Theodore Bikel Quotes

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against.

Myself, first of all, I am a Jew. And that is the most important thing for me.

I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

The Jews know who they are as a people. The Christians have not come together as a people yet.

I've never understood people who say they're not a practicing Jew. You never hear a black guy say he's not a practicing African-American. What does it even mean?

When I was growing up, I, like many Jews, cheered what appeared to be the receding of faith from everyday life. The further religion got from our lives the better our lives would get, I thought, because persecution had been such a burden to Jewish families for generations.

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity.

I believe in having a more open mind and including others who don't share your faith and having dialogue with them. And just having a pure heart and being a good person can bring you closer to God. Because once you believe in one particular religion fully and not others, that requires you to start disliking people who don't share your views.

My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.

I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true, and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths... That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith.

I'm Jewish, but I'm totally not.

I as a Muslim want you, as a Christian, to really be a perfect Christian. I want my Jewish friends to be perfect Jews, to live according to the highest principles of what it means to be a Jew, to be a Christian, to be a Muslim.

The beauty of Judaism is that it demands we ask questions, especially of ourselves.

I am Jewish, Italian, American, Catholic.

Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

My mother, a nonpracticing Jew from Delaware, had married a non-practicing Protestant in California. Sometimes, certainly not always, Jew + Protestant = Unitarian, and that is what we were - 'Jewnitarians,' as I like to say.

I am a peace supporting Jew.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

Always you find that the more decisive event wins so my father's sort of annual decisiveness which came upon him on the Day of Atonement every year, he suddenly remembered that he was Jewish.

A religious commitment coupled with theological awareness gives Jews a much better way to answer the claims made upon us by missionaries representing other religions than do the rather weak political and cultural arguments of the secularists.

I'm not a very religious man, but I'm proud to be a Jew.

I am not a Hollywood Jew and I won't ever be one.