Torah Peace Quotes

Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.

An Ego Mind is a destructive mind and a rational mind is a peaceful mind.

The system that God has given us is a holistic system. This is why the Torah is concerned with how we treat others, what we eat, how we behave, and how we produce, keep and share our wealth. The word shalom reminds us that we cannot live in peace until we completely take care of all other aspects of our lives.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

every time Jesus mentioned the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” I should have said, “Jesus undermined the inerrancy of the scriptures in favor of his version of pragmatic empathy!” or “Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures it was to err on the side of nonjudgmental co-suffering love. So up yours,

Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person's suffering? How will I do this and not lose my son, my precious son whom I love as I love the Master of the Universe Himself? How will I do this and not cause my son, God forbid, to abandon the Master of the Universe and His Commandments? How could I teach my son the way I was taught by my father and not drive him away from Torah? Because this is America, Reuven. This is not Europe. It is an open world here. Here there are libraries and books and schools. Here there are great universities that do not concern themselves with how many Jewish students they have. I did not want to drive my son away from God, but I did not want him to grow up a mind without a soul. I knew already when he was a boy that I could not prevent his mind from going to the world for knowledge. I knew in my heart that it might prevent him from taking my place. But I had to prevent it from driving him away completely from the Master of the Universe. And I had to make certain his soul would the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life.

42. And mix not truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth [i.e. Muhammad Peace be upon him is Allaah's Messenger and his qualities are written in your Scriptures, the Tauraat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel)] while you know (the truth) .

This was the virtue of Israel, to have “contended with Elokim and with men” and to have prevailed over their respective concealments of G-d. They are no longer barriers to him; indeed they assent to his blessings. He not only won his struggle with the angel (the guardian angel of Esau) but the angel himself blessed him. This is the achievement of which the Proverbs speak: “He makes even his enemies be at peace with him.”14

Ferencz said that he suspected some of the Torahs may have disappeared, and he didn’t know whether purloining a Torah was a blessed act or a criminal offense.

If the name of the Lord, as printed on the sacred parchment, has been damaged in any way, no repair is permissible. The Torah must be sent to Israel for burial in accordance with ancient Hebrew rituals

Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying to 4:1 tell the children of Israel, “If a soul sins against any of Yahweh’s commandments through ignorance of the things that ought not be done, and does any of them, 4:2 or if the anointed priest sins and brings guilt upon the people, let him bring a young bull without blemish for a sin offering to Yahweh. 4:3 He shall bring the bull to the door of the tabernacle and lay his hand upon the bull's head, and kill the bull before Yahweh. 4:4 The anointed priest shall take the bull's blood, and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation. 4:5 And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle the blood seven times before Yahweh in front of the veil of the sanctuary. 4:6 The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Yahweh, which is in the tabernacle, then pour all the blood of the bull at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle. 4:7 And he shall take from the bull all the fat for the sin offering— the fat that covers the innards, and all the fat that is upon the innards, 4:8 and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them by the flanks, and the caul above the liver, which he shall take away with the kidneys, 4:9 just as it was taken from the bull of the sacrifice of peace offerings— and the priest shall burn them upon the altar of the burnt offering. 4:10 The skin of the bull, and all his flesh, and his head, and his legs, and his innards and his dung— 4:11 the whole bull he shall carry outside the camp to a clean place where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on a wood fire. Where the ashes are poured out, he shall be burnt.

Given Luke’s policy of depicting Paul as an obedient churchman, willingly subject to apostolic decrees, it is not surprising that Acts’ portrayal of the Jerusalem conference contrasts markedly with Paul’s eyewitness report (Gal. 2: 1–10). Whereas Acts shows the Gentile–Torah issue peacefully and unanimously settled, Paul declares that “not for one moment” did he compromise his position that Gentile Christians should live absolutely free of Torah “bondage.” According to Galatians, Paul accepted no restrictions, whereas Acts states that he unhesitatingly agreed to James’s four Torah prohibitions. In addition, Paul reveals an attitude toward eating meat sacrificed to Greco-Roman gods that differs from that ascribed to him in Acts (1 Cor. 8: 8; 10: 27).

In his Guide of the Perplexed, he sets out his intensely rationalistic view of the Torah: ‘The law as a whole aims at two things–the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body.’ The first consists in developing the human intellect, the second in improving men’s political relations with each other. The Law does this by setting down true opinions, which raise the intellect, and by producing norms to govern human behaviour. The two interact. The more stable and peaceful we make our society, the more time and energy men have for improving their minds, so that in turn they have the intellectual capacity to effect further social improvements. So it goes on–a virtuous circle, instead of the vicious circle of societies which have no law.

Descartes conceived of a malicious demon intent on deceiving us as much as possible. The Matrix has been characterised as an example of the work of the malicious demon. But surely Abrahamism is his greatest work. The malicious demon is the Abrahamic God. Has anyone ever told more lies than the prophets of this God? Are there any texts more full of deceit than the Torah, Bible and Koran? We are told that all religions promote peace and follow a divine Commandment of Thou Shalt Not Kill. Of course, this is nonsense. The Bible and Koran are full of death sentences for just about everything. What religion actually says is that you should be peaceful towards all those slavishly worshipping your God and mindlessly obeying every Commandment, but you should be deadly towards everyone else. “Peace” is peace on God’s terms, not those of human beings. All heretics, apostates, infidels, and transgressors are to be killed.

I thought of the young Saul of Tarsus in November 1995, when the then prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a student called Yigal Amir. Rabin had taken part in the Oslo Accords, working out agreements toward peace with the Palestinian leadership. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his political rival Shimon Peres and with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He also signed a peace treaty with Jordan. All this was too much for hard-line Israelis, who saw his actions as hopelessly compromising national identity and security. The news media described the assassin as a “law student,” but in Europe and America that phrase carries a meaning different from the one it has in Israel today and the one it would have had in the days of Saul of Tarsus. Amir was not studying to be an attorney in a Western-style court. He was a zealous Torah student. His action on November 4, 1995, was, so he claimed at his trial, in accordance with Jewish law. He is still serving his life sentence and has never expressed regret for his actions. The late twentieth century is obviously very different from the early first century, but “zeal” has remained a constant.

In a world that was even more chauvinistic than our own, the Torah mandates that the Israelite people love peaceful non-Israelites living among them no less than they love themselves. The German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen rightly identifies this law as the beginning of what is known as 'ethical monotheism': 'The stranger was to be protected, although he was not a member of one's family, clan, religion, community or people, simply because he was a human being. In the stranger, therefore, man discovered the idea of humanity.

One of the most prominent of all Jewish communities lived in the Babylonian city of Baghdad. Visiting the city shortly before 1170, Benjamin of Tudela noted that it was home to ‘about one thousand Jews, who enjoy peace, comfort and much honour under the government of the great king.’ Among them were ‘very wise men and presidents of the colleges, whose occupation is the study of the Mosaic Law.’ Benjamin also mentioned the city’s two rabbinical schools and twenty–eight synagogues, the chief one richly ornamented with marble, gold and silver. He praised the Caliph for being versed in the Torah and able to speak and write in Hebrew–highlighting further

Men and women complement each other’s strengths well. However, when a male perspective dominates female ones, the world ends up living narratives that may be successful in some situations but simply cannot get us the results we want in others. For example, if we want peace, why do we keep telling war stories? Why don’t we turn to the half of the human race that has fostered other means of resolving conflict? Force can stop violent behaviors temporarily, but authentic sharing through story, which often has been nurtured by women, can move antagonists toward understanding one another and building the trust that leads to lasting peace. Similarly, in our politics, warlike competition prevails when candidates run for office, but to govern successfully, they need to utilize more feminine modes, reaching across the aisle to solve problems together. All of the major religions in the world instruct us to love one another as a road to a better collective and personal quality of life. Jesus repeated this decree over and over, in slightly different words: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). “If you love me, feed my sheep” (adapted from John 21:17). And quoting the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39, ASV). It was his major message. Rabbi Sefer Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, spoke to the deep roots of love in the Hebrew faith: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.”1 The sayings of Muhammad, selected and translated by the Sufi Kabir Helminski, include the very strong statement, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.”2 Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, proclaimed, “It is Love that holds everything together.”3 The Buddha enjoined us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.”4 Loving-kindness remains a cardinal practice of modern Buddhism. In the Hindu tradition, love also is the religion’s central tenet. Swami Sivananda sums this up in these words: “Your duty is to treat everybody with love as a manifestation of the Lord.”5

The Torah is teaching us that by keeping the Holy Torah, we receive Hashem’s blessings: Yevarechecha—Hashem blesses us and protects us. Yaeir—Hashem shines his face towards us and makes us favorable, in the eyes of other nations. Yisa—Hashem forgives us for everything that should not have happened and grants us true peace. And when the Kohanim mention Hashem’s name in these blessings, Hashem not only approves, but gives additional blessings of His own. (Based on Sichas Rosh Chodesh Sivan 5741; Sefer Hasichos 5751, vol. 1 p. 42)

They say you only live once, but this isn’t quite true. You only die once, but you live anew every single day. How do you want to live each new day? Let it be in harmony with who you truly are.

When you can learn to drop your expectations and embrace deep acceptance and gratitude, you will find that joy and more energy will flow into you and your life.

The Torah teaches that God created all beings, all creatures are good in and of themselves, and that the Creator remains personally invested in creation. Scriptures also indicate that human beings were created “in the image of God” by a deity who is munificent and compassionate toward all creatures. The Creator assigned human beings the task of protecting and serving creation . . . . Jews are to be compassionate, to avoid harming anymals, and Jewish law specifically protects anymals as ends in themselves. Jewish religious traditions honor anymals as individuals, and as our kin. God created a vegan world, peaceful and without bloodshed, and the Tanakh encourages people to work to create a path back to this original Peaceable Kingdom.

Whoever thinks that the exalted Torah was given so that man could attain peace of mind, lead a happy family life, love his fellow man, find favor in the eyes of society, or succeed in his affairs diminishes the Torah greatly.

You can either choose to be a hostage to your ego or a host to God.