Matisyahu Quotes

I was an atheist, I was open-minded, and I began to read in that direction, in the direction of Islam, and everything that I read about it appealed to me.

I was born with a serious spiritual consciousness and for many years studied different paths.

Plenty of people are raised Catholic and then aren't Catholic anymore, like any religion.

In Judaism, there are 613 biblical commandments, and the Talmud says that the chief commandment of all is study.

When I grew up, I thought I was Jewish. Now I don't consider myself Jewish. I consider myself a Kabbalist.

One of the stranger things about me is that I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I went to a yeshiva until I was thirteen years old and spoke fluent Hebrew.

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

I wasn't brought up with any religion at all. At school and in my early 20s, I read every religious text I could get my hands on - Buddhist scriptures, Hindu texts, the Qur'an, and the Bible. I wanted to feel like something made sense to me, that there was something sacred I could feel aligned with.

I grew up an Orthodox Jew, and now I'm not an Orthodox Jew. So I have sympathy for people who lose their faith.

If you've grown up in a church, college is a time you may branch away from that.

The whole upbringing was interesting because we grew up Orthodox Jews all the way until we were teenagers.

I was looking for something within Judaism that had a spiritual nature and not just a religious nature. So my trainer at the time was the one who took me to the Kabbalah center on my 40th birthday. I was like, "Oh, this is so cool." I was just ready for it. I was ready for something different.

I had gone to - that was my second time going to the mosque. And then at that time we met [with my wife], she was Muslim and - but was at a point where - because her father is an imam and her mother, though, is a convert, but she was basically raised Muslim. And she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself. So I was sort of trying to come walk toward it.

In my little town, Sighet, which is in Romania, Hungary-Romania, but a real shtetl, a little [Jewish] village - and we began with the Chumash [Pentateuch], probably at age four.

I'm interested to see where a combination of faith and science will take me.

People don't know what Kabbalah is, and so they jump to conclusions. For me, studying Kabbalah is studying - is just - is asking questions. And I encourage all of my children to be that way, and I think people don't understand that. And so they make assumptions and they judge.

I dabble in all kinds of spirituality. I studied Kabbalah for over ten years, and you know it's all basically the same.

I didn't have a rigidly enforced religious parental pressure, but I did have a few years in my mid-teens of turning to religion, and it was very meaningful to me.

I'm not religious, and I feel that has to do with me being uprooted so many times in my life that I've explored many religions and sentiments from many different families basically across the globe.

I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.

In Jewish tradition the Talmud is said to have been given on Sinai.

Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.

Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left.

The way of even the most jusitifiable revolution is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.

It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).