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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Heschel calls the Sabbath a cathedral in time.”

“the day is all about getting connected.”