Zev Mishell

“Today, the tempter does not lead the creative man to a high mountain to show him all the kingdoms and splendor of the world, as Satan did to Jesus. Instead, he tempts him through infinity—to lose himself in the unessential, to roam about in the great confusion in which all human clarity and definiteness has ceased. Thus, the threat of infinity that Buber experienced as a fourteen-year-old now takes on new form—the form of formlessness, of the whirl of unmastered possibilities that every young person who goes out into the world experiences, but that Buber himself experienced to an overwhelming degree.”
― Maurice S. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge: A Life of Martin Buber

“And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved.

Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour.

On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again."

And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.”
― André Aciman, Out of Egypt: A Memoir

“I will speak that I may find relief”; for there is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word, and a tormented soul finds peace in confessing.”
― Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith

“We are all one question and the best answer seems to be love--a connection between things.”
― Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures