Important Quotations Explained
1. It is terrible how much has been
forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing.
2. They do not celebrate the first
blood of those who will bear life, nor do they return it to the
earth. They have set aside the Opening, which is the sacred business
of women, and permit men to display their daughters' bloody sheets,
as though even the pettiest baal would require such a degradation
in tribute.
3. Jacob shall never know peace
again. He will lose what he treasures and repudiate those he should
embrace. He will never again find rest, and his prayers will not
find the favor of his father's god.
4. Why had no one told me that my
body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I
not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage
to become mothers?
5. My husband's words found their
mark, and I recalled something that Zilpah had told me when I was
a child in the red tent, and far too young to understand her meaning.
“We are all born of the same mother,” she said. After a lifetime,
I knew that to be true.
