Noah Feldman Quotes

On 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' it takes almost a year to get 10 shows written. It always reminds me of my old yeshiva days, where you used to sit over a piece of Talmud and analyze everything that was going on.

I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

The Reform movement isn't interested in anything, not women, nothing. All they are interested in is chasing after the Haredi public, trying to force their way of life, a permissive and lawless lifestyle, on them. But it won't help them. The Haredi public will continue to behave per their rules of behavior, per instruction of their Rabbis, and the Reform Jews can scream as much as they want

Yeshivas barely teach any Bible, only Talmud.

I am often in contact with the hareidi public and politicians.

I went to an Orthodox Jewish children's home that became an orphanage.

In my little town, Sighet, which is in Romania, Hungary-Romania, but a real shtetl, a little [Jewish] village - and we began with the Chumash [Pentateuch], probably at age four.

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning.

There's a gray area between Conservative and Orthodox people, for whom you don't screw around with the mezuzah, you don't mess with the holy melodies.

I learned early on that 'rabbi' means teacher, not priest.

Chabad is very important because without Jewish education, Diaspora Jewry would disappear.

If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting.

I study Torah all the time.

My father left me with his love of Jewish studies and cultural life. To this very day, along with several physicians and scientist colleagues, I take regular periodical lessons taught by a Rabbinical scholar on how the Jewish law views moral and ethical problems related to modern medicine and science.

[Jews have] a particular need, evidently greater than that of any others, to pay more careful attention to education.

One is also obligated to divide one's [learning] time into three: a third for learning the Written Torah, a third for learning the Oral Torah and a third in which to understand and comprehend what one learnt into the first two thirds by deriving facts from other facts

Make the study of the Torah your chief occupation; speak little, but accomplish much.

I cannot approve of prayer which challenges the world order.... A woman in a tallit [prayer shawl] is contrary to the heritage of Israel.

I attended five different Jewish day schools as a teenager. I mean, I was trained as a hazan!

I fought tooth and nail: I didn't want to learn Hebrew. My Bar Mitzvah came around, and I didn't want to read the Torah portion. I look back with a lot of chagrin about how I behaved.

Being Orthodox Jewish is kind of like being raised on like network sitcoms.

The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that?

I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.

I went off to college, a good, middle-class, very proper college, a Brethren institution, where two years of Bible study are required for graduation. It was a good, sound, thorough, but completely biased evaluation of the Bible, and I was delighted with it, because it helped to document my doubts; it gave me a framework within which I could be critical.My independent study continued for 20 years after this. So I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view.