Top 40 Deborah Feldman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I’m convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable, if only I could have books all the time.”

— Deborah Feldman

2. “Subconsciously, I have started to say goodbye to the people and objects in my life as if preparing to die, even though I have no real plan. I just feel strongly, in my gut, that I’m not meant to stay here.”

— Deborah Feldman

3. “Can anyone survive without faith, however its labeled? No matter how you live, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.”

— Deborah Feldman

4. “People want to know if I’ve found happiness, but what I’ve found is better: authenticity. I’m finally free to be myself, and that feels good. If anyone ever tries to tell you to be something you’re not, I hope you too can find the courage to speak up in protest.”

— Deborah Feldman

5. “For a woman of such intelligence and wit, surely it is beneath her dignity to parade herself in front of the most distinguished of men, in hopes of a few morsels of attention.”

— Deborah Feldman

6. “And although the excitement of trying new things fades with repetition, the excitement of freedom never fails to gratify me. Each time I exercise it, I feel a separate joy that curls through my limbs like syrup. I never want to give up even a fraction of that wonder.”

— Deborah Feldman

7. “God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it derserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerly believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness.”

— Deborah Feldman

8. “Assimilation,” my teacher always says, “was the reason for the Holocaust. We try to blend in, and God punishes us for betraying him.”

— Deborah Feldman

9. “I am convinced that my ability to feel deeply is what makes me extraordinary, and that is my ticket to Wonderland.”

— Deborah Feldman

10. “We learn in school that God sent Hitler to punish the Jews for enlightening themselves. He came to clean us up, eliminate all the assimilated Jews, all the frei Yidden who thought they could free themselves from the yoke of the chosen ones. Now we atone for their sins.”

— Deborah Feldman

11. “When I grew older, I would realize that the dangers that movie presented existed in my own community as well, only they were shrouded in secrecy and allowed to fester there. And I would come to the conclusion that a society that was honest about its perils was better than one that denied its citizens the knowledge and preparation needed to fend off their approach.”

— Deborah Feldman

12. “That wouldn’t explain my womb’s failure to open its doors at that very loud and persistent knock. My strange, rebellious womb, that doesn’t want guests.”

— Deborah Feldman

13. “I communicate wordlessly with the burblings in my womb. I don’t want to bring you into a world where silence is a cover for the worst crimes, I tell him. Not if I can’t protect you from it. I won’t keep quiet forever, baby, I promise. One day I will open my mouth and I will never shut it again.”

— Deborah Feldman

14. “The true name for God is devastatingly holy and evocative; to utter it would represent a death wish, so we have safe nicknames for him instead: the Holy Name, the One, the Only, the Creator, the Destroyer, the Overseer, the King of All Kings, the One True Judge, the Merciful Father, Master of the Universe, O Great Architect, a long list of names for all his attributes.”

— Deborah Feldman

15. “I don’t want to fight for anything. I want to just be and do, with no one saying they’re letting me.” – From The Romance Reader, by Pearl Abraham.”

— Deborah Feldman

16. “Until the stifling heat of summer sets in, my neighborhood is suspended in momentary perfection, a fantasy filled with swirling gusts of pink and white petals that rain down on the sunlit pavement.”

— Deborah Feldman

17. “How can I condemn my son to a life of smallness and limitation? How can I allow him to be imprisoned in a cheder or yeshiva for the rest of his childhood while I am allowing myself the opportunity to broaden my own limited horizons? It doesn’t feel right. I can no longer imagine abandoning him to this narrow, stifling life when I want so much to have a free one.”

— Deborah Feldman

18. “Why did I decide to speak up? Someone had to do it, and it turned out to be me.”

— Deborah Feldman

19. “One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.”

— Deborah Feldman

20. “If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed.”

— Deborah Feldman

21. “An empty vessel clangs the loudest.”

— Deborah Feldman

22. “There is always a happy ending in children’s books. Because I have not yet begun to read adult books, I have come to accept this convention as a fact of life as well. In the physics of imagination, this is the rule: a child can only accept a just world. I waited for a long time for someone to come along and rescue me, just like in the stories. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I realized that no one would ever pick up the glass slipper I left behind.”

— Deborah Feldman

23. “An empty vessel clangs the loudest. That’s the adage I hear continuously, from Chaya, from the teachers at school, from the Yiddish textbooks. The louder a woman, the more likely she is to be spiritually bereft, like the empty bowl that vibrates with a resonant echo. A full container makes no sound; she is packed too densely to ring. There are many proverbs repeated to me throughout my childhood, but this one stings the most.”

— Deborah Feldman

24. “At the time, the problem with losing my innocence was that it made it difficult to keep pretending. Inside me a conflict was brewing madly between my own thoughts and the teachings I was absorbing. Occasionally this tension would boil over my smooth facade, and others would try to remove me from the flames of curiosity before I went too far.”

— Deborah Feldman

25. “What brand of self-pride is the consciousness that Zeidy has, that he can dress like a pauper and still command respect?”

— Deborah Feldman

26. “The next day I sign a contract to write a memoir about a person who no longer exists, someone I will be sure to honor with a last remembrance. My two identities have finally split apart, and I’ve killed the other one, I’ve murdered her brutally but justly. This book will be her last words.”

— Deborah Feldman

27. “Every time a man catches a glimpse of any part of your body that the Torah says should be covered, he is sinning. But worse, you have caused him to sin. It is you who will bear the responsibility of his sin on Judgment Day.”

— Deborah Feldman

28. “The most powerful thing about living on the water, I would soon learn, is that one is forced into a perpetual relationship with a mirror – a reflective surface is some ways quite literal and in many other ways deeply spiritual. Contemplating water somehow has the effect of forcing one to contemplate oneself. A good thing, if one’s self needs fixing.”

— Deborah Feldman

29. “I cannot be one of those girls who fritters away her entire life in this small, stifling square of tenements, when there is an entire world out there waiting to be explored. I don’t know how, but maybe my escape will be accomplished in small, steady steps, like Francie’s. Maybe it will take years. But I know, with great certainty, that it will be.”

— Deborah Feldman

30. “But truthfully, all those assurances are in the mind, and if my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.”

— Deborah Feldman

31. “To be freed from the prison of staying still.”

— Deborah Feldman

32. “When the bell rings, it feels like only seconds have passed, seconds in which I have decorated my future castle in luxuriant velvets and oak-paneled libraries, with wardrobes that are all entrances to Narnia-like kingdoms. I lose myself within the opulent labyrinth of my mind.”

— Deborah Feldman

33. “Already I have grown too big to fit back into my old world.”

— Deborah Feldman

34. “When you have faith, Zeidy says, you can grasp how meaningless life is, in terms of the bigger picture. From the perspective of heaven, our suffering is minuscule, but if your soul is so weighed down that you cannot see beyond what’s in front of you, then you can never be happy.”

— Deborah Feldman

35. “The books he claims are treacherous serpents have become my close friends.”

— Deborah Feldman

36. “Happiness has a way of playing hide-and-seek when you actively pursue it, but it often surprises you when you least expect it.”

— Deborah Feldman

37. “I too want to be such a woman, who works her own miracles instead of waiting for God to perform them.”

— Deborah Feldman

38. “I still identify as Jewish, because it’s my cultural heritage, but I don’t derive any spiritual nourishment from Judaism.”

— Deborah Feldman

39. “Can you ever really leave the place you come from? Isn’t it best to stay where you belong, rather than risk trying to insert yourself somewhere else and failing?”

— Deborah Feldman

40. “Years later, even when I gazed at the world with eyes wide open, I would still be innocent in my heart.”

— Deborah Feldman

41. “Will he be able to tell, when he sees me, how truly wonderful I am? Will he want me?”

— Deborah Feldman

42. “My mother openly lives her life as a goy, and who could guarantee that the same insanity won’t enter my head like it did hers? Only complete lunacy could explain why someone would reject God and the ways of his people, like she did.”

— Deborah Feldman

43. “I talk to him in my mind, and even I will admit that I do not come to God humbly, as I should. I talk to him frankly, as I would to a friend, and I’m constantly asking him for favors.”

— Deborah Feldman

44. “If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close.”

— Deborah Feldman