Ayelet Waldman Quotes

I can change a light fixture, and I can do certain things. But I'm really bad in terms of construction. I can't do any of it on my own.

I'm useless around the house.

My mom was Jewish, so some would call me Jewish.

As an adult, I've always found the stereotype that Jews are liberal a curious one; my parents' circle was predominantly conservative, not just on Israel but on most political issues. Most of all, they were intensely (and this is a word I remember repeating in my own angry adolescent dialogues with myself) tribal.

Maybe there's something about the outsiderness of being Jewish that makes for a fiery feminist type.

DIY skills are hot. The ability to put up a shelf and hang a picture is always good and being able to cook. Cooking's really hot.

'The New World Haggadah' is meant for American Jews in the 21st century.

Admitting that we ourselves are bar mitzvah boys is our way of letting non-Jews as well as Jews in the audience know that everything we're doing is meant in good fun; we're having fun with our background and don't want to be taken in the wrong way.

Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.

My husband is Jewish.

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

Jewishness is a very big part of my identity. I am a proud Jew, I would say, who doesn't practice very actively.

My mother is Jewish. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays at home.

German Jews don't show their emotions in public.

I have a massive head of hair: it's a Jew 'fro. It's living and kicking.

I went to bar mitzvahs as a kid. I had a lot of classmates who are Jewish.

I guess you could say I'm kind of Jewish but not really.

The Jews are always up for a laugh.

Judaism is a big part of my background, obviously, and my reality.

The Jewish state has so much to teach diaspora Jews about resilience, innovation, energy, and optimism.

To have knowledge of Judaism and to be a religious Jew or an interested Jew, is to have a doorway into a worldview that is entirely alien to the rest of the world's worldview.

Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be, the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics.

The decline of practical skills, some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying. They can't put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt. They believe it's endearing and cute to be useless, whereas I think it's boring, and everyone's getting sick of it.

I love being Jewish, but I think that our generation is the first generation that crossed that line between being a cultural versus a practicing Jew.

I respect Israel as hugely special, especially given all the sensitivities around it. The Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains.