Shulamith Hareven > Quotes

“They buried their dead and submitted to the Law.

From that day on Moses too seemed a cleft man. At last he told them they were going to the Ancestral Land. Sadly he spoke to them of blessings, of curses-all, all of which they accepted as though it were his daily bread and they, his day laborers, were hangdoggedly taking it from his hands. They could hardly look each other in the eye. He talked on about olives, about grapes, about pomegranates, about figs, and wearily they answered yes, yes, anything you say as long as we don't all have to drop dead in this desert, amen. No, they would make more statues or graven images. Yes, they would not murder. They would not bear false witness. Whatever he told them, amen.

But Eshkar knew none of this. He had struck out so far on his own that the pillars of smoke and of fire were no longer in sight, nor did he wish them to be. The camp could go its way and he would go his. He had no notion of where it was headed for, if it was headed anywhere at all.

For many years, perhaps ten, perhaps more, he wandered by himself in the desert, alone with his flock. If the others crossed it once, he did so dozens of times. And he knew things that they did not: that the desert was inhabited, that it had limits, that it could be crossed from end to end in a matter of weeks. The deception of miracles was keeping them purblind and lost.”
― Shulamith Hareven, The Miracle Hater

“He held her palsied body, weeping with fear, in his arms. Once he even struck her. In the end she confessed that she was afraid of Moses, only of him. He was ways of finding out everything in the world, on earth, in heaven, even the stones.”
― Shulamith Hareven, The Miracle Hater

“אחר כך ירדה שיירת חירם מן ההר.
מורן רכבה ראשונה. בעינים נוצצות ישבה על האוכף, בין השקיים, צמאת מראות, רואה את המרחבים נפתחים לפניה, כמו נכנסת אל עולם שאין לו סוף, מן ההר המשתפל והולך, עד שנעשו הגבעות שוקטות, קטנות, מעט מרעה נמוך פזור עליהן, ורוח חמה מאד אפפה אותם מדרום.
הביטה והביטה. אולי כל ימיה צמאה למקום הזה. בכל רגע רחב ליבה יותר. הערבה קבלה אותה בלי קושי, כאילו היא שייכת לה מאז ומעולם. נפעמת קמה בבקרים, קלה, חשה את תמצית החיים בתוך גופה עם כל נשימה, עם כל משב רוח חמימה, מביטה בשמים שנעשו רחבים מאד, כמו צפה בין שמים לשמים, מעולם לא היה לה טוב כבמקום הזה. כל הדברים נעשו פשוטים. הרוח היתה נבונה, מדְרך כף הרגל היה נכון. גם השתיקה. חשה שאין דבר בעולם שלא תוכל לעשותו, אין דבר שיעמוד בפניה.”
― Shulamith Hareven, Thirst: The Desert Trilogy

“From God there came no accounting, neither by day or by night, when the huge stars hung in their orbits overhead. Sometimes he thought he was god himself. Once he traveled far to the east and knew without being told that he was in the Ancestral Land. He asked for the name of an old well and was answered Beersheba, the Well of the Oath. When he went southward from there, descending more and more until he felt sure that he had reached the bottom of the world, he found a slate-colored sea whose odd waters smelled of sulfur. Marveling greatly, he returned. And yet that too was not the world's end.”
― Shulamith Hareven, The Miracle Hater

“A man should die for his own sins alone, he told himself, knowing that that would never be. Not even with God. It was too easy to kill, to knife, to send disease.”
― Shulamith Hareven, The Miracle Hater