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 i… - Leo Rosten

SCENE: Classroom, Lower East Side, 1926. Teacher: “Who can tell us where the Romanian border is?” Student: “In the park with my aunt, and my mother doesn’t trust him!

The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

The Torah, like other ancient law codes, assigns the death penalty to many proscribed behaviors besides murder — including adultery, rape of a betrothed woman, giving insult or injury to one’s parents, witchcraft, male homosexuality, and public profanation of the Sabbath. By the second century C.E., however, the Talmudic rabbis, whose debates and rulings constitute the main body of Halakha, had virtually nullified the death penalty. The Mishnah (the codification of law that forms the core text of the Talmud) states, “A Sanhedrin [governing council] that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death” (Makkot 7A). Even in murder cases, the Torah’s requirement of two eyewitnesses for a sentence of death was interpreted by the Talmudic rabbis to make capital punishment highly unlikely: the murderer’s own confession could not be accepted as evidence, and the two eyewitnesses were required also to have warned the criminal beforehand that he would be executed! Justice tempered by mercy thus became the Jewish ideal.