Profile: Leon Botstein, Hadassah Magazine, "Botstein is a proud secular Jew not ambivalent or defensive about his identity. In I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl (Jewish Lights), he writes: "In Judaism, learning is prayer, for it celebrates the human capacity for language and thought." He waxes nostalgic for the days of "exceptional Jewry," arguing that "Jews have entered the indistinguishable middle class…. We are no longer the people of the book; we are a people of ordinary vulgarity. The real tragedy of American Jewry—and Israel—is that we've used privilege to become absolutely ordinary.""
Musleah, Rahel (May 2009). "Profile: Leon Botstein". www.hadassahmagazine.org. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
