February 20, 2008
Welcome to the fourteenth edition of Vekslblat – The Yiddish World of Michael Wex's monthly e-zine. If this is the first copy you have received, as a special gift to thank you for subscribing to this newsletter we would like to offer you a free download of the e-book version of Wex’s classic The Kugel Story, a Jewish folktale for the 21st century. Please click here to download the e-book. This e-book is only available to Vekslblat subscribers so the link has been disabled. Don't forget to check out the back-issues of Vekslblat.
This edition of Vekslblat includes news, articles from the Jewish Week, a very special offer via our website, Wex's Kvetch of the Month and much more. Enjoy!
News
Where's Vekslblat been?
It's been crazed in the Wex household for the last two months - we were intending to send out a newsletter in January, but moving house was slightly more time-consuming than we had anticipated. Cataloguing and packing over 3,000 books was no mean feat and website updates simply had to be put on hold. Wex's library shelves arrive tomorrow and then, please God, we will finally be rid of the boxes...
A very special new offer
We are very excited to tell you that we are now offering inscribed copies of the hardcover version of Born to Kvetch - for just $25 USD (plus shipping and handling) you can have a personalized version of the New York Times bestseller, signed and inscribed by Wex himself - in Yiddish or English. You choose exactly what you want Wex to write on the title page. Go to our new web page Kvetchco Exclusives to find out more details!
Where's Wex?
"From the moment Michael Wex opened his mouth at his talk Kvetch, the playful impulse in Yiddish until the final sentence was uttered, I laughed. In fact, I also giggled the whole way home.
I had read the book Born to Kvetch and very much enjoyed Michael’s well-researched and perceptive explanations into the origins of sayings, proverbs and mannerisms of Yiddish culture. I suppose I should have been bored during the talk, having read the book. Instead I was floored by his brilliant delivery and his dry, witty comments. I chuckled when I read the book but I roared with laughter when Michael spoke – even when I knew what he was going to say!
In true Kvetch fashion, some participants wanted Michael to speak more Yiddish, some less – I felt it was the perfect combination. Whenever Michael said something in his rolling, expressive and sly Yiddish, he translated into simple and thoughtful English. I especially enjoyed hearing Michael speak Yiddish with a rich and decisive accent instead of the cleaned-up, properly-schooled Yiddish that is rarely actually spoken and is devoid of all character and humor. His Hebrew, too, had a distinctive Yiddish bent which I haven’t heard in years.
Thanks, Michael, for the insightful entrance into the fascinating world of the world’s funniest language.
Kim Tzurik – Come back soon!"
Next month he's off to Congregation Kol Ami in White Plains New York. Go to our events calendar on the website to keep up to date with all of Wex's gigs, public appearances and book signings.
Purim is only a month away!
Articles
Traveling from town to town on the Jewish Book Fair circuit, I’m beginning to feel like part of the great collective known as orkhe-porkhe--hoboes, vagrants, yidishe bindlestiffs like Stuffy Derma, the tramp on the old Milton the Monster Show. The term comes from the Hebrew oreakh poreakh, "a flying guest,” one who's here today and gone tomorrow.
Unlike those of us who collect royalties, real orkhe-porkhe lebn fun vint, " they live on wind,” fun nisim, "on miracles,” and fun rukhniyes. Rukhniyes means "spirituality,” but that doesn’t mean that they're subsidized to perform religious works. They simply have no visible means of support. You could even say that they lebn fun shvientem dukhnem, "live from the holy spirit, the holy ghost." which is not only invisible, but, so far as Jews are concerned, doesn't even exist.
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––until such time as he’s voted into office.
Now that Thanksgiving has passed, there’s no doubt that we’re well embarked on what my parents used to call shikker-tsayt, “season of the drunk,” a temporally fluid festive period observed by selected members of the dominant European and North American faith community. According to the Shulkhan Arukh ha-Mom, the strictly oral code of Jewish law composed by my mother and revealed only to members of my immediate family, the season was much longer than that just described: “From Labor Day—herst, Michael?––from Labor Day to nitl [that’s Yiddish for Xmas], they’re shikker all the time.” The din, the law derived from this proposition? Try never to go outdoors.
As Purim and Simchas Torah have taught us, though, love of the biterer tropn, “the bitter drop,” transcends all ethnic and religious boundaries and even terrestrial life itself: The Angel of Death is described as having a tipoh shel moroh, “a drop of gall,” at the end of his sword. Widespread misreading of moro as an adjective instead of a noun led to the loss of shel in tipo shel moro; the resulting tipo moro is perfectly good Hebrew, but means biterer tropn, “bitter drop, ” rather than “drop of gall or bile.”
It’s a characteristically Yiddish way of looking at fun. The image rests on the resemblance between the typical attitude of the Eastern European drinker--head back, mouth wide open, face about to flush and change color—and that of a dead person under the sword of the malekh ha-moves.
One hotel room, non-smoking, Anytown, U.S.A.
A book of matches with the words “Success Without Kollel” printed on the cover.
Eight small, braided candles; nine, if you count the shammes.
A battered prayer-book, its pages daubed with candle wax and stained with tears, said to have been presented to Jerome “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges on the occasion of his bar-mitzvah.
One lonely Child of Abraham, mercilessly flogging his most recent publication and wondering if his daughter, his bas-mitzvah aged black-eyed daughter, will still know him when he returns to his wintry northland home.
A match is struck in the hotel room. The shammes is lit. Incantations are incanted, blessings are sung, supplementary paragraphs mumbled through.
It’s the last night of Chanukah. Nine candles burn in my room. I’m singing the six-verse complete version of Maoz Tsur in the voice of Curly when an angry knock is heard at my door.
“House detective, open up!” All my life I’ve longed to hear these words, but can’t figure out why I should be hearing them now.
He bursts into the room. “Shamus,” I say, gesturing to the Chanukah-lamp on the windowsill, “Meet shammes.”
“This is a non-smoking room!” he screams, grabbing the carafe of the coffee/tea machine and heading towards the candles with the boiling water. “You owe us $250 for smoking in a no-smoking room.”
I knock the carafe from his hand. “Hak mir nisht ka’ tchaynik,” I scream, “Knock me no teapots, and I’m not smoking. I was looking at the candles.”
“Candles, shmandles, it counts as smoking. One of your neighbors complained.”
It isn’t easy to be a Jew: my publisher is out $250 in the name of religious freedom.
As this festive season of the year draws to a long-awaited close, I have to confess that, like so many members of other communities, I’ve been dreaming lately. Not of a white Christmas, particularly, but of “White Christmas” itself, the Irving Berlin song that has become virtually synonymous with the American idea of Christmas.
It’s no secret that Berlin was Jewish. Like Al Jolson, he was the son of a cantor and little Irving’s first language was Yiddish. Generations of listeners and commentators, though, have found nothing even remotely Jewish in anything Berlin wrote after such early novelty tunes as “Yiddisha Eyes,” “Yiddisha Nightingale,” “The Yiddisha Professor,” and “Yiddle on Your Fiddle Play Some Ragtime,” which have the same relation to Jewish culture as “Swanee River” does to African-American. Experts seem to be of the opinion that Berlin’s ancestral traditions are pretty much absent from any of the work for which he is remembered.
But “quandoque,” as the Latin poet Horace once wrote, “bonus dormitat Homerus, There comes a time when worthy Homer nods,” and that time seems to come at the end of “White Christmas.” “May your days be merry and bright,” is one of the well-known wishes with which the song concludes; anybody who’s ever offered or received a Yiddish greeting on Chanukah knows that the standard formula is a likhtikn un freylekhn khanike, “[may you have]”––here it comes––“a bright and merry Chanukah.” It might be mere coincidence, but I like to hope that it’s Chanukah’s revenge.
And Finally....Wex’s Kvetch of the Month:
A freylekhn purim! Look out for your next edition of Vekslblat in March.