Top 494 Jewish Quotes

For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.

My father was a Jewish immigrant who settled in Argentina and was left to his own devices at the age of 15. My mother was a teacher, herself the daughter of a poor immigrant family.

My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it’s a very mixed background.

My grandmother on my father’s side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather – a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.

The spirit in which the offer was made must of necessity contribute to improving and alleviating the situation of the Jewish people without our renouncing one iota of the great principles upon which our movement is based.

It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors – especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists – deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.

We need to do everything possible to save the Jewish state. We don’t have another Jewish state.

I remind everybody that the Sabbath was the Jewish gift to civilization.

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

Being African American and Jewish, I have plenty of ancestors and family members that I can look to for strength and, more importantly, for a grateful outlook on life.

When I grew up, I thought I was Jewish. Now I don’t consider myself Jewish. I consider myself a Kabbalist.

One of the great strengths of the United States is… we have a very large Christian population – we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

I would be heartbroken if I ever thought that people in the Jewish community thought that Britain was no longer a safe place for them.

Unlike other Jewish families, we didn’t go out for Chinese food on Sundays, but we spent our time in a world of baking powder biscuits and the best shrimp cocktails that ever were.

I was raised in a Baptist household, went to a Catholic church, lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and had the biggest crush on the Muslim girls from one neighborhood over.

My wife is Jewish, and therefore, it’s my children’s birthright to be Jewish.

I was from a poor Jewish family in the South Bronx. My father was a plumber, but when I was 16, he got sick and I had to take over. Being a plumber in the South Bronx wasn’t fun.

The great question of our day is whether we, the Jewish people of Israel, can find within us the will to survive as a nation.

If you go into the old covenant, do you think that the Jewish people believe that you should be broke? They believe in wealth.

I was raised in an orthodox Jewish home where it was expected that, as a woman, I’d marry an investment banker, raise kids in the suburbs and go to temple. I wasn’t raised to set the world on fire.

John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls – indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans.

The fundamental interest – long-range strategic interest – of the state of Israel is that we will have the international bodies and primarily the United Nations recognize the two-state solution, so that there will never be any doubt as to the right of Israel to have its own Jewish independent state.

The American Jewish left gets a lot of press time. But the American Jewish right does not. And in many ways, the American Jewish right is every bit as well-organized and perhaps better funded than the American Jewish left. And they also come out with criticism.

In the Bronx, you have the southern Italians; in Queens, the Greeks, Koreans and Chinese; in Brooklyn, the Jewish community; and in Harlem, the Hispanics – all with their own markets.

Of course there is really vile anti-Semitism in Wagner’s writings, but I can’t accept the idea that characters like Beckmesser and Alberich are Jewish stereotypes in disguise. Would Beckmesser be a court councillor if he was meant to be a Jewish stereotype? No Jew could occupy such a role.

There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers – only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.

I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can’t say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.’

I don’t wear pants, or like them; I’m a Jewish woman who’s made the decision to wear skirts, so I wear mostly skirts past the knee.

The Orthodox believe in Jewish literacy, and most of the rest of us couldn’t care less. Rabbis and other creatures have a monopoly on Judaism. This is a turnoff in a world that is increasingly secular and that has turned away from religion. Jews are simply turning away from Judaism.

I am the ultimate Jewish mother.

San Francisco is really fun and liberal, and it’s my kind of politics. It’s like being Jewish in front of Jewish people.

Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.

For as long as the power of America’s diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.

The Romans weren’t trying to kill all the Jews, but they did destroy Jewish resistance to Roman rule. Jerusalem was turned into a Roman army camp, and it was a total devastation.

My father was – actually was an Episcopal priest as a young man. Became a psychotherapist, a psychologist. My mother is Jewish, so I grew up in a mixed background. But the common denominator was certainly music, and that was sort of emphasized in my household as music being sort of the spiritual force.

It is as difficult to define or classify Islamic cinema as it would be a Christian, Jewish or Buddhist one.

My mom is Episcopalian; my dad is ancestrally Jewish but personally atheist. After their divorce, however, my dad married a Jewish spiritual director, and I became fascinated by the traditions she brought into our lives.

Historically, the National Religious Party, which my party – Jewish Home – is built upon, has aligned itself in consecutive Israeli governments with the ultra-Orthodox factions.

I think we were raised in a nice Texas Jewish family where education was the most important thing, and close behind that was the arts. It was emphasized and expected that we’d play piano.

I see all this and know that if we are to save the Jewish state and its three-and-a-half million Jews from terrible horrors, we must rise up and demand a fundamental change in the very system of government.

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

I remember my own life as a small boy, son of Jewish immigrants, in a janitor’s flat on Orchard and Stanton streets on the Lower East Side of New York City. My father made pants and doubled as janitor of a tenement – before he made janitoring at $30 a month, plus rooms, a career.

When my mother left home, her family sat shivah for her, more because my father was not Jewish than because he was black.

I never thought I’d play an orthodox Jewish man.

The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land.

I represent an emerging group of leaders within the Jewish community who are conservatives; not just fiscal conservatives, but social conservatives as well.

I feel very strongly that it is vital for us to constantly keep in mind the fact that the Jewish problem is but a phase of the world problem.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God’s Book of Life.

With a successful center-right party such as ours, it is hard for the radical right to find room to operate. This is why they repeatedly attack us in the ugliest manner. They attack us more than they attack the Jewish community or the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ – which they believe exists. I am one of their main targets.

I remember Nazi election propaganda posters showing a hateful Jewish face with crooked nose.

I could live on challah bread, the Jewish kosher bread, quite happily.

According to Gallup, Obama has already lost support among Jewish voters, down from 78 percent to 68 percent. If Romney shows that he is genuinely committed to Israel and that Obama is not, he’ll make further inroads.