Leo Rosten Quotes

An aveyre is the direct opposite of a mitzva, as we shall see. The words are often contrasted, as in the saying “One mitzva leads to another; an aveyre leads to an aveyre.

What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles?

I have always loved the charming story about the brilliant young student who came to the old, learned rabbi and defiantly exclaimed, “I must tell you the truth! I have become an apikoyres. I no longer believe in God!” “And how long,” asked the elder, “have you been studying Talmud?” “Five years,” the student said. “Only five years,” sighed the rabbi, “and you have the nerve to call yourself an apikoyres?! …” aroysgevorfnY

Sholem Aleichem defined a shadkhn as “a dealer in livestock.

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.

He sat there, sighing and moaning and ruminating thusly: “Oh, if only the Holy One, blessed be His name, would give me ten thousand dollars, I promise I would give a thousand to the poor. Halevay! … And if the Holy One doesn’t trust me, He can deduct the thousand in advance and just give me the balance.

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.

You can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them - no matter how old or impressive they may be - as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much - we simply grow taller. O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

PROVERB: “Man comes into the world with an oy! — and leaves with a gevalt!

It was at this point, visualizing too vividly another Mr. Kaplan in the class, that anxious little lines had crept around Mr. Parkhill´s eyes.

I have it on indisputable authority that in Scarsdale, during a school celebration of Christmas, one of the children sang the carol as “God rest ye, Jerry Mandelbaum.

FOLK SAYING: “Poverty is no disgrace — which is the only good thing you can say about it.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

In the Middle Ages, church and secular powers often forbade Jews to trim their beards in any way. Why? To be certain that a Jew could be identified.

Which is more important: money or wisdom? “Wisdom,” says the philosopher. “Ha!” scoffs the cynic. “If wisdom is more important than money, why is it that the wise wait on the rich, and not the rich on the wise?” “Because,” says the scholar, “the wise, being wise, understand the value of money; but the rich, being only rich, do not know the value of wisdom.