Harry Kemelman > Quotes

“our prayers are rarely petitionary. We don’t so much ask for things that we don’t have as give thanks for what we have received.” “I don’t understand.” The rabbi smiled. “It’s something like this. You Christians say, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread.’ Our comparable prayer is, ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bringest forth bread from the earth.’ That’s rather over-simplified, but in general our prayers tend to be prayers of thanksgiving for what has been given to us.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Life after death means for us that part of our life that lives on in our children, in the influence that survives us after death, and the memories people have of us.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Oh no, we stem from different traditions, all three of us. Monsignor O’Brien is a priest in the tradition of the priests of the Bible, the sons of Aaron. He has certain powers, magical powers, that he exercises in the celebration of the Mass, for example, where the bread and wine are magically changed to the body and blood of Christ. Dr. Skinner as a Protestant minister is in the tradition of the prophets. He has received a call to preach the word of God. I, a rabbi, am essentially a secular figure, having neither the mana of the priest nor the ‘call’ of the minister. If anything, I suppose we come closest to the judges of the Bible.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Our people have only the one chance. Our good deeds must be done on this earth in this life. And since there is no one to share the burden with them or to intercede for them they must do it on their own.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Marks usually reward the most docile students, those who conform to their teachers’ opinions. There’s nothing competitive about learning, it’s something everyone does for himself alone.”
― Harry Kemelman, Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red

“Faptul ca un om a avut parte de o pregatire stiintifica nu inseamna neaparat ca el urmeaza sa aiba un comportament stiintific tot timpul.”
― Harry Kemelman

“An applicant for a job who disagrees with his prospective employer is either a fool or he has convictions, and there was nothing to suggest to me that your husband was a fool.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“E,in zilele noastre un om de afaceri are tensiune cu carul, mai cu seama intr-un comert cu medicamente cu bucata, cind n-ai cum sa stii,dimineata, la deschidere,daca vreun ticnit de hippy n-o sa dea peste tine si n-o sa-ti arda un glont.”
― Harry Kemelman, Miercuri pe rabin la prins ploaia

“Stresul implicat in lupta ia totdeauna sfirsit cind te predai.”
― Harry Kemelman, Miercuri pe rabin la prins ploaia

“Bohemian and long on ideals, especially where the necessity of living up to them was someone else’s.”
― Harry Kemelman, Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out

“You Jews have no political sense whatsoever, and we Irish have a genius for it. When you argue or campaign for office, you fight on the issues. And when you lose, you console yourselves with the thought you fought on the issues and argued reasonably and logically. It must have been a Jew who said he’d rather be right than President. An Irishman knows better; he knows that you can do nothing unless you’re elected. So the first principle of politics is to get elected. And the second great principle is that a candidate is not elected because he’s the logical choice, but because of the way he has his hair cut, or the hat he wears, or his accent. That’s the way we pick even the President of the United States, and for that matter, that’s the way a man picks his wife. Now wherever you have a political situation, political principles apply. So don’t you worry as to why or how you were chosen. You just be happy that you were chosen.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Mai bine interesat de religie decit de chestiile in care,pe timpurile astea , se vira tineretul.”
― Harry Kemelman

“Monsignor O’Brien is a priest in the tradition of the priests of the Bible, the sons of Aaron. He has certain powers, magical powers, that he exercises in the celebration of the Mass, for example, where the bread and wine are magically changed to the body and blood of Christ. Dr. Skinner as a Protestant minister is in the tradition of the prophets. He has received a call to preach the word of God. I, a rabbi, am essentially a secular figure, having neither the mana of the priest nor the ‘call’ of the minister. If anything, I suppose we come closest to the judges of the Bible.”
― Harry Kemelman, Four Rabbi Small Mysteries: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, and Monday the Rabbi Took Off

“It’s a sad paradox that while they adhere so strongly to the fashion in clothes, they have largely departed from the spirit of the movement. Chassidism was originally a kind of romantic mysticism, a movement of joy and laughter, of singing and dancing, that involved a kind of direct confrontation with God. It was a useful and necessary reaction to the meticulous observance of religious regulations that was characteristic of the time. But now it has come full circle, and this group is the most pedantic in its strict adherence to the letter of the law.”
― Harry Kemelman, Monday the Rabbi Took Off

“And what law, anywhere, has ever affected everyone exactly the same? There are always exceptional cases which are unfair to the individual. But society tolerates them because a perfect law is impossible and life without law is unthinkable.”
― Harry Kemelman, Four Rabbi Small Mysteries: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, and Monday the Rabbi Took Off

“Our people have only the one chance. Our good deeds must be done on this earth in this life. And since there is no one to share the burden with them or to intercede”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Take my advice, Rabbi, don’t get sucked into the sight-seeing rat race. I been there four times already. The first time they had me going from early morning till night. After the first week I said I’m not moving from the hotel. And that’s what I did all the other times we went I’d stay in the hotel, sitting around the pool, shmoosing, playing cards. The missus, of course, she wanted to see things. She’d take one of these tours at the drop of a hat. So I told her to go and she could tell me about it afterward. You know, any other country I wouldn’t think of letting her go alone, but in Israel, you feel it’s safe. There’s always Hadassah ladies that if she don’t know them, she at least knows somebody they know. It’s like family.”
― Harry Kemelman, Four Rabbi Small Mysteries: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, and Monday the Rabbi Took Off

“¿Cómo puedo hablar con un agente de KLM? ¡Contáctenos™!

Para hablar con un agente de KLM desde México, puedes llamar al número de atención al cliente +”
― Harry Kemelman, Adventures in Thrift

“In this life you sometimes have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing man. And in the long run, it’s better to please God—He’s more apt to remember.”
― Harry Kemelman, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

“You know, we have a saying that other people boast of the beauty of their women; we boast of our old men.”
― Harry Kemelman, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

“We Yankees don’t like anybody, including each other, but we tolerate everybody.” Even”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Ben is a businessman through and through. When a businessman decides that the time has come to give charity, he views it as a business proposition. He is buying kovod, honor. And naturally he wants to get the most for his kovod dollar. If he uses the money to build a chapel—say the Goralsky Memorial Chapel—who will see it? Who will know about it except the folks here in Barnard’s Crossing? But,” he lowered his voice, “suppose he were to donate a laboratory to Brandeis or even to Harvard? The Goralsky Chemical Research Laboratory? Eh? Scientists and scholars from all over the world would get to hear of it.”
― Harry Kemelman, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

“Without meaning to, you usually end up with a board made up of the richer members of the congregation.”
― Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late

“Those are Christians that are being slaughtered, and nobody in the Christian world lifts a finger or even protests, not the Pope, not your World Council of Churches, not the Christian countries. Only the damn Jews. It’s downright embarrassing. No wonder that no one supports them in the UN. That’s the point I was making. They make everybody uncomfortable, so everybody votes against them.”
― Harry Kemelman, Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out

“Instead of going back to teaching, she began to do housework because it paid more.”
― Harry Kemelman, That Day the Rabbi Left Town

“The rabbi shrugged. “It’s a common enough belief among nations that they have a special mission with respect to the rest of the world. The Greeks thought they alone were civilized and all other people were barbarians or savages. The Romans thought it was their duty to spread the benefits of Roman law and order to the rest of the world. The Spaniards thought their function was to spread Catholicism, and the English felt that they were conferring the benefits of Victorian England on India and Africa. Our own country feels a mission to spread democracy, just as, until very recently, the Russians thought it was their function to spread communism. And then there is Islam, which once again feels it has a special mission. The big difference is that we were enjoined to do it by force of example rather than by the sword. You may ridicule the idea that an Almighty God would select one group of people from all the rest, but the fact is that that group believed it, and more or less acted accordingly.” A student ventured, “Is that the official view?” “How do you mean ‘official’?” asked the rabbi. “Well, you know, the accepted version of the Jewish church or synagogue, or whatever you call it?” “If you’re thinking of an official creed,” said the rabbi, “we don’t have one. Every synagogue is autonomous. And every Jew tends to interpret the Law as he sees fit, as it applies to himself. We have”
― Harry Kemelman, That Day the Rabbi Left Town

“for me to ask for a raise is—is demeaning.”
― Harry Kemelman, Someday the Rabbi Will Leave

“what law, anywhere, has ever affected everyone exactly the same? There are always exceptional cases which are unfair to the individual. But society tolerates them because a perfect law is impossible and life without law is unthinkable. If there are too many such exceptional cases—that is, if the cases stop being exceptional and become the rule—then either changes are made in the law, or it is bent a little, reinterpreted, to accommodate to the new situation.”
― Harry Kemelman, Four Rabbi Small Mysteries: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, and Monday the Rabbi Took Off

“But cynicism is only disappointed idealism.”
― Harry Kemelman, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

“I’m afraid my class regarded it as an elaborate trap and the safest course was to remain silent.”
― Harry Kemelman, The Nine Mile Walk: The Nicky Welt Stories