Sublime

The Ellis Island legend is simply the final step in this multigenerational process of denying, hiding, and burying the reality that American Jews feared most—namely, the possibility that they were not welcome

even though Jews were shattered politically and scattered geographically, they were still a nation. Even at such a time they are bound by a covenant of mutual responsibility. Jewish fate and destiny are indivisible.

capace di distinguere tra la pietà e il delitto.

That's because I come from America, which has to be the classic, ultimate, then-they-broke-the-mold incubator of not knowing who you are until you find out.

You too will be able to take a subject, any subject, and hype it to the point where it bears no resemblance to reality. Whomever you write about will never be able to live up to what you write about him, but never mind. The important thing is that people will talk about YOUR STORY. They will talk about it for years.

Once it was a young girl who entered the kitchen suddenly in a gust of wind, pale, thin, and strange, like a stray thought.

The Jewish philosopher Will Herberg once spoke of “cut-flower ethics.” He argued that Jewish ethical norms will last for a brief while, even apart from Jewish teachings, just as flowers uprooted from the soil stay in bloom for a short time after cutting. But soon the flowers fade. Behaviors, too, disintegrate if cut from the soil in which they were