A Quote by Daniel Barenboim

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.

Daniel Barenboim

Quote Topics

Accept Anti Anti-Semitism Characters Could Course Court Disguise Idea Jew Jewish Like Meant Meant To Be Occupy Really Role Stereotype Stereotypes Vile Wagner Would Would Be

Quote Author

Daniel Barenboim
Argentinian - Musician
Born: November 15, 1942

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

Michael Douglas

Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world... the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.

Albert Einstein

[Jew] didn't believe anything good could come out of a Jewish study. So, what has happened is anti-Semitism has cost the Jews their lives and their property. It's also cost the Christians the ability to read the old gospels, which are deeply, deeply Jewish, and to bring that out is a pretty exciting thing. I'm having a wonderful time with that. I'm just not near ready to do much with it.

John Shelby Spong

In school they told me I was a Jew, "a filthy Jew." At first I asked myself what exactly that was. But then I began to understand. I was a Jew, I was a member of the Jewish faith, the Jewish community. One time, when I was giving a reading at a school, someone asked me: "If it was so dangerous to be Jewish, why didn't you convert to Christianity?" My response was: "It's not as easy you think. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

As a Jew, it is my historic responsibility to defend the Jewish people. I feel this responsibility for the survival of the Jewish people. We're not going to accept any decision by anybody else about security of the State of Israel. It is our role and only our role.

Ariel Sharon

I have no idea what `classic anti-Semitism' is. I'm not familiar with this term. I don't know where it comes from and what connection it has to France and what is occurring here. There wasn't anti-Semitism in France. An isolated incident can always happen. When two drivers curse each other on the road, and one of them happens to be a Jew, you can't define that as anti-Semitism. In recent years - before the intifada - there were three or four incidents of anti-Semitism a year, and that's out of 18 million crimes and violations of the law.

Jean-Marie Le Pen

I didn't know I was Jewish until I encountered anti-Semitism at the age of 10, when my best friend told me I couldn't come to their house because I was a Jew.

Peter Eisenman

As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world.

Steven Spielberg

If it is 'anti-Semitism' to say that communism in the United States is Jewish, so be it; but to the unprejudiced mind it will look very much like Americanism. Communism all over the world, not in Russia only, is Jewish.

Henry Ford

...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.

Irena Klepfisz

Without a Jewish state, the iron truth of history is that the Jewish people sooner or later become even more vulnerable to the next wave of anti-Semitism.

Jack Schwartz

It is a third generation anti-Semitism. First it was religious in nature. Today, the Jewish state is attacked and that is the new anti-Semitism. What they have in common is that in all versions, Jews are seen as absolute evil.

Manfred Gerstenfeld

I never felt like a good Jew. My mother was not Jewish, and that makes me a non-Jew according to Jewish religious law.

Stephane Hessel

At the heart of anti-Semitism lies Moses. He made a catastrophic error, a terrible mistake, and all anti-Semitism for two thousand years stems from his misjudgement. Moses said we Jews could remain a people without having a land. He said we don't need territory to hold onto our Jewish identity. This was a disaster.

A. B. Yehoshua

I have no patience for those in the American Jewish community who just go around slandering people as anti-Semites without realizing that what they're doing is really trivializing anti-Semitism.