"The moment you ask a child in Israel what Yom Kippur means to him, and he answers the Yom Kippur War, or a fun day on a bicycle — then I don’t know if that is Zionism or whatever you call it, but it has certainly become bankrupt"

“There’s a big difference between education and knowledge. The moment that we don’t invest in educating Jewish children according to the roots that were the basis of our education for thousands of years, we are knowledge-givers rather than educators.”

“It is written that ‘All Jews are responsible for one another,’ and a Jew who lives in Siberia or in Kamchatka is just as good as a Jew who had the good fortune to be born in Jerusalem.”

“I know that I have my own mission and I know that life, unfortunately, is short. I have a limited time, and we have to get as much done as possible, and that’s that. And we have to preserve our health.”

“I’m a very big believer in the idea that if a Jew lives like a Jew and, as it is written, sets aside tithes or a fifth of his income — then the Holy One, blessed be he, pays him back. I know that from my personal experience. The more I give every year, the more I have.”

“Just as a Muslim studies Islam, the Jew has to study Judaism. Everyone has to learn the heritage of his family and the history that dates back thousands of years.”

“I come to eat with very important people in the world, and I say ‘only kosher’, and always with a skullcap. I don’t recall that my business ever suffered from that.”