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 … - 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.

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.

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 made some difference that you lived at all.