Love Strong as Death
The autobiography of André Chouraqui — the story of a life devoted to dialogue between peoples and religions.
In this autobiography, André Chouraqui traces the journey of his extraordinary life: his childhood in Algeria, his studies in Paris, his commitment to the Resistance, his role at the Alliance Israélite Universelle, his move to Jerusalem where he became Deputy Mayor, and his great life's work of translating the sacred texts of the three monotheisms.
A vibrant testimony of a man who devoted his life to building bridges between civilizations.
Excerpt from the Book
The rock upon which we were established in our exiles, in the desert of nations, was assuredly for all of us, in all our diasporas and all our hours, the Bible — or as we called it, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, of which we were the children.
Mother was ignorant of the precise content of those Books that stood in our libraries, but she strictly governed her life by their commandments. My father could read them and knew by heart, like most of our men, many chapters. But only our rabbis, or those among us who, without exercising rabbinical functions, possessed the knowledge, held the key.
Run then, my pen, to describe that vanished universe where an entire civilization converged in a single hope that I read in my mother's gaze when she told me: "Do not forget, my child, your prayer."
For prayer was our very life, not alongside, not at the margins of what we were, but in the very being of our beings. Prayer explained us to ourselves better than we could explain ourselves.
Translations
Forte come la Morte è L'Amore
Italian · 1994