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There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.
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Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)
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I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.
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Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There’s a Hasidic proverb: ‘While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.’” Jacob
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Am)
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The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man's flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve.
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Hasidic Saying
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The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man's flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve.
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-Hasidic saying
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I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.
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Elie Wiesel (Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters)
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I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!
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Chaim Potok (The Chosen (Reuven Malther, #1))
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The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren
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Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
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For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.
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Chaim Potok (My Name Is Asher Lev)
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As far as I can remember, I have always wanted everything from life, everything it can possibly give me. This desire separates me from people who are willing to settle for less. I cannot even comprehend how people's desires can be small, ambitions narrow and limited, when the possibilities are endless
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?
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Elie Wiesel (Night (The Night Trilogy, #1))
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If my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The same point is made by the Hasidic Rabbi, Susya, who shortly before his death said, "When I get to heaven they will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses?' Instead they will ask 'Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?
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Irvin D. Yalom (Existential Psychotherapy)
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I can't bear the thought of living an entire lifetime on this planet and not getting to do all the things I dream of doing, simply because they aren't allowed. I don't think it will ever be enough, this version of freedom, until it is all-inclusive. I don't think I can be happy unless I'm truly independent.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. "Hasidic Noir
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Pearl Abraham (Brooklyn Noir (Akashic Noir))
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A Hasidic teaching says, "If your child has a talent to be a baker, don't tell him to be a doctor." Judaism holds that every child is made in the divine image. When we ignore a child's intrinsic strengths in an effort to push him toward our notion of extraordinary achievement, we are undermining God's plan.
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Wendy Mogel (The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children)
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Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.
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Hasidic Saying
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I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under me, directly under the weight of my body on the grass, are other creatures, just as real, for whom also this moment, this tree, is “it”… in the top inch of soil, biologists found “an average of 1,356 living creatures in each square foot… I might as well include these creatures in this moment, as best as I can. My ignoring them won’t strip them of their reality, and admitting them, one by one, into my consciousness might heighten mine, might add their dim awareness to my human consciousness, such as it is, and set up a buzz, a vibration…Hasidism has a tradition that one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst.
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Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
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Subconsciously, I have started to say goodbye to the people and objects in my life as if preparing to die, even though I have no real plan. I just feel strongly, in my gut, that I'm not meant to stay here.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate;
their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man’s
flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is
that he can improve. —Hasidic saying
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
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Can anyone survive without faith, however its labeled? No matter how you live, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I’m convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable, if only I could have books all the time.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, "Those people had God in their hearts."
I said to him in a whisper, "God exists now too."
"But not within us," he said.
I said to him: "A certain hasidic master was asked where the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells. He told them: Wherever He is allowed to enter, there He dwells.
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S.Y. Agnon (A Book that Was Lost: and Other Stories)
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The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew
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Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
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amused them with the story of his Romanian grandmother who jumped out a window to avoid marrying a Haskalah Jew, only to land atop a Hasidic rabbi from Austria. “She knocked him to the mud,” he exclaimed. “When he looked up, she was reading his palm. So they got married.
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James McBride (The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store)
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So it is no surprise that Jewish teaching includes frequent reminders of the importance of a broken-open heart, as in this Hasidic tale: A disciple asks the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answers: “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”38
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Parker J. Palmer (Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit)
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La virtud de los ángeles es que no pueden decaer; su defecto es que no pueden mejorar. El defecto del hombre es que puede decaer, y su virtud que puede mejorar.
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Hasidic Saying
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Do not exalt any path above god. There are many paths that lead to god. So people are capable of finding and following the ways that suit them, provided they do not stand still.
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Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings and Tales of The Hasidic Masters)
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I have to remember that understanding sometimes comes in degrees, like growth. Like age.
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Leah Lax (Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home)
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I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I’m convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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How could anyone reconcile the agony of the Holocaust with Hasidism, a dancing religion that teaches love, joy, and celebration?
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Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
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The mitnagged served the Shulhan Aruch (the Law), but the hasid served Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu (God).
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Menahem Mendel
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and pleasure? What is it that I am tasting?' The most eloquent rabbi and writer of Hasidic mysticism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, left Warsaw in 1939 to become an important
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Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
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He was a follower of a Hasidic rebbe, a trustee in the synagogue, a big-shot with the authorities. In brief, a factotum.
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Sholom Aleichem (Happy New Year! and Other Stories)
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The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man’s flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve. —Hasidic saying
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
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Chaim Potok wrote two novels that I think are indispensable to understanding the Hasidic and Orthodox American Jewish communities following the Holocaust: The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev.
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Nancy Pearl (Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason)
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Shapira's Hasidism included transcendent meditation, training the imagination and channeling the emotions to achieve mystical visions. The ideal way, Shapira taught, was to "witness one's thoughts to correct negative habits and character traits." A thought observed will start to weaken, especially negative thoughts, which he advised students not to enter into but examine dispassionately. If they sat on the bank watching their stream of thoughts flow by, without being swept away by them, they might achieve a form of meditation called hashkatah: silencing the conscious mind.
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Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
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Until the stifling heat of summer sets in, my neighborhood is suspended in momentary perfection, a fantasy filled with swirling gusts of pink and white petals that rain down on the sunlit pavement.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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There is something that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfilment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.
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Martin Buber (The Way of Man: According to the Teachings of Hasidism (Routledge Classics))
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The disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, tell of a dream he had. In the dream, the very incarnation of the Evil Impulse appears in the form of a sinister heart. The Baal Shem Tov seizes the heart and pounds it furiously. He would destroy evil and redeem the world. As he pummels it, he hears an infant’s sobbing emitted from the heart. He stops beating it. In the midst of evil is a voice of innocence; there is goodness entangled in evil.
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Harold M. Schulweis
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Bubby scoffs at my question. A Jew can never be a goy, she says, even if they try their hardest to become one. They may dress like one, speak like one, live like one, but Jewishness is something that can never be erased. Even Hitler knew that.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I resolve to venture into the city on my own. I look at maps in the library—subway maps, bus maps, and regular maps—and try to memorize them. I’m afraid of getting lost; no, I’m afraid of sinking into the city as in a quicksand, afraid of getting sucked into something I can never escape.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The connection between radical attentiveness, prayer, and joy pervades Jewish mystical thinking in its diverse phases but never so brightly, so every-day-related, and so clearly as in Hasidism. Melancholy is the dust in the soul that Satan spreads out. Worry and dejection are seen to be the roots of every evil force. Melancholy is a wicked quality and displeasing to God, says Martin Buber.
Rabbi Bunam said: "Once when I was on the road near Warsaw, I felt that I had to tell a certain story. But this story was of a worldly nature and I knew that it would only rouse laughter among the many people who had gathered about me. The Evil Urge tried very hard to dissuade me, saying that I would lose all those people because once they heard this story they would no longer consider me a rabbi. But I said to my heart: `Why should you he concerned about the secret ways of God?' And I remembered the words of Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz: 'All joys hail from paradise, and jests too, provided they are uttered in true joy’ And so in my heart of hearts I renounced my rabbi's office and told the story. The gathering burst out laughing. And those who up to this point had been distant from me attached themselves to me." (a quote from Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber).
Joy, laughter, and delight are so powerful because, like all mysticism, they abolish conventional divisions, in this case the division between secular and sacred. The often boisterous laughter, especially of women, is part and parcel of the everyday life of mystical movements.
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Dorothee Sölle (The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance)
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The Two Caps Rabbi David Moshe, the son of the rabbi of Rizhyn, once said to a hasid: “You knew my father when he lived in Sadagora and was already wearing the black cap and going his way in dejection; but you did not see him when he lived in Rizhyn and was still wearing his golden cap.” The hasid was astonished. “How is it possible that the holy man from Rizhyn ever went his way in dejection! Did not I myself hear him say that dejection is the lowest condition!” “And after he had reached the summit,” Rabbi David replied, “he had to descend to that condition time and again in order to redeem the souls which had sunk down to it.
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Martin Buber (Tales of the Hasidim)
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For a while I thought I could un-Jew myself. Then I realized that being Jewish is not in the ritual or the action. It is in one's history. I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that's where my indomitable spirit comes from, passed down from ancestors who burned in fired of persecution because of their blood, their faith.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I cannot be one of those girls who fritters away her entire life in this small, stifling square of tenements, when there is an entire world out there waiting to be explored. I don’t know how, but maybe my escape will be accomplished in small, steady steps, like Francie’s. Maybe it will take years. But I know, with great certainty, that it will be.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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We live together in the same web but with few lines binding us to one another. Put a fence around the Torah, the Law says. We put fences around our hearts.
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Leah Lax (Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home)
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Will he be able to tell, when he sees me, how truly wonderful I am? Will he want me?
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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If I change, if I get honest, will you know me?
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Leah Lax (Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home)
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Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.
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Elie Wiesel (Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters)
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A broken heart is a whole heart. A leaning ladder is a straight ladder.
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Simcha Raz (Hasidic Wisdom: Sayings from the Jewish Sages)
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An empty vessel clangs the loudest.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Can you ever really leave the place you come from? Isn’t it best to stay where you belong, rather than risk trying to insert yourself somewhere else and failing?
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Assimilation,” my teacher always says, “was the reason for the Holocaust. We try to blend in, and God punishes us for betraying him.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The virtue of angels is that they
cannot deteriorate;
their flaw is that they cannot
improve. Man's
flaw is that he can deteriorate; and
his virtue is
that he can improve.
”
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Hasidic Saying
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I am convinced that my ability to feel deeply is what makes me extraordinary, and that is my ticket to Wonderland.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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What brand of self-pride is the consciousness that Zeidy has, that he can dress like a pauper and still command respect?
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Years later, even when I gazed at the world with eyes wide open, I would still be innocent in my heart.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Can anyone survive without faith, however it is labeled? No matter how you live your life, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Why did I decide to speak up? Someone had to do it, and it turned out to be me.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I still identify as Jewish, because it’s my cultural heritage, but I don’t derive any spiritual nourishment from Judaism.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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the only thing of value one can achieve in this life is menuchas hanefesh, the deep, inner serenity that prevails even in the face of persecution.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I am convinced that my ability to feel deeply is what makes me extraordinary,
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I don’t want to fight for anything. I want to just be and do, with no one saying they’re letting me.” —From The Romance Reader, by Pearl Abraham
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The books he claims are treacherous serpents have become my close friends.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I too want to be such a woman, who works her own miracles instead of waiting for God to perform them.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Tikkun Olam. There is a Jewish legend behind this notion. Sometime early in the life of the world, something happened to shatter the light of the universe into countless pieces. They lodged as sparks inside every part of the creation. The highest human calling is to look for this original light from where we sit, to point to it and gather it up and in so doing to repair the world. This can sound like an idealistic and fanciful tale. But Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who told it to me as her Hasidic grandfather told it to her, calls it an important and empowering story for our time. It insists that each one of us, flawed and inadequate as we may feel, has exactly what’s needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.
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Krista Tippett (Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters--and How to Talk About It)
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Today, my faith has been replaced with questions. I love the way unanswered cosmic questions leave open all possibilities. The universe spreads out in three inscrutable, wondrous dimensions.
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Leah Lax (Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home)
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But truthfully, all those assurances are in the mind, and if my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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waited for a long time for someone to come along and rescue me, just like in the stories. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I realized that no one would ever pick up the glass slipper I left behind.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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In an inn somewhere, a wealthy guest mistakes [Rebbe Zusia] for a beggar and treats him accordingly. Later he learns his identity and comes to cry his remorse: "Forgive me, Rebbe, you must - for I didn't know!"
"Why do you ask Zusia to forgive you?" Rebbe Zusia said, shaking his head and smiling. "You haven't done anything bad to him; it is not Zusia you insulted but a poor beggar, so go and ask the beggars, everywhere, to forgive you!
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Elie Wiesel (Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters)
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Every time a man catches a glimpse of any part of your body that the Torah says should be covered, he is sinning. But worse, you have caused him to sin. It is you who will bear the responsibility of his sin on Judgment Day.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there.
I never knew I was there, either.
For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.
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Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
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My mother openly lives her life as a goy, and who could guarantee that the same insanity won’t enter my head like it did hers? Only complete lunacy could explain why someone would reject God and the ways of his people, like she did.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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The wearing of skullcaps in public was criminalised, as were other items defined as habitually Jewish. But Hasidic Jews responded by adopting the costume of the Polish-Russian merchant; the black fox-fur shtreimel hat worn over the yarmulka, the long belted black coat and white stockings that merchants wore in St Petersburg. This is what they still wear in Jerusalem and elsewhere, imagined as distinctively Jewish dress, which frozen over the generations it has duly become.
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Simon Schama (The Story of the Jews: When Words Fail, 1492–1900)
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The doer cannot apprehend who the powers are whose emissary and acting agent he is; he must nevertheless be aware that the fullness of the world’s destiny, namelessly interwoven, passes through his hands. It is said in the Mishnah, “Every man shall say: ‘It is for me that the world was created.’ ”16 And again, “Every man shall say: ‘The world rests on me,’ ” which is corroborated by the hasidic text: “Yes, he is the only one in the world, and its continued existence depends on his deed.
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Martin Buber (On Judaism)
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The ontological status of evil in the world, both in the celestial and terrestrial aspects, may be compared to the status of the firstborn, preferred for its essential priority. Evil precedes good just as darkness precedes light and absence precedes existence.
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Rachel Elior (The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism)
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People want to know if I’ve found happiness, but what I’ve found is better: authenticity. I’m finally free to be myself, and that feels good. If anyone ever tries to tell you to be something you’re not, I hope you too can find the courage to speak up in protest.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
“
When you have faith, Zeidy says, you can grasp how meaningless life is, in terms of the bigger picture. From the perspective of heaven, our suffering is minuscule, but if your soul is so weighed down that you cannot see beyond what’s in front of you, then you can never be happy.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
“
I communicate wordlessly with the burblings in my womb. I don’t want to bring you into a world where silence is a cover for the worst crimes, I tell him. Not if I can’t protect you from it. I won’t keep quiet forever, baby, I promise. One day I will open my mouth and I will never shut it again.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
“
A doorman peers up at the rain from under an awning. We reach Madison, where Holly waits in the drizzle while I stand in the doorway of a boutique, watching that dog walker, those Hasidic Jews, the Arab-looking businessman over there. A couple of cabs slow down, hoping to lure a fare, but Holly is gazing into the small green rectangle of Central Park at the far end of the block. Her mind must be in turmoil. To write a memoir in which psychic events irrupt occasionally is one thing, but for psychic events to dreamseed you, serve you Irish tea, and spin you a whole cosmology, that’s another. Maybe Ōshima’s right; maybe I should suasion her back to 119A.
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David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)
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At the time, the problem with losing my innocence was that it made it difficult to keep pretending. Inside me a conflict was brewing madly between my own thoughts and the teachings I was absorbing. Occasionally this tension would boil over my smooth facade, and others would try to remove me from the flames of curiosity before I went too far.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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It is important to recall here the fact that, in contrast to the claim of those who only look at the quantitative aspects of things and consider the esoteric element of religion to be marginal and peripheral, the esoteric dimension actually lies at the heart of religion and is the source of both its endurance and renewal. We observe this truth not only in Islam, but also in the Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions in Judaism and various mystical currents in Christianity. In Islam itself, Sufism has been over the centuries the hidden heart that has renewed the religion intellectually, spiritually, and ethically and has played the greatest role in its spread and in its relation with other religions.
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Seyyed Hossein Nasr (The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity)
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What Can Be Learned From a Thief
The saintly Rabi Zusya was originally a disciple of the tsaddik Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritsh. Once he asked his master to teach him the secret of worshipping the Creator. “There’s no need for me to teach you,” replied Rabbi Dov Baer, “because you can learn it from any child or thief.”
“Why, how can I learn it from a child?” asked the astounded disciple.
“In three ways,” replied his master. “First, a child needs no reason to be happy. Second, a child always keeps busy. And third, when a child wants something, it screams until it gets it.”
“And what,” asked Rabbi Zusya, “can I learn from a thief?”
“From a thief,” answered Rabbi Dov Baer, “you can learn seven things. First, to apply yourself by night and not just by day. Second, to try again if at first you don’t succeed. Third, to love your comrades. Fourth, to be ready to risk your life, even for a small thing. Fifth, to attach so little value to what you have that you will sell it for a pittance. Sixth, not to be put off by hardship and blows. And seventh, to be glad you are what you are instead of wanting to be something else.
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Pinhas Sadeh (Jewish Folktales)
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Every year before the Days of Awe, the Ba-al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, held a competition to see who would blow the shofar for him on Rosh Hashanah. Now if you wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov, not only did you have to blow the shofar like a virtuoso, but you also had to learn an elaborate system of kavanot — secret prayers that were said just before you blew the shofar to direct the shofar blasts and to see that they had the proper effect in the supernal realms.
All the prospective shofar blowers practiced these kavanot for months. They were difficult and complex. There was one fellow who wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov so badly that he had been practicing these kavanot for years. But when his time came to audition before the Ba-al Shem, he realized that nothing he had done had prepared him adequately for the experience of standing before this great and holy man, and he choked. His mind froze completely. He couldn’t remember one of the kavanot he had practiced for all those years. He couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to be doing at all. He just stood before the Ba-al Shem in utter silence, and then, when he realized how egregiously — how utterly — he had failed this great test, his heart just broke in two and he began to weep, sobbing loudly, his shoulders heaving and his whole body wracking as he wept.
All right, you’re hired, the Ba-al Shem said.
But I don’t understand, the man said. I failed the test completely. I couldn’t even remember one kavanah.
So the Ba-al Shem explained with the following parable: In the palace of the King, there are many secret chambers, and there are secret keys for each chamber, but one key unlocks them all, and that key is the ax. The King is the Lord of the Universe, the Ba-al Shem explained. The palace is the House of God. The secret chambers are the sefirot, the ascending spiritual realms that bring us closer and closer to God when we perform commandments such as blowing the shofar with the proper intention, and the secret keys are the kavanot. And the ax — the key that opens every chamber and brings us directly into the presence of the King, where he may be — the ax is the broken heart, for as it says in the Psalms, “God is close to the brokenhearted.
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Alan Lew (This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation)
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An empty vessel clangs the loudest. That’s the adage I hear continuously, from Chaya, from the teachers at school, from the Yiddish textbooks. The louder a woman, the more likely she is to be spiritually bereft, like the empty bowl that vibrates with a resonant echo. A full container makes no sound; she is packed too densely to ring. There are many proverbs repeated to me throughout my childhood, but this one stings the most.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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There is always a happy ending in children’s books. Because I have not yet begun to read adult books, I have come to accept this convention as a fact of life as well. In the physics of imagination, this is the rule: a child can only accept a just world. I waited for a long time for someone to come along and rescue me, just like in the stories. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I realized that no one would ever pick up the glass slipper I left behind.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it derserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerly believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Whoever came to see Rebbe Shmelke with outstretched palms left bearing a gift. one day, when he had not a single piece of change, he gave a beggar a ring he saw lying on the table. It belonged to his wife, who, when she heard the story, complained loudly: "How could you, didn't you know this was a valuable ring, a diamond ring?"
Whereupon Shmelke ran out of the house in pursuit of the beggar, shouting: "Friend, listen, that ring is valuable! Don't let the jeweler cheat you! You mustn't sell it too cheap!
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Elie Wiesel (Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters)
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Love's mystery resides in oneness, and so does God's. "Whatever is above is also down below." Between the present concrete world and the other, the one to come, there is a link as between source and reflection. God does not oppose humanity, and man, though vulnerable and ephemeral, can attain immortality in the passing moment. In man's universe, everything is connected because nothing is without meaning.
Thence the tolerance the Baal Shem exhibited toward sinners. He refused to give them up as lost. If need be, he could understand - though not accept - evil in others. But evil without consciousness of evil he deemed inadmissible.
...To realize himself, the Baal Shem's Hasidism teaches us, man must first of all remain faithful to his most intimate, truest self; he cannot help others if he negates himself. Any man who loves God while hating or despising His creation, will in the end hate God. A Jew who rejects his origins, his brothers, to make a so-called contribution to mankind, will in the end betray mankind. That is true for all men.
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Elie Wiesel (Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters)
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You would expect the loss of a stable existence on earth to drive a search for fixity on a higher sphere. If this is the case, a rise in the appeal of fundamentalism will testify to the experience of impermanence. That takes me deep into the realm of subjectivity, but there are empirical hints and signs. In Egypt, we saw, the old regime was initially replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the country’s only fair elections to date. The hard reality in the Middle East is that Islamist groups have prospered wherever secular Arab authoritarians have wobbled. In the US, the more demanding faiths — evangelists, Mormons, Hasidics — have grown at the expense of older institutions which too much resemble the earth-bound hierarchies of the Center. The spread of Christianity in China is among today’s best-kept secrets. For the governing classes and articulate elites of the world, this turn to religion is both appalling and incomprehensible — but this is a denial of human nature. If the City of Man becomes a passing shadow, people will turn to the City of God.
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Martin Gurri (The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority)
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You have to manifest it for yourself,” the blond diva says wisely. “I spent years believing against all odds that it would happen for me. I still wake up every morning knowing even better things will happen. If you believe it against all odds, it comes true. It’s the power of the universe.” Even though Polly, too, left religion behind, she still has her own system of faith that she carried with her. Can anyone survive without faith, however it is labeled? No matter how you live your life, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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I thumb my well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables before placing it in the bag along with Watership Down and Jane Eyre. Anne was plagued like all the beloved female characters of my youth, but she was my favorite, because for all her spunk and mischief, she earned the undying love of those around her the way I always wished to. I thought it would be Eli, finally, who would love me despite my inability to be ordinary, the way he promised to when we first met and I warned him I would be a handful. But perhaps what he meant by being able to handle me was not love but the power to make me bend to his wishes and conform to his world.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Documentaries All My Loved Ones, directed by Matej Minac, 1999. As If It Were Yesterday, directed by Myriam Abramowicz and Esther Hoffenberg, 1980. The Flat, directed by Arnon Goldfinger, 2012. Four Seasons Lodge, directed by Andrew Jacobs, 2008. Generation War (Our Mothers, Our Fathers in the original German), directed by Philipp Kadelbach, 2013. Hidden Children, directed by John Walker, 1994. Hitler’s Children, directed by Chanoch Ze’evi, 2011. Image Before My Eyes, directed by Josh Waletzky, 1981. Imaginary Witness, directed by Daniel Anker, 2004. Inheritance, directed by James Moll, 2006. A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, 1997. The Nazi Officer’s Wife, directed by Liz Garbus, 2003. Torn, directed by Ronit Krown Kertsner, 2011. Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, 1935. Features Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick, 2008. In Darkness, directed by Agnieszka Holland, 2011. Inside Hana’s Suitcase, directed by Larry Weinstein, 2002. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, 2002. Sarah’s Key, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010. Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1993. A Year of the Quiet Sun, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, 1984.
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R.D. Rosen (Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors)
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After shedding my old self, I didn’t suddenly discover a more authentic version underneath. When you carve yourself out of your entire life, you are not left with much. It takes a decade to build both a new self and a life to go with it, and had somebody told me how hard it would be, I might not have undertaken the challenge at all. Yet I never expected it to be easy either. I had no fairy-tale ending in my head and I think that helped. Happiness has a way of playing hide-and-seek when you actively pursue it, but it often surprises you when you least expect it. I found my version of happiness in Berlin. If someone had predicted that ten years ago, I would have found the thought hilarious bordering on insane.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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Lately I have been spending hours sitting between the library stacks and thinking about my future. Looking at the books lining the shelves, I remember how I coveted the privilege to read as a child, how much I risked for knowledge, and how the joy of reading always outweighed the fear. I used to marvel at the innate right those authors felt they had to speak their mind in whatever way they saw fit, to put down on paper their innermost thoughts, when I couldn’t contemplate a day that I would not feel compelled to keep secrets. I am so tired of being ashamed of my true self. I am exhausted by the years I have spent pretending to be pious and chastising myself for my faithlessness. I want to be free—physically, yes, but free in every way, free to acknowledge myself for who I am, free to present my true face to the world. I want to be on this library shelf, alongside these other authors, for whom truth is a birthright.
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Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots)
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As soon as the Rabbi of Bluzhov had finished the ceremony of kindling the lights, Zamietchkowski elbowed his way to the rabbi and said, “Spira, you are a clever and honest person. I can understand your need to light Hanukkah candles in these wretched times. I can even understand the historical note of the second blessing, ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.’ But the fact that you recited the third blessing is beyond me. How could you thank God and say ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season’? How could you say it when hundreds of dead Jewish bodies are literally lying within the shadows of the Hanukkah lights, when thousands of living Jewish skeletons are walking around in camp, and millions more are being massacred? For this you are thankful to God? For this you praise the Lord? This you call ‘keeping us alive’?” “Zamietchkowski, you are a hundred percent right,” answered the rabbi. “When I reached the third blessing, I also hesitated and asked myself, what should I do with this blessing? I turned my head in order to ask the Rabbi of Zaner and other distinguished rabbis who were standing near me, if indeed I might recite the blessing. But just as I was turning my head, I noticed that behind me a throng was standing, a large crowd of living Jews, their faces expressing faith, devotion, and concentration as they were listening to the rite of the kindling of the Hanukkah lights. I said to myself, if God, blessed be He, has such a nation that at times like these, when during the lighting of the Hanukkah lights they see in front of them the heaps of bodies of their beloved fathers, brothers, and sons, and death is looking from every corner, if despite all that, they stand in throngs and with devotion listening to the Hanukkah blessing ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season’; if, indeed, I was blessed to see such a people with so much faith and fervor, then I am under a special obligation to recite the third blessing.”2 Some years after liberation, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, now residing in Brooklyn, New York, received regards from Mr. Zamietchkowski. Zamietchkowski asked the son of the Skabiner Rabbi to tell Israel Spira, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, that the answer he gave him that dark Hanukkah night in Bergen Belsen had stayed with him ever since, and was a constant source of inspiration during hard and troubled times. Based
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Yaffa Eliach (Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust: The First Original Hasidic Tales in a Century)