Judith Shulevitz Quotes & Sayings

Heschel calls the Sabbath a cathedral in time. — Judith Shulevitz

The Sabbath, I said, is not only an idea. It is also something you keep. With other people. You can't just extract lessons from it. — Judith Shulevitz

The religious Jew is to study Torah for the sake of studying Torah. Torah lishmah. The ingenuity of the edict, I realized was that it relieved you of the obligation to be qualified. You studied because you had to study, and those who taught had to take you as a student. — Judith Shulevitz

According to one estimate, one-third of all the books sold in Germany between 1518 and 1525 were written by Luther. — Judith Shulevitz

There is no better point of entry to the religious experience than the Sabbath, for all its apparent ordinariness. Because of its ordinariness. The extraordinariness of the Sabbath lies in its being commonplace. — Judith Shulevitz

the day is all about getting connected. — Judith Shulevitz

Jewish Law is like musical notation; it gives meaning to the stuff of life by regulating it in time. The Sabbath is its most sacred interval — Judith Shulevitz

The psychoanalytic session, like the Sabbath, takes you out of mundane time and forces you into what might be called sacred time--the timeless time of the unconscious, with its yawning infantile unboundedness, its shattered sequentiality. It may not be pleasant, it may not be convenient, you may not want to go, but you do. On time. And the fixed time limits also keep you from losing yourself in that disorienting , disorganizing flux. — Judith Shulevitz