Esther Seligson

Esther Seligson (25 October 1941 – 8 February 2010) was a Mexican writer, poet, translator, and historian. She was an academic, with a wide range of interests including art, cultural history, Jewish philosophy, mythology, religion and theater. She published books, poems, short stories and translations. She won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize and the Magda Donato Award for her literary contributions.

Quotes

 * To speak of Judaism in such global terms as the "Jewish tradition" as belonging solely to the Ashkenazic or the Sephardic is absurd. That which is Jewish does not rest on blood or race, nor does it rest on uniformity of origin, nor even less on rigidity of thought and action. If we speak of philosophy, then the Sephardic tradition is the weightier; if we speak of a certain mysticism or of the resurgence of literary themes, then the Ashkenazi tradition is closer to our own times. But where fidelity to Torah or the oral tradition is concerned, both visions, and within both these visions, the multiplicity of their views, form the continuous circle that has maintained living Judaism to this day. Neither Ashkenazim nor Sephardim have the exclusive privilege of having preserved Judaism. It is the good fortune of Judaism that opposition and contradiction are its germinative elements. Ought we then to continue to foment in our children an antagonism which is not only anachronistic but-considering the narrow dwelling-ground-effectively disperses our communal identity for others as well as for Jews themselves, with respect to our continuing desire to be a source of living waters.
 * from 1978 article, translated from the original Spanish by Roberta Kalechofsky for Echad: An Anthology of Latin American Jewish Writings

Isomorfismos (1991)
Translated from the Spanish by Nancy Abraham Hall in A Necklace of Words: Short Fiction by Mexican Women


 * His foot wounded, once again, on the sole, right where he was beginning to step with joy


 * The afternoon bubbles, and flows stealthily towards the lap of night. A lukewarm sky envelops the city, like a caress on a check, a pleasure of solitude that relieves eyes and ears.


 * To follow one's own path means the rejection of those chosen by others, he knows it, and will remain alone, against wind and tide, tremulous warrior who brandishes his sword in the air to test its weight and mettle.


 * "Better to have scars than incurable wounds," Grandfather would say


 * She was always a child who anticipated things, believed in words yet to be spoken, in days that open to a recent now, in fairy tales. Sometimes she awoke with woodsy breezes in her hair and the amazement of finding herself a stranger to this time and world. What early banishment snatched the taste of immensity from her mouth? In her he recognized a perfume, a tenacious expectancy, perhaps the name of an unexpressed desire. In him she recognized a dream, a search, a brightness that awaits a powerful and inextinguishable irradiation.


 * To the brink of what edges does a kiss lead?


 * He carries islands of peace in his hands; she, a burning river-bed of windmills and storms.