May you be covered in your Rabbi’s dust and may you thirstily drink his words. ~ Mishnah The disciples did not want to just learn from Jesus, they wanted to be Jesus. Peter walked on the water, because if his Rabbi could, he wanted to be able to do everything his Rabbi could. He may have sank, not because he doubted his Rabbi, but because he doubted himself.
Discipline yourself to study Torah, for you do not acquire it by inheritance. ~ Mishnah (Avot 2:12)Same goes with the Bible. You do not get the Torah as a Jew and you do not get the Bible at salvation.
If [the student] learns Torah and does not go over it again and again, he is like a man who sows without reaping. (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 99a) For "learns" read memorize. By comparision, reading scripture once is like sowing without reaping.
There doesn't exist any Jewish child who doesn't know by heart the history from Adam to Zerubbabel [i.e., from the beginning to the end of the Bible]. ~ Jerome Jerome learned his hebrew in Bethlehem (lucky dog), he would listen to children walking reciting their lessons they memorized.
Above all we pride ourselves on the education of our children, and regard as the most essential task in life the observance of our laws and of the pious practices based thereupon, which we have inherited. ~ Josephus (Against Apion 1:60, Loeb ed.) The Jews felt that their schools were more important than their synagogues.
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