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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 email 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!
S
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.
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