Reuven Malter Quotes

“We are commanded to study His Torah! We are commanded to sit in the light of the Presence! It is for this that we were created! . . . Not the world, but the people of Israel!”

“You have become a small giant since the day Danny’s ball struck your eye. You do not see it. But I see it. And it is a beautiful thing to see.”

“Reb Saunders sat back slowly in his chair. And from his lips came a soft, tremulous sigh. He was silent for a moment, his eyes wide, dark, brooding, gazing upon his son. He nodded his head once, as if in final acknowledgment of his tortured victory.”

“What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? … I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.”

“I stood in that room for a long time, watching the sunlight and listening to the sounds on the street outside. I stood there, tasting the room and the sunlight and the sounds, and thinking of the long hospital ward. . . Somehow everything had changed. I had spent five days in a hospital and the world around seemed sharpened now and pulsing with life.”

“A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.”

“Then he spoke his son’s name.”

“[My father] taught me with silence. . .to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul. . . . One learns of the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain … by turning inside oneself. . . . It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.”

“A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning...A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest”

“We shook hands and I watched him walk quickly away, tall, lean, bent forward with eagerness and hungry for the future, his metal capped shoes tapping against the sidewalk. Then he turned into Lee Avenue and was gone.”

“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.”

″‘The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other?’ ‘Choose a friend.’ I said.”

“Danny came over to our apartment one evening in September...His beard and earlocks were gone, and his face looks pale.”

“Forgive me…for everything…I have done…A─ a wiser father…may have done differently. I am not…wise.”

“There are better ways to teach a child compassion.”

“My son is my most precious possession. I have nothing in the world compared to my son. I must know what he is reading.”

“There came the news, at first somewhat guarded, then, a few days later, clear and outspoken, of the German concentration camps.”

“When a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen. Especially if he has hurt you in any way.”

“How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person’s suffering?”

“I have no choice,” he said again. “It’s like a dynasty. If the son doesn’t take the father’s place, the dynasty falls apart. The people expect me to be their rabbi. My family has been their rabbi for six generations now.”