Jewish Perspective Quotes

I believe I understand anti-Semitism which is a very complex movement. I see it as a Jew, but without hatred or fear. I recognize what is anti-Semitism is rude jesting, vulgar jealousy of métier, hereditary prejudice; but also what can be considered as in fact legitimate defence.

Israel always has a special filter to look at things, and that is the attitude toward Jews.

I think the lack of automatically feeling, 'Yes, the future is going to be like the present' - that is very much a Jewish thing.

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.

If a Jew is fascinated by Christians it is not because of their virtues, which he values little, but because they represent anonymity, humanity without race.

If Christians see Mormonism as a dramatic deviation from a millennia-old, biblically-based faith, Jews see Christianity in the same light.

Jews don't care about ancient rivalries. We worry about humidity in Miami.

I know what it means to be Jewish, and I don't think someone who wasn't Jewish would really understand.

I can't imagine writing something that didn't address Jewish themes and questions. It's such a big part of my life, a lot of the way in which I experience the world.

My proposal is not that we understand what the word ‘god’ means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross-and that we take our courage in both hands and allow our meaning for the word ‘god’ to be recentered around that point.

We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews.

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

I find its attention to living this life rather than the next one exhilarating because I think even independently of Judaism that that's the right way to go about life.

I don't know that I believe that God is in control of everything that happens. As a Jew, I believe that we have free will and we are responsible for our actions. But I guess it's something I'm still probing.

It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.

One is happy to report that Israel Shenker is still at the aerosol stage. His energy is still compressed. The result distinguishes him both as a Jew and as an observer of Jews.

Being Jewish is a big part of my artistic sensibility and my humor... I think it gives me a certain take on the world on a literary level.

The Jews started it all-and by 'it' I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and aethiest, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings ... we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.

I think Jews tend to hold me in fairly high regard.

Israel, in terms of Jewish values, and what I have been reading in Jewish papers, and hear from Jewish around the country, they are upset about Donald Trump.