Heart of a Stranger Quotes

“The mark of Lailah is a reminder that the depth of our entire life experience and the world’s secrets are already inside us, waiting to be restored. Which means we spend our entire lifetime relearning a wisdom we always had.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging

“We are in control of our fear. Fear is a choice.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging

“They say that it takes a village to raise a child. But it took a village to make me a mother. I was shaped by a sisterhood who had trudged the path before me and lived to tell the tale, sharing their tips and war stories.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging

“After plenty of tears in Israel and a true sense of futility and loneliness, I had my mother’s voice in my head, telling me to dust myself off. I realized, after all that, I was still Jewish.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging

“When I was eleven, my mother put kimchi on our ritual Passover plate. She thought it was a reasonable substitution for the horseradish “bitter herbs,” since both elicit a similar sting in the mouth, the same clearing of the nostrils.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging

“Without a Jewish mother, the majority of Jews did not see me as “legally” Jewish.”
― Angela Buchdahl, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging