"I feel connected to Jewish history. I feel a part of the Jewish community, in all of its variety. As a Jew, my fate is bound up with other Jews. That could be Hasidim, Sephardim...people who are very different from me. In addition to that sense of bond and commitment, I also feel an obligation to contribute to Jewish culture, and that could take different forms. That could be my own writing, or it could be translations from Yiddish, so that people who don’t speak Yiddish can connect with Ashkenazi tradition. I don’t want Yiddish to disappear because nobody can read it. I also spend a lot of time on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I feel very much that it’s a part of me, in a way; I can’t totally distance myself from it, but I’m deeply disturbed by what’s happened there. I recognize the existence of religious texts, but I don’t necessarily believe them. I appreciate some of them from a literary or historical perspective, and I understand that they’re part of my history as a Jew, but I’m not moved by synagogue. I’m not even sentimental about it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
You write that you have always identified as a secular Jew. What does that mean to you?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Irena_Klepfisz
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Irena Klepfisz
140 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Irena Klepfisz →
Related Quotes
"I want my Yiddish involvement to be rooted in my life, in the present, want it to be infused with my contemporary pol…"
"I feel a sense of urgency when it comes to Trump and his administration. I’m here today because I’m beginning to see …"
"no theory about American Jews has been able to express quite as well the nature and power of Jewish identity as the m…"
"From the age of twenty, my ego has been invested in poetry. For me, the prospect of expression through poetry transfo…"
"di bavegung, "the movement," has pushed, encouraged, and given me space, like it has to many women who lacked confide…"
"At thirteen I tried silence. At sixteen I tried anonymity. I have since learned these are not the only options."
"Repeatedly, I find that I am preoccupied not with countering anti-Semitism, but with trying to prove that anti-Semiti…"
"I want the issue of anti-Semitism to be incorporated into our overall struggle because there are lesbian/feminists am…"
"When the Jews finally staged the uprising in April 1943, the Polish underground refused them almost every form of ass…"
"Klepfisz's bilingual poems do not-and this is significant-drop Yiddish phrases in a cosy evocation of an idealized pa…"