Yiddish Proverb Quotes

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

Man plans. God laughs.

When a father gives to his son, they both laugh. When a son gives to his father, they both cry.                                       —Yiddish proverb

God made man because He loves stories

Life, John Lennon famously said, is what happens to you while you’re making other plans. Now that I think of it, Lennon, that wizard of words and music, probably wasn’t the first. There’s an old Yiddish proverb, “Man plans and God laughs.” Probably every culture has a virtually identical aphorism.

PROVERB: “A tavern can’t corrupt a good man, and a synagogue can’t reform a bad one.

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.

Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.

An empty vessel clangs the loudest. That’s the adage I hear continuously, from Chaya, from the teachers at school, from the Yiddish textbooks. The louder a woman, the more likely she is to be spiritually bereft, like the empty bowl that vibrates with a resonant echo. A full container makes no sound; she is packed too densely to ring. There are many proverbs repeated to me throughout my childhood, but this one stings the most.

When a father gives to his son, they both laugh. When a son gives to his father, they both cry. —Yiddish proverb

A fool can throw a stone into the sea and ten wise men will not be able to retrieve it.

Primer of Love [Lesson 44] Fire and gunpowder don't sleep together. ~ Ashanti Proverb from Ghana Lesson 44) Leave the oil and vinegar for your salad dressing -- look for compatibility in your lover. You heard the old adage 'opposites attracts'-- just listen for a few more minutes and you'll next hear KABOOM. That is not the chemistry for long term relationships. You need identical value systems or you're setting yourself up for tsuris (Yiddish for aggravation).Some important compatibilities you should have are God (monotheist+atheist/bad combo), children (wants none+wants four/bad combo), money (important+non-important/bad combo), where you want to live (big city apartment+suburbia, sex (often+often/good combo). What you must agree upon from day one is the mother-in-laws don't live in your house. That's a relationship killer with an ugly hat.

The sages taught the Jews not to rejoice over another’s misfortune. “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth” (Proverbs 24:17). (I must confess that I have always enjoyed gloating over the comeuppance suffered by the detestable, regardless of race, color, or creed.)

A man is what he is, not what he used to be. —Yiddish proverb

The girl who can't dance says the band can't play.

Primer of Love [Lesson 53] The truth is not always what we want to hear. ~ Yiddish Proverb Lesson 53) I solemnly promise to tell the truth, the partial truth, anything but the truth -- whatever preserves the relationship. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven."There's a time for candor and a time for white lies, depending whether you want touproot or you want to plant goodwill. There's a time for brutal honesty and a time for diplomacy, depending whether you want to tear down or to build egos. There's a time to talk and a time to refrain from talking, depending if you want to spill the beans on yourself and you want the perfect accompiment for your hot dog. "Does my ass look fat in this dress?" Fuck the truth, there is only one answer: "No, sweetheart, your ass looks great!" Get the picture? "There's a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." Keep the love, keep the peace! Amen.

A Bulgarian proverb goes: “When you baptize a Jew, hold him underwater for five minutes.

PROVERB: “A wise man, looking for a bride, should take an ignoramus along to advise him.

There is a Yiddish proverb that calls tears the soap of the soul. The release, rather than the bottling up, of inarticulate emotion is a valuable first aid to be applied over and over again to the raw wounds of grief.

Yiddish proverb: Man plans, God laughs.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

If triangles had a God, he'd have 3 sides.

We begin to see order at the heart of uncertainty and tranquility in the eye of the storm. Abandoning fixed ideas about how things should be, we instead take delight in watching plans manifest and dissolve in kaleidoscopic fashion, arranged and rearranged by the vagaries of everyday life. It is in the North that we learn to embrace the Yiddish proverb “Man plans, God laughs.

If you want equality, go to a graveyard.

God made man because he loves stories

Bygone troubles are a pleasure to talk about.

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

A Jew without a beard is better than a beard without a Jew’ – Yiddish proverb

had also become the familiar given, the necessary condition of life, viewed with a mixture of friendliness and, yes, condescension. They were simply the goyim, the routine term, still used today, for all Gentiles short of aristocratic status. Sometimes they were — in an inversion of “our Jews” — “our goyim.” And although Poles and Jews retained their spiritual separateness, their daily culture — habits, language, cooking, ordinary aesthetics — inevitably intermingled and influenced each other. They lived in similarly constructed wooden houses. Some of the gorgeous wooden synagogues of Polish towns and villages were decorated with Polish folk motifs. Yiddish was permeated by Polish vocabulary: shmata for rag, czajnik for kettle, paskudny for odious, among many others. The peasants picked up Yiddish words, and Jewish themes appeared in their proverbs. Even today, people in Brańsk say, “It’s as noisy as a cheder”, or “She’s dressed as for a Jewish wedding” — meaning, dressed ostentatiously. We no longer know whether the origins of chicken soup were Jewish or Polish. And then there was the music. Each village had its Jewish musicians, to whom everyone was willing to listen. People from Brańsk still remember the Jewish fiddlers and klezmer bands that played at Polish weddings. Their melodies combined Jewish and Gypsy and Polish and Russian influences — that vivid, energetic, melancholy mix that is the Eastern European equivalent of the blues. And surely if they played like that, moving their audiences to dancing and to tears, then their souls must have caught something of the genius loci — the tune, the temper, the spirit of the place. But toward the end of the nineteenth century, the balance began once again ineluctably to shift. In the Yizkor Book, several revealing details suggest new winds, new currents. Perhaps the most important changes were caused by sudden migrations, both inward and outward. The influx of new immigrants began after the assassination of the liberal Tsar Alexander II in 1881, an event followed by a wave of pogroms and other anti-Semitic persecutions within the Russian Pale. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of Jews, known as Litvaks — so named because most of them came from Lithuania or from parts of Belarus commonly called Lithuania in those days — fled to the Polish territories to seek refuge.

PROVERB: “Man comes into the world with an oy!—and leaves with a gevalt!

Az men krigt zikh miten rov, muz men sholem zein miten shainker,” Avi had said when he first put the rifle in Jacob’s hands. The old Yiddish proverb could be roughly translated as, “If you’re at odds with your rabbi, make peace with your bartender.” His uncle offered no explanation, but as Jacob had chewed on its meaning, he had concluded that Avi meant something like, “Always be prepared” or “Have a plan B.” The problem was, Jacob didn’t want a plan B. He didn’t want life to change. He wanted things to be the way they had always been.

Mensch tracht, Gott lacht. (Man plans, God laughs.) —Yiddish proverb