YiddishWit.com is a collection of Yiddish proverbs and sayings and expressions that are published in Yiddish and that lend themselves to illustration. The illustrations are created by Johanna Kovitz, and are adaptations and recombinations of existing images, many of which are copyright-free graphics published by Dover.

Today’s Wit

The Yiddish language is written with Hebrew letters and read from right to left, but its grammar and much of its vocabulary are closely related to German. Also, quite a few words are borrowed directly from Hebrew.

The text is presented in three forms: Yiddish, using the Yiddish version of the Hebrew alphabet, Romanized Yiddish (shown in italics) using the YIVO system of transliteration; and English translation.