Abraham Cahan Quotes

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.

I am very proud of being Jewish. I went to a Jewish school all my life.

I can't imagine writing something that didn't address Jewish themes and questions. It's such a big part of my life, a lot of the way in which I experience the world.

Jews have become the teachers of men in great things.

I went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.

If I had to identify the one skill set shared by most by the men who become part of the SEAL teams... it would be sheer brainpower.

'The New World Haggadah' is meant for American Jews in the 21st century.

I am a fifth-generation American, but from a young age, I went to yeshiva. I spent 12 hours a day with rabbis, and I think in Yiddish. To this day, I have to go back and unravel my writing and polish it so everyone doesn't sound like an old Jewish woman.

I attended five different Jewish day schools as a teenager. I mean, I was trained as a hazan!

I grew up attending a Conservative day school, Solomon Schechter, until I was about 14, and going to a Reconstructionist synagogue.

I want every Israeli child, secular and religious, to know about Moses, about Maimonides, about Yoni Netanyahu, about Hannah Senesh and S. Y. Agnon. I want every child to know how to read the Bible, and know how to make Kiddush.

Christ is my life.

Intelligence is the sexiest thing in the world.

Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, and the modern presence there just cements this.

I haven't made art about Israel. There's a covert subtext of Jewish identity in my artwork.

"Beauty fades," my father would tell me, "but dumb? Dumb is forever."

We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God.

Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart.

You're so stupid, Rose!

Being "Jewish" is way stronger culturally than it is religiously.

The essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old.

The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.

Has your relationship with God changed the way you live your life?

Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance. -Doc