My Jewish Year Quotes

“It’s a clear snapshot of how we hold both the ending and the beginning in the same moment, not to mention that the ending never ends.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“brief encounter with having less, to honor the people losing more.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“Contrary to the other three hundred days of the year, when you’re running and doing and building and constructing, the Jewish holidays provide a kind of in-built way to pause and to gather yourself and regenerate. . . . Our lives can become so full of activities and to-do tasks that, in some sense, the soul becomes overwhelmed. We need to defragment our souls. We can be pulled in so many different directions, but the holidays help that part of us that needs meaning and connection and great purpose. . . . Holiday rituals are ancient technologies that carry contemporary wisdom. Judaism works.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“Simchat Torah (rejoicing of the Torah) marks the day we complete the Torah and start it all over again. The last verses of the last book (Deuteronomy) are read, followed by the first verses of the first book (Genesis). It’s a clear snapshot of how we hold both the ending and the beginning in the same moment, not to mention that the ending never ends.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“When Levy and I sit down to talk at her sukkah table, she expands again on Paley’s metaphors of the flesh, albeit with a little less porn: “The etrog is a breast. It actually has a nipple. The pitam [one of the etrog’s stems] is a nipple. I mean, there are so many phallic symbols within every tradition. Let’s look at it this way: Moses had a staff. Miriam had a well. The lulav is a phallus and the etrog is a breast. Is sukkot about sex? I would say sukkot is certainly about sensuality.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “A religious person is one who suffers harm done to others . . . whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew

“This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, by the late rabbi Alan Lew,”
― Abigail Pogrebin, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew