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The Books of Jacob

Book by Olga Tokarczuk · 13 quotes · Jacob Frank, Light, Soul

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The Books of Jacob Quotes

“There exists in Ein Sof, that is, in the Infinite itself, in the divine source, absolute good, which is the origin and source of all perfection and all good in the world. It is perfection, and perfection requires no alterations, it is dignified and immovable, there can be no movement in it. But for us, who look upon it from the underside of creation, from afar, this motionlessness seems dead, and therefore bad, yet perfection excludes movement, creation, change, and therefore the very possibility of our freedom. That is why it is said that in the depths of absolute good, the root of all evil is concealed, and that root is the negation of every miracle, every movement, and all that is possible and all that might still happen. For us, then, for people, good is something other than what it is for God. For us, good is the tension between God’s perfection and his withdrawal in order that the world might arise. For us, good is the absence of God from where he could instead be.”

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“There were corporeal, psychic, and spiritual people. Somatics, psychics, and pneumatics, they called them, from the Greek. Equality goes against nature, however rightly one might strive toward it. Some are made of more earthly elements, and those people are thick, sensual, and non-creative. They are only good for listening. Others live with their hearts, their emotions, in bursts of the soul, and others still have contact with the highest spirit, distant from the body, free from affects, spacious inside. It is to this final group that God has access.”

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“the human soul is part of the great cosmic stream that flows through all creatures. It is a single force, one motion, but when a person is born into a physical body, when he comes into the world as an individual being, that soul has to separate from the rest, otherwise a person would not be able to live—the soul would drown in the One, and the person would go mad in just a few instants. That is why such a soul gets sealed, that is, seals are stamped upon it that will not let it mix with that unity but will allow it to operate in the finite, bounded world of matter.”

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“Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges.”

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“To be impatient means never really living, being always in the future, in what will happen, but which is after all not yet here. Do not impatient people resemble spirits who are never here in this place, and now, in this very moment, but rather sticking their heads out of life like those wanderers who supposedly, when they found themselves at the end of the world, just looked onward, beyond the horizon? What did they see there? What is it that an impatient person hopes to glimpse?”

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“Isn't this the very glue that holds the human world together? Isn't this why we need other people, to give us the pleasure of knowing we are better than they are? Amazingly, even those who seem to be the worst-off take, in their humiliation, a perverse satisfaction in the fact that no one has it worse than they do. Thus they have still, in some sense, won. Where does this all come from? Asher wonders. Can man not be repaired? If he were a machine, as some now argue, it would suffice to adjust one little lever slightly, or to tighten some small screw, and people would start to take pleasure in treating one another as equals.”

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“Then, however, Mayer thought it fitting to remind her of the most important thing: 'Between the heart and the tongue lies an abyss,' he said. "Remember that. Thoughts must be concealed, particularly since you were born, to your great misfortune, a woman. Think so that they think you are not thinking. Behave in such a way that you mislead others. We all must do this, but women more so. Talmudists know about the strength of women, but they fear it .... But we don't ... because we ourselves are like women. We survive by hiding. We play the fools, pretending to be people we are not. We come home, and then we take off our masks. But we bear the burden of silence: masa duma.”

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“There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as sweets. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens—an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren't obvious. Cleverness and acumen come about. A person who is a stranger gains a new point of view, becomes, whether he likes it or not, a particular type of sage. Who was it who convinced us that being comfortable and familiar was so great? Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work.”

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“I took to heart what Isohar had taught us. He said that there are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out what is most important. The funnel takes in what he reads at one end, while at the other, everything he's read pours out of him. The strainer lets through the wine and keeps the sediment; he ought not to read at all -- it would be infinitely better if he simply dedicated himself to some manual trade. The sieve, on the other hand, separates out the chaff, to give a result of only the finest grains. 'I want you to be like sieves, and to discard all that is not good or interesting,' Isohar would say to us.”

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“When I look at him, I see that there are people who are born with something that I cannot find the words for, something that means that others respect them and hold them in the highest esteem. I don’t know what it is—is it posture, is it a head held high, a penetrating gaze, a way of walking? Or maybe some spirit hovering around him? An angel who keeps him company? He has only to enter any space, be it the most decrepit shed or the holiest chamber, and all eyes turn to him at once, pleasure and appreciation on everyone’s face, although he has not yet done or said a thing. ...But I also fear falling into blind love, exaggerated and unhealthy, like that Heshel, who, if he could, would lie down like a dog at his feet.”

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“They agree only on the point that the most important aspect is reason. For one entire evening they play around with the metaphor of the light of reason that illuminates everything equally and dispassionately. Gertruda remarks immediately and intelligently that wherever something’s brightly lit, there is also a shadow, a darkening. The more powerful the light, the deeper, the more intense the shadow. That’s true, that’s a little bit disturbing; they stop talking for a while.”

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“We have done nothing other than waking up at midnight, at the time of the greatest darkness, in our low, dark, cubbyholes, in the cold, to study light. It is the light that has revealed to us that the huge body of matter and its laws is not mechut, or real, and also all its shapes and manifestations, its infinite forms, its laws and habits. The truth of the world is not matter, but the vibration of the sparks of light, that constant flickering that is located in every last thing.”

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