Simon Schama Quotes

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

We did Passover when we were younger.

Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over.

The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

Remember, you must not sleep at the Seder. If you do, Elijah the Prophet will come with a bag on his shoulders. On the two first nights of Passover, Elijah the Prophet goes about looking for those who have fallen asleep at the Seder, and takes them away in his bag.

Passover is the most widely observed of all the Jewish holidays, and the Passover Seder... is the most practiced of all the Jewish rituals.

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.

Each Passover, I prepare all sorts of fancy desserts for my family and friends, often experimenting with adaptations of sophisticated modern fare.

For the religious, Passover is the grateful remembrance of a homeward journey after years of suffering.

The message of Passover remains as powerful as ever. Freedom is won not on the battlefield but in the classroom and the home. Teach your children the history of freedom if you want them never to lose it.

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.

I remember my father, who was 'somebody' in the synagogue, bringing home with him one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the Passover meal. These patriarchal manners I remember well, although there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence which was somewhat comic.

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 never serve a dessert on Passover that I would not serve the rest of the year.

There's an Armed Forces Haggadah and an Alcoholics Anonymous Haggadah and an LGBT Haggadah. Some people make a new Haggadah every year. It's a real living document... They're just constantly made throughout time.

The Passover experience is an incredibly pedagogic one.

The Jews spend at Easter.

When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul.

In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.

I do love the idea of ritual. I'm a very ritualistic person. I have to wash my face twice, and on the second wash before I rinse, I brush my teeth, then I rinse, then I floss, then I put on moisturizer. I'm ritualistic. Jewishness is very ritualistic.

My strength never came from political echelons, it came from the family. And from the fields and the lands and the flowers and everything I see there. My strength came from there.

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

I go to eat dinner with my folks when I'm home. I think that's the trick.

Whenever I have friends over, we end up eating and talking and losing track of time, and, once in a while, singing karaoke. It reminds me of the family meals we had in Russia, which always lasted a very long time. That's a tradition I miss.

I love where I'm from. I don't live there because of the circumstances, but all my family is there. It's what's inside, it's not what's outside that determines the culture and the feeling.