I really wanted to be born a woman. It all started there. A South American woman. And I'm upset that I was born a white Jewish male. I've been angry since.
The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life.
Even a secret agent can't lie to a Jewish mother.
My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Sumeria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.
The opportunities which the present position open up for a lasting and radical solution of the most vexing problem of the Jewish state are so far-reaching as to take one's breath away.
I don't feel we need a declaration from the Palestinians that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation.
I was proud to witness American Jewish organizations found the Save Darfur Coalition in June 2004 to mobilize a coordinated interfaith response to the ongoing humanitarian disaster.
My grandfather was Catholic; my grandmother, Jewish. Crossing over from Bavaria, as immigrants to the United States, the ship started to sink. My grandmother jumped overboard. My grandfather followed, to save this girl he had never met.
Both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions admit an empty tomb.
I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.
People from all over the world were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. They came from many different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu believers were killed together as they worked in the towers.
My mother should have been Jewish. She could have taught a class on how to induce guilt.
I grew up pretty secular. I went to public school, and all the Jews that I knew, none of them were religious. While probably half of my friends were Jewish, they were all secular Jews. We went to Hebrew school, we knew we were Jewish, but it wasn't a major part of our existence.
I am one of the happiest people I know. And that's a weird place to have arrived at from being a depressed Jewish kid.
I'm Jewish and my wife isn't so right now we're literally decorating a Christmas tree with Jewish stars draped around it.
I'm not saying I'm the only Jewish person who cares about Palestinian people, but unfortunately, their voices are not necessarily heard as loudly as they should be.
I'm really an honorary Jew, you know; all the best people are. I really do feel Jewish, even though I'm a Catholic. The way the Church has been behaving, I'm happy to be Jewish.
I've always felt that there's a Catskills comic who lives in my head and is constantly trying to get out. There's all these jokes that have been passed down from Jewish generation to Jewish generation, which I love but which I've always made fun of.
I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed, for a variety of - well, for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.
For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.
The Christian Armenian story was the Polish Jewish story. The efforts of the Armenians to stay alive in Musa Dagh chimed with those struggling to survive the ghetto.
People think of Jews as the Woody Allen stereotype, the nebbishy kind of thing, but that's not the kind of Jews I know. I know plenty of Israelis and plenty of tough guys that are Jewish. So, I think it makes sense that Jews play metal.
For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.
So an autobiography about death should include, in my case, an account of European Jewry and of Russian and Jewish events - pogroms and flights and murders and the revolution that drove my mother to come here.
I'm a mongrel in the sense that I'm Spanish, English, Latino, Jewish, north, south - all these things are mixed in me.
Jews have been in Egypt since Biblical times, and Alexandria had once been, at least partially, a Jewish city.
Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.
My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister.
The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.
I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don't have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.
Though I am not religious in the least, I am very proud to be Jewish.
The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.
I have reached a conclusion that when we have to make a choice between greater Israel or a Jewish democratic state - and we have to make this choice, it is inevitable - then my choice is a Jewish democratic country.
I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.
