Quotes from My Name is Rifka

"Rifka lived by the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of Anyone, a credo eulogized by her father that became the soundtrack of her life."
"In the words of Atticus Finch, 'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.' For over thirty years I inhabited Rifka, so much so there were times I couldn't separate my authentic self from my Rifka self."
"Toward the end, when Alzheimer's had emptied Rifka of all memory, and we became strangers, I was reminded over and over that she had bequeathed something more precious than her story. Her trust."
"I turn back to the mirror and stare at my face, blushed with daubs of crimson, and another peers back. A frightened, skinny girl in a striped prison pinafore, her head shorn, who has rouged her cheeks with beet peel. Fifty years ago. In a concentration camp. Somewhere."
"I hug my legs close, resting my chin on my knees, and think back to when destiny came knocking, and our worlds collided, and my Sisyphean struggle to get her to break her silence, tilting at the windmills she threw up whenever I got dangerously close. Often, a weariness would set in, but there was never a thought of giving up; the compulsion was too strong."
"All I ever wanted was a simple wedding with a two-layer buttercream cake. Nothing grand. Just a happily-ever-after wedding with champagne and confetti. But that childhood fantasy has sailed. We’ve become reluctant stars in a story as old as the world, and the whole damn town’s got a front-row seat."
"It would be a cry from the heart heard across the world as they stood twenty deep to the railings and sang their hearts out. Before them, rising from the shore, the majestic Mount Carmel; surrounding them, the aqua-blue Mediterranean, their amphitheater."
"I glance up from the chopping board. There's an unexpected edge to her voice, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Anger?"
“As a young girl, I often questioned where God was in all of this. Why had He allowed it? A catastrophe on such an incomprehensible scale. Where was His mercy? Where the hell was God, for God's sake?”

"Rifka lived by the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of Anyone, a credo eulogized by her father that became the soundtrack of her life."

"Toward the end, when Alzheimer's had emptied Rifka of all memory, and we became strangers, I was reminded over and over that she had bequeathed something more precious than her story. Her trust."

"I turn back to the mirror and stare at my face, blushed with daubs of crimson, and another peers back. A frightened, skinny girl in a striped prison pinafore, her head shorn, who has rouged her cheeks with beet peel. Fifty years ago. In a concentration camp. Somewhere."

"It would be a cry from the heart heard across the world as they stood twenty deep to the railings and sang their hearts out. Before them, rising from the shore, the majestic Mount Carmel; surrounding them, the aqua-blue Mediterranean, their amphitheater."

"I glance up from the chopping board. There's an unexpected edge to her voice, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Anger?"

“As a young girl, I often questioned where God was in all of this. Why had He allowed it? A catastrophe on such an incomprehensible scale. Where was His mercy? Where the hell was God, for God's sake?”