Philip Roth Quotes

The relation between Judaism, Zionism, and Messianism is one that is often hard for Jews to get straight. Needless to say, it is even harder for non-Jews.

As a Jew, I recognize the importance of Israel historically, liturgically: its place in our history and in our sacred texts. I fully recognize and appreciate that. I just think that, for me, a sole focus on Israel gets in the way of the pursuit of a relationship with God and a more spiritual existence within Judaism.

I'm no more or less Jewish than any other Jew. Israel has survived because we haven't forgot our Judaism, but there are some Israelis who did forget.

The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in corned beef sandwiches.

It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.

As a matter of fact, part of being Jewish is the whole question of what it is to be a Jew.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

To be a Jew is a destiny.

I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it.

If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home.

You can take a Jew out of a shtetl, but you cannot take a shtetl out of a Jew.

Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces.

Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

I feel that I am completely in solidarity with Jews in the world, because I know what it is to be a Jew. I've seen what it is; I am myself of Jewish origin, and therefore I can only be fully in support of the idea that the Jews, after all they've suffered, need a country where they are at home.

[The Jews] are the people of the Book [ahl' ul-kitab.]

My thinking is dominated by the future of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they are—in 30 years or 300 years.

I think all the history of the Jewish people is about adaptation.

Open a Jewish daily prayer book used in any part of the world, and Zionism will leap out at you.

I'm Jewish. That's all. So I am in exile all the time. Wherever we go, we are in exile. Even in Israel, we are in exile.

As a Jew, even if you were not born in Poland, the very name, Poland, gives rise to a shuddering in your body and a longing in your heart. This country was the breeding ground for the soul of the Jewish nation, and unfortunately, also grounds to the largest Jewish cemetery.

We are one family, and the connection between all Jews, all over the world, is very important to the State of Israel.

I love the nation of Israel. I love Jewish people. My King was Jewish, and I embrace that.

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.

The Jewish question is really the most serious of our problems.