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6058c56
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My mother was an excellent woman. Pious, virtuous. Kind. But she was not the intellectual equal of my father. Not by any means. I do not speak of book learning. I speak of a certain innate quality of mind, a superior understanding. Because she had it not, their companionship was - diminished. Father looked to his books, rather than to his wife.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a874c3c
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When she thought of the letter beit, it was not of the thickness of lines or the exactitude of spaces. It was of mysteries: the number two, the dual; the house, the house of God on earth. 'They will build me a temple and I will dwell in them.' In them, not in it. He would dwell within her. She would be the house of God. The house of transcendence. Just a single, tiny letter, and in it, such a path to joy.
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transcendence
words
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3f52563
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Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3720408
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To believe, to act, and to have events confound you--I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act, or to act in a way that every fiber of your soul held was wrong--how can you not see? That is what would have been reprehensible.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8b11c29
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He did not turn. Embracing his sister, he stepped off the bank, onto the ice. He walked out into the centre, where the ice was thin. His sister's head lay on his shoulder. They stood there for a moment, as the ice groaned and cracked. Then it gave way.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1c27dc9
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Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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bc4cd6e
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In any case, the manifesto states that a Jew is without honour from the day of his birth. That he cannot differentiate between what is dirty and what is clean. That he is ethically subhuman and dishonourable. It is therefore impossible to insult a Jew and from this it follows that a Jew cannot demand satisfaction for any insult.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7d156f8
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The author of this text did not write to provoke, but merely to express a truth as he conceives it. Your own theologians have tied logic in knots to advance a doctrine addressing this very same point. What is the Virgin Birth, after all, but the fumbling of minds striving to deal with the indelicate realities of the body? We Jews are merely more forthright about such matters.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8072b66
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It did not even occur to David to consult Ruti herself about this, or any other matter. Had he done so, he would have been most surprised by the result. He did not realize it, but his love for his daughter marched hand in hand with a kind of contempt for her. He saw his daughter as a kind-hearteed, dutiful, but vaguely pitiable soul. David, like many people, had made the mistake of confusing "meek" with "weak."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d74202c
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Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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15dd17e
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You know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avokat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We call it 'writing with many pens' and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that be..
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christianity
judaism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7bb21d9
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The Wampanoag, in ways which are not plain to me, in concert decided upon their own observance of father's passing. They marked it in a most singular manner. As soon as father's loss became known to them, each one, when traveling up or down the island, would fetch from the shore a smooth white stone such as can oft be found there. These they carried until they passed the place where father had taken farewell of them. There they deposited th..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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4f10f18
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And yet [Tequamuck] refuses to see that God prospers you, and protects you, and keeps from you the sicknesses against which his powers are as nothing. So, this do I see: We must find favor with your God, or die. That, Storm Eyes, is why I came to your father." His expression was grim. I wanted to reach for his hand, offer some comfort. But I did not. I just sat there, wordless, until he spoke again. "Life is better than death. I know this. ..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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15a619e
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Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan's servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that it is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God's ange..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6baec86
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How should I worship your God, no matter how powerful, when I know what he will allow to befall us? Who would follow such a cruel god? And how should I lay aside the spirits by whose aid I have roiled the sea and riven rock, who for long years gifted me the power to cure the sick and to inflame my enemies' blood? To begloom the bright day and set dim night ablaze? All this, my spirits have allowed to me. Your God may be stronger than these;..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a41c4b3
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The haggadah] was made to teach, and it will continue to teach. And it might teach a lot more than just the Exodus story.
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religion
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Geraldine Brooks |
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5bd06f9
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Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral.
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time
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7692778
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Even the ordinary business of cleaning house seemed somehow to have become sacramental.
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work
worship
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Geraldine Brooks |
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535849d
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I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e0e27fc
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You English palisade yourselves up behind 'must nots' and I commence to think it is a barren fortress in which you wall yourselves. - Caleb
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8a5f661
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Only one god. Strange, that you English, who gather about you so many things, are content with one only. And so distant, up there in the sky. I do not have to look so far. I can see my skygod clear enough, right there,' he said, stretching out an arm towards the sun. 'By day Keesakand. Tonight Nanpawshat, moon god, will take his place. And there will be Potanit, god of the fire....' He prattled on, cataloguing his pantheon of heathenish ido..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0c03072
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A woman had thrown her own babe down a well. When she was brought to answer for the murder, she said that one great good had come of her evil act. At last, she said, she was free of the uncertainty that had plagued her every waking thought: was she numbered among the damned or the saved? Her whole life had been bent about that question. Finally, she knew.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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31ced64
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Widespread mutilation seems to have originated in Stone Age central Africa and traveled north, down the Nile, into ancient Egypt. It wasn't until Arab-Muslim armies conquered Egypt in the eighth century that the practices spread out of Africa in a systematic way, parallel to the dissemination of Islam, reaching as far as Pakistan and Indonesia. They
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3658734
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Save the Children, an organization whose research has proved repeatedly that money in women's hands benefits families much more than money flowing to men.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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206c6af
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His radicalism took many forms. A vegetarian, he founded a commune, Fruitlands, so extreme in its Utopianism that members neither wore wool nor used animal manures, as both were considered property of the beasts from which they came. One reason the venture failed in its first winter was that when canker worms got into the apple crop, the nonviolent Fruitlanders refused to take measures to kill them. The Mr. March of Little Women departs fro..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a620d55
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She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and gazed at me. 'I wonder if you know how you have changed. It is the one good, perhaps, to come out of this terrible year. Oh, the spark was clear in you when you first came to me - but you covered your light as if you were afraid of what would happen if anybody saw it. You were like a flame blown by the wind until it is almost extinguished. All I had to do was put the glass around you..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0c3c08e
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Often the women are burned, so that the death can be passed off as an accident. The killer usually becomes a local hero: a man who has done what was necessary to clear his family name.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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468e48b
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We're seeing a rise in the school dropout rate for girls because their families' incomes are falling and girls' schooling is the first place they economize," she sighed. The"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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ff6387f
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West Bank women's groups argued that the time wasn't right, that the struggle for independence from Israeli rule had to come before questions of women's rights could be raised. The
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8acb5e8
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Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided coreligionists with the fervor they expend on outside critics, the grave mistake of conflating Islam with clitoridectomy and honor killings will continue. And much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many Muslim women's health and happiness.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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443c43e
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In Muslim societies men's bodies just weren't seen as posing the same kind of threat to social stability as women's. Getting
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Geraldine Brooks |
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622d4c9
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She would have had to keep her headscarf on, never laugh, never smile--if she smiles at a man he will think, 'Ah, she loves me,' " Mohamed explained. As"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1abf78d
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The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for "source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion." In"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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af7f10e
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If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f33d92f
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What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go into this God's house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house than he would have sent our ancestors such a book.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3ebfae4
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girls were subjected to both clito-ridectomy--the excision of the clitoris--and infibulation--the cutting away of the labia and the sealing of the wound to leave only a tiny opening for urination and menstruation. If the malnourished little girls didn't bleed to death from the procedure itself, they often died from resulting infections or debilitating anemia. In others, scar tissue trapped urine or menstrual fluid, causing pelvic infections..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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077ecb7
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How easily Caleb had taken the teachings of his youth--the many gods, the animate spirit world--and simply recast them in terms of our teaching.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7216312
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His task was to survive and endure through the harsh winter months, winnowing his soul until it could cross to the spirit world. There, he would undertake the search for his guide, a god embodied in some kind of beast or bird, who would protect him throughout his life. His spirit guide would enlighten his mind and guide his steps in myriad ways, until the end of his life. In those cold woods, he would learn his destiny. He said that if the ..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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53112d2
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Much later, when I could think about it clearly, I consoled myself that there were many worse ways in which I might have been raped.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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048701a
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Perhaps it was pride, merely, to seek these souls that God had chosen to abandon. Perhaps it was in itself a sin....
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Geraldine Brooks |
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bb191e7
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The practice of mutilating women's genitals in Eritrea predated the arrival of both religions, and for hundreds of years neither faith had questioned it. The
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Geraldine Brooks |
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2e6da1b
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My mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother all told me it was right, that without it a woman wouldn't be able to control herself, that she would end up a prostitute," said Aset, a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old whose own genitals had been mutilated when she was about seven years old."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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cbf1170
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Other ayatollahs considered the female voice arousing and barred women from speaking in mixed gatherings unless they first put a stone in their mouths to distort the sound. Khomeini,
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a77f41e
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So, you are happy to be a pigeon?" "Maybe so. But at least a pigeon does no harm. The hawk lives at the expense of the other creatures that dwell in the desert."
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Geraldine Brooks |