Leo Rosten Quotes

when the overwhelming majority of Europeans were illiterate, it would have been hard to find a Jewish male over the age of five who could not read. Virtually every Jewish boy had to learn Hebrew.

in converting Jews to Christians you raise the price of pork. — The Merchant of Venice, act III, scene

A Bulgarian proverb goes: “When you baptize a Jew, hold him underwater for five minutes.

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.

Since God is the King of kings, all men, whether princes or paupers, are His servants. Hence, the rabbis taught that no man should serve another,* for all are servants of God alone. A sign in a café in Jerusalem reads: “Self-service. ‘For you are servants unto Me,’ saith the Lord.

A shnorrer came to the back door on his biweekly rounds. “I haven’t a penny in the house,” the baleboste said apologetically. “Come back tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” said the shnorrer with a frown. “Lady, don’t let it happen again. I’ve lost a fortune, extending credit.

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.

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.

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

​It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

Virtually all of male Jewry participated in a perpetual seminar on the Torah and the Talmud. Even the cobblers. Even the tailors. The drovers and diggers, farmhands and carpenters. The peddlers and beggars and shopkeepers.

"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."

The Hebrew alphabet, incidentally, came from the inhabitants of Canaan, which was that part of Palestine the Greeks called Phoenicia. Hebrew was most probably the language spoken by the Phoenicians/Canaanites (Isaiah spoke of the “language of Canaan”), who almost surely created those letters that formed a Semitic alphabet and from which all the alphabets in Europe descended. Hebrew was one of a cluster of related languages (Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, etc.) known as “Semitic.

I own a little book written by Jacques-Albin-Simon Collin de Plancy (1793–1887), A Dictionary of Demonology, that has long beguiled me. It catalogs all sorts of spooky spirits, from a Neopolitan pig with the head of a man to Adram-melech, “grand chancellor of hell,” whom the Assyrians worshiped with infant sacrifices and who, learned rabbis said, took the shape of either a mule or a peacock, which runs a gamut of pretty versatile disguises. Amduscias, a grand duke of hell, is shaped like a unicorn — and gives concerts.

FOLK SAYING: “Better to be in Gehenna with a wise man than in Gan Eden [Paradise] with a fool.