Kaddish Quotes

“There are circumstances that must shatter you; and if you are not shattered, then you have not understood your circumstances. In such circumstances, it is a failure for your heart not to break. And it is pointless to put up a fight, for a fight will blind you to the opportunity that has been presented by your misfortune. Do you wish to persevere pridefully in the old life? Of course you do: the old life was a good life. But it is no longer available to you. It has been carried away, irreversibly. So there is only one thing to be done. Transformation must be met with transformation. Where there was the old life, let there be the new life. Do not persevere. Dignify the shock. Sink, so as to rise.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Surely it is foolish to hate facts. The struggle against the past is a futile struggle. Acceptance seems so much more like wisdom. I know all this. And yet there are some facts that one must never, never accept. This is not merely an emotional matter. The reason that one must hate certain facts is that one must prepare for the possibility of their return. If the past were really past, then one might permit oneself an attitude of acceptance, and come away from the study of history with a feeling of serenity. But the past is often only an earlier instantiation of the evil in our hearts. It is not precisely the case that history repeats itself. We repeat history—or we do not repeat it, if we choose to stand in the way of its repetition. For this reason, it is one of the purposes of the study of history that we learn to oppose it.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“I found a rip in my phylacteries. Hath heaven no more thunderbolts?”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Nahmanides appreciates that an acquaintance with death can ruin an appetite for life. And so he seeks to secure the mourner against such ruin—to describe an ideal of mourning that is not despair, that honors the encounter with death but does not succumb to it.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Nahmanides does not believe that mourning is absurd. He has answers to his question. This is his first answer: “It was the destiny of man to live forever, but as a consequence of that ancient sin, human beings have gone down to the slaughter. Therefore they tremble, because they are being separated from their true nature.” Nahmanides is referring to the sin in paradise, to the consequences of Eve’s apple. He is proposing that we do not mourn over death, we mourn over mortality.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Lumea este susținută de rostirea cuvintelor.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Datoria ... o pasiune fără bucurie.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Vrea să muște din fructul amar, dar fără să-i guste amăreala. Să lucrezi în lume, dar să nu simți nici un fel de dragoste pentru lume.”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

“Suferință, hrănește-mă!”
― Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish