Michael Chabon Quotes

I am a non Zionist because the Jew, in seeking a homeland of his own, seems to me to be giving up something of infinitely greater value of the world.

Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.

My dad's Israeli. He was born in Baghdad to Iraqi Jews. Then, at age two, his parents wanted to move to their homeland and he grew up in Israel. I've been there twice, once as a baby and once when I was 15.

It took me many years to understand that my identity is more Israeli than Jewish.

Many Jews are not Zionists and many non-Jews are. Zionism is a political movement, not a race. To say Zionism is the Jewish people is like saying the Democratic Party is the American people. Jewish people who oppose Zionism, however, have been given a very hard time.

Zionism aims to create for the Jewish people a publicly recognized and legally secured home in Palestine.

I am, as a human being, an opponent of nationalism, but as a Jew, I am from today a supporter of the Zionist effort

The malady of the Jews is that they don't see territory as part of their identity.

We in the Jewish Home party talk all the time about how Judea and Samaria are our homeland and they are part of Israel, so we are there to stay.

There is really no place for individuals in Israel.

Our eternal capital Jerusalem was and remains our top national priority.

Nobody can send me to Pakistan. India is my country, and I love my country. Five generations of my family have lived and died on this land, and even my children will live in this country because this is my homeland.

The Land of Israel needs a People and the People of Israel needs a Land.

I have no religion because I was born and raised Jewish. And on the first night of Hanukkah, my parents, when I was very young, gave me a top to play with. They called it a dreidel. I knew it was a top. And as I looked at that top, I said, 'You know. I don't think I'm gonna be Jewish for very long.

I am a non Zionist because the Jew, in seeking a homeland of his own, seems to me to be giving up something of infinitely greater value of the world. ... I look askance at any movement which assists in making the peacemaker among nations merely a national warrior.

I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.

Throughout early modernity there were very strong pressures on Jews to assimilate. Assimilating meant cutting your ties with the community of origin.

I don't believe in God and all that. But I am Jewish, and very proud to be so, very proud of the culture.

Being a Jew and an Israeli are inseparable things.

Zionism wants to define the Jewish people as a national entity ... which is a heresy.

By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.

My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks.

I think I may well be a Jew.

All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

A Jew is anyone who says he is.