Mr. Abraham, driven to desperation by the endless delays of the tailor who was making him a pair of trousers, finally cried, “Tailor, in the name of … - Leo Rosten

For twenty years Mr. Sokoloff had been eating at the same restaurant on Second Avenue. On this night, as on every other, Mr. Sokoloff ordered chicken soup. The waiter set it down and started off. Mr. Sokoloff called, “Waiter!” “Yeah?” “Please taste this soup.” The waiter said, “Hanh? Twenty years you’ve been eating the chicken soup here, no? Have you ever had a bad plate — ” “Waiter,” Sokoloff said firmly, “taste the soup.” “Sokoloff, what’s the matter with you?” “Taste the soup!” “All right, all right,” the waiter said, grimacing. “I’ll taste — where’s the spoon?” “Aha!” cried Sokoloff.

Two shlemiels were drinking tea. In time, one looked up and announced portentously: “Life! What is it? Life — is like a fountain!” The other pondered for a few minutes, then asked, “Why?” The first thought and thought, then sighed. “So okay: life isn’t like a fountain.

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.