The Tradition of Judaism, Part I. Quotations about Jews and Judaism

Part I. Quotations about Jews and Judaism

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

- Shylock, From The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.


Who hates the Jews more than the Jew?

- Henry Miller

It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of another Jew?

- Heinrich Heine

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

- Golda Meir

HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the She-brew, an altogether superior creation.

- Andrew Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews. - Anne Frank

To be a Jew is a destiny.

- Vicky Baum

Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.

- David Ben-Gurion

If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.

- Bernard Malamud

A baptised Jew is a circumcised Christian.

- German Proverb

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

- Elie Wiesel

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

- John Adams


Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

- Benjamin Disraeli, Reply to a taunt by Daniel O'Connell.

Historically the profoundest meaning of Passover is something which sets Judaism apart from other religions. It marks the birth of a nation. Out of a mass of slaves, Moses fashioned a nation and gave them a faith.

- Philip S. Bernstein

These three are the marks of a Jew - a tender heart, self-respect, and charity.

- Hebrew Proverb

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

- Henny Youngman


I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.

- Elie Wiesel









May the LORD God bless you in the name of the God of Israel.