Here I Am: A Novel

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda single-handedly revived Hebrew. Unlike most Zionists, he wasn’t passionate about the creation of the State of Israel so that his people would have a home. He wanted his language to have a home. He knew that without a state—without a place for Jews to haggle, and curse, and create secular laws, and make love—the language wouldn’t

“Anyway, Grandpa Irv used to do this thing where he’d give Max and me five bucks if we made a speech that convinced him of something. Anytime, anything.

Without love, you die. With love, you also die. Not all deaths are equal.

“Judaism has a special relationship with words. Giving a word to a thing is to give it life. ‘Let there be light,’ God said, and there was light. No magic. No raised hands and thunder. The articulation made it possible. It is perhaps the most powerful of all Jewish ideas: expression is generative.

Longs for his positive qualities to be universally recognized but never mentioned.

“We’re mishpuchah,” Irv pleaded. “Yes. And if you can’t keep secrets from your family, who can you keep secrets from?”

But now that something had happened between them—it was entirely possible they’d already fucked—his mind was released. It’s not that the fantasy was suddenly too painful; it suddenly wasn’t painful enough.

Just because we’re smarter than those lunatics doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on insanity. The Arabs have to understand that we’ve got some stones, too, but our slingshot’s in Dimona, and the finger on the button is connected to an arm with a string of numbers tattooed on it!”

“In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world.”