"My wife and I are affiliated with a temple here in Los Angeles. We feel very close to the congregation and to the rabbi, who happens to be my wife's cousin and who I admire greatly. I talk to him regularly but I consider myself more spiritual than religious"
About this Quote
Nimoy’s voice here has the soft pragmatism of a working actor in late-20th-century Los Angeles: religious life as both anchor and adjacency. He’s careful to declare affiliation - temple, congregation, rabbi - then immediately reframes it as intimacy rather than doctrine. That sequence matters. In a city built on reinvention, “affiliated” signals belonging without surrendering autonomy; it’s membership as community, not submission as creed.
The family detail lands like a strategic disclosure: the rabbi is his wife’s cousin. Nepotism isn’t the point; credibility is. Nimoy sidesteps the stereotype of celebrity dabbling in spirituality by rooting his connection in ordinary, almost domestic logistics. He admires the rabbi “greatly,” talks “regularly” - verbs of consistency, not spectacle. The subtext is, I’m not playing dress-up with faith; I’m in relationship with someone I trust.
Then comes the pivot that reflects a broader American cultural mood: “more spiritual than religious.” It’s an escape hatch and a badge. The phrase gently protects him from being pinned down by dogma or identity policing, while still letting him claim depth, wonder, ethics. Coming from Nimoy - forever associated with Spock, a character defined by logic and restraint - it reads as a counterbalance: a public permission to be moved by mystery without endorsing institutions wholesale. The intent isn’t to reject religion; it’s to keep the door open while refusing to be owned by it.
The family detail lands like a strategic disclosure: the rabbi is his wife’s cousin. Nepotism isn’t the point; credibility is. Nimoy sidesteps the stereotype of celebrity dabbling in spirituality by rooting his connection in ordinary, almost domestic logistics. He admires the rabbi “greatly,” talks “regularly” - verbs of consistency, not spectacle. The subtext is, I’m not playing dress-up with faith; I’m in relationship with someone I trust.
Then comes the pivot that reflects a broader American cultural mood: “more spiritual than religious.” It’s an escape hatch and a badge. The phrase gently protects him from being pinned down by dogma or identity policing, while still letting him claim depth, wonder, ethics. Coming from Nimoy - forever associated with Spock, a character defined by logic and restraint - it reads as a counterbalance: a public permission to be moved by mystery without endorsing institutions wholesale. The intent isn’t to reject religion; it’s to keep the door open while refusing to be owned by it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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