The king and queen are preparing an expulsion order— David sucked in his breath. Yes, even as we have feared. They have taken the capitulation of Granada as a sign of divine will that Spain be a Chris...
The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.
She was loved by a man as a woman is meant to be loved.
One program that deplored the high incidence of wife beating drew hundreds of letters from angry men, who insisted that beating their wives was a God-given right.
It was only then that I realized the distance between uncle and nephew wasn’t nearly as great as I’d assumed.
Is it ever thus, at the end of things? Does any woman ever count the grains of her harvest and say: Good enough? Or does one always think of what more one might have laid in, had the labor been harder...
I realize that lust stands high in the list of deadly sins. And yet lust - the tightening of the throat, the flushed cheeks, the raging appetite - is the only word accurate to describe the sensation I...
I borrowed his brightness and used it to see my way, and then gradually, from the habit of looking at the world as he illuminated it, the light in my own mind rekindled.
For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.
But the stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip. They pull life from whatever surfaces they cling to, while the roots, maybe, wither and rot until you cannot find the pl...
Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.
And now, a year has passed since I undertook to go to war, and I wake every day, sweating, in the solitude of the seed store at Oak Landing, to a condition of uncertainty. More than months, more than...
A sofer must fill his mind with only the holy letters. He could not be distracted by daily things. Leshem ketivah haggadah shel Pesach, he whispered to himself again, trying to quiet his mind. His han...
So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand.
Who they were, or how they worked. That’s how I add my few grains to the sandbox of human knowledge. It’s what I love best about what I do. And there were so many
The man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor.
You, he continued, grabbing my wrist. All of you, from the safe world, with your air bags and your tamper-proof packaging and your fat-free diets. You are the superstitious ones. You convince yourself...
What was it Dante wrote, about the pope who abdicated his throne to become a contemplative and yet is condemned to one of the lowest circles of hell? Something about being punished for having turned h...
We will need to give you a Muslim name…does Leila suit you? I don’t deserve this kindness, she whispered. That you, Muslims, should help a Jew— Come now! Serif said, realizing that she was about to cr...
There was malachite green, and red; the intense red known as worm scarlet—tola’at shani in Hebrew—extracted from tree-dwelling insects, crushed up and boiled in lye. Later, when alchemists learned how...