As a Jew Quotes

“So when I think about what Jews are, it’s clear that “religion” is not the right word. This is Judaism’s Western category problem: Jews do not fit into the primary categories—race, ethnicity, religion—that we often use to sort people today. Jews emerged long before these classifications, at a time when, as Rabbi Jay Michaelson notes, “nation, religion, tribe, and land25 were all imbricated together.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“Chaplains understand spirituality broadly to include not just someone’s religious beliefs, but how they find meaning, comfort, courage, and connection, particularly in times of crisis.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“I also worry that this anti-Zionism-versus-antisemitism debate sometimes misses the point”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“In the Six-Day War in 1967”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“Zionism had anti-colonial elements. Those early Zionists were resisting the oppressive demands of the powers in the countries where they lived: demands to embrace Christian-inflected cultures”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“Again and again”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us – A Defiant Memoir of Heritage, Identity, and Antisemitism

“Jews do not proselytize because we do not believe that others have to join our covenant with God to be acceptable or saved. We’re fine to let others do their thing, as long as they observe the basic laws that are considered part of the covenant God made with all human beings after the flood (no murdering, incest, etc.). We simply ask that others let us do our thing.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

“Finally, I understood: the covenant is not a call to personal faith or obedience, but to collective action and transformation—to transformation through action—and to holy separation. This is the Jewish mission in the world, the reason why we are here.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

“It wasn’t until I considered the Torah in its historical context that I finally understood: the Torah is essentially one long protest—a polemic really, an epic critique, page after page of pure trolling—directed at the powerful empires of its time, Egypt and Mesopotamia.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

“Rather, the Torah is the story of who Jews are, why we exist, and what kind of society and world we should strive together to build.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

“There is no word in biblical Hebrew that simply means “obey,”* which is good because many of the people in the Torah are not particularly obedient.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

“Of the ancient Near Eastern civilizations in existence at the birth of the Jewish people—the Hittites, Ammonites, Edomites, and so many others—none remain, lost to history long ago. But Jews are still here, and I believe Jewish civilization still has something important to say, to us and to the world.”
― Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us