Jewish Family Quotes

• If only one country, for whatever reason, tolerates a Jewish family in it, that family will become the germ center for fresh sedition. If one little Jewish boy survives without any Jewish education, with no synagogue and no Hebrew school, it [Judaism] is in his soul. Even if there had never been a synagogue or a Jewish school or an Old Testament, the Jewish spirit would still exist and exert its influence. It has been there from the beginning and there is no Jew, not a single one, who does not personify it.

  Adolf Hitler

  Country, School, Boys

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• I came from a warm Jewish family.

  Michael Marmot

  Warm

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• When I was a boy, we were the only Jewish family in a terribly anti-Semitic neighborhood. Those streets weren't any fun for us but our parents never found that out. In a way, you avoid telling your parents what happened to you during those days.

  Noam Chomsky

  Fun, Boys, Parent

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• Growing up after the Second World War in a Jewish family, I really understand that, and have members of my family who are very committed to this concept. My grandfather's first name was Israel and he thought it was his country. In my own sense of this issue as an American Jew, I have been on both sides of this. At this point I think it is very important for there to be separation of religion and state. It's not good for Jews. It's not good for Muslims. It's not good for Christians. The marriage of state and religion is inherently problematic.

  Jill Stein

  Christian, Country, Growing Up

  Source: www.justicenewsnetwork.com

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• The Jewish culture - people that are Jewish have a certain cultural habit that they've formed and one of those habits is an appreciation of theater and music - these are cultural things one does associate with values that are promulgated by Jewish families. I think that's a good thing.

  Woody Allen

  Appreciation, Thinking, People

  CrankyCritic Interview, www.woodyallen.art.pl.

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• There is a Jewish tradition of family, too, but then not all Italian or Jewish families are close.

  Richard Rogers

  Italian, Jewish Tradition, Tradition

  "Building civilisation". Interview with Geraldine Bedell, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2006.

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• I've always wanted to be a poet at the beginning. I would look at my grandparents' books and my parents' books. And in my family, a typical aspirational Jewish family, being a writer was very much exalted, and it seemed impossible to me, that I could ever do something like that.

  Mark Leyner

  Book, Grandparent, Typical

  "Whit Stillman and Mark Leyner on Their First Projects in 15 Years". Interview with Matthew Perpetua, www.rollingstone.com. April 6, 2012.

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• Jewish Christmas' - that's what my gentile friends called Chanukah when I was growing up in Michigan in the thirties and forties. Anachronistic, yes, but they had a point. Observing the dietary laws of separating milk and meat dishes was far easier for the handful of Jewish families in our little town than getting through December without mixing the two holidays.

  Faye Moskowitz

  Christmas, Growing Up, Holiday

  Faye Moskowitz (2011). “And the Bridge Is Love”, p.33, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Miami Beach - that's where I grew up, in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me, my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor, who was my roommate - my grandparents, my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.

  Brett Ratner

  Mom, Beach, Brother

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• And I remember that about three years before that, her first record had come out. And I just remember really liking this one song off it called "In My Bed" and being a little bit enamored. This, you know, this young kind of Jewish girl from North London, you know, I have the same thing - from a Jewish family from North London - with this incredible voice.

  Mark Ronson

  Girl, Song, Years

  "The Story Behind Mark Ronson's Hit Song 'Uptown Funk'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. April 16, 2015.

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• My father was from a secular Jewish family and my mother from a nominally Christian (Episcopalian) one. They were not religious as adults. They did, however, believe in educating their children about the Bible. They viewed this as an essential part of any education.

  Mike Berenstain

  Christian, Mother, Religious

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• I was from a poor Jewish family in the South Bronx. My father was a plumber, but when I was 16, he got sick and I had to take over. Being a plumber in the South Bronx wasn't fun.

  Leonard Susskind

  Fun, Father, Sick

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• I am quite international. My background, born in Turkey. My family is a Jewish family from Iran, so I went from Turkey to Iran to Israel, and then grew up in Italy and ended up in U.S. for graduate school. So I tend to look at things from an international perspective, and I think that gives you a little bit of a broader view of what's going on.

  Nouriel Roubini

  School, Thinking, Israel

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• I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Dark, Dark Days, Europe

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• I think gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, People, Gold

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• I was born in 1923 into a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, a few years after the end of World War I, which was disastrous from the Austrian point of view.

  Walter Kohn

  War, Views, Years

  Walter Kohn, Matthias Scheffler, Peter Weinberger (2003). “Walter Kohn: Personal Stories and Anecdotes Told by Friends and Collaborators”, p.295, Springer Science & Business Media

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• I grew up in Queens, in New York City, in a middle class Jewish family. My mother was a public school teacher, my father was a lawyer. They were Democrats - kind of middle-of-the-road democrats.

  Elliott Abrams

  Mother, Teacher, Queens

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• Unlike other Jewish families, we didn't go out for Chinese food on Sundays, but we spent our time in a world of baking powder biscuits and the best shrimp cocktails that ever were.

  Ricky Jay

  Sunday, Chinese, Shrimp

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• When I was growing up, I, like many Jews, cheered what appeared to be the receding of faith from everyday life. The further religion got from our lives the better our lives would get, I thought, because persecution had been such a burden to Jewish families for generations.

  Bruce Feiler

  Growing Up, Everyday, Generations

  4 Copy quote

• The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics - the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw - but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse.

  Bayard Taylor

  Eye, Dark, Differences

  Bayard Taylor (2015). “The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain”, p.64, The Floating Press

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• 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.

  Goldie

  Mother, Strong, Practice

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• I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.

  Michael Sandel

  Children, Jewish Tradition, Giving

  "Michael Sandel: This much I know". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2013.

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• I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore with an extremely high concentration of Jewish families - where the Levys and Cohens in the high school yearbook went on for pages, where I could count far more temples than I ever could churches. Anti-Semitism, in our cultural biodome, was mostly an abstract concept.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  School, Yearbook, Church

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