Yiddish Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Yiddish". There are currently 3 quotes in our collection about Yiddish. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Yiddish!
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  • Yiddish for gall, nerve, arrogance-whatever

    Howard Fast (1977). “The Immigrants”, Dell Publishing Company
  • On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. "You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?" The mother answered, "I don't want he should forget he's a Jew."

    Funny   Mother   Humor  
  • There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

    Wise   Gratitude   Humble  
    Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”
  • True poverty does not come from God.

    Doe   Poverty   Yiddish  
  • When I was a little boy, I thought when I grew up I would talk Yiddish. I thought little kids talked English, but when they became adults, they would talk Yiddish like the adults did. There would be no reason to talk English anymore, because we would have made it.

    Kids   Boys   Adults  
    "Mel Brooks Is Always Funny and Often Wise in This 1975 Playboy Interview". Interview with Alex Belth, www.thedailybeast.com. February 16, 2014.
  • Singing in Yiddish was a great thrill for me and came about through Joe Papp, the founder of The Public Theater.

  • The prejudice is still there, but it's breaking down. You have writers like Michael Chabon and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He's a writer who's determined to break down genre barriers. He's done amazing things.

    Prejudice   Done   Unions  
    "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
  • I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.

    Latin   Greek   Language  
    Source: logger.believermag.com
  • I heard Yiddish when my father's family came to the house, which was as seldom as my mother could arrange it.

    Mother   Father   House  
  • If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits.

  • I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.

    Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”
  • Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish.

    Linda Barnes (2015). “Cold Case”, p.9, Open Road Media
  • I'm Italian, but some people think I'm Jewish because I work the Yiddish. I also work the Italian, by the way.

  • Even though I loved the song [My Yiddish Momme] and it was a sensational hit every time I sang it, I was always careful to use it only when I knew the majority of the house would understand Yiddish. However, you didn't have to be a Jew to be moved by 'My Yiddish Momme.' 'Mother' in any language means the same thing.

    Mother   Song   Mean  
  • At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I'm Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.

    Mother   Father   School  
  • They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew.

    Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.26, Anchor
  • The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.

    Country   Book   Years  
  • Romanian-Yiddish cooking has killed more Jews than Hitler

    Cooking   Yiddish   Jew  
  • English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.

    Blue   Gnarly   Enemy  
    Roy Blount, Jr. (2009). “Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory”, p.125, Macmillan
  • I tended to listen to doo-wop, but my grandmother would always have the radio on all day and she'd start with Yiddish and then move on to gospel and later to "make believe" ballroom music. I got to hear all kinds of music and my mother would get up to go to work listening to country music. That was her alarm clock. My dad was a jazz lover and listened to the man who wrote "Misty", Errol Garner. He loved piano players, so I got to listen to that as well.

    Country   Mother   Dad  
    "Richie Havens Interview: Woodstock, Dylan and Greenwich Village". Interview With Rick Landers, guitarinternational.com.
  • Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

    The Observer, December 29, 1974.
  • Yiddish, the language which will ever bear witness to the violence and murder inflicted on us, bear the marks of our expulsions from land to land, the language which absorbed the wails of the fathers, the laments of the generations, the poison and bitterness of history, the language whose precious jewels are the undried, uncongealed Jewish tears.

    Father   Jewels   Land  
    "Manginot HaZman" by I. L. Peretz, 1886.
  • Donald Trump did his usual softball interview on "Fox News" where the interviewer agreed with Trump that using that Yiddish vulgarity is going to be OK for him.

    Source: www.msnbc.com
  • I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

    Long   Language   Speak  
    "Carlos Santana: 'My daughter beat me at Guitar Hero'" by Peter Robinson, www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2012.
  • Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too.

    Grace Paley (2014). “The Collected Stories”, p.357, Macmillan
  • I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

  • My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

    Father   Long   Would Be  
    Interview with Michael Silverblatt, stephengreenblatt.com. March 16, 2013.
  • The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. They were the people of The Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study of man and human relations, which they called Torah, Talmud, Mussar, Cabala.

    Book   Ghetto   Men  
    Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”
  • In another project I worked on just a few years ago, a staging of Peter and the Wolf, which I translated into Yiddish and sang on a stage in New York City. Thank God very few people knew I was doing it! But the kids in the audience loved it - even though it was all in Yiddish.

    New York   Kids   Years  
    Source: www.hbook.com
  • Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English.

    Latin   Years   Greek  
    "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.
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