Here All Along Quotes

“God is not a being, but rather the process of being. Connecting with this kind of God is less about addressing an entity, and more about simply being present with what is. As rabbi Alexander S. Gross describes it, “the closer I feel to life at each lived moment, the closer I feel to God.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life-in Judaism

“As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel noted (as recounted by his daughter), “The Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, and Hitler did not come to power with tanks and guns; it all began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“your fundamental moral orientation must always be in the direction of the outsider. Their struggles must always be your concern. For in some essential and eternal way, the plight of the stranger was, and always will be, your own.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“Listen to the truth from whoever said it.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“Many of us constantly use work or technology to “leave our place”—to escape the moment in which we currently find ourselves so that we can avoid the uncomfortable feelings that are arising. Bored? Hop on Twitter! Lonely? Start texting people! Anxious? Unwind with some TV! Doubting your purpose in life? Dive into those work emails! But on Shabbat, many of the strategies we use to run away from ourselves are prohibited. We can’t escape to the office or into a screen. We can’t curate our life for others’ consumption on social media, focusing on how our life looks, rather than how it feels. Instead, for twenty-five hours, we actually have to live it.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“A more accessible explanation comes from the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, in the form of a story about two ocean waves—a tall one and a short one—heading toward the shore. The tall wave sees what’s up ahead—waves crashing and dissolving back into the ocean—and starts panicking. “We’re going to die!” it cries. The short wave is untroubled. The tall wave repeatedly tries to convey the gravity of the situation. “Seriously! This is the end!” But the short wave remains unconcerned, responding: “What would you say if I told you that there are six words, that if you really understood and believed them, you would see that there’s no reason to fear?” “Fine, fine, tell me the six words!” pleads the tall wave. The short wave replies: “You’re not a wave, you’re water.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“Judaism asserts that there is one God who loves and cares for all of humanity, and while Jews have a particular relationship with that God, we recognize that others also have their own relationships with the Divine. Jews do not feel the need to convert people to Judaism because we do not think that others need to act and believe like we do to be saved or morally acceptable. A better name for us would be “the choosing people”—the people who chose to accept a particular covenant with the Divine, and who must continue choosing, in each new generation, to honor it.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“it is important to me to say the same prayers that my grandmother said, and that her grandmother said, and that other Jews around the world are saying today. These prayers have traveled a journey over thousands of years, echoing through ancient stone Temples, teeming synagogues, and boisterous Shabbat tables; spoken under wedding canopies and over squirming babies, on deathbeds and during dark nights of the soul. And they have been the last words on the lips of many people who lost their lives because they refused to give up their right to utter them.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“Though I appreciate that worrying about what will happen after I die is sort of like worrying about what was happening before I was born. My prebirth existence/nonexistence doesn’t keep me up at night, and maybe I should try to feel the same way about what is beyond the other end of my life.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“On Sukkot, we’re told to construct a visibly fragile, temporary structure—one that offers little protection from the wind, rain, heat, and cold, but affords a clear view of the heavens. It is a house that “gives us no shelter…a parody of a house,” Rabbi Alan Lew observes, “it exposes the idea of a house as an illusion.” Sukkot seems to be telling us that being written in the Book of Life is an all-inclusive kind of deal. It is not “The Book of the Pleasant Things in Life” or “The Book of the Easy Things in Life.” It is “The Book of Life”—all of it. If you try to keep out all the rain, you’ll be unable to see any stars. If you refuse to bear the heat, you’ll never feel the sun on your skin. Either you get the whole package—pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow—or you get a numb, closed-off, sleepwalking existence that might seem safe and manageable, but isn’t much of a life. That kind of existence offers only the illusion of control, and it’s no way to live.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“I also do not think belief in God is necessary to incentivize moral behavior. Some of the most ethical people I know are atheists. They”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“this is what spirituality in Judaism looks like: It’s less a pursuit of once-in-a-lifetime highs, and more a series of routine practices, the effects of which build slowly over time.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“it would be as follows: God chose a powerless people for a particular relationship, rescued them from slavery, and gave them a mission: To create a society that is the very opposite of Egypt, one based on the belief that we are all created in the Divine image—all infinitely worthy, fundamentally equal, and totally unique.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“The purpose of Jewish existence is not to eat Jewish foods, or tell Jewish jokes, or use Yiddish*10 words. It is to fight evil and to reduce suffering in the world.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“The blessing practice is calling us to wake up again and again to these kinds of miracles. Rabbi Max Kadushin deemed this approach “normal mysticism”—the habit of infusing daily life with a sense of the sacred, and transforming it from a succession of unremarkable acts we mindlessly perform to a series of wonders in which we delight.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“baby, took her into his arms, sat down, and rocked her to sleep. When the student emerged from his prayers, he was shocked and embarrassed to find his master in his house, holding his baby. “Master,” he said, “what are you doing? Why are you here?” “I was walking in the street when I heard crying,” he responded, “so I followed it and found her alone.” “Master,” the student replied, “I was so engrossed in my prayers that I did not hear her.” The master replied, “My dear student, if praying makes one deaf to the cries of a child, there is something flawed in the prayer.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“interpretations. One traditional Jewish teaching claims that there are “seventy faces to the Torah,” meaning many different ways to understand it. Another declares: “Turn it [the Torah] over and turn it over, for everything is in it.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“This reaction is a good snapshot of how I had always approached Judaism: largely ignorant of context or history, generally assuming the worst, and quick to judge based on surface appearances.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism

“I’ve found that it’s better to say fewer prayers with greater intention than to mindlessly rattle through the whole liturgy. As the old story goes: A man tells his rabbi, “I’ve been through the Talmud three times.” The rabbi responds, “How much of the Talmud has been through you?”
― Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism