Seven Blessings Quotes

“Whoever cannot see the hand of God in finding their mate, will never see the hand of God in anything. —JEWISH PROVERB”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“he was embarrassed he wasn’t wearing a kippah in front of the rabbi. The rabbi said, ‘I’m a short man. My head only reaches your shoulders. I can’t see what’s on top of your head. I can only see your heart.’” Doctor”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Well, if he’s not for you? Believe me, you know right away. And if he is for you? You can marry him, you can have children with him, you can spend your life with him, and still, you never know.” They continued”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“That’s what they all do,” Beth said philosophically, as they squeezed between two tables, narrowly avoiding a Styrofoam cup of coffee set on a table’s edge. “The college girls come, they study, they love Israel, and then it’s the end of the year, they cry at the airport, and they never come back. It’s like camp to them.” “Oh Beth, don’t be cynical. Not everyone’s cut out for Aliyah, you know. We’re the lucky ones.” They continued walking toward a table at the outskirts,”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“A shard of lightning split the sky, then seconds later thunder came, rolling soft and low. Beth turned her eyes toward his. “God just took our picture.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“That’s some fire water,” she gasped. She’d eaten nothing that day because of the Purim fast. The”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“The greatest amount of water collected in the deepest hole; wisdom gathered in the most humble person. The deeper the hole, the more water it could contain. People who made no room inside themselves would never hold much beyond their own preconceived ideas. Belief didn’t create meaning, she concluded, it just made room for it.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“As the French say: There are no ugly women, just lazy ones.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“She sniffed the air. No baking bread smell from Yussel’s Bakery, but the air was thick with Shabbat fare: gefilte fish, cholent or chamin, jachnun and koobana bread, zchug hot sauce, Yerushalmi kugel.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“her. “That kind of answers your question, ‘a helpmeet opposite.’ It’s that reconciliation—as you call it—between opposites, between Man and Woman, that brings us to our deepest good.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Not good for Adam implies woman was created solely with man in mind, for his benefit. But this translation implies—this state of man being alone is not beneficial for the universe. It’s a cosmological statement. This aloneness is not good for the world. Woman wasn’t created to complement man but to complete the world.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Not you,” Judy stage-whispered. “The men. Without the taboo, they’d never get it together. That’s why men are commanded to get married, but not the women.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“I don’t know,” Dina was muttering to herself. “To tell the truth, this verse makes me angry. How am I supposed to feel? If women were created for the sake of men, or say you understand it mutually, that men, too, were created for the sake of women, then where does that leave me? What place do I and all the other singles have in this world? I’m irrelevant.” Her eyes blazed, and for a second Judy thought she might”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“the creation of woman sounds like: Man’s lonely. God throws in a woman to keep him company, make life better for him.” Judy stared at her. “And what’s so terrible about that?” “It suggests her existence doesn’t have intrinsic worth, independent of man.” Dina groped in a knapsack. “Wait a second. I’m getting a”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Judy took a closer look at her, the half-circles carved around her mouth and the beginning of slackness around the neck area. Here was no college girl, but a woman in her early thirties.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“After years spent polishing their phrases and explaining their religion so that the foreign powers would tolerate their presence, the religious Jews had tired of living apologetically. Now in their own land, they reveled in “telling it like it is,”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Yes, but you’re different. You have a neshama, a soul. Those Ashkenazim walk around”—Estrella pressed her knees together and took a few penguin-like steps, side-stepping a cranky, arthritic rooster that had escaped someone’s yard—“they walk like they’re constipated. They don’t know how to sing, not like we do.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“She might’ve asked a rabbi or teacher to help her interpret these verses, but she never could bring herself to approach anyone. It was like sharing her mess, opening up the fridge for the world to see the spilled juice, the rotting, moldy food. So she had settled into a chronic religious anxiety while staying connected by whatever means—more meticulous observance of the laws, increased prayer—until, she hoped, she would feel differently.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Israel was strange that way. In the summertime trees drooped, and now in the winter they came to life, helped on, no doubt, by the five months of rain. On the other side of the road, a hill rose sharply and became”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Still, the hard part wasn’t coming up with a match, but executing it, and there was the real secret of making a shidduch: chutzpah, pure nerve. Because many people could come up with good ideas. It annoyed her the way acquaintances would say, “Oh yes, I thought of Yossi and Miriam, too,” and she would always restrain herself from asking, “So why didn’t you, then?” She knew why. They were frightened. She, Tsippi, normally on the timid side, for some reason was never upset if the parties were insulted (Me with him? Do I look fifty pounds overweight? Do I?) and abused her with their complaints, their How-could-you’s, their wounded expressions. She brushed them off and did her work. She”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“how she decided to put so and so with that one and not another. How could she explain? She liked to juxtapose two people in her mind, imagine them eating a falafel together, or setting a table. If no sparks flashed, she dropped it cold.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel

“Tsippi had begun stocking more of the spices the Sephardim liked: the cumin and cardamom and turmeric, the hawajj and hilbe.”
― Ruchama King Feuerman, Seven Blessings: A Novel