“The people we call the prophets I think are the earliest dissident intellectuals, and they're treated like most dissident intellectuals - very badly. They're imprisoned, driven into the desert. King Ahab, the epitome of evil in the Bible, condemned Elijah as a "hater of Israel." This is the first self-hating Jew, the origin of the term. It goes right up to the present. That's the history of intellectuals.” PeopleThinkingFirstsSelfHateEvilTermKingsJewIsraelDrivenTreatedDesertProphetElijahEpitomeDissidentsAhab Author:Noam Chomsky
“Maybe when the President tells you that you should be afraid of Mexicans or Muslims or Jews or black people or gay people or trans people, you'll realize that those are just labels, that underneath it all we're all the same people, we all have the same aspirations, the same hopes, the same desires, that we all share the same values.” PeopleShouldDesireValuesBlackPresidentRealizingShareGayJewLabelsAspirationBlack PeopleTransGay People Author:Reza Aslan
“I am afraid that I am actually naturally good with money. My wife thinks it is because I am a Jew, which is both slightly anti-Semitic and also correct. Frankly, all my "goysha" - gentile - friends haven't got a clue.” ThinkingWifeHavensJewMy WifeClueGentilesAnti Semitic Author:Giles Coren
“America as a setting seems inexhaustibly fascinating to me, and I think there's something about the outsider viewpoint that works for me. Being of Jewish descent in England always carried a vague sense of being foreign, while not being a practicing Jew made it hard to think of myself as fully Jewish either. So living here in a way just clarifies that terminal outsider position - makes it somehow official, which I like.” ThinkingWayMadeHardSeemsAmericaPositionEnglandJewSettingSettingsMade ItOfficialsFascinatingOutsidersVagueViewpointsDescentTerminal Author:James Lasdun
“I think a lot of these terms, nationalistic things, somebody is an American, or somebody is a Frenchman, or somebody is a Jew, I don't know, it doesn't mean anything to me. You really should start augmenting these words, saying what kind. If you want to say somebody is a Jew, what do you mean by that? Does he have blonde hair? I think a lot of these ancient nationalistic and ethnic terms have kind of lost their meaning, or their meaning is so broad, it's nothing. It's like he's connected to the ancient world. Everybody is.” IfsThinkingKnowsWorldWantShouldKindMeanDoeLostTermHairAncientJewConnectedBroadsBlondeFrenchmenBlonde HairNationalisticAncient World Author:Ben Katchor
“As a Jew and a journalist I have my privileges, and if one doesn't work I use the other one.” IfsUsePrivilegeJewJournalist Author:Amira Hass
“I have privileges even in comparison to a Palestinian Israeli because Palestinian Israelis who live permanently in Ramallah risk their status, not as citizens but as residents. They might lose their social rights if they move to Ramallah. But I won't, so I live with privileges. That notion is very difficult for me as a child who was raised in a left-wing family, a family of people who suffered discrimination as Jews abroad. The notion that I am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it means to live in a white society. You are white, so you are privileged.” PeopleIfsMeanChildrenMightMovingLeftSocialDifficultLosesWhiteRightsRiskCitizensWingsRaisedNotionPrivilegeJewDiscriminationComparisonDisgustingPalestinianPrivilegedIsraeliLeft WingResidents Author:Amira Hass
“Some think, "If I marry this guy who's two inches taller than I am and who has a nice bank account, I won't die. If I buy six cars, I won't die. If I hate Jews, I won't die. If I hate homosexuals, I won't die." They think they will increase their life by shunting misery onto somebody else, but it's just the opposite.” IfsThinkingTwoGuyHateDiesNiceCarSixOppositesAccountsI HateIncreaseMiseryJewInchesHomosexualThis GuyBank Accounts Author:Maya Angelou
“I think it is important that religious leaders of all kinds consciously attempt to distinguish between issues of natural law on which there is consensus among Catholic, Protestant, and Jew and those issues on which there must be a greater degree of tolerance of other peoples' opinions and of the diversity that is characteristic of American society.” ThinkingKindImportantNaturalReligiousLeaderOpinionDiversityCatholicJewToleranceAll KindsConsensusNatural Law Author:Bruce Babbitt
“The integration in Germany was made easier by the fact that I am probably of the third generation. So I have undergone a process of assimilation, of Jews into German society.I lived as a child in Germany, the feeling of being surrounded by people of whom the majority had very strong anti-Semitic sentiments. But there was one very odd thing in the whole milieu in which I lived: no one accepted the stigmatization. It is quite difficult. No one, my father for instance, would ever take it seriously. He would regard anti-Semites as people of no education.” PeopleChildrenFeelingsFatherStrongDifficultJewAcceptedOddSentimentsVery StrongIntegrationAssimilation Author:Norbert Elias
“I knew that the black struggle wasn't my struggle. But I felt like it was my-struggle-adjacent, you know? I've always said that if you turn the dial in one direction, a Muslim is a Jew is an East Asian person is a Native American and so on. I feel very much that all of these struggles are kind of the same and - Hillary Clinton actually said this recently - when you get rid of one barrier, it opens up the gates for a whole bunch of people you didn't even know would benefit from it. So not fighting for the black struggle is like not fighting for the Muslim struggle.” PeopleKindFightingBlackStruggleClintonJewNativeBarriersGatesNative AmericanMy Struggle Author:Negin Farsad
“As a book person and a movie person, I feel Jewish. My Dad was more Buddhist than anything, and on the West Coast I've often had the impression that Jews become Buddhists. I think, if anything, my religion has more to do with California consciousness, vibrations and energy. My wife isn't Jewish. There's nothing ceremonial going on at our house, I mean, occasionally a candle gets lit. But, definitely, my Judaism is an ongoing relationship, one that remains to be consummated.” ThinkingMeanBookHouseEnergyConsciousnessWifeDadMy DadJewMy WifeImpressionBuddhistCandleJudaismLit Author:Jonathan Raymond
“There are hard texts in each tradition which we must confront and ask ourselves, 'Can we reinterpret those texts to allow us to live peaceably, and respectfully, with people of other faiths?' That is a job only Jews can do for Judaism, only Christians can do for Christianity, and only Muslims can do for Islam. But sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith.” PeopleSometimesChristianChristianityTraditionIslamJewEmpoweringWrestlingJudaism Author:Jonathan Sacks
“Sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith. For me, it was reading about how the Catholic Church wrestled with itself in the 1960s. Pope John XXIII set Nostra Aetate - the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions - in motion. It changed the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Today, Jews and Catholics meet as friends. If you can do that, after the longest history of hatred the world has known, that empowers you as a Jew or a Muslim to wrestle with your faith.” WorldSometimesTodayReadingChurchChangedHatredRelationCatholicJewEmpoweringWrestlingPopeDeclaration1960s Author:Jonathan Sacks
“When you've got Jews and Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus removing graffiti from buildings, or getting drug dealers off the street, that's side by side. When you do that, you take it from the very elevated level of interfaith dialogue to the street level of neighbors. You get them working side by side, and they become friends. Friendship sometimes counts for more than interfaith agreement or understanding. Friendship is deeply human.” SometimesChristianUnderstandingBuildingDrugJewNeighborDialogueDealerGraffiti Author:Jonathan Sacks
“I think the Barack Obama position and the majority position of American Jews and a lot of Americans is a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Settlements get in the way of that. If they're not stopped soon, there is no prospect for that type of solution.” ThinkingSolutionsJewBarackPalestineSettlement Author:David Brooks
“Hitler was obviously a dictator. And he was Christian. And I think that he persecuted the Jews, there's no doubt about that. And he did that for nationalistic reasons, which would be prohibited in Islam.” ThinkingReasonChristianDoubtIslamJewDictator Author:Anjem Choudary
“We must never allow demagogues to divide us up by race, by religion, by national origin, by gender, or sexual orientation. Black and whites, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and every religion - straight or gay, male or female - we must stand together. This country belongs to all of us.” CountryChristianTogetherBlackGayFemaleJewGenderNativeBlack And WhiteNative AmericanLatino Author:Bernie Sanders
“Genocide, in my opinion - is an attempt by a powerful group completely to eradicate from the face of the Earth the existence of people because of their ethnic makeup or because of their race or religion, and that was the case with Hitler trying to exterminate the Jews, and that was the case in Rwanda, when the Tutsis were attacked and over 500,000 were killed in two or three days.” PeopleTryingEarthPowerfulExistenceOpinionJewMakeupGenocideRwandaOver 50 Author:Jimmy Carter
“I've taught the Bible all my life and I believe in the rights of Jews to have a place in the Holy Land, and so I have a natural affinity for that right. I believe that the right of Israel to have a place in the Holy Land can be honored by the two state solution, to abbreviate a long premise, and I think the only way to have peace is by following the basic road I've been following for the last 30 years, to try to bring peace to Israel through negotiation.” ThinkingTryingBelieveLongI BelieveNaturalHolySolutionsJewHonoredNegotiation Author:Reza Aslan
“I'm not interested in being an intellectual or in being traditional, conventional. I'm not interested in having great wisdom. I'm not interested in those facets of the evangelical movement. I don't have to get stuff from them. I got my own stuff. If it hits you, okay. That's why I've got so many different races, classes, and such a mixture of theologies and philosophies. I've got agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims the whole spectrum.” DifferentPhilosophyChristianIntellectualOkayAtheistJewTheologyBuddhistNot InterestedEvangelical Author:Cecil Williams
“The dissolution of a family, global crisis creates the massive fracture, not only in the Middle East but between America and Israel, between Europe and Israel, between American Jews and Israeli Jews. The distances seem to be widening wherever you look.” CrisisDistanceJewIsraeli Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
“The Jews believed they were the nation God had chosen among all the nations. And they were. But that did not give them immunity to God's judgment. Like the nations, they too would feel God's wrath if they refused to live in God's ways. Furthermore, God could deal with other nations in mercy as well as judgment. Jeremiah was full of surprises, as against the popular religious assumptions of his day. That's perhaps why some people, when they encountered Jesus, thought he was very like Jeremiah. He turned things upside down.” PeopleGivingJesusReligiousJudgmentMercySurpriseJewChosenAssumptionUpside Down Author:Christopher J. H. Wright
“My wife told me, "Listen, you have to do something big, beautiful story." I remember that I read The Shack script and I told her that there is a big message over here, and as a Jew, I read the script, and I didn't see anything that connects to religion. It's not about religion, it's about faith, it's about God, and I connected with it, because from my point of view, there is God in this world.” WorldBeautifulRememberWifeJewMy WifePoint Of ViewShack Author:Aviv Alush
“I've met a lot of people who are Christian, and they are all very loving, they love the idea that I am Jewish and from Israel. I think they are a little bit excited that I am Jewish from Israel who plays Jesus in The Snack. I can't explain it. But I think because Jesus was a Jew!” PeopleThinkingChristianJesusJewExcited Author:Aviv Alush
“It seems to me that one of the most interesting things about God as a concept, if you decide to believe in God, is that God's ways are unknowable. And God obviously, look at the world around you, does or is responsible for some terrible, terrible, awful things. A young girl kidnapped and kept in the darkness and sexually abused. The deaths of six million Jews. A mudslide that buries a village. All of these things. If God is doing the good stuff, he's got to be doing that stuff too.” WorldBelieveGirlInterestingDarknessTerribleResponsibleJewBelieve In GodMost InterestingSexually Author:Neil Gaiman
“American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. By "liberal," I mean, basically, support for the rule of law, support for human rights, support for peace; and on all those counts - rule of law, human rights, peace - Israel's record has become indefensible.” MeanSupportHuman RightsJewRule Of Law Author:Norman Finkelstein
“What I mean by context is worldview - having the ancient Israelite or first-century Jew in your head as you read. How would an ancient Israelite or first-century Jew read the Bible - what would they be thinking in terms of its meaning? The truth is that if we put one of those people into a small group Bible study and asked them what they thought about a given passage meant, their answer would be quite a bit different in many cases than anything the average Christian would think. They belonged to the world that produced the Bible, which is the context the Bible needs to be understood by.” PeopleThinkingWorldMeanDifferentChristianTermStudyTruth IsAncientJewWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Sometimes, recently Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was. Every decent man had to be against fascism, period. It is not as simple as apartheid or colonialism or racism or misogyny. It is not simple because the Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country, about the size of New Jersey.” MenCountrySometimesSimpleConflictRacismTragedyJewDecentFascismPalestinianMisogynyIsraeliClashApartheid Author:Amos Oz
“Black Box is not a statement about injustice committed against Sephardi Oriental Jews or about the extremism of religious Jews or the lack of imagination of the old Israeli elites. It's a human story, in my view, first and foremost about a mystical communion between enemies. This is the inner story of the novel. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.” BlackImaginationReligiousEnemyNovelInjusticeCommittedJewCommunionMysticalIsraeliExtremism Author:Amos Oz
“Israel is a fulfilled dream. Nothing that exists here existed here a hundred years ago. "The State of the Jews" was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel. A little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of another novel written by the same author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no state. There was no nation. All you can see, if you look through the window - everything you see is a fulfillment of dreams, different dreams.” DifferentCountryDreamNovelWindowJewFulfillmentFuturistic Author:Amos Oz
“Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. Dreams fulfilled are imperfect. And, Israel is imperfect, of course it is - a far cry from the monumental dreams of the founding fathers. One of the reasons is that their dreams were unrealistic. They were bigger than life. These were messianic dreams, dreams about total redemption for the Jews, for the world. Such dreams do not come true, not in their entirety.” WorldReasonDreamFatherCryJewRedemptionFulfillmentImperfectFlawed Author:Amos Oz
“I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts.” PeopleDifferentChristianJewOld Testament Author:Win Butler
“I don't really like saying "the gays"... I'm not sure why. I suppose I say "the Jews." but I don't say "the blacks." I guess because I'm a Jew for all intents and purposes and to group people together of which I am not one in such a casual way feels disrespectful.” PeopleTogetherPurposeGayJewNot SureDisrespectful Author:Sarah Silverman
“When it comes to partisan politics, everyone is a hypocrite. And all they care about is whether it hurts or helps them ... Is it good or bad for the Democrats? Is it good or bad for the Republicans? Is it good or bad for Jews, or good or bad for blacks, or is it good or bad for women? Is it good or bad for men? Is it good or bad for gays? That's the way people think about issues today. There is very little discussion of enduring principles.” PeopleThinkingMenHelpingCareTodayHurtRepublicanGayDemocratEndureJewDiscussionIt HurtsHypocrite Author:Alan Dershowitz
“What I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith - and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers - regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.” PeopleWorldCountryDreamChristianCommonJewCommunicate Author:Barack Obama
“The more foreign to me, to my existence, to your core existence, the more foreign the foreign language, it's really moving to me to think, to get to experience my own story crossing those boundaries. To have that experience that I so cherished as a reader. I can't believe this. To me, it's really nice because that would be a thing where I'm like, "There may be lots of Jews in my work. I'm not writing stories for Jews. I'm telling stories about people, and Jews are people, too."” PeopleThinkingWritingBelieveMovingLanguageExistenceNiceJewBoundariesReally NiceForeign Language Author:Nathan Englander
“There's a common threat facing all of us - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - and that is the Antichrist. It's a very deep subject, and it's a horrendous thing to contemplate. Someone will appear who is, in fact, the opposite of what he appears to be. Some people will believe in him, and that's really frightening. In Islam, there's a belief that Jesus will return to destroy the Antichrist, which is something many people don't know about the Islamic faith.” PeopleBelieveChristianJesusBeliefCommonThreatIslamJewIslamicContemplatingFrighteningVery DeepAntichrist Author:Cat Stevens
“Noah was this sort of patron saint in my life. When I finished Pi and I started to think about what was next, I was like, "Wow, it's interesting that no one has done a film of one of the greatest stories ever told." Even if you're not a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian, you likely have a flood story in your culture.” ThinkingDoneChristianFilmCultureInterestingSaintJewFloodPatron Author:Darren Aronofsky
“When you look at the science and the genetic studies that have been done on Palestinians and Jews, you find that there is a unity. They're both descended from the Canaanites. They're essentially the same people.” PeopleDoneStudyUnityJewPalestinian Author:Lawrence Wright
“Yugoslavia served as a reminder that the lessons of World War Two were only partially learned. There's a great line someone wrote in the middle of the 1990s, at the time when Clinton was agonizing about whether or not to go into Bosnia: "Everyone says, 'Never again. Never again.' But all they really mean is never again will Germans kill Jews in the streets of Warsaw".” WorldMeanWarClintonJewWar Of The WorldsReally Mean Author:Tony Judt
“I remember my days as a graduate student at Stanford, within any leading university, a very active Israeli support, for Israel, Jews fighting for the cause of Israel. Now you find Israelis, former Israelis, and Arabs, and Jews, fighting for the Palestinian cause. We are somehow losing the moral high ground, and I keep telling our people it's great to deal with propaganda, to activate many ways, to deploy PR firms all around the world.” PeopleWorldRememberFightingMoralSupportStudentsLosingJewFirmPropagandaGraduatesPalestinianIsraeli Author:Ehud Barak
“I thought of reaching out for progressive Israelis, progressive Americans, progressive American Jews - this was probably my main mission.” JewProgressiveReach Out Author:Ari Shavit
“Israel is very confusing because it seems to be a Goliath, and in some ways it is, when you look at the tanks versus the Palestinian boy. But deep down, when you look at the big map and the big picture and the big history, we are really a David. We are a David with some megalomaniac ideas who thinks he's huge. But we're not. At the end of the day, Jews as a people are an endangered species. One cannot overlook this dimension.” PeopleThinkingBoysJewPalestinianConfusingBig PictureEndangered Species Author:Ari Shavit
“At the end of the day, with all due respect, the Jews are the ultimate victims of the twentieth century.” UltimateVictimJew Author:Ari Shavit
“Jerusalem is a holy site for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Israelis and Palestinians both lay claim to it as their capital. Jerusalem is the most sensitive of all the issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But Donald Trump determined an important aspect of the United States' position towards Jerusalem before any agreement. Most of the rest of the world feels that it ought not to be dealt with first, that it ought not to be dealt with separately, and that it ought not to be dealt with unilaterally.” WorldImportantChristianAchieveHolyJewDeterminedSensitivePalestinian Author:Richard N. Haass
“What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation. My parents said, "We have a place where we can just be ourselves and nobody says, 'Don't tell me your opinion, you damn Jew, go somewhere else.'" Then you go to this country and other Jews tell you to shut up. It's frustrating. I think that we have a bad government and that some people are fearful. They're going with the class bully. But I really truly believe - you read it in my stories - that deep inside, people have goodness.” PeopleThinkingBelieveCountryParentOpinionGoodnessJewFearfulShut UpBullyFrustrating Author:Etgar Keret
“If you were to do the world championship of victimhood in modern times, then the finals would probably be between Jews and Palestinians. I think the Jews win: we, Isralians, go from the Spanish Inquisition to pogroms to the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion to World War II and the Holocaust - it's a horrible history. And if you look at the Palestinian world, victimized by every entity in the Middle East, they were massacred in every country. I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is this fear of genocide.” PeopleThinkingWorldWarCountryWinningModernJewHorribleFakeWar Of The WorldsGenocideWorld War IiHolocaustWorld War IPalestinianChampionship Author:Etgar Keret
“I come from a missionary family - I grew up in China - and in my case, my religious upbringing was positive. Of course, not everyone has this experience. I know many of my students are what I have come to think of as wounded Christians or wounded Jews. What came through to them was dogmatism and moralism, and it rubbed them the wrong way.” ThinkingChristianReligiousStudentsJewMissionaryUpbringing Author:Huston Smith
“The ironic factor that is between the Houthis and al-Qaida, that is, they both have strong anti-American sentiment. For example, the slogan of the Houthis is death to America and death to Israel and God curse the Jews and victory to Islam. And besides that, there is very little in common between al-Qaida and the Houthis as far as ideology goes, but they see themselves as having a common enemy, which is America. And America is in a situation, where the Houthis are fighting al-Qaida quite viciously on the ground, yet now the Americans are allied with Saudi Arabia in strikes against the Houthis.” FightingStrongCommonSituationEnemyVictoryIslamJewIdeologyCurseSentimentsIronicSlogans Author:Safa Al Ahmad