Jewish Wisdom Quotes

“I was always in new schools and had British parents, which was not the norm, and I think there was also... I'm not particularly religious, but I was born Jewish, and I always felt like the outsider because I wasn't Christian or Catholic.”

“To Your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning.In the morning it springs up and flowers, by evening it withers and fades.So we are destroyed in Your anger, struck with terror in Your fury.Our guilt lies open before You; our secrets in the light of Your face.All our days pass away in Your anger. Our life is over like a sigh.Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain, they pass swiftly and we are gone.”

“Gribenes have been referred to as Jewish popcorn or kosher pork rinds. It's basically chicken skin fried in schmaltz. They're crispy and mixed with fried onions. I'm telling you, when you have it with chopped liver, it's the most incredible thing because you get this crunch and this surge of chicken flavor.”

“For many people, that war [WWII] is called the “good war” because it was fought against a regime guilty of unspeakable atrocities. But the Allies did not enter the war to save Jews from extermination. The United States entered the war after it was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and, as a nation, we certainly did not do as much as we should have to save the Jewish population of Europe. The basic question is still with us: Is it right, justifiable, to intervene in a nation’s internal activities when those activities include genocide, ethnic cleansing, or some other demonstrable harm to a subset of its people?”

“I may discuss love, and I don't mind if two men fall in love, fine. Two women, fine. But I flinch when I think of two Jewish women getting together and having a child because the idea of having two Jewish mothers makes my head explode. I have one; I couldn't handle two.”

“We must work together to strengthen Jerusalem as a modern, open capital and to foster welcoming, inclusive communities across the Jewish world. It is vital to the health and vibrancy of the global Jewish future and to ensuring a strong Israel.”

“I'll tell you that when an innocent person is killed, we never go about asking or inquiring whether they were Jewish or Christian or Muslim. That's not our way or creed.”

“There will never be another Ed Koch. He was an original, but he represented a significant, if shrinking, segment of American Jewry who refused to compromise their liberal values, their support for Israel or their Jewish pride.”

“When the Jewish people, after nearly 2,000 years of exile, under relentless persecution, became a nation again on 14 May 1948 the 'fig tree' put forth its first leaves. Jesus said that this would indicate that He was 'at the door,' ready to return.”

“Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they're always obsessed with one issue - identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?”

“When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'”

“As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less.”

“A Jew ain't only a religion, and it ain't a race. It isn't an ethnicity, and you aren't disqualified if you're good at spreading mayonnaise on white bread or bad at money or good at sports or bad at guilt. It ain't about whether your mother is Jewish or your father converted or both parents fasted on Yom Kippur. It don't matter if you were bar or bat mitzvahed, or if your grandma's recipe for chicken soup kicked Campbell's ass, or any of that. It ain't about a toe in Israel, or an opinion on Palestine, or an uncle who died of a heart attack in Brooklyn or Queens, or a family story from Ellis Island, or an aunt who was murdered by nazis or Russian pogromchiks, or whether or not three-fifths of your person is scared shitless of Auggie's "schvartzes," or at least the young bucks you see walking with guns out and half their pants down.”

“My own electorate, which I represented for 36 years as an anti-apartheid politician, had a considerable number of Jewish voters supporting me throughout my career.”

“The Jewish community has always taken care of its own.”

“When my children were growing up, we began every family meal - which included breakfast and dinner every day - with a prayer. We are Jewish and so it was the prayer over bread, when we were having bread, or the catch-all prayer for everything when we weren't.”

“A writer has a difficult fate, but a Jewish writer has an especially difficult fate. His soul is torn; he lives on two streets with three languages. It is a misfortune to live on this sort of 'border,' and that is what I have experienced.”

“I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn't pay the rent.”

“I went to this very disorganized Jewish summer camp in Maine called Camp Modin.”

“All sorts of other lies are being spread today, I do not know what else they will invent. I've heard that I'm of Jewish descent, but I found, I knew of my ancestors in Zagorje from around 350 years ago, and I said, maybe it would be good to have some of that, I guess I would be richer, I might not have become a Communist.”