Andre Aciman Quotes

The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

Let my people go!

Though I'm not religious in the classical sense I did partake in Passover.

Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over.

Moses is our true founding father.

Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.

Since the Exodus, Freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.

That [Exodus] occurred, I have no doubt.

Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.

When Israel, of the Lord belov'd, Out of the land of bondage came, Her fathers' God before her mov'd, An awful guide in smoke and flame.

When Israel was from bondage led,Led by the Almighty's handFrom out of foreign land,The great sea beheld and fled.

Truth be told, for a 21st Century American Jew there is something hollow in the Seder's liberation story and the commandment to feel as if you were there.

Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey. Moses in effect led the tribes of Israel out of the District of Columbia, parted Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, and wandered for forty years in Delaware.

Passover takes place in the home rather than the synagogue and centers around an epic meal - the seder - so you remember Passover as storytelling, you remember it in food, and you remember it in the family.

I don't know if you saw the parting of the Red Sea with the chariots on the horses, I did stuff like that.

If the angel Gabriel came to me and said, 'Look, I'm willing to take your soul now and give it back to you at any period of time in the history of the nation of Israel, from the very beginning to this very day' - I think I would not think of any other time except for when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai.

I personally have no doubt that the Exodus occurred. How it occurred, I don't know.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

You know that Moses was spinning like crazy in Exodus XIV through XVII when the Jewish people wanted to go back and become a place again because tramping through the desert was a bit too hard.

Remember, you must not sleep at the Seder. If you do, Elijah the Prophet will come with a bag on his shoulders. On the two first nights of Passover, Elijah the Prophet goes about looking for those who have fallen asleep at the Seder, and takes them away in his bag.

In the Bible, God offered the Pharaoh freedom if he would just let the oppressed people free to go to the land of milk and honey. But the Pharaoh disobeyed, and he was destroyed.

The mandate we have as Jews is for the story of the Exodus from Egypt to be retold every generation.

Passover is the most widely observed of all the Jewish holidays, and the Passover Seder... is the most practiced of all the Jewish rituals.

Most of us have made the mistake that after they crossed the Red Sea they spent 40 years in the wilderness fighting amongst each other.

Moses, who said to the children of Israel, Wear your galoshes; I never did this trick before. Never got a dinner!