Matisyahu Quotes

I love Hanukkah because it's so weird. You just sit there and light candles and say spells.

Put on your yarmulkahHere comes HannukahSo much funnukahTo celebrate Hannukah

Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.

In terms of my religious preference, if a year goes by and I don't have a Seder or I don't light the menorah, I feel a loss.

Most Texans think Hanukkah is some sort of duck call.

Is it possible Hanukkah doesn't inspire folksy songs? Plot lines may be a part. The Christmas story has a lot of material to work with. There's Jesus and his birth, the wise men, their gifts and tons of frankincense.

What I find fascinating about Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights we celebrate at this time of the year, is the way its story was transformed by time.

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

I'm not against the Hanukkah songs. I like Hanukkah songs. I grew up with Hanukkah songs. I'm not opposed to Hanukkah or the songs that accompany it, at all.

Hanukkah is...the festival of lights, instead of one day of presents, we get eight crazy nights

Judaism for me is a sensibility of collective self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling. I feel a debt of responsibility to this past. It is why I am Jewish.

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

My purpose is to have American Jews look away from the success story with which they've cheered themselves up, and to have them remember the classical tradition, whatever it is.

I consider myself a Jewish writer - even if my characters frequently are not Jewish - in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don't often attend shul.

I believe in Judaism, I was raised a Jew, I'm happy to be one - or proud to be one.

For a Jewish guy, I've recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

When my children were born, I made the choice I wanted them to be raised as Jews and to have a Jewish education.

I've liked being Jewish in America - there's a secular version of Jewishness there that's more about bagels and jokes than going to synagogues.

Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.

It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.

I'm very spiritual and I'm Jewish by faith. I'm not a practising Jew, I'm more of a recreational Jew. I celebrate the holidays and I try to inform my kids about their heritage because I think we all at some point have to defend our heritage and if they get picked on I want them to know why.

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.

When you have a Jewish mother who has a very strong Jewish family, it's very ethnic in its practices. Eating brisket, the food and the family and the interconnectedness for better or worse.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

Christians get trees. Jews get bushes. To stay in good standing with the Tribe, you've got to refer to a Christmas tree as a Hanukkah bush.