Change for the pushke

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Almost full!
Quite some time ago our town's Chabad rabbi gave me this pushke. 
It was empty then.
Rabbi Shneor's hope was that I would put in some loose change every day--not because he needed the money for Chabad House, but because he wanted me to learn the habit of giving tsdakah every day. 

Tsdakah in Hebrew means justice or righteousness but is often translated (for want of a better English equivalent) as "charity."

Today's Theme Day subject at City Daily Blog is CHANGE and I decided to go with coins as change.  But to see how other bloggers did it, see 
http://cdpbthemeday.blogspot.com/ .

To read about the uniquely Jewish perspective on charity, please see
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/814118/jewish/Tzedakah-Charity.htm

and
https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/pushke
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Die goldene Medina

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Every spring when these Israeli trees shed their flowers, turning the sidewalk a bright yellow, I am reminded of the Yiddish expression Die goldene Medina.
The Jewish immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island probably did not expect to see America's streets literally  paved with gold  in "the golden country," but they knew that with hard work and patience they would rise out of poverty.

The trees responsible for my reverie look like this, with rough bark.
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(Linking to Camera-Critters meme, for the sweet black cat.)
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Room enough

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New plots are ready at my town's cemetery.
Which brings to mind the old Yiddish proverb,

As long as a man lives, the entire world is too small for him.  After death the grave is big enough. 

Azoy lang der mentsh lebt iz im di gantse velt tsu kleyn; nokhn toyt iz im der keyver genug.
 אַזוי לאַנג דער מענטש לעבט איז אים די גאַנצע וועלט צו קליין; נאָכן טויט איז אים דער קבֿר גענוג.

For ABC Wednesday, Y is for Yiddish.
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The world consists of cogs

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As an old Yiddish proverb says,
The world consists of cogs: one depends on the other.
Di velt iz a hekeleh: ainer darf tsum anderen.

And on the wall, Hebrew idioms using the word "wheel," e.g. "to reinvent the wheel" and "If Grandma had wheels ...."
I found these in a play area for kids in the antique automobile museum at the Omer Open Museum and Industrial Park.
In future posts you will see their nice sculpture garden, a photography exhibit, friendly cats, and of course the old cars.
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Horse Yiddish

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What is a funny old way of saying "a distant relation" in Yiddish?

Dem ferds baytsh-shtekls potkeve   
דעם פערדס בייטש-שטעקלס פאטקעווע
Literally: the horse’s whipping stick’s horseshoe!

And what do I miss most about Vienna?
Her beautiful horses clip-clopping around the palaces!
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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The green stone

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Eyal, my sweet grandson in Australia, can help illustrate another Yiddish proverb.

If a stone stays in one place, it becomes overgrown with grass.
Az der shteyn ligt af eyn ort vert er oykh bavaksn mit groz.
.אַז דער שטיין ליגט אויף איין אָרט ווערט ער אויך באַוואַקסן מיט גראָז

English proverb expressing the converse: A rolling stone gathers no moss.

German gloss (unattested): Als (wenn) der Stein liegt auf einem Ort wird er auch bewachsen mit Grass.
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Check out the proverb in many languages at Proverbial Planet.
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P.S. I added an update to the earlier post if you'd like to learn more about illegal firearms in my country.
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Can one teach a bear to dance?

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Z is for zoo, the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem.

And another old Yiddish saying:

With time, even a bear can be taught to dance. 
 אַ בער לערנט מען אויך אויס טאַנצן. A ber lernt men oykh oys tantsn.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
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Yiddish wit and wisdom

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Another old Yiddish proverb:

Better a crooked foot than a crooked mind 

Beser a krumer fus eyder a krumer kop

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Can't make a streimel out of a pig's tail

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Y is for Yiddish wit, for example:

You can't make a shtreimel out of a pig's tail.

• Fun a khazer-shventsl ken men keyn shtrayml nit makhn.

• English equivalent: You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
• Meaning: You cannot produce anything of good quality from poor raw material; often used of people.

In case you've never seen a shtreimel, it's that fur hat on the right.
Worn by certain ultra-orthodox Jewish men on holidays and Shabbat.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
UPDATE: Please see added interesting information in the comments.
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X, O, and the K-word

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The challenge of letter X comes around again today at ABC Wednesday meme.

Tic-tac-toe is not the only fun way to use X and O.

Remember the era when we still wrote letters on stationery--and signed them with XOXO under our signature?
OK, it's easy to imagine hugging arms looking like the O. That is a recent North American addition to XOXO.
But how did X come to stand for "kiss"?
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Apparently this custom started in the early Christian era. To sign with "X" gave a document the validity of a sworn oath. The X was the first Greek letter of the Greek name Xristos (Jesus) and the X cross mark symbolized the cross.
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Many people were illiterate until even as recently as 150 years ago. So signing X took the place of a full signature. To show the importance of the mark, people would kiss it, just like they reverently put their lips to a Bible or crucifix.
This practice led to the idea of X representing a kiss.
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To Jews, however, X was an evil sign (as Leo Rosten recounts in The Joys of Yiddish) which represented the horrors of crucifixion [Jesus was not the only Jew crucified by the Romans, remember] as well as being the symbol of their Christian oppressors.
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So when waves of Jews, many of them illiterate or writing only non-Latin alphabets, entered Ellis Island in New York, they refused to sign the immigration forms with the customary X.
Instead they drew a circle.
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The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced ky-kel).
The American immigration inspectors started calling anyone who signed with an O a "kikel." Soon this was shortened to "kike."
Jewish-American merchants continued to sign with O instead of X for several decades, spreading the nickname kike wherever they went as a natural result.
At that time it was not a bad word. Only later did it develop into a racial slur.
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Apropos, you might also enjoy (?) my previous X-letter post; it's about xenophobia. :-)
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