It could be fairly said that I disagree with the old, false romanticism about Judaism. In practice, Orthodox Judaism can keep you busy nearly all of the time with things you should be doing. Keeps you feeling guilty. But feeling Jewish should also feel pleasurable. What can be wrong with that?

The Jewish contribution to the idea of love is the conception of love of the Sabbath, the love of a day, of spirit in the form of time.

Growing up in an ethnic family, food was always central. In the Jewish religion, on Friday nights you bring in the Sabbath – for us it wasn’t so much a religious occasion but more a ritualistic one.

I’m deeply grateful to be Jewish. I feel it’s enriched my life and I feel very strongly about Jewishness.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.

In my youth, growing up in a Jewish milieu, there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.

I'm very proud to be Jewish and a big part of me being a creative person comes from being Jewish. The eccentricity in Jewish musicians really connects with me.

Indeed, Judaism as a way of life, seeks to inculcate in us a consciousness of the Divine Presence in the World and respect for life accordingly. The more we care for life, the closer we are in fact to God. Accordingly, an ethical vegetarian way of life expresses the most noble and sublime values and aspirations of Judaism itself, bringing us closer to its vision for society as a whole.

I see Judaism as a way of life. Sticking up for the underdog. Being an outsider. A critic of society. The kid on the corner who says the emperor has no clothes on. The Prophet.

We Jews are fond of listening to music and have a good grasp of melody—even our enemies would be the first to admit that—and yet on the other hand, we don’t often get the opportunity to hear it. What do we have to celebrate after all, for us to suddenly break into song and dance? Say what you will, though, we are still connoisseurs, experts in both singing and playing music, and in all manner of other things to boot.

The purpose and goal of Jewish living is to raise our consciousness of the presence of God in our every-day lives. Judaism, with its system of brakhot (blessings) for every experience from going to the bathroom to seeing a rainbow, teaches us that we do not need to remove ourselves from our daily routine in order to engender a sense of holiness. Rather, our challenge is to live with the chaos and tension of life in the modern world and, at the same time, to live lives of kedusha (holiness).

This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

At the core of Jewishness and Judaism is this foundation of continually questioning and interpreting and communally coming at ways of living. So, putting those together, I understand the core of Jewishness and Judaism as being ultimately a story of liberation and how we continually strive for that in the here and now, wherever we end up. I understand Judaism as a sacred duty, which goes along with anarchism. For most of that history — and I understand myself as a diasporic Jew — we’ve existed outside of empires or states or nations. We’ve almost never been part of those bodies, yet we’ve continually created these really powerful communities. So to me, Judaism and Jewishness is this incredible experiment and beautiful lived practice of having community and solidarity and life without states.