David Hopen > Quotes

“God is someone—something—we’ll always need. He is the adversary against which we rage and the comfort for which we yearn. We need Him when we need something larger than ourselves to thank and something larger than ourselves to blame. We need Him to feel as if we’re not alone, and we need Him to feel as if our aloneness isn’t our fault. We need Him when we rejoice, when we want happiness, peace, quiet, but we also need Him when we mourn, when we experience dread, loss, insanity.” He paused, looking to the empty chair. “We need Him more than He needs us. And that, I think, is what it all amounts to. So did we make Him up?” He shrugged, closing his copy of Hume, giving an exhausted smile. “Does it matter?”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“It’s the only way of looking at it. Guilt is pointless. Guilt is our way of legitimizing self-cruelty. It’s a basic human tendency to take pleasure in inflicting suffering, but seeing as we shouldn’t inflict suffering upon others—and seeing as we cannot harm the divine, even if we wanted to—what do we do? We turn on ourselves. We make ourselves suffer instead. We feel guilt.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“It is true that both ethics and religion aim at one thing—to raise man above the filth of the narrow self-love and bring him to the heights of love-of-others. But still, they are as remote one from the other as the distance between the Thought of the Creator and the thought of people. —Ba’al HaSulam, The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“Leaving didn't make me sad; on the contrary, the exhilarating prospect of trading my dreary, uneventful life for something new was, at long last, within reach. What was saddening was the realization that, in time, we stand in emptied houses to learn we've never made a mark.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“Why’d you do this, Ari? Why did you romanticize me like this? So—so unsustainably. You’ve insisted, from the very beginning, on building me into some kind of . . . I don’t know, some idealized entity just because you decided you wanted me. Just because the person you choose has to be special, doesn’t she? Has to be world-changing, has to be—”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“Gemara Shabbat teaches that attendees at a funeral are charged with shedding tears, and that such people are forgiven for all their sins. Why? Because an emotional life doesn’t just make us human, it solidifies our reality of being created Imago Dei, B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“Being this close to her, feeling the weight of her body against mine, gave me a sense of physical pain in my chest. I imagined my years of loneliness as a long corridor, one door after another, a passage of empty chambers leading me to this night.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“Guilt is pointless. Guilt is our way of legitimizing self-cruelty. It’s a basic human tendency to take pleasure in inflicting suffering, but seeing as we shouldn’t inflict suffering upon others—and seeing as we cannot harm the divine, even if we wanted to—what do we do? We turn on ourselves. We make ourselves suffer instead. We feel guilt.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard

“I strongly believe that achieving fulfillment here on earth hinges on unleashing our capacity to become divine. In short? I think we should channel God to empower ourselves instead of allowing Him to crush us.”
― David Hopen, The Orchard