Secular Judaism Quotes

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

I was Jewish, through and through, although in our house that didn't mean a whole lot. We never went to synagogue. I never had a Bar Mitzvah. We didn't keep kosher or observe the Sabbath. In fact, I'm not so sure I would have known what the Sabbath looked like if it passed me on the street, so how could I observe it?

Yesh Atid is a Jewish, religious-secular party. Our DNA is center - both Left and Right. The difference between center-left and center-right is more emotional and hereditary than having to do with what people think about the Palestinians.

My father's mother was a secular Jew who died in Auschwitz. I only found out as an adult because my father never talked about it. He was a secularist and never defined himself in ethnic terms - partly, I think, because he was scared; partly out of the habit of not talking of such things; partly because he didn't like being defined by other people.

The arrogance of secular Jews regarding the ultra-Orthodox community and their attempt to impose on it a different lifestyle is inappropriate.

A lot of the Jews I met in Israel, almost all of them are secular. They get turned off by their religion, in the same way that Americans get turned off Christianity by people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson.

My particular pain is that the world of Jewishness that I identify with - the extremely assimilated, educated European and Russian Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries - is lost, and is not mourned enough.

We're not religious, but we've always done Passover and Hanukkah.

I'm not super, super religious. If this is okay to say, I'm more culturally Jewish.

I feel very Jewish, and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion.

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

My parents were Orthodox Jews but not very regular Orthodox Jews. I was bar mitzvahed and all that. But God was hardly ever mentioned in my family. Franklin D. Roosevelt was.

It's not what the rabbis say that defines Jewishness but what we Israelis do every day - our actions and our values.

I was the kind of Jew who'd be in a bar, somebody would say it's Yom Kippur, and I'd go, 'Really?'

I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.

If psychoanalysis was late 19th century secular Judaism’s way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world, and retail is the late 20th century’s way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world, what does it mean that I’m impersonating the father of psychoanalysis in a store window to commemorate a religious holiday?

I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.

Being "Jewish" is way stronger culturally than it is religiously.

I don't believe in God and all that. But I am Jewish, and very proud to be so, very proud of the culture.

My family was totally non-religious. There was no question we were Jewish, but we were not observant.

I consider myself more of a cultural Jew; I'm not religious in any way.

I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.

I was brought up a Jew but, you know, that way of being Jewish - the New York way. We were stomach Jews; we were Jewish-joke Jews. We were bagel Jews. We didn't go to synagogue. I'm frightened of synagogue to this day.

There's no such thing as being a cultural Jew. You're religious or you're not.

No one in my family has been observant for generations, but we all identify with being Jewish.