Comic and Cosmic

By William Doerner

LEO ROSTEN'S TREASURY OF JEWISH QUOTATIONS 716 pages. McGraw-Hill. $10.95.

The subtitle of this vast collection might be: "You don't have to be Jewish to like Leo Rosten." Where else, after all, could the one-liner addict of whatever persuasion be exposed to a barrage of ecstasy that includes the following punches: "May all your teeth drop out, except one--so you should have a permanent toothache." "If you lend someone money, and he avoids you you've gotten off cheap." "A man is not honest just because he has had no chance to steal." "Sleep faster, we need the pillows."

The author, who began collecting Yiddish aphorisms in his childhood and continued throughout a distinguished academic career, provides a fine sketch of Jewish social character in the introduction. He is nothing if not thorough.

As the book says, "Where there is too much something is missing. In this case it is an editor's pencil, which might profitably have been put to use cutting out repetition.

Not to worry. The book is still lull of gems. For those who need definitions of Yiddishisms that have crept into everyday use, Rosten provides examples, many with a fond patina of age: chutzpa is a case of "a man who, having killed his mother and father, asks the court for mercy because he is an orphan, poor schlemiel is a man who "falls on his back and breaks his nose." Some lines are cosmic as well as comic: "The rich have heirs, not children." "Good men need no recommendation and bad men it wouldn't help."

The Jews have devised a saying to prove just about anything, natural enough for a people whose recorded history stretches back more than 2,500 years. But they have also framed the best single-sentence putdown for anyone who cites one of them as an example to make his point: "'For instance' is not proof."

sbWilliam Doerner

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