Top 100 Quotes About Hebrew
#1. Only 8000 different words appear in the Hebrew Bible, compared to the 20,000 or more that the average adult needs to know in most languages.
Robert Lane Greene
#2. 'Walking the Bible' describes the year that I spent retracing the five books of Moses through the desert, and I was actually working on a follow-up, which would look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
Bruce Feiler
#3. When I say a spoken Hebrew sentence, half of it is like the King James Bible and half of it is a hip-hop lyric. It has a roller-coaster effect.
Etgar Keret
#4. Wherever it's spoken, Gaelic sounds like a combination of Swedish and Hebrew.
Howard Tomb
#5. It was important to my father that I go to Hebrew school three days a week for two or three hours each time. To me, it felt endless. Think about it from a kid's perspective: I would finish my normal school day, then get on a bus and go to another school. That was tough to take.
Steve Sheinkin
#6. Physics is nothing but the ABC's. Nature is an equation with an unknown, a Hebrew word which is written only with consonants to which reason has to add the dots.
Johann Georg Hamann
#7. I'm a Persian Jew, and we don't speak Hebrew.
Zubin Mehta
#8. I learned Hebrew from a high school teacher named Mr. Cohen. We would drive down the highway to meet his car, and Jewish boys from these Massachusetts towns would sit in his car and learn the lessons.
Israel Horovitz
#9. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrew 11:1 KJV)
Anonymous
#10. People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
John McWhorter
#11. Live on the divine Eucharist, like the Hebrews did on the Manna. Your soul can be entirely dedicated to the divine Eucharist and very holy in the midst of your work and contacts with the world.
Peter Julian Eymard
#12. In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
Mandy Patinkin
#13. I studied at the Hebrew University Medical Faculty, graduated, and was an Israel Defense Forces' combat physician on a Navy ship.
Aaron Ciechanover
#14. I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions.
Norman Finkelstein
#16. We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.
David Ben-Gurion
#17. Hebrews . This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.
James F. Cooper
#18. Nobody ever saw anybody who had seen anybody who had heard of anybody that had ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the original Hebrew manuscripts.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#19. Its other name was Satis, which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three
or all one to me
for enough ... but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else.
Charles Dickens
#20. The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#21. The grocer told him that he participated in his sorrow, the Hebrew way of expressing condolence.
Judith Frank
#22. Vocal cords are not rental units. No Hebrew prophet, nor Mohammed, nor any founder of any cult or religion ever spoke the words of anybody but themselves.
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
#23. Back home, almost everything I did, I did in Hebrew. I went to drama school in Hebrew, my whole career was in Hebrew, and to switch languages was something that was fascinating and more complicated than I expected it to be, even though I've been speaking English since I could speak.
Yael Grobglas
#24. The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#25. The ruach blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but cannot tell from where it comes or where it goes. God is He, He is Ruach (Spirit) and Ruach is speaking to our ruach (spirit) revealing great mysteries, knowledge, wisdom, understanding and joy.
Sipporah Joseph
#26. The original text of the Bible was perhaps written in Hebrew and Aramaic and later translated into Greek.
Sudhir Ahluwalia
#28. I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for 'history.' The closest word for it is memory.
David Miliband
#29. The tombstones smashed in Hebrew cemeteries and plundered for Polish sidewalks; today bored citizens, staring at their feet while waiting for a bus, can still read the inscriptions.
Anne Michaels
#30. Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.
Etgar Keret
#31. Nazarenes." Ezra faltered, leaning against a nearby wall. The word in Hebrew was Hanozree and held powerful significance among religious Judeans. The word signified the highest form of denial of self, rejection of sin, turning away from temptation, and earnestly seeking the Lord.
Janette Oke
#32. 2017 is the Year of Jubilee! Receive its blessings in your spirit! Forgive and be forgiven. Reconcile and be reconcilable. Revival is due!
Steve Cioccolanti
#33. I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
David Antin
#34. It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#35. I do not like the darkness, but please don't make the light too strong.
Raphael Ben Levi
#36. Being that the *historical* Jesus was of pure Hebraic descent- lineage of Eber- He was not an Arab or of Arabic descent, therefore He was not dark skinned as most Israeli's are not."
~R. Alan Woods [2013]
R. Alan Woods
#37. Before Ben-Yehuda ... Jews could speak Hebrew; after him they did.
Cecil Roth
#38. Some providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.
John Flavel
#39. And what will you call her, then?" Nancy asked the new mother. "Abigail," Naomi said. "We will call her Abigail." "Ah," Nancy said with a smile of approval. "'Tis Hebrew, meaning 'the father's joy.
Melanie Schmidt
#40. Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.
Dara Horn
#41. In the Torah, the Hebrew 'to know', often used in a sexual context, is not about facts but about connections. Knowledge, not as accumulation but as charge and discharge.
Jeanette Winterson
#42. Every Hebrew should look upon his Faith as a temple extending over every land to prove the immutability of God and the unity of His purposes.
Grace Aguilar
#43. I'm twelve years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life but he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don't understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me $600 for Hebrew lessons.
Woody Allen
#44. I never learnt Hebrew because my health was fragile, and it was thought that learning Hebrew would be an added burden. I regret it, because I would like to be able to join in fully. Not that I am a believer, but I would like to be.
Anita Brookner
#45. One crucial thing to keep in mind as you read any Hebrew narrative is the presence of God in the narrative. In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story.
Gordon D. Fee
#46. Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that's more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won't it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?
Bernard Cornwell
#47. I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
Joshua Foer
#48. The Tigris is so fierce and rapid, and swallows its alluvial banks so greedily, that it is probable that some of the buildings described by the Hebrew traveller Benjamin of Tudela as existing in the twelfth century were long since carried away.
Isabella Bird
#49. I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.
Amar'e Stoudemire
#50. Unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me.
Charlotte Bronte
#51. It is of great importance for a student of Old Testament theology to notice that in every period of the discipline, the questions, methods, and possibilities in which study is cast arise from the sociointellectual climate in which the work must be done.
(p. 11)
Walter Brueggemann
#52. Lamentations' testimony is bitter, raw, and largely unhealed. Its poems use 'wounded words' to illumine pain and resist God's acts in the world.
Kathleen M. O'Connor
#53. I might sing a gospel song in Arabic or do something in Hebrew. I want to mix it up and do it differently than one might imagine.
Stevie Wonder
#54. The Hebrew Bible is the supreme example of that rarest of phenomena, a national literature of self-criticism. Other ancient civilisations recorded their victories. The Israelites recorded their failures. It is what the Mosaic and prophetic books are about.
Jonathan Sacks
#55. The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and ... become a living language
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
#56. Begin thinking of death and you are no longer sure of your life. It's a Hebrew proverb.
Leo Gordon
#57. After I spent my compulsory army service in the 'top secret office' of the Medical Forces, where I was fortunate to be exposed to clinical and medical issues, I enrolled to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ada Yonath
#58. Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that - if Herodotus can be believed - was unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats.
Stacy Schiff
#59. At times, God's history seems to operate on an entirely different plane than ours ... Exodus identifies by name the two Hebrew midwives who helped save Moses' life, but it does not bother to record the name of the Pharaoh ruling Egypt (an omission that has baffled scholars ever since).
Philip Yancey
#60. when a Greek or Roman individual wanted to communicate a concept, he or she would typically write a theological treatise or lay out a rhetorical argument or speech about the topic. When a Hebrew teacher would seek to communicate something, he would often convey the message through a story.
Robert F. Gallaty
#61. As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods.
Joseph Goebbels
#62. We do hereby command the Leaders of the Hebrew, Catholic and Protestant Churches to sanctify and have us crowned Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Joshua A. Norton
#63. But there was a saying in Hebrew, "We survived Pharoah, we'll survive this too." In the words of the old joke, it was the theme of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, they failed, so let's eat!
John Connolly
#64. ABAD'DON, noun [Hebrew Chaldee Syriac Samaritan to be lost, or destroyed, to perish.] 1. The destroyer, or angel of the bottomless pit. Revelation 9. 2. The bottomless pit. Milton.
Noah Webster
#65. God has called His creation to find satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him, and stop trying to manage the world by conforming it to our expectations, and to allow Him to govern His creation. He continues to say through an ancient Hebrew worship song, Be still and know that I am God!
Charles R. Swindoll
#66. My grandfather sold insurance to King Farouk of Egypt. And my savta's parents helped found the city of Tel Aviv in 1906. Our family name used to be Mizrahi, but they changed it to Mayron, which means 'happy water' in Hebrew.
Melanie Mayron
#67. Jews are just like everyone else, only more so.
Lionel Blue
#68. You are not the one who speaks your thoughts - you are the one who hears your thoughts." In Hebrew, the word for the highest soul, that which God breathed into Adam, is N'Shama - "the hearer.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#69. What Jews do you know who don't make comedy of their lives? It's part of the religion. I'll bet you think all that Hebrew at bar mitzvahs is prayers, don't you? Fooled you, didn't we? It's stand-up.
Jennifer Coburn
#70. I speak fluent Hebrew and even dream in Hebrew when we visit there, once or twice a year.
Natalie Portman
#71. And God, the Master Builder. This is the meaning behind Joseph's words "God meant it for good in order to bring about ... " The Hebrew word translated here as bring about is a construction term
Max Lucado
#72. The Hebrew scriptures say it's okay to enslave anybody except your fellow Jews. It says you should enslave only your neighbors. I say to people that means Mexicans and Canadians are a bit at risk if we want to be literal about the Bible.
John Shelby Spong
#73. I have six or seven 'what to name the baby' books, the Oxford dictionary of names, and a fabulous tome that's 26 languages in simultaneous translation - French, German, all the European majors, plus Esperanto, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.
Melanie Rawn
#74. Strange, the Hebrew noun which means "I am", The English always use to govern damn.
George Gordon Byron
#75. Sect. 32. Hawaiian authorities are able to throw no light, and conjecture, but little light upon the true meaning of Ia. It is evidently the name or appellation of, or stands to represent, some deity. (The only name of a deity corresponding in form to this is the Hebrew JAH. Ps. 68: 4.)
David Malo
#76. Both gospels employ the term "Son of God" exactly as it is used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: as a royal title, not a description.
Reza Aslan
#78. I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don't know how much experience you've had with contemporary Hebrew. It's quite difficult.
Noam Chomsky
#79. There is so much information in one Hebrew word that translators are hard pressed to decide how much information should be cut. Since the first official translation (the Septuagint), Jewish translators advocated translating Hebrew (for outsiders) at the 'story' level.
pg viii
Michael Ben Zehabe
#80. Mitzvah" is Hebrew for "colossal pain in the ass.
Jesse Andrews
#81. One of the stranger things about me is that I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I went to a yeshiva until I was thirteen years old and spoke fluent Hebrew.
Dani Shapiro
#82. Let's take some extra time to talk about one: Only the number one can create all numbers with this simple equation, 111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321. One, expressed nine times, multiplied by itself, produces all subsequent numbers progressively and then inversely. Zero is not a number.
Michael Ben Zehabe
#83. Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him. In Hebrew, "Be silent in God, and let Him mould thee." Keep still, and He will mould thee to the right shape.
Martin Luther
#85. The Hebrew Bible has long been the world's possession, and those who come to it by any means, through whatever language, are equals in ownership, and may not be denied the intimacy of their spiritual claim.
Cynthia Ozick
#87. The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It
John Steinbeck
#88. one legend has it that Jews found Poland attractive because the country's name sounded like the Hebrew imperative po lin ("rest here").
Diane Ackerman
#89. They spoke in Latin, so that all might understand; but the quotations they flung at each other were Greek and Hebrew, Turkish, Persian.
Dorothy Dunnett
#90. In fact, the ultimate speculation we can make about the nature of Divinity is that Divinity is NO-THING which we can know. In Hebrew, the word for no-thing (nothing) is AIN.
Donald Michael Kraig
#91. But where Moabite differed from Hebrew the difference pointed to Phoenician on the one side and to Arabic on the other, rather than Aramaic.
John Courtenay James
#92. The Egyptians of 4000 B.C. believed that the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, taught them how to grow olives. The Greeks have a similar legend. But the Hebrew word for olive, zait, is probably older than the Greek word, elaia, and is thought to refer to Said in the Nile Delta.
Mark Kurlansky
#93. Life to me is a beautiful gift from from AdoShem that should not be wasted but shared with others. Including amazing revelations that are meant to be seen and meant to be told for such a time as this!
Sipporah Joseph
#94. By the reduction of the Arabs on the one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.
Moshe Sharett
#95. Of all the languages that have existed upon the Earth, the Hebrew language is unique and extraordinary in its ability to paint vivid pictures with words that lodge within the heart conveying deep and profound Truth".
~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
#96. It seems likely that Jesus, being a scholarly young man, learned some Hebrew, but that's conjecture. It's more likely that Jesus spoke some Greek, as this language dominated the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century.
Jay Parini
#97. English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.
David Crystal
#99. And God does have a personality. He can't hide from us. His personality shines through every Hebrew letter, on every page. Sometimes we forget that God is a person
not a fleshly person, but a person nonetheless. (page iii)
Michael Ben Zehabe
#100. We Jews created the concept of good luck. Luck in Hebrew is mazel, which is not actually a word. It is an acronym for three words:
1. makom = place
2. zman = time
3. lamud = work
Celso Cukierkorn
