Yiddish Wisdom Quotes

Which is more important: money or wisdom? “Wisdom,” says the philosopher. “Ha!” scoffs the cynic. “If wisdom is more important than money, why is it that the wise wait on the rich, and not the rich on the wise?” “Because,” says the scholar, “the wise, being wise, understand the value of money; but the rich, being only rich, do not know the value of wisdom.

It is hard to raise sons and much harder to raise daughters. ES IZ SHVER TSU HODEVEN ZIN NOR A SAKH SHVERER TSU HODEVEN TEKHTER.

Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic, from Hebrew-Aramaic, from anything which came its way. On the other hand it contributed: to Hebrew, to English-American. Its chief virtue, however, lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions.62 It was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog; of pathos, resignation, suffering, which it palliated by humour, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer, its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

For example, Professor Morris Raphael Cohen was a very distinguished philosopher who challenged conventional wisdom in a Yiddish accent. With the diversity and poverty of its students, City College was known as “the poor man’s Harvard.