Leo Rosten Quotes

In the Jewish communities of Europe, learned but poor Jews were much, much more highly respected than rich but unlearned ones.

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.

It has been said that the basic principle of Jewish ethics lies in the idea of mandatory mitzvas. Said Eleazar ben Simeon: “The world is judged by the majority of its people [and] an individual by the majority of his deeds. Happy is he who performs a good deed: that may tip the scale for him and the world [italics mine].” Israel Zangwill called the mitzvas the Jews’ “sacred sociology.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

At the end of a pier in Tel Aviv, a man was about to jump into the sea when a policeman came running up to him. “No, no!” he cried. “How can a man like you, in the prime of life, think of jumping into that water?” “Because I can’t stand it anymore! I don’t want to live!” “But listen, mister, please. If you jump in the water, I’ll have to jump in after you, to save you. Right? Well, it so happens I can’t swim. Do you know what that means? I have a wife and four children, and in the line of duty I would drown! Would you want to have such a terrible thing on your conscience? No, I’m sure. So be a good Jew, and do a real mitzva. Go home. And in the privacy and comfort of your own home, hang yourself.

"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be "happy". I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that you lived at all."

Any reader who feels superior to such quaint English might remember that when the overwhelming majority of humankind was illiterate, it was hard to find a Jewish lad over six who could not read and write (Hebrew). Most adult male Jews could handle at least three languages: they used Hebrew in the synagogues and houses of study (see Besmedresh), Yiddish in the home, and — to Gentiles — the language of the land in which they lived. My father, a workingman denied the equivalent of a high school education in Poland, handled Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and Polish. Jews were linguists of necessity.

Tis said that Hitler, disturbed by nightmares, called in a soothsayer. The seer consulted a crystal ball and said, “Ah, mighty Führer, it is foretold that you will die on a Jewish holiday.” “Which one?” said Hitler with a scowl. “Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday.” Simchas

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

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

Dr. M. J. Kornblum and Dr. Albert Steinhoff, both obstetricians, share an office. On the door, under their office hours, some lets printed: 24-HOUR SERVICE … WE DELIVER

Why do the wicked always form groups, whereas the righteous do not? Because the wicked, walking in darkness, need company, but the righteous, who live in the light, do not fear being alone.

The sages taught the Jews not to rejoice over another’s misfortune. “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth” (Proverbs 24:17). (I must confess that I have always enjoyed gloating over the comeuppance suffered by the detestable, regardless of race, color, or creed.)

Vun ting more I should say, so de cless shouldn´t fill too bed about Jake Popper. It´s awreddy nine yiss since he pest avay!”
“And I didn´t go to de funeral!” On this strange note, Mr. Kaplan took his seat.
The class hummed, protesting against this anticlimax which left so much to the imagination.
“Why you didn´t?” cried Mr. Bloom, with a knowing nod to the Misses Mitnick and Caravello.
Mr. Kaplan´s face was a study in sufferance. “Becawss de funeral vas in de meedle of the veek,” he sighed. “An´ I said to minesalf, “Keplen, you in America, so tink like de Americans tink!´ So I tought, an´ I didn´t go. Becawss I tought of dat dip American idea, ´Business before pleasure!

What a farshtinkener business!” has the edge on “What a stinking business” in my opinion, because the sh is more eloquent than the s in the communication of obloquious nuances. It is also more chic to enlist a foreign word when driven to coarse utterance.