A blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing, But the man who lves that span, he is something… A man must fill his life with meaning, m...
You don't want to make mistakes with people. Sometimes when you make a mistake you lose a human soul.
We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it...
There’s a rabbi in the Talmud who even says there’s no atonement for lashon hara.
She would sit with her eyes wide open, staring, as if a lever had been pulled inside her, sealing off her feelings. Her face sagged; the light went out of her eyes. I knew those moments: sudden retrea...
Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.
It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned.
If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
Asher, an animal cannot help what he does. A human being is able to control himself if he wills it.
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
… every great artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a universal without p...
Truth has to be given in riddles. People can’t take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed, Lev. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go lo...
To the rabbis who taught in the Jewish parochial schools, baseball was an evil waste of time, a spawn of the potentially assimilationist English portion of the yeshiva day. But to the students of most...
Take care of your father, he said. There aren't many people like him around anymore.
Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important thing that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them- ordinary things is a better expression....
My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipul...
May the best of the past be the worst of the future. Keep everything always off balance. No boundaries. No repetition. The opposite of what the Rebbe wants. The Rebbe seeks fixed boundaries, perfect b...
How can we expect to know everything about God?He looked at me, his eyes narrowing.I call that ambiguity, I said. Riddles, puzzles, double meanings, lost possibilities, the dark side to the light, the...
A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two
A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary...