Two Martians who had landed in America happened to run into each other. “What’s your name?” asked the first. “4286. And yours?” “3359.” “That’s funny; you don’t look Jewish.

Any reader who feels superior to such quaint English might remember that when the overwhelming majority of humankind was illiterate, it was hard to find a Jewish lad over six who could not read and write (Hebrew). Most adult male Jews could handle at least three languages: they used Hebrew in the synagogues and houses of study (see Besmedresh), Yiddish in the home, and — to Gentiles — the language of the land in which they lived. My father, a workingman denied the equivalent of a high school education in Poland, handled Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and Polish. Jews were linguists of necessity.

Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.