FOLK SAYING: “Poverty is no disgrace — which is the only good thing you can say about it. - Leo Rosten

Aroysgevorfne yorn (“years”), enunciated with a sigh deep from the diaphragm, or with bitterness, refers to the wasted years that can never be relived.

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.

Writing after the Holocaust had destroyed a third of the world’s Jews, Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky (1894–1975) addressed the “Chosen People” doctrine most poignantly: “O God of Mercy,” she wrote, “For the time being / Choose another people.