I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.
I just think of myself as a comedian, really. I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.
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.
I have no religion, but I can't escape being extremely Jewish ethnically - that is, culturally. In other words, I'm not religious, but I worry and I'm neurotic. And I'm very good with money.
I have no religion, but I can't escape being extremely Jewish ethnically - that is, culturally. In other words, I'm not religious, but I worry and I'm neurotic. And I'm very good with
money.
I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.
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.
I feel Jewish in the sense of culturally Jewish, I suppose the way Bernie Sanders feels Jewish, but not Jewish in a religious sense.
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.
In the gay community there are not very many Jewish drag queens. I've always found that funny because there are a lot of Jewish gay people out there, so why aren't there more Jewish drag queens?
When I became religious, it was full-force for me. And, through the lifestyle of being out on the road with non-Jewish musicians, in non-Jewish nightclubs and going all over the world - getting out of the shtetl - opened me up to having experiences that other religious men might not have to think or worry about.
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?'
I read about the Trinity. I found something - Jesus was Jewish, he was a rabbi! - and I read a lot of stories about Jesus in Israel. And it's interesting that they picked me for this part in The Snack, and I'm Jewish, I'm kind of religious Jewish from Israel, and I don't look like the traditional Jesus with the long blonde hair and blue eyes.
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 am extremely respectful of the Jewish community. You know, I am Christian. I think of Jews as my older brothers. I mean, there wouldn't be Christianity without the Jewish religion. There is a direct connection between the two of them.
First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish.
The funny thing is that I write and I act a lot about being Jewish, but I don't really think about it as a regular person.