Fervor Quotes

“If you’re a Jew,” the ancient woman had said, “and you’re sensible, you do two things. Learn languages and collect passports.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“I’ll leave you with one last thought,” he said. “It’s an idea I had, possibly quite useless. But worth trying, perhaps. I ask you to find ten names, just ten out of the six million. The lists are widely available. And if each one of us in this room today commits ten names to memory, then that’s something. Not a lot, but something. And every now and then, you should recite the names to yourself and ponder what happened to them, the people whose names were stolen and replaced with a number seared into their arms. Those names that were supposed to plunge into oblivion, never to be restored. We must all try to remember.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“We must always remember. It is the only defence we have.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“In the face of evil, our last defence is memory. Orwell knew this. Big Brother’s final victory is not the destruction of human sexuality but the obliteration of the past.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“Then why could it not be stopped? God knew what was coming. Surely, then, God let it happen. What to do with such a thought? How can we still live as Jews, how can we go on lighting the sabbath candles, separating milchedig from flayshedig, circumcising our children?” Night had fallen. Schultz’s aging face glowed bronze in the smoky light. I looked about me hoping, if I’m honest, to see other non-believers who had come to the lecture but not the dinner. I thought a confederate or two might alleviate my growing unease. “And yet, the reverse position is equally compelling. It is recorded that in the camps there were those who fasted on Yom Kippur, men and women already living under the tyranny of starvation who still refused their soup rations in order to honour their spiritual commitments, fully aware it would bring their deaths a whole day nearer. Who are we to turn our backs on God, after those human skeletons kept faith? “We have arrived at a paradox. To live as a Jew is impossible, and not to live as a Jew is equally impossible. Both paths are obscene, both insult the dead.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“to the tzaddik there is no distinction between past and present, that if you see with God’s eyes you can look back on the future, and sit with the past before you?”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“Any resemblances to an Orthodox service lay somewhere between superficial and blasphemous.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor

“We should not condescend those who lived through past eras for their ignorance. They are what we know.”
― Toby Lloyd, Fervor