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5d01d6b
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How memory accordions time and places disparate moments next to one another like photographic slides on a tray!
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Chaim Potok |
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188594c
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It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly," I read in the collection of letters written by Camille Pissarro to his son Lucien, "that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.... You must harness yourself to drawing."
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Chaim Potok |
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7e9ed44
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The paintings had a strange quality: they were figurative but there were no figures in them. They looked as if they might suddenly dissolve.
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Chaim Potok |
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85d1329
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I told her of a letter Camille Pissarro once wrote to his son about Monet's dealers, who were insisting he exhibit only one kind of painting, the one that had become very popular with collectors. The collectors only wanted Sheaves. Pissarro wrote that he couldn't understand how Monet could subject himself to the demand that he repeat himself. He called it a terrible consequence of success.
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Chaim Potok |
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6381357
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Is it better for man to live with uncertainty? Is the answer of Freud an answer? We should simply learn to accept our position as strange sick creatures? Is the answer of Nietzsche an answer? We should learn to live gladly as guests in a murderous but fascinating world that cares nothing about our presence?
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Chaim Potok |
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5939bfc
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Do not expect redemption if you enter the world of art. Redemption is death to art. Tranquillity is the poison the artist takes when he is ready to give up his art.
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Chaim Potok |
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565710c
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If there were not anxiety behind those apples, Cezanne would not interest me any more than Bouguereau.
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Chaim Potok |
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19619b8
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Basically it's none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we're on the trail of the law of our own growth.
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Chaim Potok |
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724f537
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On the fifteenth of August, Tisha B'av, there had been Arab disturbances in Jerusalem. The British said these had been in reaction to the demonstration staged by the followers of Jabotinsky at the Western Wall protesting new British regulations that interfered with Jewish religious services at the Wall. But we knew all about the British, he said. Our dear friends, the British. They announced that they washed their hands of the Jews as a res..
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Chaim Potok |
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d85fe77
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We cannot build our lives around sickness, Asher. We must have faith in the Master of the Universe.
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Chaim Potok |
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1ae1211
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It's nice to be able to retire. Comforting." "You think so?" he said. "Isn't it?" "No," he said. "Endings are never nice."
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Chaim Potok |
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3ffa308
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He looked down at the books. There was a long silence. Then he raised his eyes and directed his gaze at Gershon, and Gershon did not look away. "I will tell you, Loran what is of importance is not that there may be nothing. We have always acknowledged that as a possibility. What is important is that if indeed there is nothing, then we should be prepared to make something out of the one thing we have left to us -- ourselves. I do not know wh..
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wisdom
meaning-of-life
self-reliance
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Chaim Potok |
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9d685e1
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My wife believes in it not one whit, but is scrupulous in its observance," said Charles Leiden, sipping from his glass. "A curious state of affairs, don't you think? We are kosher, Fermi probably attends synagogue, Albert believed in Spinoza's God and helped raise money for Israel, Teller may end up teaching in a Jewish parochial school one day, Szilard has the soul of a Jewish prophet. And we tinker with light and atomic bombs, with the en..
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light
judaism
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Chaim Potok |
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79a0ea3
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I grew up encrusted with lead and spectrumed with crayons. My dearest companions were Eberhard and Crayola. Washing for meals was a cosmic enterprise.
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Chaim Potok |
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dc83774
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There was an unearthly quality to the way he sang that melody that night - as if he were winging through unknown worlds in search of sources of strength beyond himself. His eyes were open, fixed, but gazing inward. There was a sweetness and sadness, a sense of pain and yearning in his voice - soft, tremulous, climbing and falling and climbing again. And when he was done there was a long silence - and in that silence I thought I heard distan..
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Chaim Potok |
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2209e95
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Gershon had never seen him so transformed, so possessed of open radiance, so easily moved by all around him, so hungry, so eager. The city was a woman, and he embraced it with all the tender and gentle adoration one brings to a first love.
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Chaim Potok |
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31543f9
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Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.
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Chaim Potok |
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5fd150f
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It was a large store and i did not like to go in it because its brightness was cold, like sunlight on distant ice.
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coolness
store
cold
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Chaim Potok |
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4b36f56
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How do I convince him that the way we study Talmud is not a threat?' 'But it is a threat, Reuven. I just told you it is a threat. In the hands of those who do not love the tradition it is a dangerous weapon.' 'Everything is dangerous in the wrong hands. How do I convince him that we're not a threat?
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Chaim Potok |
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4a4cdf3
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There are times when those who fear God make themselves very unpleasant as human beings.
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Chaim Potok |
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6f2ec07
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We will have many fights. But they will be for the sake of Torah.
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Chaim Potok |
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f9511ac
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The everyday was king. And the courtiers were popularization, superficiality, doubt, cynicism. The century was exhausted.
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everyday
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Chaim Potok |
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562c833
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Become a great artist. That is the only way to justify what you are doing to everyone's life.'... I did not understand what he meant. I did not feel I had to justify anything... I did not want to paint in order to justify anything, I wanted to paint because I wanted to paint. I wanted to paint the same way my father wanted to travel and work for the Rebbe. My father worked for Torah. I worked for - what? How could I explain it? For beauty? ..
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religion
truth
judaism
social-pressure
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Chaim Potok |
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9f7a75f
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All a man has in the world is the now, the day and the hour where he is, because tomorrow is an entirely different world.
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Chaim Potok |
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fc7f36e
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She would sit with her eyes wide open, staring, as if a lever had been pulled inside her, sealing off her feelings. Her face sagged; the light went out of her eyes. I knew those moments: sudden retreats into herself as she thought of my father journeying for the Rebbe. She looked old, limp, doll-like: all her features intact but the life gone from them.
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Chaim Potok |
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6b1db57
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Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete?" my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood."
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Chaim Potok |
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3d2ac66
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In "Culture Confrontation in Urban America," Potok uses the term Zwischenmensch to define himself and his experience of cultural conflict: "Urban wanderings that result in core-culture confrontations often shape a certain kind of individual. I call that individual a Zwischenmensch, a betweenperson. Such an individual will cross the boundaries of his or her own culture and embrace life-enhancing elements from alien worlds."
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Chaim Potok |
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d94c4d5
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I gambled that there was enough strength and depth in the tradition for me to be able to make it into more than Sunday-school Bible stories. I had no stomach for fundamentalism. I wanted American Judaism to become something an intelligent person would have to take seriously and be unable to laugh at and want to love.
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Chaim Potok |
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b665af6
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A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.
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meaning
meaning-of-life
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Chaim Potok |
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84b77bb
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The two extremes of secular life. Stoic acceptance and gay defiance in the face of--nothing; in the face of indifference, boiling violence, inexorable chaos; in the face of--the Other Side. Two hundred years of this. Enough. Jews must return to Torah. The world must return to God. There must be a center to human life or, God forbid, there will be no human life left on this planet. A man may not live alone.
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Chaim Potok |
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eb2e08f
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Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man?
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time
spirituality
death
life-lessons
jewish-identity
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Chaim Potok |
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115b27c
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I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible the world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I see them all around me in my sculptures and paintings. I know these feelings are true, because if they were not true they would make art that is as terrible as the world.
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Chaim Potok |
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2c02a46
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There is never an end to our work. It is not given to us to complete it. Who completes his work? That is the way of the world, Asher. Only the Master of the Universe completed His work. And it is said that even the Master of the Universe needs humankind in order truly to complete the Creation. Without man, what is God? And without God, what is man? Everyone needs the help of someone to complete the work of Creation that is never truly compl..
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Chaim Potok |
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0234a6f
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I wish that your journey will be to a light not only for yourself but for all of us. I wish that it will be a journey for the sake of heaven. I give you my blessing, Asher Lev.
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Chaim Potok |
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9bc08ac
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To the rabbis who taught in the Jewish parochial schools, baseball was an evil waste of time, a spawn of the potentially assimilationist English portion of the yeshiva day. But to the students of most of the parochial schools, an inter-league baseball victory had come to take on only a shade less significance than a top grade in Talmud, for it was an unquestioned mark of one's Americanism, and to be counted a loyal American had become incre..
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Chaim Potok |
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be48b56
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It was then that it came, though I think it had been coming for a long time and I had been choking it and hoping it would die. But it does not die. It kills you first. I knew there would be no other way to do it. No one says you have to paint ultimate anguish and torment. But if you are driven to paint it, you have no other way.
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Chaim Potok |
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05b8e68
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It would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work.
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Chaim Potok |
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0cc37e4
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I felt a sudden momentary sense of unreality, as if the play yard, with its black asphalt floor and its white base lines, were my entire world now, as if all the previous years of my life had led me somehow to this one ball game, and all the future years of my life would depend upon its outcome. I stood there for a moment, holding the glasses in my hand and feeling frightened. Then I took a deep breath, and the feeling passed. It's only a b..
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Chaim Potok |
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2598cdb
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Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. If
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Chaim Potok |
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980df79
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Without the future there is no present," my father is saying. "Without the future there can be no hope for redemption, and without hope for redemption there is nothing. A man must plan for the future." Max smiles politely. That is the sort of talk, he once told me, he used to get from his own father. "They talk about redeeming the world for the future," Max said. "I have more modest goals. I wish only to redeem a canvas for today."
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Chaim Potok |
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0f93884
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May the best of the past be the worst of the future." Keep everything always off balance. No boundaries. No repetition. The opposite of what the Rebbe wants. The Rebbe seeks fixed boundaries, perfect balance, eternal repetition. Asher Lev caught between the two."
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Chaim Potok |
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99577bb
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I cannot pray. I talk to God through my sculpture and painting.' 'That's also prayer.' He smiled faintly, the morning sun on his face. 'The Rebbe said precisely that. You are following the party line, Asher Lev. But we know it is not the same thing, don't we?
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religion
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Chaim Potok |
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2c7d2c0
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I don't understand why I wanted to kill you.
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Chaim Potok |
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2dfb5be
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It is never pleasant to be a buffer, Reuven.
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Chaim Potok |