Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

The inside of life became far smaller than the outside, creating a cavity, an emptiness.

“There’s a Hasidic proverb: ‘While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.’”

“Nothing goes away. Not on its own. You deal with it, or it deals with you.”

Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts.

long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there—not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die.

Especially Jewish Americans, who will go to any length, short of practicing Judaism, to instill a sense of Jewish identity in their children.

Jacob had met these people throughout his life, but only at rites of passage—bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals. He didn’t know their names, but their faces evoked a kind of Pavlovian existentialism: if you’re here, if I see you, something significant must be happening.

‘And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.’

Kein briere iz oich a breire. Not to have a choice is also a choice.

What we don’t wrestle we let go of. Love isn’t the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.”