Howard Jacobson Quotes

Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they're always obsessed with one issue - identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?

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.

If you research history, I think we are all Jewish. It's the original culture.

I'm a Jew. I think every Jew is dark in certain ways.

I think I may well be a Jew.

Truth be told, for a 21st Century American Jew there is something hollow in the Seder's liberation story and the commandment to feel as if you were there.

I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

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've discovered my Jewishness late in life. And I've really enjoyed exploring that world.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.

I may look like an American WASPy doctor or lawyer, but I feel just like Woody Allen. Don't cast me for my looks - I have a very ironic, existential, crazy Jew in me.

If you are a Rothschild, a Rosenwald, a Gimbel, or even a Waldbaum, growing up Jewish can be a rich experience. For the rest of us, it could be just so-so.

I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it.

I don't consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.

I love being Jewish; I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.

The funny thing is that I write and I act a lot about being Jewish, but I don't really think about it as a regular person.

My parents genuinely loved Vienna, and in later years I learned from them why the city exerted a powerful hold on them and other Jews. My parents loved the dialect of Vienna, its cultural sophistication, and artistic values.

Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'

I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

I'm certainly not a practicing Jew. I would never claim, 'I'm Jewish.' That's not the first and foremost thing in my mind, as far as who I am as a person.

I'm not trying to disrespect anybody by saying this - I'm not sure I feel any interaction with Asian America in any collective sense. - It's like, when you're telling me this right now, my reaction is, Really? Asian America knows about me?

My wife is Jewish, and therefore, it's my children's birthright to be Jewish.