Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.
Chaim PotokRead
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
Interpretation
This quote expresses confidence in the teachings of the Torah and an acceptance of truth, suggesting a strong moral and spiritual grounding.
Chaim Potok emphasizes the importance of faith in spiritual texts like the Torah and the courage to confront and embrace the truth, regardless of its challenges. This perspective suggests that a deep connection with one's beliefs can provide strength and clarity in navigating life's complexities.
In practice
During a religious discussion at a community gathering.
Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.
β¦ the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
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 poetry or a modern novel.
All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.
He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.
Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.
The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
It is worth while dying, to find out what life is.
People can't seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next "horrifying" event. People forget there is such a thing as memory, and that when a wound "heals" it leaves a permanent scar that never goes away, but merely fades a little. What really ought to be said after one of these so-called tragedies is, "Let the scarring begin.
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