Deborah Feldman > Quotes

“As far as I can remember, I have always wanted everything from life, everything it can possibly give me. This desire separates me from people who are willing to settle for less. I cannot even comprehend how people's desires can be small, ambitions narrow and limited, when the possibilities are endless”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I am hungry for power, but not to lord over others; only to own myself.”
― Deborah Feldman

“I can't bear the thought of living an entire lifetime on this planet and not getting to do all the things I dream of doing, simply because they aren't allowed. I don't think it will ever be enough, this version of freedom, until it is all-inclusive. I don't think I can be happy unless I'm truly independent.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“If my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Subconsciously, I have started to say goodbye to the people and objects in my life as if preparing to die, even though I have no real plan. I just feel strongly, in my gut, that I'm not meant to stay here.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Can anyone survive without faith, however its labeled? No matter how you live, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I’m convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable, if only I could have books all the time.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed. For years I would stand with a foot in each sphere, drawn to the exotic universe that lay on the other side of the portal, wrenched back by the warnings that sounded like alarm bells in my mind.”
― Deborah Feldman

“I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“For a while I thought I could un-Jew myself. Then I realized that being Jewish is not in the ritual or the action. It is in one's history. I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that's where my indomitable spirit comes from, passed down from ancestors who burned in fired of persecution because of their blood, their faith.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Until the stifling heat of summer sets in, my neighborhood is suspended in momentary perfection, a fantasy filled with swirling gusts of pink and white petals that rain down on the sunlit pavement.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I am convinced that my ability to feel deeply is what makes me extraordinary, and that is my ticket to Wonderland.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I’m convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“I resolve to venture into the city on my own. I look at maps in the library—subway maps, bus maps, and regular maps—and try to memorize them. I’m afraid of getting lost; no, I’m afraid of sinking into the city as in a quicksand, afraid of getting sucked into something I can never escape.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Bubby scoffs at my question. A Jew can never be a goy, she says, even if they try their hardest to become one. They may dress like one, speak like one, live like one, but Jewishness is something that can never be erased. Even Hitler knew that.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“There is always a happy ending in children’s books. Because I have not yet begun to read adult books, I have come to accept this convention as a fact of life as well. In the physics of imagination, this is the rule: a child can only accept a just world. I waited for a long time for someone to come along and rescue me, just like in the stories. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I realized that no one would ever pick up the glass slipper I left behind.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“What brand of self-pride is the consciousness that Zeidy has, that he can dress like a pauper and still command respect?”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“That wouldn’t explain my womb’s failure to open its doors at that very loud and persistent knock. My strange, rebellious womb, that doesn’t want guests.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“The most powerful thing about living on the water, I would soon learn, is that one is forced into a perpetual relationship with a mirror - a reflective surface is some ways quite literal and in many other ways deeply spiritual. Contemplating water somehow has the effect of forcing one to contemplate oneself. A good thing, if one's self needs fixing.”
― Deborah Feldman, Exodus: A Memoir

“At the time, the problem with losing my innocence was that it made it difficult to keep pretending. Inside me a conflict was brewing madly between my own thoughts and the teachings I was absorbing. Occasionally this tension would boil over my smooth facade, and others would try to remove me from the flames of curiosity before I went too far.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Why did I decide to speak up? Someone had to do it, and it turned out to be me.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“When the bell rings, it feels like only seconds have passed, seconds in which I have decorated my future castle in luxuriant velvets and oak-paneled libraries, with wardrobes that are all entrances to Narnia-like kingdoms. I lose myself within the opulent labyrinth of my mind.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“His mother has told him not to let me read any more library books, as if my illicit glimpses into their pages were the cause of all our problems. If I ever want to read again, I must revert to the wiles of my childhood, and the thought of such deception now tires me. I am too old to fight for these small freedoms. It was never supposed to be like this. I have to get rid of all my books. I used to be so excited by the way they lay nakedly on the table near the sofa, by the way I lived in my own home and no longer had to hide the evidence of my preferred pastime. Now I can’t afford for anyone to see them and report back to my mother-in-law. I put them all into a big plastic garbage bag that Eli will take to the Dumpster outside his office.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it derserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerly believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“When you have faith, Zeidy says, you can grasp how meaningless life is, in terms of the bigger picture. From the perspective of heaven, our suffering is minuscule, but if your soul is so weighed down that you cannot see beyond what’s in front of you, then you can never be happy.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“The books he claims are treacherous serpents have become my close friends.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots