Leo Rosten Quotes

The Torah, like other ancient law codes, assigns the death penalty to many proscribed behaviors besides murder — including adultery, rape of a betrothed woman, giving insult or injury to one’s parents, witchcraft, male homosexuality, and public profanation of the Sabbath. By the second century C.E., however, the Talmudic rabbis, whose debates and rulings constitute the main body of Halakha, had virtually nullified the death penalty. The Mishnah (the codification of law that forms the core text of the Talmud) states, “A Sanhedrin [governing council] that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death” (Makkot 7A). Even in murder cases, the Torah’s requirement of two eyewitnesses for a sentence of death was interpreted by the Talmudic rabbis to make capital punishment highly unlikely: the murderer’s own confession could not be accepted as evidence, and the two eyewitnesses were required also to have warned the criminal beforehand that he would be executed! Justice tempered by mercy thus became the Jewish ideal.

Two cheder students were discussing how hard and tiring their studies had become, and impulsively one blurted: “Let’s run away!” “Run away? … Our fathers would catch up with us and give us a sound thrashing.” “So we’ll hit them back!” “What? Hit your father?! You must be mad. Have you forgotten the Commandment — always to honor your father and mother?” “Mmh…. So you hit my father and I’ll hit yours.

I am informed by veterans of the Lower East Side that decalcomania pictures were called “cockamamies” because no one knew how to spell “decalcomania.

I wouldn’t say ‘Hello’ to a paskudnyak like that!” “Did you ever hear of such a paskudnyak?” “That whole family is a collection of paskudnyaks.” This word is one of the most greasily graphic, I think, in Yiddish. It offers the connoisseur three nice, long syllables, starting with a sibilant of reprehension and ending with a nasality of scorn. It adds cadence to contempt.

Jews are not proselytizers.*Rabbis are required to make three separate efforts to discourage a would-be convert.

The shadkhn was impressing the young woman with the boundless virtues of a female and ended: “And to look at, she’s a regular picture!” The young man could not wait for his blind date. But when he accosted the shadkhn the next day, his voice was frosty: “Her eyes are crossed, her nose is crooked, and when she smiles one side of her mouth goes down — ” “Just a minute,” interrupted the shadkhn. “Is it my fault you don’t like Picasso?

My mother would often end a lecture to me with the dour lament that her words were probably in vain: “Aroysgevorfne verter” (ah-ROYCE-ge-vor-f’neh VER-ter, meaning “Thrown out words”). Was ever a phrase more heartfelt?

Mr. Kaplan smiled back and answered promptly, “Vell, I´ll tell you about Prazidents United States. Fife Prazidents United States is Abram Lincohen, he vas freeink de neegers; Hodding, Coolitch, Judge Vashington, an´ Banjamin Franklin.”
Futher encouragement revealed that Mr. Kaplan´s literary Valhalla the “most famous tree American wriders” were Jeck Laundon, Valt Viterman, and the author of “Hawk l. Barry-Feen,” one Mock- tvain. Mr. Kaplan took pains to point out that he did not mention Relfvaldo Amerson because “He is a poyet, an´I´m talkink about wriders.

Writing after the Holocaust had destroyed a third of the world’s Jews, Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky (1894–1975) addressed the “Chosen People” doctrine most poignantly: “O God of Mercy,” she wrote, “For the time being / Choose another people.

FOLK SAYING: “The luck of an am horets is this: He doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.

Long, long before Freud, the Jews had this saying: “When a son gets married, he divorces his mother.

Medieval rabbis dubbed Germany Ashkenaz, after a passage in Jeremiah (51:27), and decided that after the Flood, one of Noah’s great-grandsons, named Ashkenaz, had settled in Germany. I have no idea what inspired the rabbis.

Yiddish is the Robin Hood of languages. It steals from the linguistically rich to give to the fledgling poor. It shows not the slightest hesitation in taking in house-guests — to whom it gives free room and board regardless of genealogy, faith, or exoticism. A memorable remark by a journalist, Charles Rappaport, runs: “I speak ten languages — all of them in Yiddish.

Yiddish, the language which will ever bear witness to the violence and murder inflicted on us, bears the marks of our expulsions from land to land, the language which absorbed the wails of the fathers, the laments of the generations, the poison and bitterness of history, the language whose precious jewels are undried, uncongealed Jewish tears.

The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.