Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 35a
It is forbidden to enjoy anything in this world without a bracha (blessing).
Babylonian Talmud, Menakhot 43b
Rabbi Meir said: A person is obligated to say one hundred blessings every day.
Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 12b
Rabbi Yossi said: Alas for people who see but know not what they see and for people who stand but
know not on what they stand.
Rambam (Maimonides), Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Hatorah 2:2
The way to come to love and fear God is by contemplating God's amazing words and creations and
seeing the infinite wisdom expressed in them. This will bring one to love God and want to praise
and glorify God. One will experience tremendous longing and yearning to know God's great name.
In the words of David, ‘My soul thirsts for Elokim, the Living Power’ (Psalm 42).
As one contemplates further on these things, one will immediately recoil in fear and awe realizing
that one is a tiny, lowly creature standing with flimsy wisdom before the One who has perfect
knowledge.
A Teva story – from an unkown (Hasidic) tale
The child of a certain rabbi used to wander in the woods. At first his father let him wander, but over
time he became concerned. The woods were dangerous. The father did not know what lurked there.
He decided to discuss the matter with his child. One day he took him aside and said, “You know,
I have noticed that each day you walk into the woods. I wonder, why you go there?” The boy said to
is father, “ I go there to find God.”
“ That is a very good thing,” the father replied gently. “ I am glad you are searching for God.
But, my child, don’t you know that God is the same everywhere?”
“Yes,” the boy answered, “but I’m not.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is not Alone, 1951
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our
state of mind. We will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (attributed to the Baal Shem Tov)
The world is full of wonders, special radiance, and marvelous secrets, but all it takes is a small hand
held over the eye to hide it all.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
Know the great reality, the richness of existence that you always encounter. Contemplate its
grandeur, its beauty, its precision, its harmony. Be attached to the legions of living things who are
constantly bringing forth everything beautiful.
Rabbi Lawerence Kushner, Honey From The Rock
To be a Jew means to wake up and to keep your eyes open to the many beautiful, mysterious, and
holy things that happen all around us every day.
Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as
though everything is a miracle.
Saul Tchernikovsky (Haskalah poet)
And if you ask me of God, my God
“Where is God that in joy we may worship?”
Here on earth too God lives, not in heaven alone
A striking fir, a rich furrow, in them you will find God’s likeness, Divine image incarnate in every
high mountain. Wherever the breath of life flows, you will find God embodied.
And God’s Household? All beings: the gazelle, the turtle, the shrub, the cloud pregnant with
thunder . . . God-in-Creation is God’s eternal name.
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 3:19
For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one
dies so dies the other; all share the same breath of life.
Pirke Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers) 4:3
Do not be scornful of any person and do not be disdainful of anything. For there is no person
without his hour, and no thing which does not have its place.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th c.)
One glorious chain of love, of giving and receiving, unites all living things. All things exist in
continuous reciprocal activity one for All, All for one. None has power, or means for itself; each
receives only in order to give, and gives in order to receive, and finds therein the fulfillment of the
purpose of its existence. ‘Love,’ say the Sages , ‘love that supports and is supported in turn’—that is
the character of the Universe.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, pp. 57-58
I can contemplate a tree. I can accept it as a picture . . . I can feel it as a movement . . . I can assign
it to a species and observe it as an instance . . . I can overcome its uniqueness and form so
rigorously that I can recognize it only as an expression of law . . . I can dissolve it into a number,
into a pure relation between numbers, and externalize it. Throughout all of this the tree, the tree
remains my object and has its time span, its kind and condition. But it can also happen, if will and
grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree, I am drawn into the relation and the tree ceases to be
an It.
Breached (Genesis) 2:15
And the Lord took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and guard it.
Tosefta Sanhedrin 8:3
Why were human beings created last in the order of Creation? So that they should not grow proud –
for one can say to them, ‘ Even the gnat came before you in creation!’
Midrash Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) Rabbah 7:20
Upon creating the first human beings, God guided them around the Garden of Eden, saying; ‘Look
at my creations! See how beautiful and perfect they are! I created everything for you. Make sure
you don’t ruin or destroy My world. If you do, there will be no one after you to fix it.’
Bereshit (Genesis) 1:30-31
And to every beast off the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the
earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw
everything that he had made and behold it was very good.
Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 100b
If we had not received the Torah we would have learned modesty from watching a cat, honesty
from the ant, and fidelity from the dove.
Rashi’s commentary: Modesty from the cat: because it covers up it excrement; honesty from the
ant: one ant does not take the food of another ant; and fidelity from the dove: doves are faithful to a
single partner.
Vayikra Rabbah 3:1(Midrash on Leviticus)
A person with a vegetable garden and fertilizes it and hoes it and sustains himself from it is better
off than a person who rents as a sharecropper. As the proverb says: ‘Who rents one patch eats
birds; who rents many patches – birds eat him.’
Jerusalem Talmud, Kedoshim 4:12
It is forbidden to live in a town, which has no garden or greenery.
Chasidic Tale (Source Unknown)
Two men were fighting over a piece of land. Each claimed ownership and bolstered his claim with
proof. To resolve their differences, they agreed to put the case before the rabbi. The rabbi listened
but could not come to a decision because both seemed to be right. Finally he said, “Since I cannot
decide to whom this land belongs, let us ask the land.”. He put his ear to the ground, and after a
moment straightened up. “Gentlemen, the land says that it belongs to neither of you – but that you
belong to it.”
Rabbi Lawerence Kushner, Honey From The Rock
The wilderness is not just a desert through which we wandered for forty years. It is a way of being.
A place that demands being honest with yourself without regard to the cost in personal anxiety. A
place that demands being present with all of yourself. In the wilderness your possessions cannot
surround you. Your preconceptions cannot protect you…. You see the world as if for the first time.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
Every blade of grass sings poetry to God without ulterior motives or alien thoughts—without
consideration of reward. How good and lovely it is, then, when one is able to hear this song of the
grasses. It is therefore a precious thing to conduct oneself with piety when strolling among them.
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