I myself tell people that Israel is the only place that Jews can live where they don't have always to be thinking about being Jewish. For, as you are… - Yehuda Amichai

I've spoken a few times at Peace Now rallies. I am generally against the right wing taking over. But I think I exert more influence, such as it is, through my poems than I would by espousing public positions.

(HC: You may now be quasi-retired, but you don't at all sound ready to stop working. Nevertheless, you can look back on much of a lifetime of significant achievement and many awards. What projects have you yet in mind? What do you still want to accomplish?) YA: Oh, to continue with my own thing with poetry: to clean up the language, to use it the right way. I have no wish to be a prophet or a guru. As always, I shall use my own life as my material. You know, I have never been a poet in the professional sense. It's been that way all my life, and so it should remain.

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?