Quotes About Yiddish

Six Lines I know that in this world no one needs me, me, a word-beggar in the Jewish graveyard Who needs a poem, especially in Yiddish? Only what is hopeless on this earth has beauty and only the ephemeral is godly and humility is the only true rebellion

Nothing of that tongue survived into my generation but a few insults: Yiddish can describe defects of character with the precision that Inuit describes ice or Japanese rain.

You should smile at that,' he said. 'There is a Yiddish word, schlemiel, a man who falls over everything, who buys brass for gold. There should be a goy word for the elegant schlemiel, who has been born to handle gold but never knows it from brass and calls it gold with the weight of authority, who falls over everything but does it with such assurance that the fall is taken for a curtsy.

One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality.

By the time we became friends, he was concerned he was losing his facility for the language, so he actually found a Yiddish-speaking psychiatrist in Los Angeles and paid her hourly fee once a week just to sit and speak with him in Yiddish. He

Eviction," Frieda said. "You can't pay, you can't stay." She said in Yiddish, "Es iz shver tzu makhen a leben." It's hard to make a living.

Vilnius was once known as 'The Jerusalem of Lithuania' because of the number of prayer houses and scholars there; in the first half of the 20th century, it became a center of Yiddish-language scholarship.

Hello!" "Hello!" the Russian says, waving his gloved hand. And I realize something else. I understood him. He said hello in Yiddish. He is Jewish, too.

Hello!" the Russian says, waving his gloved hand. And I realize something else. I understood him. He said hello in Yiddish. He is Jewish, too. A

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.

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.

If God lived on earth," goes a sardonic Yiddish saying, "people would knock out all His windows.

a whisperer of Yiddish—the lingua franca spoken by Jewish immigrants when they didn't want their American children to understand what they were saying

It's Yiddish. Like…Ikh hob dikh lib." Evie narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "What does that mean?" Sam smiled. "Maybe one day I'll tell you.

Grinning, he grabbed his fisherman's cap and coat. "I love you," he whispered quietly. "Ikh hob dikh lib." He kissed Evie's head. She rustled in her sleep, turning away. "Fine. I see how it is. I just wasted my best Yiddish on you," Sam joked to himself.

THERE'S A YIDDISH PROVERB YOU'LL FIND quoted in many books on parenting: "Little children disturb your sleep; big children your life.

There are nineteen words in Yiddish that convey gradations of disparagement from a mild, fluttery helplessness to a state of downright, irreconcilable brutishness. All of them can be usefully employed to pinpoint the kind of individuals I write about.

sternly, and I was stricken myself to realize that Lev Schuster's Yiddish phrases continued to infect my vocabulary.

Though Margaret has a South African accent and my mother retains a vaguely midwestern inflection, flecks of Yiddish float through both of their speech. They are the same size and shape (small, with fluffy silver heads of hair) and they both wear loose shirts and comfortable sandals.

Hello." "Hello yourself. Where you from?" "From hunger!

May my enemies, your enemies, and all enemies of the Jews have as many good years as we have profit out of dealing with hot Yiddish papers.

KVETCH:(Yiddish) verb: to gripe or fret; noun: a chronic complainer, a whiner

the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) appeared half a century later than in Berlin, Vienna or Paris, and took on a national form: secularization and modernization gave birth to a Jewish nation whose pillars were the Yiddish language and culture.

Man plans and God laughs," Myron said. Fat Gandhi smiled. "I like that one. Is that an American expression?" "Yiddish.