George S. Kaufman, a prince of wit, once remarked that he liked to write with his collaborator, Moss Hart, because Hart was so lucky. “In my case,” s… - Leo Rosten

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 Heaven, it has already taken you six weeks!” “So?” “So, you ask? Six weeks for a pair of pants? Reboyne Shel Oylem! It took God only six days to create the universe!” “Nu,” shrugged the tailor, “look at it….

The twelfth-century poet Abraham ibn Ezra, whom you encountered in high school as Browning’s Rabbi ben Ezra (may his tribe increase), limpidly described the shlimazl’s lot when he wrote: If I sold lamps, The sun, In spite, Would shine at night.

Jews participated in the ownership of human beings right up through to the nineteenth century, and biblical texts were quoted by some Civil War–era American rabbis to justify the South’s “peculiar institution.