Quotes About Jews

The Jews also appropriated the figure of this solar hero in the shape of Samson whose strength is conditioned by his hair, as the power of the sun lies in his rays.

that Chaldea was the original home of these stories and that the Jews received them originally from the Babylonians

the role of Assyrian merchants in assisting the development of the Anatolian economy is strikingly reminiscent of that played by the Jews in opening up the interior of Europe during the Middle Ages. Perhaps that is unsurprising: Jewish culture and tradition, as minutely prescribed in the Babylonian Talmud, was itself largely forged in Mesopotamia.

More than anything, studying the Bible with Jews dislodged my parochial thinking about God, and it's had a lasting impact. Over time, I came to appreciate firsthand the richness and depth of that tradition. I also felt some shame for never really being exposed to it before,

Wisdom, in other words, was not an add-on, but was always central for obeying any law in the Bible. Laws, once we begin thinking about what they mean and how they are to be obeyed, actually push us to seek wisdom, which goes beyond mechanical obedience. It's not surprising, therefore, that ancient Jews came to think of wisdom and Law as inseparable—they need each other to work, like needing a pin number to access your cash.

Why the Jews? Because an ancient tradition of blaming them for disasters, both present and prospective, a tradition deeply rooted in religious rivalry and superstition, persisted into the modern world and even assumed new forms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Holocaust was the product of a particular time and place: Europe in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. These were the contexts in which ancient hostilities toward Jews and Judaism, deeply rooted in religious rivalry but updated with the trappings of modern science, turned into a fixation on removing Jews from civil society as a magical solution to all social problems.

Antisemitism is a categorical impugning of Jews as collectively embodying distasteful and/or destructive traits. In other words, antisemitism is the belief that Jews have common repellent and/or ruinous qualities that set them apart from non-Jews. Descent is determinative; individuality is illusory.

dissatisfaction with the nation's political and economic condition, along with fear of communism, the votes for which also were rising, clearly had more to do with Hitler's ascent than hatred of Jews.

in 1939, he issued an executive order indefinitely extending the visitors' visas of all Jews then in the United States, thereby saving another 15,000 Jews from repatriation and death.

leaders of the Republican Party who declared that, thanks to FDR's appointment of many Jews to office, he was offering the public, not the New Deal but the Jew Deal.

The xenophobic form sees Jews as different from others in some observable respects, and its adherents exhibit varying degrees of discomfort with this difference. The chimerical form sees Jews as dangerous to others in some imagined ways, and its exponents advocate doing something in response.

These deals allowed Switzerland to seize the heirless Swiss assets of dead Polish and Hungarian citizens, most of whom were Jews, as compensation for the nationalization of Swiss property in these newly communist states.

Attacking Jews was of far greater importance to the Nazis than defending them was to other Germans, so most such people decided that discretion was the better part of valor and said nothing.

Let it be known to the king that the Jews who came from you to us have returned to Jerusalem. And they are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city, restoring its walls, and repairing its foundations.

When the text of the letter from King Artaxerxes was read to Rehum, Shimshai the scribe, and their associates, they went immediately to the Jews in Jerusalem and forcibly stopped them.

that read: “It is reported among the nations—and Geshem agrees—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and this is why you are building the wall. According to these reports, you are to become their king,

In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

So the king removed the signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.

And the letters were sent by couriers to each of the royal provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—and to plunder their possessions on a single day, the thirteenth day of Adar, the twelfth month.

That same day King Xerxes awarded Queen Esther the estate of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. And Mordecai entered the kingís presence because Esther had revealed his relation to her.

And once again, Esther addressed the king. She fell at his feet weeping and begged him to revoke the evil scheme of Haman the Agagite, which he had devised against the Jews.

“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if I have found favor in his sight, and the matter seems proper to the king, and I am pleasing in his sight, may an order be written to revoke the letters that the scheming Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, wrote to destroy the Jews in all the kingís provinces.

Now you may write in the kingís name as you please regarding the Jews, and seal it with the royal signet ring. For a decree that is written in the name of the king and sealed with the royal signet ring cannot be revoked.”