Quotes by Bruce Feiler

But humans disappoint. Adam, in tasting the fruit, indicates that he prefers Eve to God, so God banishes them.

...I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me. I never felt that more than with this trip. It was as if the act of touching these places, walking these roads,and asking these questions had added another column to my being. And the only possible explanation I could find for that feeling was that a spirit existed in many of the places I visited, and a spirit existed in me and the two had somehow met in the course of my travels. Its as if the godliness of the land and the godliness of my being had fused.

In the end I believe the essential spirit that animates those places animates me. If that spirit is God, then I found God...If that spirit is life, then I found life...If that spirit is awe, then I found awe. Part of me suspects its all three...all I had to do to discover that spirit and the resulting feeling of humility and appreciation was not to look or listen or taste or feel. All I had to do was remember, for what I was looking for I somehow already knew.

At Abrahams burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier. The text reports their union nearly without comment. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites. But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished. Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They are brothers. They are mourners. In a sense they are us, forever weeping for the loss of our common father, shuffling through our bitter memories, reclaiming our childlike expectations, laughing, sobbing, furious and full of dreams, wondering about our orphaned future, and demanding the answers we all crave to hear: What did you want from me, Father? What did you leave me with, Father? And what do I do now?

Heres a confession: I hate parenting books. I hate the ones that are earnest and repetitive.

I set out to write an anti-parenting parenting book.

When I was growing up, I, like many Jews, cheered what appeared to be the receding of faith from everyday life. The further religion got from our lives the better our lives would get, I thought, because persecution had been such a burden to Jewish families for generations.

One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand Gods role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day.

Knowing more about family history is the single biggest predictor of a childs emotional well-being. Grandparents can play a special role in this process, too.

Moses became Americas true founding father because he evangelized action he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty.

If you tell your own story to your children - that includes your positive moments and your negative moments, and how you overcame them - you give your children the skills and the confidence they need to feel like they can overcome some hardship that theyve felt.

The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your familys positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

I was surprised how relevant the Moses story was to contemporary American debates - from our ongoing debate about values, to our role as champions of freedom, to our place as a country that welcome immigrants.