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61 " What had drawn a non-Jewish woman of her generation to this obscure life as a specialist in Jewish studies? "
― Rachel Kadish , The Weight of Ink
62 " Mustn’t desire then be integral—a set of essential guideposts on the map of life’s purpose? And mightn’t its very denial then be a desecration? "
63 " Yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet. "
64 " He gave a hum of recognition. 1657. The early days of the readmission of Jews to England, after nearly four centuries of official expulsion. "
65 " Yet what does harm,” she said, “is not what truly merits a man’s anger, but what he seizes on instead. "
66 " Life is muddy. Denying that—thinking there’s only one noble path above the fray—can be a poisonous approach to life. "
67 " What was there to stop him from choosing some completely different life, after all? Nothing but the fact that he’d never wanted a different life. "
68 " This blessing,” she said to him. “To dream such glad dreams that you wake laughing. "
69 " Ester saw that she’d used belladonna drops to dilate them, sacrificing the day’s vision for the chance to seem to Thomas more melting, more womanly. "
70 " Some women, Ester, like to believe their hearts are made of glass, which must shatter if they so much as think of a sin. Oh Ester, shatter "
71 " such a God as the theologians would have us pray to—a God who in a world of suffering aids some but not others—cannot contain the mercy ascribed to him. Therefore, I say: such God as we pray to does not exist. And to this I add: there is no divine intervention. There is no divine judge. So we must supply for ourselves notions of good and ill. This is the purview and millstone of the philosophe. "
72 " She’d been wrong to think the universe cold, and only the human heart driven by desire. The universe itself was built of naught but desire, and desire was its sole living god. "
73 " So said the old man: As a boy I gathered fruit from the trees planted by my forebears. Am I not, then, required to plant the trees that will sustain my grandchildren? "
74 " It is an error not only of soul but also of body, for they that muster for the next world before it has come can only betray their lives in this one. "
75 " Here it is. I left this for you. As though an ancient library had breached the border into now, into the life of Aaron Levy, who had not until this moment understood how powerfully he needed something like this. He extended his fingertips. “Wash your hands,” Helen snapped from behind him. "
76 " You’re a student?” John flushed as though the question were both compliment and accusation. “I was. Or am.” He shook his head. “That is, I will be again, if I’m to have my say in the matter. "
77 " To study with an able mind is to escape prison, for a time. "
78 " The greatest curse, he’d thought, was to be stuck in one’s own time—and the greatest power was to see beyond its horizons. Studying history had given him the illusion of observing safely from outside the trap. Only that’s what the world was: a trap. The circumstances you were born to, the situations you found yourself in—to dodge that fray was impossible. And what you did within it was your life. "
79 " My grandmother," Ester said, "wished not to trap her love into taking her. She said a heart is a free thing, and once enslaved will mutiny.... "
80 " It is not God’s will,” Aaron quoted, “that Jews should wager on the Messiah as dicers will. "