rebira

[rebira]

"That a people at the very bottom of the social scale, upon whom the heaviest weights of history descended, should nonetheless have expressed so much of its ethos through a complicated network of jokes, witticisms, satiric stories, symbolic shrugs and gestures-- this may be explained, if it can be explained at all, by the fact that humor was its first and only line of defense, though in a sense an impregnable defense. Only if they took the myth of the Chosen People with the utmost seriousness, yet simultaneously mocked their pretensions to being anything but the most wretched people on earth, could the Jews survive."

A Treasury of Yiddish Stories

#yiddish #jewish #judaism #yiddishkeit #a treasury of yiddish stories #irving howe #eliezer greenberg

[rebira]

"For whatever the deficiencies of yiddish culture, the power of love remains: fir the child, the poor, the weak, for the insulted and injured everywhere. It is the power at the heart of the yiddish tradition."

A Treasury of Yiddish Stories

#yiddish #jewish #judaism #yiddishkeit #a treasury of yiddish stories #irving howe #eliezer greenberg