A Quote by Simon Schama

I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.

Simon Schama

Quote Topics

American Commit Community Dose Even Fiercely Identity Jews Know Memory Misunderstood Need Order Orthodox Otherwise Persecution Really Sense Strictly Want Would Would Be Your

Quote Author

Simon Schama
British - Historian
Born: February 13, 1945

We were Orthodox Jews, but we really didn't deserve it. I mean, bacon - my father said, 'Don't put bacon in the house,' but we had bacon. We didn't keep kosher. And we observed which today would be Conservative Jews. But in those days, we belonged to an Orthodox temple. So we made out we were Orthodox Jews, but we really weren't.

Don Rickles

I never understood liberal Jews blaming Israel, you know, supporting Palestinians. I've never understood it, until I spoke once to a man named Norman Podhoretz, and he said to me, "Many of you refer to liberal Jews that way. They're not Jews. They are liberals. Liberalism is what is first and foremost in their identity. The fact that they are Jews is not paramount or prominent. It's secondary - and, in many cases, even tertiary - to their identity."

Rush Limbaugh

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.

Nat Hentoff

As American Jews and descendants of immigrants, we never forget where our families came from or what members of our community experienced. Because we remember, we look out for those who are freeing persecution, oppression, and danger.

Jan Schakowsky

The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.

John Shelby Spong

The Jewish question exists wherever the Jews live, however small their number. Where it does not exist it is imported by Jew immigrants. We naturally go where we are not persecuted, and, still persecution is the result of our appearance...By persecution we cannot be exterminated...the strong Jews turn proudly to their race when persecution bursts out. Entire branches of Judaism may disappear, break away; the tree lives.

Theodor Herzl

We need a spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together. If we have no sense of community, the American dream will wither.

William J. Clinton

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are not Orthodox, the ultra-Orthodox hold the keys not just to Israel's Jewish sacred places, but to the life cycle events - conversions, weddings, divorces, burials - of the country's more than six million Jews.

Bari Weiss

You need to be able to nurture yourself in order to be a good mother, good at your job, good at servicing your community. I really believe women can do it all, but they can't do it all at the expense of their health, their sleep, and their sense of well-being.

Arianna Huffington

If one person sits down at their computer one day and types one word, dose that affect the future? If that one person didn't type that one word, would the future's history be changed? Dose their one word even mean anything? Dose my one (times a lot) word mean anything? Dose that one person's one word even get read-once? If I wasn't sitting here writing my words, would my future be different?

Esther Earl

There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done 'for the common good.'...one might point to the way in which racial hatreds and even persecution are admitted by people who consider themselves, and perhaps in some sense are, kind, tolerant, civilized and even humane.

Thomas Merton

When I see ultra-Orthodox Jews stamping all over Jaffa, or when I see them deciding who is a Jew, I think: 'What's happened to the grand dream of Zionism?' I don't like to see ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. What's wrong with Manchester?

Howard Jacobson

On a relative level where we live, we need to have a sense of identity, otherwise we'd fall apart, wouldn't we?

Tenzin Palmo

But the idea of using the Apache resistance, one, it works effective to actually get German soldiers to think of Jews that way. You know, and they're not just any Jews. They're the American Jews. They're Jews with entitlement.

Quentin Tarantino

Memory is identity....You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.