"Old Friends, Like Old Wines, ONLY GET MORE Flavor." -- Yiddish Proverb
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"Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish." -- Lenny Bruce "G~d could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers." -- Yiddish Proverb "Old friends, like old wines, ONLY GET MORE flavor." -- Yiddish Proverb "Don't look for more honor than your learning merits." -- Yiddish Proverb "First mend yourself, and then mend others." -- Yiddish Proverb "A hero is someone who can keep his mouth shut when he is right." -- Yiddish Proverb "Do not be wise in words - be wise in deeds." -- Yiddish Proverb "One old friend is better than two new ones." -- Yiddish Proverb "What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth." -- Yiddish proverb "The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks." -- Yiddish Proverb "You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails." -- Yiddish proverb 1 "As you teach, you learn." -- Yiddish Proverb "Behind every successful Jew stands a bigot who could not stop him." -- Sam Levenson "A half-truth is a whole lie." -- Yiddish Proverb "You can't shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Sam Levenson "Our faith is grounded in our Jewish tradition. We believe we're from the House of David. We believe we're from the House of Abraham, so we cannot hate our own." -- James Caviezel "I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how." -- Lionel Blue "There are more important things in life than money. The trouble is they all cost money." -- Sam Levenson "You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose." -- Mary Antin "War doesn't prove who is right; only who is left." -- Sam Levenson "I'm so proud of being Jewish. Are you kidding? That's how I was raised." -- Dyan Cannon "Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them." -- Albert Einstein 2 "It seemed ironic that Lowell Levine and I, who were both Jewish, were going over to identify the remains of a man who was so anti-Semitic." -- Michael Baden "The U.N. has been as effective against war as foghorns have been against Fog." -- Sam Levenson The Six-Day War With more and more papers being declassified, some light has just been shed on the real reason the Israelis won the Six-Day War. It seems all the equipment was rented for one week. "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx. "I have an inferiority complex, it's just not a very good one." Anonymous. "Don't judge a man by the words of his mother, listen to the comments of his neighbors." -- Yiddish Proverb "The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault." -- Henry Kissinger "I'm not afraid of dying - I just don't want to be there when it happens!" -- Woody Allen "One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world." --Jewish Proverb 3 "Don't be so humble - you are not that great." -- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat "The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks." -- Yiddish Proverb "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." -- Albert Einstein When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet the German Ambassador: "They want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits." -- Albert Einstein "It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore." -- Golda Meir "A wise man hears one word and understands two." Yiddish Proverb "I have given instructions that I be informed every time one of our soldiers is killed, even if it is in the middle of the night. When President Nasser leaves instructions that he is to be awakened in the middle of the night if an Egyptian soldier is killed, there will be peace." -- Golda Meir "A man is not honest simply because he never had a chance to steal." -- Yiddish Proverb "I don't believe in mathematics." -- Albert Einstein 4 "Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself. " -- Golda Meir "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." -- Albert Einstein "I don't want to become immortal through my work. I want to become immortal through not dying." -- Woody Allen "A hero is someone who can keep his mouth shut when he is right." -- Yiddish Proverb "We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon - no alternative..." -- Golda Meir "When you teach your son, you teach your son's son." --The Talmud "Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them." -- Albert Einstein "If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the Poor could make a wonderful living." -- Yiddish Proverb "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein "What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth." -- Yiddish proverb "The Two-Minute Haggadah" Opening prayers rapidly : 5 Thank G~d for creating wine. (Drink wine.) Thanks for creating produce. (Eat parsley.) Dip the egg ( remove shell first ) Overview: Once we were slaves in Egypt. Now we're free. That's why we're doing this. Four questions: 1. What's up with the matzah? 2. What's the deal with horseradish? 3. What's with the dipping of the herbs? 4. What's this whole slouching at the table business? Answers: 1. When we left Egypt, we were in a hurry. There was no time for making decent bread. 2. Life was bitter, like horseradish. 3. It's called symbolism. 4. Hungry people get to slouch. Now tell a funny story: Once, these five rabbis talked all night, then it was morning. (Heat soup now.) The four kinds of children and how to deal with them: Wise child - explain Passover. Simple child - explain Passover slowly. Silent child - explain Passover loudly. Religious child - have the child explain it to you. Speaking of children: We hid some matzah. Whoever finds it gets $4.25. The story of Passover: It's a long time ago. We're slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. G~d brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzah. G~d parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren't so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. 6 (Let brisket cool now.) The 10 Plagues: Blood, Frogs, Lice - you can name all the bad stuff before you have dinner...lessens the appetite. The singing of "Dayenu": If G~d had gotten us out of Egypt and not punished our enemies, it would've been enough. If he'd punished our enemies and not parted the Red Sea, it would've been enough, oh, Dayenu! Dayenu, Dayenu... If he'd parted the Red Sea - (Remove gefilte fish from refrigerator now.) Eat more matzah. Take a few more sips of way too sweet red wine. Slouch. Again thank G~d for everything....and do it all again tomorrow night. "The Egyptians could run to Egypt , the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight." -- Golda Meir "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." -- Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton "When a thief kisses you, count your teeth." -- Yiddish Proverb "The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax." -- Albert Einstein "Old friends, like old wines, don't lose their flavor." --Jewish Proverb 7 "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein "One definition of courage is the willingness of a person to stand up for his beliefs in the face of great odds. Chutzpah is doing the same thing wearing a Mickey Mouse hat." -- Anonymous "Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth..." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein "For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasure of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the most distant Indies." -- Philostratus - The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 3rd Century CE Teacher "On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down." -- Woody Allen "Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place.