Quotes About Tradition

Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.

Custom is second nature.

The Seder is long, but delightful, and no matter how sleepy we feel at the end of it we are very happy.

I once asked a little boy why he liked Passover the best of the Jewish festivals. He answered at once, "Because of the Cyder nights." He meant "Seder" nights, the first two evenings of the festivals, and I had expected that would be his answer. Then I asked him why he liked the Seder nights, and he replied, after thinking a minute, "Because I am allowed to stay up late."

You white people are so strange. We think it is very primitive for a child to have only two parents.

A virgin's silence is the proper answer to a marriage proposal; it signifies a dignified consent.

This move is called Qworegoys, and the women of my grandmother's family taught it to their daughters just as they taught them to make thorn-bush fences to protect the hut from hyenas.

Islam is not unusual in having a tradition of martyrs. What is unique to Islam is the tradition of murderous martyrdom, in which the individual martyr simultaneously commits suicide and kills others for religious reasons.

A woman who is baarri is like a pious slave. She honors her husband's family and feeds them without question or complaint. She never whines or makes demands of any kind. She is strong in service, but her head is bowed. If her husband is cruel, if he rapes her and then taunts her about it, if he decides to take another wife, or beats her, she lowers her gaze and hides her tears. And she works hard, faultlessly. She is a devoted, welcoming, well-trained work animal. This is baarri. If

The will of little girls is stifled by Islam. By the time they menstruate they are rendered voiceless. They are reared to become submissive robots who serve in the house as cleaners and cooks. They are required to comply with their father's choice of a mate, and after the wedding their lives are devoted to the sexual pleasures of their husband and to a life of childbearing.

both the immigrants from the tribe and bloodline and the activists of prosperity share a common delusion: they believe that it is possible to make this transition without paying the price of choosing between values. One side wants change in their circumstances without letting go of tradition; the other, overcome with guilt and pity, wants to help newcomers with the material change but cannot bring themselves to demand that they excise traditional, outdated values from their outlook.

I can well remember how when someone in my family lay sick or dying—like my aunt when she contracted breast cancer—the Qur'an was chanted by the bedside, in the belief that its words alone would cure the patient. Analogies with Christian prayer are misleading because the reciter of the Qur'an is voicing God's words, not appealing to God for intercession.

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love.

Ideological clashes, antagonism, and fixations are as old as civilization.

What man didn't join his wife on their wedding night?

We will never lose sight of our heritage, for if we forget where we came from we will lose our way forward.

Religion of your upbringing is like a cloak -- you must know how it is made in order to take it off.

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.

Therefore, since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor, to obtain good customs.

We have brought in the yoke of custom to improve the world, and in the world the custom sticks.