A Jewish community that is diverse and openly embraces all who seek to lead actively Jewish lives will be a Jewish community that is stronger and more enduring for generations to come.
I grew very skeptical of certain kind of Jewish separatism in my youth. I mean, I saw the Jewish community was always with each other; they didn't trust anybody outside. You'd bring someone home, and the first question was, 'Are they Jewish, are they not Jewish?'
Jewish immigration in the 20th century was fueled by the Holocaust, which destroyed most of the European Jewish community. The migration made the United States the home of the largest Jewish population in the world.
...I am an outsider, a lesbian, a shikse. The Jewish community is not my community. But as a Jew--as a Jew in a Christian, anti-Semitic society--the Jewish community is, and will always remain, my community. Enemy and ally.
I started the label Tzadik to support an entire community of musicians, not just Jewish musicians. But the radical Jewish culture movement was begun in a lot of ways because I wanted to take the idea that Jewish music equals 'klezmer' and expand it to, 'Well, Jewish music could be a lot more than that.'
I got into the situation where I was extreme right. It turned out that my mother is Jewish, my grandmother is Jewish. I am Jewish. So I can't hate Jewish people.
It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.
Working with the Jewish community is essential to me and what I stand for. I do explicitly see Jewish people as a people - not either a religion or an ethnicity but a people. The Tories take Jewish London for granted. I will not.
Jewish communities in the diaspora are very important to Israel and we are open to a dialogue with them. It is bitter for us to see the process of assimilation, the mixing of Jewish and non-Jewish. But when it comes to the relations of state and religions, the basics have not changed since Rabin's times.
Dig: I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. B'nai B'rith is goyish; Hadassah, Jewish.
If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish.
If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.
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.
One reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam.
When I was kid, yeah, my family, my parents wanted me to marry a Jewish girl because that was what they taught their children, and thought it would be an easier life for me to raise a Jewish kid. And I have a Jewish wife, I have a Jewish kid. They seem pretty happy about it.
I don't know what it's like to be Jewish, but I suspect there is some aspect of that: being Jewish is the thing that bonds you as opposed to being Jewish from Poland, or Jewish from Hungary.
I married a Jewish lady, and we're raising our son Jewish, and since I'm not Jewish the whole thing is just a mystery to me. I leave it to her, actually, because it's just a great mystery.