January 24, 2007
Welcome to the fifth 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 link has been disabled since the e-book is only available to Vekslblat subscribers.
This edition of Vekslblat includes news, an exclusive extract from Wex's new book Just Say Nu, articles, Wex's Kvetch of the Month and much more. Enjoy!
News
Hear Wex Sing!
Our apologies for the lack of newsletter in December - it was insane in the Wex world before the holidays. Michael was finishing his new book Just Say Nu (the book is due out in the autumn from St. Martin's Press) and we were preparing to teach at Klezkamp over Christmas week. Camp was a great success for all the Wexes - click here to see Michael performing "I'm Too Sexy" at the Klezkamp Staff Concert.
Exclusive Just Say Nu Extract
We are very excited to give all our newsletter recipients a sneak preview of Wex's new book Just Say Nu. Ostensibly son of Kvetch, Just Say Nu is a Yiddish phrasebook that fills in the blanks - a guide to the hows and whys and shut-ups of Yiddish. For your delectation here is Wex's translation of Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff" in Yiddish:
Kh’zits in es zakh doos harts oop, in vart meer,
(I’m sitting here eating my heart out)
Vart biz a koKHAnik klingt on.
(Waiting for a lover to call)
OONgeDRAYT toyznt NImern shoyn, hob ikh
(I’ve tried about a thousand numbers,)
RakhMOOnes afn teleFON.
(I feel sorry for the telephone.)
Kh’zikh meer Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef.
(I’m looking for some flayshiks), let it be yontef,
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks, ketsl, hei nakht,
(I need something flayshik, baby, tonight)
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef
(I want something flayshik, let it be yontef)
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks,
(I need something flayshik)
Ersht bin ikh fin MIKveh aROYS.
(I’ve just come out of the ritual bath.)
Kh’darf meer FLAYshiks
(I need something flayshik)
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks
(I want something flayshik
Kh’darf Epes FLAYshiks.
(I need something flayshik.)
Kh’zikh meer a koKHAnik voos zikht koKHANkeh,
(I’m looking for a lover who wants a lover)
Nokh a nakht aLAYN vil ikh nisht.
(Don’t want another night alone)
Kh’vil mesSHAmesh zein haMEEteh vee a KAleh,
(I want to use my bed like a bride does)
Nisht tsim shlufn nor tse vern geKISHT.
(Not for sleeping but for being kissed)
Kh’zikh meer Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef.
(I’m looking for some flayshiks,let it be yontef)
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks, ketsl, hei nakht,
(I need something flayshik, baby, tonight
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef
(I want something flayshik, let it be yontef)
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks,
(I need something flayshik)
Ersht bin ikh fin MIKveh aROYS.
(I’ve just come from the ritual bath)
Kh’darf meer FLAYshiks
(I need something flayshik)
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks
(I want something flayshik)
Kh’darf Epes FLAYshiks.
(I need something flayshik)
Kh’zits in es zakh doos harts imZIST oop,
(I sit and eat my heart out for nothing)
Nokh a nakht aLAYN vil ikh nisht.
(Don’t want another night alone)
OONgeDRAYT a HINdert NImern shoyn, ketsl,
(I’ve dialed about a hundred numbers, baby)
Kayner est meer nokh nisht dem knish.
(But there’s still nobody eating my knish)
Kh’zikh meer Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef.
(I’m looking for some flayshiks, let it be yontef
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks, ketsl, hei nakht,
(I need something flayshik, baby, tonight
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks, zol meer zein YONtef
(I want something flayshik, let it be yontef)
Darf ikh Epes FLAYshiks,
(I need something flayshik)
Ersht bin ikh fin MIKveh aROYS.
(I’ve just come out of the ritual bath)
Kh’darf meer FLAYshiks
(I need something flayshik)
Kh’vil Epes FLAYshiks
(I want something flayshik)
Kh’darf Epes FLAYshiks.
I need something flayshik.
This extract uses a different transliteration system that Wex is trying out in the new book.
The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist now available for the first time in English!
We are extremely excited and proud to announce that The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist, previously only available in German, is now available in the original English for only $14.99 through our online store! The story of a crime-fighting Belzer Hasidic wunderkind, Micah Mushmelon is a comic strip in prose. Click here to order your copy now.
Wex is in the New York Times - Again!
We were delighted to see that William Safire mentioned Born to Kvetch in his column in Sunday's edition of the New York Times. The article discussed how the word kvetch has become absorbed into the English language aided, in part, by Wex's bestselling book. To read Safire's piece, click here.Where's Wex?
After a completely crazy schedule before the holidays things have settled down now and Wex is aiming to stay at home more this year. However there are still opportunities to see him live and hear his lectures. Michael is the scholar in residence this weekend at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, OH. Then it's all quiet on the Western front until the beginning of March when both the Wexes will be reprising their hugely popular Purim Shpiel at the Lula Lounge in Downtown Toronto on Sunday 4th March - more details will follow in next month's newsletter.Articles
The following are five articles previously published in Wex’s Kvetch column in the Jewish Week.The mid-term election results have left many a Yiddish-speaking liberal echoing the title of an old klezmer tune and saying, “Oy, tateh, s’iz git, Oh, Daddy, it’s good.” In such a phrase, tateh—a familiar or affectionate term for “father”— is a way of avoiding the use of the Lord’s name in vain, while its diminutives tatenyu and tateleh, both of which mean “little father,” are sometimes used to bless a child to whom you’re speaking (often your own infant son or grandson) with length of days and children of his own.
Less affectionately, tatenyu is sometimes used as the equivalent of “Mac” or “buddy.” Her zekh tsi, tatenyu,” means, “Lissename, buddy,” while “Oy, tatenyu, s’iz git,” instead of “Oy, tate,” is the sort of thing that you say when your lover is doing something that you know is wrong but feels so right.
Such affectionate diminutives for father were once common in Indo-European languages and the idea appears already in Gothic, the earliest Germanic language for which we have written records. The honorific title, Aetli, “little father,” has been turned into a proper name under the form of “Attila.” The Hun leader’s real name was forgotten almost sixteen hundred years ago; all we know is that he conquered widely, then died on the night of his wedding. Had he been an early embodiment of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the Scourge of God would have been known as Tateleh the Litvak.
I knew that the world I grew up in was gone for good when I noticed three or four Volkswagens and a couple of BMW’s in the parking lot of my daughter’s Hebrew day school, all of them utterly unmolested.
When I was a kid you couldn’t park such a car at any Jewish institution and expect to come back to windows that were intact or tires that hadn’t been slashed. It was bad enough that non-Jews–veterans, yet–had such short memories, but the idea that a Jew would buy anything–let alone something that probably needed financing–when he knew that the money was going to them–was too much to bear.
Things were so bad that in the late ‘60’s, when a friend’s older brother paid fifty dollars for what had to have been a fifth-hand Bug, he was not only forbidden to park it in the family driveway, but his neighbors in Toronto’s Bathurst Manor, a Jewish area with an unusually high concentration of Holocaust survivors, not only refused to let him park on their street, they made it clear that they’d trash the car if he dared to do so–and he should also forget about ever going anywhere with any of their daughters ever again. They made this clear in Yiddish, which the Hitler-krikher, as they called him, understood perfectly. As I sat waiting for my daughter to come out of school, I wondered how many of those neighbors were spinning in their graves.
Nebekh, an interjection meaning "the poor thing, it's a pity, alas," is one of the oldest Slavic words in Yiddish, one of the few to have penetrated the Yiddish of Western Europe, where the non-Jewish population did not speak Slavic languages. "Nebbish" is a Germanized pronunciation of nebekh, which is usually spelt nebbich when transliterated into German. A nebbish is called a nebekhl in Eastern Yiddish, a person at whom you take one look and think, "Oy, nebekh, the poor thing."
The fact that nebekh managed to travel backwards, as it were, into non-Slavic territory indicates how indispensable it is to almost any Yiddish conversation. Jews were nebekhing all over Europe as early as the fifteenth century, and they haven't stopped doing so here. Many Yiddish statements would be incomplete without a nebekh: If you're the president's press secretary you say, "The president is nebekh sick." If you're the kind of citizen who can separate the office from the man, you'll also say nebekh, even if you voted for the other candidate. But if you're a journalist with pretensions to disinterest, you say, "The president is sick." Apply the same principles to your feelings for your relatives and you'll see that the presence or absence of a nebekh can tell a listener all that need be known about your familial relations.
So when a Jew with beard and payes nebekh kisses the president of Iran, you know how we feel for the poor Jewish people.
Whenever people find out that I work in Yiddish, they almost inevitably ask me to tell them my favorite Yiddish curse. These days it’s a kazarme zol af dir aynfaln, "a barracks should collapse on you.”
Having a building of any kind collapse on top of you is never pleasant, but if that building is a barracks, then you're probably in the army--the last place any East-European Jew wanted to find himself. There's a whole history of bad luck built into the collapse of the barracks: first you get a conscription notice; then you can't buy, hide or cheat your way out of serving; you endure the million and one horrors and humiliations of army life, along with the additional horrors and humiliations reserved exclusively for minorities; and then--as if all this isn't already punishment enough--the scene of all these crimes has to fall down and crush you--all because you hadn't succeeded in evading the draft, that is, because you had failed as a criminal.
There is something quite Talmudic about all of this; it's the dialectic, the logical examination of premises, that gives the curse its kick. In a culture in which every cursee is his or her own Rashi, cursing isn't a matter of yelling out bad words; the trick is to put the good ones together in the most damaging possible way.
Henry Ford might have been one large, cuddly bundle of Jew-hatred – he did write the preface to my copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion–but he also helped to enrich the Jewish people with the one thing for which it had been yearning since the publication of the Bove Bukh, a verse epic about a Yiddish-speaking knight: Henry Ford helped give us armor. Not for us the clank of mail as we struggle vainly to mount some stupid horse; we’d rather climb into something with wheels and heat that can serve as weapon and refuge simultaneously. And now that air conditioning means that no car window need ever be opened again, we’ve embarked on a new golden age of in-car Yiddish artistry. “Why do the nations rage?” ask the Psalms (Ps. 2:1); what’s with the chases, the guns, the fisticuffs? Let them take a lesson from us. The car has done more than any other invention to insulate us from the pains of goles, of exile. Behind that wheel, every Jew is a tough guy, a shtarker, a street fighting man who takes crap from nobody and knows that in a car, as in space, no one can hear him scream. The air of many a Yiddish-speaker’s car is heavy with slurs and slights. A combative spirit takes possession of such a driver and departs just as quickly when he turns off the ignition and opens the door. King of the road becomes lord of antacids again.
For a guide to Yiddish pronunciation, click here.
The Yiddish World of Michael Wex Recommends - Chosen Couture for All Your Valentine's Day Needs!
If you haven't yet discovered Chosen Couture's line of Jewish-themed gift items, you've been missing out. Many of their products have been seen on prime time television in the last few months, with Zach Braff wearing the "Kosher Beef" t-shirt on Scrubs,and the "You had me at Shalom" t-shirt appearing on "The Nights of Prosperity" and "What Would Barbra Do?" t-shirt appearing on "In Case of Emergency" just last week. Click on the image above to visit their great store.
And Finally.....Wex’s Kvetch of the Month:
My daughter's ivrit be-ivrit day school recently sponsored a trip to a local roller-rink as part of an effort to beef up school spirit and encourage Jewish unity. Despite all of its efforts to ignore the existence of Ashkenazi Hebrew and a millennium of Yiddish culture, the school has been unable to sever its essential connection to the traditions of the Yiddish-speaking world. The body-count at the end of the field trip came to three sprained ankles, two broken arms and a broken leg. The lawsuits are being conducted in English.Happy New Year! Look out for your next edition of Vekslblat in February.