I honestly feel like I've been mostly toiling in obscurity until a little bit after 'Day Of the Dog' came out.

I grew up attending a Conservative day school, Solomon Schechter, until I was about 14, and going to a Reconstructionist synagogue.

I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.

I was thinking very carefully about going into education, becoming a teacher, maybe becoming a rabbi.

Jews like to write and sing. In America, a lot of us have been eager to show that we're part of American culture. But it all goes back to King David writing Psalms.