Elizabeth Ehrlich

What does spring cleaning and clearing the house of crumbs have to do with freedom and history, anyway? Is it an artificial and self-serving way to attach importance to a housewife's ritual? Is it investing the everyday with spirituality? Do ceremony, excitement, and special food simply serve to lock ritual into a child's mind, securing it for the future? Without the meal and the commotion, the tradition of remembering the Exodus would certainly have died.

— Elizabeth Ehrlich

Flawed humans though we are, come Yom Kippur we have a moment to turn God's mirror on ourselves, if there is a God. Or it is a moment to think about something larger than everyday life, to contemplate obligations to other people, to regret our failures, to renounce our shallowness. . . . Within all the nattering activity, this day is a silent space.

— Elizabeth Ehrlich

It was a nice way to remember, to gather those scattered Friday nights of candles strewn over childhood's inconsistent terrain. A token of memory, and also of history, the collective remembrance far beyond memory's reach.

— Elizabeth Ehrlich