Wednesday, August 03, 2005

I didn't think he was a Zionist either

"...[F]arming itself is an expression of the mitzvah of settling the land by bringing forth its holy fruit... Thus a person in Israel - who wants to exclusively learn Torah and doesn't want to farm - is like one who says that he doesn't want to put on tefillin because he is studying Torah. It is possible that this is also true concerning all occpuations which help develop society - that they are included in the mitzvah of settling Israel."

-Chatam Sofer, Sukkah 36b

2 comments:

ADDeRabbi said...

did you see that i posted this exact quote earlier this week?
interesting coincidence, no?
I see that you also did your own translating.

Beisrunner said...

seeing as i'm technically in yeshiva or something, i don't really have time to check blogs other than my own. and that, only relatively rarely. interesting coincidence, as you say.