Yom Kippur Quotes

I get invited to an awful lot of Jewish functions.

Every holiday has unique fare and symbolic foods, but none as much as Rosh Hashana.

In Judaism, almost every ritual entails either food or the absence of food. Yom Kippur, for instance, is the absence of food. Part of it is Talmudic, part of it is custom. So much of Judaism was bound up in dietary laws. So everything you ate - the very act itself - was part of religion.

We're not religious, but we've always done Passover and Hanukkah.

'Kol Nidrei' is probably the most important prayer in the Jewish religion. It comes on the evening of Yom Kippur. There are so many different renditions of it.

My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.

A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!

On the Day of Atonement, Jews are commanded to seek forgiveness from the people we have hurt.

I know some people say that high fashion should not be worn at synagogue. I, on the other hand, think that it is of the utmost importance that the Goldbergs from down the street see you in the new Chanel Fall 2010 Yom Kippur line.

I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.

I was the kind of Jew who'd be in a bar, somebody would say it's Yom Kippur, and I'd go, 'Really?'

Every Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition requires a strict spiritual inventory. You aren't supposed to just sit around feeling guilty, but to take action in the real world to set things right.

Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.

I'm Jewish. Went to a Jewish school.

I'm Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.

Judaism is in all my books.

What you do for Jewish New Year is you go down to Times Square. It's a lot quieter than the regular New Year. It's just a few Jews walking around going, "sup?"

You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.

In the matrimonial life of the Jewish male every day is Yom Kippur.

I went to bar mitzvahs as a kid. I had a lot of classmates who are Jewish.

Judaism has always been a strong interest of mine. My two sons speak Hebrew and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

There's no question that I am biased toward the Hebrew calendar over the Gregorian one.

Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

If you crave an anti-new year New Year, consider adopting Rosh Hashana as your own.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.