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Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

If history remembers me at all, in any way, I hope it will be as a man who loved the Land of Israel and watched over it in every way he could, all his life.

There is no other language as similar to Hebrew like Arabic.

I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.

People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.

History is like Santa Claus: a language construction. We have some registers about the existence of Santa and history - the presents under the tree, the archives - but none have really seen them.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.