14 Quotes by Deborah Feldman

If my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.

The most powerful thing about living on the water, I would soon learn, is that one is forced into a perpetual relationship with a mirror - a reflective surface is some ways quite literal and in many other ways deeply spiritual. Contemplating water somehow has the effect of forcing one to contemplate oneself. A good thing, if one's self needs fixing.

I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.

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.

Can anyone survive without faith, however its labeled? No matter how you live, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.

Ich stoße mich mit den Kufen ab, schließe beim weichen Dahingleiten, das darauf folgt, meine Augen und halte, wie Mimi es mir zeigte, meinen Rücken gerade. Nie zuvor habe ich mich so frei gefühlt. Der Klang der auf dem Eis kratzenden Schlittschuhe ist am lautesten, und ich verliere mich in seinem Rhythmus. Meine Bewegungen wiederholen sich und werden tranceähnlich, und ich wünschte, das Leben wäre immer so. Jedes Mal, wenn ich die Augen öffne, erwarte ich, irgendwo anders zu sein.

Later, in my adulthood, I will read the book again, even watch the movie, and understand that I wasn’t equipped, as a child, to make room for arguments that would undermine every single choice made for me, that would shatter the foundations of my very existence. I would see that I had to believe everything I was taught, if only to survive. For a long time I wouldn’t be ready to accept that my worldview could be wrong, but I do not look back with shame at my ignorance.

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.

I am hungry for power, but not to lord over others; only to own myself.