Isaac Bashevis Singer - Yiddish Quotes

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There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists — rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those who spoke it are identical.

Isaac Bashevis Singer