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Description edit
A delightful excursion through the Yiddish language, the culture it defines and serves, and the fine art of complaint Throughout history, Jews around the world have had plenty of reasons to lament. And for a thousand years, they've had the perfect language for it. Rich in color,... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“P.3: Like so much of Jewish culture, kvetching has its roots in the Bible, which devotes a great deal of time to the nonstop grumbling of the Israelites, who find fault with everything under the sun. They kvetch about their problems and they kvetch about the solutions. They kvetch in Egypt and they kvetch in the desert. No matter what God does, it's wrong; whatever favours He bestows, they're never enough.”
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“P.23: Compared with the way things are supposed to be, the way things used to be when the Jews had a country and a Temple, everything sucks, and there's no point mincing words about it.”
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“P.24: The Yiddish tendency to rain on parades and deflate the expectations of others arises from a similar impulse to see everything "sub specie æternitatis" and wonder if it's good for the Jews.”
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“P.62: "To break through a fence" means to transgress, to put no boundaries to one's own behaviour, and two millennia of Mishnaic influence have left many Jews with a near-innate inclination for erecting barriers and devising prohibitions.”
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“P.64: "Yid" means "you" as often as "New," and is the only polite way of referring to a Jewish stranger (as long as he's a man).”
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“P.69: When "sheygets" is used of a Jewish boy (compare "rascal" in English), it is often pronounced "shkots" — a form developed by working backwards from the plural — so that everyone will know that the "sheygets" in question is a Jew. To call a Jewish boy a "sheygets" or a "shkots" is a matter of Jewish behaviour, not gentile ethnicity.”
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“P.75: A "posek" is a verse in the Bible, and any yeshiva boy worth his shiny black jacket should be able to tell you that the Torah consists of 5,845 "psukim", the numerical equivalent of the words "the sun" in gematria. Gematria is an interpretive technique based on assigning numerical values to letters of the alphabet.”
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“P.87: You can call a stupid or irreligious Jew a goy; you could never call him an "orel". There was a classified ad that ran for years in "Der Yid", the weekly newspaper of the Satmarer Hasidim, that began "Farleslekher orel", reliable male with prepuce seeks work as a handyman."”
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“P.92: As if endless exile and ravening goyim were not enough, let us not forget that "klal yisroel", the Jewish people as a whole, is besieged twenty-four hours a day by "sheydim", "rukhes", "klipes", "leytsim", "mazikim", and "dibukim" — demons, spirits, gremlins, sprites, goblins, and devils, whose only reason for living is to wreck your hopes and rain on your parade. They hate human happiness and can't stand prosperity.”
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“P.95: A person described as a lets is a wag, a dab hand with a quip, someone who sits at the back of the room and cracks wise.”
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“P.111: Heaven, where the dead people go, is technically known as "ganeydn", "the Garden of Eden", paradise," but people tend to speak more of "yene velt", "that world, the other world," the one where we're really not so anxious to go, which is why we aren't calling it paradise: the spirits might get the wrong idea.”
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“P.145: It's no secret that religious observance tends to decline as wealth and social mobility increase, and people sometimes joke that you can judge the state of the economy by Yom Kippur attendance in non-Orthodox synagogues: the worse the business, the larger the crowd.”
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“P.145-146: The idea that suffering is good for the Jews seems to have been embraced by everyone except the Jews who did the suffering. Sholem Aleykhem quotes the red bridle remark in one of the stories on which "Fiddler on the Roof" is based, and provides his own interpretation: "Got hot faynt a kaptsn". God hates a pauper, and the proof is that if God loved the pauper, the pauper wouldn't be a pauper."”
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“P.153: The wind, the "rukhniyes", the holy spirit are all elaborate versions of the much more well known "luftmentsh", an "air man" full of ideas that never fly. He tends to be busy enough, always rushing hither and yon, never not on his way to a meeting, but no one can figure out just what it is that he does for a living. A little of this, a little of that; and always the hope that something will soon turn up. He tends to be engaged in one "luft-eysek", "air business, business with no foundation," after another. He's usually portrayed as impractical, but desperate is probably a more accurate description.”
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“P.176: "A kosherer yid", "a kosher Jew," is exactly what he sounds like — a Jew who does what a Jew's supposed to do. He's honest and trustworthy, esteemed by God and man alike. He is "a yid fun a gants yor," "an all-year Jew," a day-to-day kind of Jew: John Q. Jew. He isn't a "rosheshonenik", "a Rosh Hashana Jew," or a Saturdays-and-holidays Jew; he's at shul every day, praying, studying, hanging out, and being a Jew. If a bar mitzvah was a real bar, the "yid fun a gants yor" would be one of the regulars.”
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“P.189:; A religious Jew — generally a yeshiva boy — who has strayed into worldly ways of thinking is said to be "niskhomets", he has fermented and become "khomets".”
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“P.191: There are generations already with us for whom canned pineapple — Del Monte, Dole, or the ultrakosher Festive — is a quintessentially Jewish food.”
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“P.219: At the age of thirteen years and one day, a boy who has managed to live long enough simply becomes "bar-mitsve," whether he does anything about it or not, whether he knows that he is "bar-mitsve" or not.”
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“P.241: Were there a politically correct Yiddish, "ziveg" would be enjoying new life among people who refer to their legal or common-law spouses as "partners." Unlike "khosn-kale" or "man un vayb," it would also work for same-sex couples.”
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“P.244: If you're invited to the house of someone whom you don't really know, they'll refer to you as "der gast," "the guest," when talking to you. "Tsi vil der gast a gloz tey," would the guest care for a cup of tea?"”
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“P.260: The much dirtier "yentsn," "to fuck," far exceeds "trenen," in frequency of use, largely because "yentsn" has been extended to mean "fuck" or "screw" in a nonsexual sense, while "trenen" is restricted to actual intercourse.”
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“P.283: The "gilgel" in "gilgel mekhiles" comes from a Hebrew verb that means "to roll, knead, bring to pass." Used on its own in Yiddish, "gilgel" means "metamorphosis," "transmigration of the soul," or "(re)incarnation." Shirley MacLaine is always talking about her different "gilgulim"; a dybbuk is the "gilgel" of a dead creature that has taken up residence in a living one, and so on.”
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“P.284-285: The word "siyem" has never lost its Talmudic associations, though, and has come to be applied to the celebration held to mark the completion — the "siyem" — of a course of Talmudic study, whether that course consists of the entire Talmud, one of its six orders, or an individual tractate. It celebrates the attainment of a goal and is often attended by a sizable "kiddesh".”
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Yiddish started out as German for blasphemers, as a German in which you could deny Christ without getting yourself killed any more often than necessary.
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Beelzebub, Baal Zevuv, lord of the flies, was a takeoff of Baal Zevul, lord of heaven.
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Jezebel, I-zevel in Hebrew, means “daughter of garbage”; her name was probably I-baal,
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Since studying Torah in the name of a deceased person is a common way of praying for his or her soul, Jews were afraid that studying on Jesus’s birthday might somehow work to Jesus’s benefit, so they abstained from study on Christmas Eve.
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What the chosen people have been chosen for is the obligation of fulfilling mitsves that are incumbent on nobody else.
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Kvetching lets us remember that we’ve got nowhere to go because we’re so special.
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BIz DI Yidn Veln Kumen, “until the Jews turn up.”
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ale tseyn zoln dir oysfaln, all your teeth should fall out, nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik, but you should keep one to get a toothache with.
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Judaism is a Talmudic, not a biblical religion; without the interpretive guidance of the Talmud, the Hebrew Bible can lead to Jesus on the cross as easily as to me at my bar mitzvah.
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mamoshes vi der goyisher got, as much substance as the god of the gentiles,
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First Sentence edit
A man boards a Chicago-bound train in Grand Central Station and sits down across from an old man reading a Yiddish newspaper.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Michael Wex (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 439.109
Subjects edit
- Books › Reference › Dictionaries & Thesauruses › Foreign Language › Yiddish
- Books › Reference › Foreign Languages › Instruction › Yiddish
- Books › History › World › Jewish
- Books › Reference › Words & Language › Linguistics
- Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology
- Books › Reference › Dictionaries & Thesauruses › Science
- Books › Religion & Spirituality
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