I have been unable to find any distinctively Jewish toasts
except Lah'im & Mazaltov. Yiddish speaking Jews were renown for
their curses though and curses are nothing but the inverse of a toast and
often have the same "May you..." form as a toast. The below are
primarily eastern European Jewish curses derived from the Yiddish. Here are a few
curses translated into English. If you have the Yiddish original
please send it to me at
.
- May you never be alone in bed: you should always have bedbugs, lice, fleas, etc.
- "May you grow beets in your belly and pee borsht!
- May you have twelve healthy children.
And then may someone give one of them a whistle.
- May they find thousands of new cures for you each year.
- May you have devoted children to chase the flies off your nose.
- May you never have to visit such a filthy place as a bathroom or outhouse.
- May your daughter's beauty be admired by everyone in the circus.
- May you grow so wealthy you can afford only the finest specialists.
- You should be like a chandelier -- you should hang and burn.
- May they name a baby after you!
(It means "Drop dead!" because, traditionally, babies are named after *dead* relatives.)
- You should find a gold piece on the sidewalk and be so arthritic you can't pick it up.
- Your nose should grow so much hair it strains your soup.
- May your blood turn to alcohol so all the fleas on your body get drunk and dance the mazurka in your belly button!
- May the sun and the spring breeze warm you and caress you like an apple as you hang from a tree.
- May you back into a pitchfork and grab a hot stove for support.
- Den ganzen Kopp sollen se haben voller Läüs und so e korz Ärmchen dass Se
sich net kratze könne
"Your head should be full of lice but your arms should be too short for you to scratch."
- Zolst farlirn ale tseyner, akhuts eynem -- un *der*
zol dir veytun (vey tun)!
May you lose all your teeth, except for one -- and *that* one should hurt!
- You should grow like an onion,
with your head in the ground pointing towards hell.
- May you win a lottery,
and spend it all on doctors.
- May you live in a house with a hundred rooms,
and may each room have its own bed,
and may you wander every night from room to room,
and from bed to bed, unable to sleep.
- I hope you swallow an umbrella and it opens up inside you
- May you grow so rich that your widow's second husband
never has to worry about making a living.
- May you grow two more hands to scratch all your itches.
- May you back into a pitchfork and grab a hot stove for support.
- May you have lot of money, but you should be the only one in the family with it.