Jack Hughes Quotes

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

Passover takes place in the home rather than the synagogue and centers around an epic meal - the seder - so you remember Passover as storytelling, you remember it in food, and you remember it in the family.

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm the only one in my family - I'm a practicing Jew - who has attached themselves to religion in a more traditional way.

We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible.

I'm very spiritual and I'm Jewish by faith. I'm not a practising Jew, I'm more of a recreational Jew. I celebrate the holidays and I try to inform my kids about their heritage because I think we all at some point have to defend our heritage and if they get picked on I want them to know why.

I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. I don't think I ever had a single discussion with my parents about faith. It was just something gently imposed.

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.

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

The Jews spend at Easter.

I was not a very good Jew. I never practised what Judaism tells you to do, to teach your kids all about Judaism.

The purpose of the Seder to my mind is to inspire conversations with your family about the human drama and hopefully transmit values to the next generation. I've always felt like this could be better.

To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - the first Festival evening prayer and blessing.

I consider myself a Jewish writer - even if my characters frequently are not Jewish - in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don't often attend shul.

I felt a real strong connection and still do with Hanukkah. So it started out by doing concerts on Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights tour, and then, yeah, let's make some Hanukkah songs. Let me make a Hanukkah song that kids can listen to, party to and get the spirituality of it, because it is not just about dreidels and having fun.

No one in my family has been observant for generations, but we all identify with being Jewish.

When I was a little kid, it was not uncommon for a cousin or an uncle, before they would even say 'Hello,' to gush, 'You know, your mother's brisket is just incredible; it's so good.' That was an inspiration for creating a love song in that well-worn terrain of the relationship between a Jewish boy and his mother.

I had a bat mitzvah, was confirmed, went to Jewish summer camp, I go to temple for the High Holy Days. I think, like most people in their early 20s, I kind of strayed away from it. I think once I have a family I'll be back into it.

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.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.