Yehuda Matzos Quotes

Try to remember some details. For the world
is filled with people who were torn from their sleep
with no one to mend the tear,
and unlike wild beasts they live
each in his lonely hiding place and they die
together on battlefields
and in hospitals.
And the earth will swallow all of them,
good and evil together, like the followers of Korah,
all of them in their rebellion against death,
their mouths open till the last moment,
praising and cursing in a single
howl. Try, try
to remember some details. ~ Yehuda Amichai

If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound
to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the
heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of
the national body and fill it with life. ~ Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
~ Yehuda Amichai

Always run after opportunities to create peace between people, to find ways to bridge differences, please. Because as long as one person continues to feel separation…
…we'll all still feel it.
Close the space between you and someone today. Seeing their essential goodness helps a lot. ~ Yehuda Berg

In the Middle of This Century"

In the middle of this century we turned to each other
With half faces and full eyes
like an ancient Egyptian picture
And for a short while.

I stroked your hair
In the opposite direction to your journey,
We called to each other,
Like calling out the names of towns
Where nobody stops
Along the route.

Lovely is the world rising early to evil,
Lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity,
In the mingling of ourselves, you and I,
Lovely is the world.

The earth drinks men and their loves
Like wine,
To forget.
It can't.
And like the contours of the Judean hills,
We shall never find peace.

In the middle of this century we turned to each other,
I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me,
The leather straps for a long journey
Already tightening across my chest.
I spoke in praise of your mortal hips,
You spoke in praise of my passing face,
I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey,
I touched your flesh, prophet of your end,
I touched your hand which has never slept,
I touched your mouth which may yet sing.

Dust from the desert covered the table
At which we did not eat
But with my finger I wrote on it
The letters of your name. ~ Yehuda Amichai

The biggest breakthroughs in consciousness occur when things are difficult; when we have a choice to fall to the worst of ourselves or rise to the best of ourselves. ~ Yehuda Berg

Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children's games, which are so much alike, everywhere. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Tonight I think again of many days that are sacrificed for one night of love. Of the waste and the fruit of the waste, of plenty and of fire. And how painlessly-time. ~ Yehuda Amichai

And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field. ~ Yehuda Amichai

The beauty of the environment is an important factor in the quality of life. ~ Yehuda Levi

To me, spirituality means 'no matter what.' One stays on the path, one commits to love, one does ones work; one follows one's dream; one shares, tries not to judge, no matter what. ~ Yehuda Berg

Our ego seeks to understand everything. It wants all the answers. Part of what destroys the ego and connects us with the light is doing things that absolutely don't make any sense. If we want something beyond logic, like a miracle, we have to do something that is beyond logic. ~ Yehuda Berg

If you are seeking the right path, you are already on the right path. ~ Yehuda Berg

Particular nuisances (are) smoke, sewage odours, dust and similar aerosols, and vibrations. ~ Yehuda Levi

Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity. ~ Yehuda Amichai

We are increasingly open to understanding how we are all connected and that if we sink the ship that we are all on, we all drown. However, we have simultaneously become so focused on our own life experiences that we think we are alone. ~ Yehuda Berg

You invite judgment into your life every time you judge others. To avoid this invitation to negativity, it's best to stop focusing on others' darkness. Instead, pay attention to their strengths. Today, be a horse with blinders. Look at only the good. As you develop this power, you will attract positive forces into your life. ~ Yehuda Berg

We may proclaim that stress kills, but in reality it is not stress that kills; it is our reaction to it. Sometimes we react to the Light by finding various ways of shutting it out. But when we shut off the Light, we are in fact killing ourselves - so the idea is not to turn stress away, but to let it in. ~ Yehuda Berg

I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there. ~ Yehuda Amichai

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world. ~ Yehuda Amichai

When you complain you advertise your stupidity. ~ Yehuda Ashlag

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Even if the devil worshipper is simply 'worshipping one's self,' as their heretical chronicles proclaim, it does nothing to quail my disdain for their kind. The fact that a single evil one whom most of us cannot see or hear in this world, is replaced by an entire army of greedy, heartless and soulless human beings stripped of their conscience and performing human sacrifice, in effigy or otherwise, is indeed far more sinister than the existence of one actual 'devil. ~ Yehuda HaLevi

When you're truly connecting with wisdom, the more you learn, the more you realize the less you know. ~ Yehuda Berg

God is not separate from anything, or anyone. So it's impossible to prevent God from being visible in our government. ~ Yehuda Berg

The whole point of all of this - why we are here, why the world is here, and why we have the political system and leaders that we do - is to achieve change. This is the purpose of life. ~ Yehuda Berg

In fact, this figure [five million "murdered" Gentiles] is too high if one is counting victims who were targeted exclusively for racial reasons, but too low if one counts the total number of victims the Nazi regime killed outside military operations.
(...)
Wiesenthal's aggrandizement of his role in the Eichmann capture is far less disturbing and historiographically significant than another of his inventions. In an attempt to elicit non-Jewish interest in the Holocaust, Wiesenthal decided to broaden the population of victims - even though it meant falsifying history. He began to speak of eleven million victims: six million Jews and five million non-Jews. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer immediately recognized that this number made no historical sense. Who, Bauer wondered, constituted Wiesenthal's five million.

--The Eichmann Trial, page 8 ~ Deborah E. Lipstadt

Eyes sharp as can-openers
pried open heavy secrets. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Sometimes pus
Sometimes a poem.

Something always burst out.
And always pain. ~ Yehuda Amichai

To live is to build a ship and a harbor
at the same time. And to complete the harbor
long after the ship was drowned. ~ Yehuda Amichai

People use each other
as a healing for their pain. They put each other
on their existential wound,
on the eye, on the cunt, on mouth and open hand.
They hold each other and won't let go. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred ... ~ Yehuda Berg

The soul inside me is the last foreign language I'm learning, ~ Yehuda Amichai

Loving one another isn't enough to make a relationship last. The real glue that holds a couple (or friends or family) together is the effort both put into helping others who are in need of financial, health, personal or emotional assistance. Today, sustain your connection to a loved one by finding ways you both can help others, with a genuine heart. ~ Yehuda Berg

A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It's about feeling connected and responsible for what happens. Humanity is our ultimate community, and everyone plays a crucial role. ~ Yehuda Berg

However they coped, children are not wrong to have learned to do what they could. ~ Na'ama Yehuda

Jenny held
her breath wondering whether her matzo would pass muster. ~ Adam Yamey

If we are going to be happy and have any chance at growing then we must learn how to forgive others ... and ourselves. ~ Yehuda Berg

Cities originally surrounded by a wall can produce an urban population cut off from the surrounding fields and from agriculture altogether. At the same time, the greenbelt laws eliminate the possibility of the unchecked expansion of a city into a monstrous megalopolis. If there is a need for additional homes, a new city must be established. ~ Yehuda Levi

The memory of my father is wrapped up in white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits out of his hat, he drew love from his small body. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Be happy for things that work. ~ Na'ama Yehuda