“More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

[But if things continue the way they are] …the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war.

This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you.

We can’t ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation.

If this be the Messiah, then I do not wish to see his coming

The right place for the League of Nations is not Geneva or the Hague, Ascher Ginsberg has dreamed of a Temple on Mount Zion where the representatives of all nations should dedicate a Temple of Eternal Peace.

The less their ability, the more their conceit.

Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind.

Only when all peoples of the earth shall go to THIS temple as pilgrims is eternal peace to become a fact.

The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside.

What is national freedom if not a people’s inner freedom to cultivate its abilities along the beaten path of its history?

We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR.

More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

The sensible part of me wanted to dissect my emotions, overthinking and overcomplicating my reaction to jev.

Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.

Everybody is somebody’s Jew.

There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.

Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I’ve always felt okay in Berlin.

Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or ‘stage’ Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.