Yiddish proverbs - God

God is an honest payer, but a very slow one.

God loves the poor and helps the rich.

God will provide. If only God would provide until He provides!

God gave burdens, also shoulders.

God created a world full of little worlds.

If God wants people to suffer, he sends them too much understanding.

The nearer to the synagogue, the farther from God.

May God protect you from goyisha hands and yiddishe tongues.

He falsifies who renders a verse just as it looks.

A child’s tear rends the heavens.

Prayers go up and blessings come down.

If God lived on earth, all his windows would be broken.

A table is not blessed if it has fed no scholars.

It’s a good idea to send a lazy man for the Angel of Death.

The whole world is a dream, and death the interpreter.

A man comes from the dust and in the dust he will end - and in the meantime it is good to drink a sip of vodka.

God made man because he loves stories.

Dear God: You do such wonderful things for complete strangers; why not for me?

Image: The Great Synagogue in Dohàny Street, Budapest by Jackfre2

Yiddish proverbs - love

Love is blind; jealousy sees too much.

Love tastes sweet, but only with bread.

A heart is a lock: you need the right key for it.

Love enters a man through his eyes, a woman through her ears.

For a little love, you pay all your life.

Thieves and those in love both love darkness.

When the heart is full, the eyes overflow.

The eyes are the mirror of the soul.
You can't force anyone to love you or lend you money.

A maiden is like velvet - come on, fondle her!
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Yiddish proverbs - friends and enemies

A good friend is often better than a brother.
A good enemy is better than a bad friend.

A good friend you get for nothing, an enemy you have to buy.

You buy yourself an enemy when you lend a man money.

Rejoice not at your enemy's fall, but don't pick him up, either.

One old friend is better than two new ones.

Make new friends, but don't forget the old ones.

A friend remains a friend up to his pocket.

Treat me like a rabbi; watch me like a thief.

When a thief kisses you, count your teeth.

Mountains cannot meet, but men can.

Image: ‘Two men playing chess in Taras Schevchenko park’ from olechko

Yiddish proverbs - faults and virtues

A little charm and you are not ordinary.

Charm is more than beauty.

No man suffers from another's sins - he has enough of his own.

Charity and pride have different aims, yet both feed the poor.

Charity covers a multitude of sins.

Charity excuseth not cheating.

One good deed has many claimants.

Spare us what we can learn to endure.

An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease.

A living dog is better than a dead lion.

If you lie on the ground, you can't fall.

It is far easier to spot faults in another than virtues in oneself.

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

It is the kindness and not the harshness in the headmaster’s voice that pushes tough boys to cry.

Understanding is something we're sure the other fellow hasn't got.

Laughter is heard farther than weeping.

What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul

Weeping makes the heart grow lighter.

One always thinks that others are happy.

Your neighbour’s apples are the sweetest.

Your pot broken seems better than my whole one.
All brides are beautiful; all the dead are pious.
If you're going to do something wrong, enjoy it!

A bad peace is better than a good war.

The soldiers fight, and the kings are heroes.

The whole world is a big town.

Measure the corn of others with your own bushel.

Make no more haste than good speed.

Show her the rudder, but don't steer her boat.

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.

A man should live if only to satisfy his curiosity.

We have far greater compassion for another's misfortune than our pleasure in another's good fortune.

When fortune calls, offer her a chair.

Image ‘Sound of Heavens’ from Yossef Sofrim

Yiddish proverbs - in adversity

The wheel turns round.

Confidence is half of victory.

If you ever need a helping hand you'll find one at the end of your arm.

He that cannot endure the bad, will not live to see the good.

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

If we cannot do what we will, we must will what we can.

When one must, one can.

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

Trouble does not come alone.

Trouble is to man what rust is to iron.

Worries go down better with soup.
Fleas are not lobsters.

Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.

The wagon rests in winter, the sleigh in summer, the horse never.

Tomorrow your horse may be lame.

You can't measure the whole world with your own yardstick.

Do not throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.

Do not throw a stone into a well from which you have drunk.

Do not spit into the well - you might drink from it later.

If a link is broken, the whole chain breaks.

If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water.

If you do not want to do something, one excuse is as good as another.

Time is the best doctor.

The glaciers did not freeze overnight.

With time, even a bear can learn to dance.

You can throw a cat wherever you want, it always falls on its feet.
If each one sweeps before his own door, the whole street is clean.

If you want your dreams to come true, don't sleep.

Sleep faster, we need the pillows.

Uphill one climbs slowly, downhill one rolls fast.

Had you gotten up early, you would not have needed to stay up late.

Provide for the worst; the best can take care of itself.

Bygone troubles are good to tell.

Yiddish proverbs - money

Money is on many people’s minds at the moment. I know it is on my mind. We watch the financial crisis unfolding on TV or the internet like a slow motion train wreck. Sovereign debt crisis. Quantitive easing. Credit default swaps. Fiat currency collapse. Inflation-deflation. Moral hazard. Record gold prices.

It was much simpler in the old days (when I was a kid): you worked for money, then you spent it. Sometimes you even saved it to spend later. I agree with Paul Volcker: the last good innovation from the financial industry was the automatic teller machine. I also agree with Teddy Roosevelt:

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honour, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price ... the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

The one good thing coming out of this whole international financial quagmire is that the collective consciousness is being raised about money and morals and the responsible government necessary to achieve financial health.

You can’t expect a viable economy if the only object of government policy is to be re-elected every four years. Sir Arnold Weinstock

We need to go back to basics. When you are exhausted you still have the strength to be simple.

Here are some Yiddish proverbs passed down the generations. They were valid back then, they are valid today but nobody thinks of them.

Golden dreams make men wake hungry.

Interest on debts grows without rain.

Money buys everything but good sense.

If you have nothing to lose, you can try anything.

Once poor, never rich.

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Money is round, so it rolls away.

If I dealt in candles, the sun wouldn't set; if I dealt in shrouds, people would stop dying.

Charge nothing and you'll get a lot of customers.

Every seller praises his wares.

Life is the cheapest bargain - you get it for nothing.

What you save is, later, like something found.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

A penny is sometimes better spent than spared.

A penny is a lot of money - if you haven't got a penny.

The heaviest thing in the world is an empty pocket.

He that cannot pay, let him pray.

A heavy purse makes a light heart.

A golden key will open every lock.

It costs money to sin.              
A trade makes you a king, but robs you of your leisure.

Gold's father is dirt, yet it regards itself as noble.

Golden dishes will never turn black.

Better an ounce of luck than a pound of gold.

When luck joins in the game, cleverness scores double.

A rich man who is stingy is the worst pauper.

A rich man's foolish sayings pass for wise ones.

With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.

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

The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.

Happy poverty overcomes everything.

He who comes for the inheritance is often made to pay for the funeral.

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

Image from Wikipedia: silver shekel minted in Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 68 C.E.

Yiddish proverbs - the fool and the wise man

Here is the first of a series of posts featuring lists of Yiddish proverbs by subject. We start with the fool and the wise man. I think all cultures have such proverbs, certainly in English we do – fools rush in where brave men fear to tread etc. So it is a subject and a form that is well recognised and we eagerly soak up these new perspectives on an old subject.

As I was thinking of an intro I realized that there is really no such thing as a pure fool or a pure wise man. We are all fools on some subject or other and we are all relatively wise on some subjects. Not only that, we can be fools for short periods of time, for example when we are stuck (when we ‘do the same thing over and over expecting a different result’), when we are ‘dis-couraged’, or when we are angry. And even foolish people can take on the mantle of wisdom when they are fearless, when they speak the truth that others dare only to think, and when they are sincerely themselves.

So we all have something of a working relationship with stupidity and wisdom and I found that relationship very well put in this quote, which I just happened to fall upon today:

Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity. Edwin Land

With that in mind, here are the collective insights of countless Yiddish generations on the fool and the wise man.

A fool can ask more questions in an hour than a wise man can answer in a year.

A dead man is mourned seven days; a fool, his lifetime.

A fool is his own informer.

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

A fool who can keep silent is counted among the wise.

If you seek a reputation for wisdom, agree with everyone.

A fool grows without rain.

The complete fool is half prophet.

Not everyone who sits in the seat of honour is master.

Send a fool to close the shutters and he'll close them all over town.

Send a fool to the market and a fool he will return.

A schlemiel lands on his back, and bruises his nose.

We are all schlemiels.

Hope may give a man strength, but not sense.

If the head doesn't work it's bad news for the legs.

When the stomach is empty, so is the brain.

Some people are like new shoes - the cheaper they are, the louder they squeak!

One fool is an expert on the other.

The crow flies high and alights on a pig.

A snake deserves no pity.

A chip on the shoulder indicates wood higher up.

A dog without teeth will also attack a bone.

Show a dog a finger, and he wants the whole hand.

Many complain of their looks, but none of their brains.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

A wise man knows what he says; a fool says what he knows.
All signs are misleading.

Better ask ten times than go astray once.

He that cannot ask cannot live.

When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are talking.

Hell shared with a sage is better than paradise with a fool.
Talking comes by nature, silence by wisdom.

Talk is worth a shilling; silence is worth two.

Talk too much and you talk about yourself.

Protest long enough that you are right, and you will be wrong.

Silence is also speech.

Beware of still water, a still dog, and a still enemy.

The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks.

Time and words can't be recalled, even if it was only yesterday.

One good forewit is worth two afterwits.

Words should be weighed, not counted.
Words show the wit of a man, but actions his meaning. 

Yiddish proverbs and sleepless nights

2h30 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I think of a wrong that has been done to me recently and anger wells up in me like a flood against the person responsible. I cannot reign in that rolling chariot of anger and sometimes I think that I don’t even want to. And for what? Words.

This afternoon, to take my mind off the anger, I sorted through some Yiddish proverbs that I have been planning to post on the blog. Regular readers will know that I often post quotations on the blog and in my travels I have come across a few Yiddish proverbs. I always found them very pithy, down to earth and jolting in their ability to make you see the truth. I discovered more reading Life’s Daily Blessings by Rabbi Kerry M. Orlitzky. This one for example:

If I would be like someone else, who would be like me?

I wish I had found that one when I was 15 years old and searching for my identity.

So this afternoon, as I sorted through my Yiddish proverbs, I began to think of the people who made these proverbs: all the generations of Jews who repeated these phrases to themselves and to their children so often that they became part of the Yiddish psyche. And I began to think how small my anger was. When compared to the possibilities of wrongs that one person can do to another, the wrong I had suffered was small. ‘Fleas are not lobsters.’ If you cannot sleep because of a few miserable words, what would you have done if you had lived through the Second World War for example, where wrongs done were counted in loved ones taken, imprisoned, killed?

I saw in these Yiddish proverbs, that wrongs have always been and will always be and that my wrongs are not something out of the ordinary at all. Every proverb is a witness of the experiences and wisdom of many people in times gone by. It took away some of the sting.

But still I won’t rest well until ‘the wheel turns round’ and truth comes out.

The entire world rests on the tip of the tongue.

Truth never dies, but lives a wretched life.

Truth is the safest lie.

When the light is crooked, the shadow is crooked.

Half an answer also says something.

A half-truth is a whole lie.

A word is like an arrow - both are in a hurry to strike.
A slap heals but a harsh word is remembered.

He who puts up with insult invites injury.