Skip to content

The heart itself, and particularly the Jewish heart, is a violin: you pluck the strings, teasing out various, generally sad and gloomy songs

— Sholem Aleichem My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu (1888)

Another quote →

More quotes by Sholem Aleichem

Once a joke, twice a joke, but not a joke forever.

No doubt everyone has worries—a Jew does not need to go looking for trouble.

My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu (1888)

The sun gave light, but no warmth. Like a stepmother, as they say in Kasrilevke.

The fiddle weeps, sinking to the lower strings

My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu (1888)

In America there’s a custom: you moofe. That is, you pack up from one apartment to the next. From one street to the next. From one biznes to the next. Everybody has to moofe. If you don’t moofe of your own free will, then they make it so you have to.

All Sholem Aleichem quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sholem Aleichem (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.