A story in the Talmud relates that after the Israelites had safely crossed the Red Sea,* they sang a song of praise to God, but when the angels sough… - Leo Rosten

To be sure, the cheder curriculum was narrowly limited, the pedagogical methods primitive: drill, repetition, and cracks across the knuckles with a pointer or ruler. But at a time when the overwhelming majority of humanity was illiterate, there was hardly a Jewish male over the age of five who could not read and write. The cultural impact and importance of this are for historians, sociologists, and educators to appraise.

The sense of differentiation is so acute in Yiddish that a word like, say, paskudnyak has no peer in any language I know for the vocal delineation of a nasty character. And Yiddish coins new names with ease for new personality types: a nudnik is a pest; a phudnik is a nudnik with a Ph.D.

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