Yiddish words and sayings

Yiddish words and sayings

Yiddish words and sayings
We have brought together the most beautiful yiddish words and sayings that will translate your feelings for you as basla.org . You can share your favorites from the following messages on social media accounts.

Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Israelites, their ancestors. It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.

Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים, ISO 259-2: Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation: [jehuˈdim]) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelite and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, although its observance varies from strict to none.

In the event that you experienced childhood in a Jewish family, all things considered, you as of now use Yiddish words in ordinary discussion; as a matter of fact, words like kvell and schvitz are presumably the same amount of a piece of your regular vernacular as hi and farewell. Furthermore, in the event that you’re not piece of The Tribe and don’t have the foggiest idea about your keppies from your punims, then learning a couple of fundamental words and brighten up your vocabulary is rarely past the point of no return. Whether you’re a goy or a bar mitzvahed kid, continue to peruse to find probably the best Yiddish words and expressions.

…Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art. You’re not a machine. And you are young. Start working on this great work of art called your own existence. – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

A bird that you set free may be caught again, but a word that escapes your lips will not return.

A black hen can lay a white egg.

A candle is a small thing. But one candle can light another. And see how its own light increases. As a candle gives its flame to the other, you are such a light. – Moshe Davis

A car hit a Jewish man. The paramedic says, Are you comfortable? The man says, I make a good living.

A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation. – Gertrude Stein

A Jew who doesn’t believe in miracles is not a realist. – David Ben Gurion

A mother understands what a child does not say.

A person who takes a walk of 100 feet and a person who walks 2,000 miles have one major thing in common. They both need to take a first step before they take a second step. – Rabbi Zelig Pliskin

A pessimist, confronted with two bad choices, chooses both.

A righteous man falls down seven times and gets up. – King Solomon, Proverbs, 24:16

A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat! – Alan King

Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act. – Leonard Cohen

Act while you can: While you have the chance, the means, and the strength. – The Talmud, Shabbat 151b

Adam was the first lucky man as he had no mother-in-law.

All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes so long. – Steven Spielberg

All is not butter that comes from a cow.

America is a place where Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas. – John Burton

Among those who laugh, do not weep; among those who weep, do not laugh.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. – Victor Frankl

Anti-Jewish racism has risen, but so has Jewish Pride. We will reject their attempts fto shame us. We will reject their hate and instead turn towards love. – Ben M Freeman

Any attempt to ascribe attributes to God is merely man’s imperfect attempt to understand the infinite.

Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies. – Milton Berle

Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth. – Barbra Streisand

As he thinks in his heart, so he is.

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes. – Mel Brooks

As you teach, you learn.

Ask about your neighbors, then buy the house.

Build a worthy family, stay on the path of virtue, and you shall be rewarded. – Elana Roth

Community is society with a human face. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Do not accuse a man for no reason – when he has done you no harm.

Do not be wise in words – be wise in deeds.

Do not envy a violent man or choose any of his ways, for the Lord detests a perverse man but takes the upright into his confidence.

Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you.

Do not say something that should never be heard, because ultimately it will be heard. – Hillel the Elder, Avot 4:2

Do not separate yourself from the community. – Pirkei Avot 2:5

Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect. – Alan Cohen

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.

Don’t be afraid of discovering that the ‘real you’ may be different than the ‘current you.’ – Rabbi Noah Weinberg

Don’t be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don’t be bitter, lest you be spewed out.

Don’t look for more honor than your learning merits.

Don’t open a shop unless you know how to smile.

Don’t be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don’t be bitter, lest you be spewed out.

Don’t give me the honey and spare me the sting.

Don’t live in a town where there are no doctors.

Don’t look for more honor than your learning merits.

Dress up a broom and it will look nice too.

Even a bear can be taught to dance.

Even a poor person who subsists on the charity of others should perform [acts of] charity. – Talmud, Gittin 7a

Even a secret agent can’t lie to a Jewish Mother. – Peter Malkin

Even if the land is full of all good things, still you must plant…even if you are old, you must plant. Just as you found trees planted by others, you must plant them for your children. – Midrash Tanchuma, Kodashim 8

Every act of forgiveness mends something broken in this fractured world. It is a step, however small, in the long, hard journey to redemption. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness. – Billy Graham

Everybody, every human being has the obligation to contribute somehow to this world. – Edith Carter

Everyone complains about a lack of money, but none complain about a lack of brains. – Jewish Proverb

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. – Viktor E. Frankl

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. – Viktor Frankl

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love. – Mel Brooks

First mend yourself, and then mend others.

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. – Allen Ginsberg

For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums. – Barry Manilow

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. – Simon Wiesenthal

Freedom is won, not on the battlefield, nor in the political arena, but in human imagination and will. To defend a land, you need an army. But to defend freedom, you need education. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Gam zu l’tova. This too is for the good. – Nachum Ish Gamzu, Talmud, Taanit, 21a

God cannot be everywhere at once, that’s why He created mothers.

God gave man two ears and one mouth, so listen more and talk less.

God is a unity. He is a single, whole, complete indivisible entity. He cannot be divided into parts or described by attributes.

God is closest to those with broken hearts.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. – Psalms 46:1-3

God is the only being to whom we should offer praise. The Shema can also be translated as the LORD is our God, the LORD alone, meaning that no other is our God, and we should not pray to any other.

Growing old, man’s sight worsens, but this allows him to see more.

Hard work builds strong character.

Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared.

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief. – Sigmund Freud

He has more in his head than in his pocket.

He that can’t endure the bad, will not live to see the good.

He who cannot accept reproof cannot become great. – Nachman of Breslov

Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

He’s meditating on whether a flea has a belly-button.

Hey, I may loathe myself, but it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m Jewish. – Larry David

Home is the human heart. Our return to G-d is in no way separate from our return to ourselves, to the point of inward truth out of which our humanity shines forth. – Arthur Green

Honestly, what can really be said about ‘the Jewish people’ as a whole? Is it not a lamentable stereotype to make large generalizations about all Jews, and to presume they all share the same political commitments? – Judith Butler

Hope for a miracle, but don’t rely on it.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. – Anne Frank

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness. – Anne Frank

Humor is the weapon of unarmed people. It helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them. – Simon Wisenthal

I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent. – Rabbi A.Y. Kook

I grew up in a tradition where having ideas and contributing to the community and creating art that had an impact on the world mattered. That’s part of the Jewish tradition. – Eve Ensler

I have earned the title of expert, it is only on what was. There is no expert on what will be. And yet, without knowing the future, I remain a man full of hope. – Shimon Peres

I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I’m not observant, and I don’t belong to a synagogue. I don’t go to temple on high holy days, but I’m proud to be Jewish. – Erica Jong

I lived, while 1 1/2 million Jewish children died. So I have an obligation to repair the world. – Ruth Westheimer

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory. – Elie Wiesel

I think art, literature, fiction, poetry, whatever it is, makes justice in the world. That’s why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog. – Grace Paley

I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963. – Jon Stewart

I’d like it if people thought I was Jewish looking. – Natalie Portman

I’m a Jew. I’m fascinated by our culture and our history, by what made us the people we are. It influences every breath I take. It informs and guides me. Without it, I’d just be a vacuum. – Mandy Patinkin

I’m Jewish. I don’t work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, He would have put diamonds on the floor. – Joan Rivers

I’m proud of my Jewish heritage. And for me it’s not just about religion. It’s about community and culture as well.’ – Julian Edelman

If a girl can’t dance, she says the musicians can’t play.

If a problem can be solved with money, then it’s not a problem but a cost.

If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

If he were twice as smart, he’d be an idiot!

If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. – Rabbi Menachem Mendel

If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? – Hillel the Elder, Pirkei Avot 1:14

If I weren’t a Jew then I wouldn’t be an artist, or at least not the one I am now. – Marc Chagall

If not for fear, sin would be sweet.

If the rich could hire the poor to die for them, the poor would make a very nice living.

If things are not as you wish, wish them as they are.

If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for a tomorrow? – Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

If you don’t know what you’re living for, you haven’t yet lived. – Rabbi Noah Weinberg

If you look at a group of people that had faith, it’s got to be the Jews. They followed Moses through the desert for 40 years with no map. There had to be one guy in the back, like, ‘I don’t think he knows where he’s going.’ – Adam Ferrara

If you sleep with dogs, you get up with fleas.

If you’re behind the times, they won’t notice you. If you’re right in tune with them, you’re no better than they are, so they won’t care much for you. Be just a little ahead of them. – Shel Silverstein

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again. – Groucho Marx

In Jewish history there are no coincidences. – Elie Wiesel

In spirituality, the searching is the finding and the pursuit is the achievement. – Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. – Anne Frank

Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother’s side. – Archie Bunker

Jews survived all the defeats, expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people, even the Holocaust itself, because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear. – Jonathan Sac

Jews, black people – any people who are hated or who have suffered, either as individuals or as a people – use humour. It is a survival skill. – Sarah Silverman

Join the community: the wolf snatches only the stray sheep that wanders off from the flock. – Jewish Proverb

Judaism is not a religion, it’s a relationship. – Rabbi Benzion Klatzko

Klieg, klieg, klieg – du bist a Nar. You are smart, smart, smart – but you are not so smart! – Yiddish Proverb

L’fum tzara agra. According to the effort is the reward. – Ben Hei Hei, Pirkei Avot 5:26

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. – Albert Einstein

Let the Good in me connect with the good in others, until the world is transformed through the compelling power of love. – Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Life is a tragedy full of joy. – Bernard Malamud

Life’s not as good with money as it is bad without it.

Loose tongues are worse than wicked hands.

Lose with truth and right rather than gain with falsehood and wrong.

Make sure to be in with your equals if you’re going to fall out with your superiors.

Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool. – Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Man plans and God laughs.

Man’s task in the world, according to Judaism, is to transform fate into destiny; a passive existence into an active existence; an existence of compulsion, perplexity and muteness into an existence replete with a powerful will, with resourcefulness, daring, and imagination. – Rabbi Joseph Solovetchik

May God protect you from bad people, and save yourself from good ones!

Never trust the man who tells you all his troubles but keeps from you all his joys.

No other being participated in the work of creation.

Not to have felt pain is not to have been human.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. – Golda Meir

One day, Honi Hameagel, a righteous miracle worker, saw an old man planting a carob tree. Knowing that a carob tree took 70 years to bear fruit, and that therefore the old man would not live to see the results of his labor, he asked why he was planting a tree whose fruits he would never enjoy. ‘Carob trees were here when I was born, planted by my father and his father,’ answered the old man. ‘Now I plant trees for the enjoyment of my children and their children’s children.’ – Talmud, Taanit 23a

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one’s life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. – Hannah Szenes

One of the very first lessons of the Torah gives it a place of high priority: All human beings are created equal. This belief in equality compels action in response to discrimination, racism, and racial injustice. – Rabbi Dr. Laura Novak Winer

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. – Albert Einstein

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed. – Abraham Joshua Heschel

Our heads are round so thought can change direction. – Allen Ginsberg

Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately. – Elie Wiesel

People often avoid making decisions out of fear of making a mistake. Actually, the failure to make decisions is one of life’s biggest mistakes. – Rabbi Noah Weinberg

Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created. – Esther 4:14

Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member. – Groucho Marx

Prepare your proof before you argue.

Pride joined with many virtues chokes them all.

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai said: If you have a sapling in your hand, and someone says to you that the Messiah has come, stay and complete the planting, and then go out to greet the Messiah. – Avot D’Rabbi Natan, 31b

Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall – but don’t rush to pick him up either.

Sometimes people who are Jewish are held to a higher standard which sometimes we take great pride in. – Gary Ackerman

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. – Jerry Seinfeld

Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning. – King Solomon

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. – Franz Kafka

Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off. – Proverbs 23:18

Sympathy doesn’t provide food, but it makes hunger more endurable.

Teach your tongue to say I don’t know instead of to make up something.

The community is Isreal’s rampart. – Jewish Proverb

The hat is fine but the head is too small.

The highest form of wisdom is kindness. – Talmud, Brachot 17a

The idea that it’s possible to move from slavery to freedom and from darkness to light and from despair to hope – that is the greatest Jewish story ever told. – Rabbi Sharon Brous, quoted in Why Be Jewish? by Edgar Bronfman

The Jewish community has always taken care of its own. – Lee Whitnum

The Jewish religion is an ethical religion. That is, we are taught to do right, to love mercy, do justice, not because there’s gonna be any reward in heaven or punishment in hell. We live righteously because that’s how people should live. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. – Elie Wiesel

The past is not easy to forget, and I do not want to forget. The past lives in me. I don’t live in the past. – Olga Horak

The people of Isreal compose a single soul. Only the bodies are separate. – Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence, these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it. – Albert Einstein

The responsible life is one that responds. In the theological sense, it means that G-d is the question to which our lives are an answer. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The world is a dark place for one who looks to the table of others [for his sustenance]. – Rav, Beitza 32b

The world is new to us every morning – and every man should believe he is reborn each day. – Baal Shem Tov

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. – Viktor Frankl

There is a wide range of views within the Jewish community, so it is not monolithic. – Barack Obama

There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you. – Elie Wiesel

There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews. – Mary Antin

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart. – The Rebbe of Kotsk

There is one respect in which each of us has precisely the same strength as Moses. Namely, the strength to choose. There is no hand of heaven – no physiological, genetic, psychological or Providential compulsion – that forces us to act one way rather than another. The fear of heaven is not in the hands of heaven; therefore the fear of heaven is as live an option to us as it was to Moses. Here is indeed a thing which, if it is small for Moses is small for us. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Tradition in an Untraditional Age

There is only one God.

They are both in love: he with himself and she with herself.

Thieves and lovers like the dark

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. – Anne Frank

This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things. – Abraham Joshua Heschel

This is the story of a people which was scattered over all the world and yet remained a single family, a nation which time and again was doomed to destruction and yet, out of the ruins, rose to new life. – Abba Kovner

Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. – Yehuda Bauer

Though I am not religious in the least, I am very proud to be Jewish. – Daniel Radcliffe

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time. – Leonard Bernstein

To be a Jew is a destiny. – Vicki Baum

To be a Jew, essentially and not just accidentally, is to regard the Jewish people as one’s sole primal community. Election by the unique God requires total and unconditional loyalty to one people. – David Novak

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you’re not aware of that when you’re a child, the whole tradition is lost. – Joyce Carol Oates

To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens. – Rabbi Menachem Mendel

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. – Golda Meir

We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That’s all we know for sure. We can’t create a new species or a new world. That’s been done. Now we have to live within those boundaries. What are our choices? We can despair and curse, and change nothing. We can choose evil like our enemies have done and create a world based on hate. Or we can try to make things better. – Carol Matas

We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. – Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein

We have our own values; we build our own special, our JEWISH life – and we are proud, so very proud. – Meir Kahane

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. – Elie Wiesel

Well, I just said that Jesus and I were both Jewish and that neither of us ever had a job, we never had a home, we never married and we traveled around the countryside irritating people. – Kinky Friedman

What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah; the rest is just commentary. – Hillel the Elder

What one has, one doesn’t want, and what one wants, one doesn’t have.

What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t invent with your mouth.

Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived. – Ruth Bader Ginsberg

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. – Abraham Joshua Heschel

When there’s an emerging social issue that needs greater attention by the Jewish community, that’s where I am. – Nina Beth Cardin

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. – Viktor E. Frankl

Whenever feeling downcast, each person should vitally remember, ‘For my sake, the entire world was created.’ – Baal Shem Tov

Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure.

Who is wise? He who learns from everyone. – Ben Zoma

Whoever does not try, does not learn.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to. – Henny Youngman

With horses you check the teeth; with a human you check the brains.

Worries go down better with soup than without. – Jewish Proverb

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. – Pirkei Avot 2:21

You can’t force anyone to love you or lend you money.

You can’t sit on two horses with one behind.

You don’t need intelligence to have luck, but you do need luck to have intelligence.

You have to have faith, fantasy, hope, drive, determination, and the belief that tomorrow will be better. – Magda Brown

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel. – King Solomon

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