March 27, 2007
Welcome to the seventh 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. Don't forget to check out the back-issues of Vekslblat.
This edition of Vekslblat includes news, an exclusive extract from Wex's new book Just Say Noo, articles, Wex's Kvetch of the Month and much more. Enjoy!
News
New Larger Sizes in our Online Store!
We have just added five new t-shirt styles to our online store - four women's plus size shirts (scoop neck in light or dark colors and v-neck in light and dark colors) and, at last, a dark kids' shirt is now available! Click on the images above or the following link to go to our online store.
Exclusive Just Say Noo Extract
Just Say Noo is a Yiddish phrasebook that fills in the blanks - a guide to the hows and whys and shut-ups of Yiddish.
Here is another exclusive preview of Wex's new book Just Say Noo:
Nakhes, often spelled “nachos” in English, is probably the best-known of all Yiddish words having to do with pleasure. If a phrase like
pleasure that you get from your children
hasn’t yet entered English, it isn’t for want of trying. Nakhes pops up often enough on T.V. and in movies to suggest that even people who keep Christmas are familiar with it. It means “delight, pleasure,” but it means so much more than “delight” or “pleasure.” Uriel Weinreich glosses it as “(spiritual) pleasure,” by which he means only that you can’t get any nakhes from a body rub (though the rub itself can be a mekheiyeh). The pleasure to which nakhes refers is intangible, unquantifiable; it takes place in the mind, rather than the body, and is entirely a matter of disposition or point of view: graduation ceremony means nothing to you until a child of yours is one of the graduates.
This extract uses a different transliteration system that Wex is trying out in the new book.
Where's Wex?
The Creative Artists Agency loves
Born to Kvetch
Literary agent Robert Bookman of CAA in Los Angeles was kind enough to forward us this great photo of himself and his colleagues all enjoying Born to Kvetch. The photograph was used as part of a humorous presentation of agent photos at a recent retreat for literary agents from CAA.
Articles
While most Jewish Week readers are probably familiar with the term minyen, the quorum of ten traditionally male Jews required for the recitation of certain prayers and the performance of certain rituals, I’m willing to bet that considerably fewer are acquainted with a fantastic but much rarer Yiddish term for a minyen and a half–of eggs rather than people, but a minyen and a half nonetheless.
In the old country, eggs were sold fifteen at a time, rather than by the dozen. In the area around Lodz in Poland, where my paternal grandfather grew up, a package of fifteen eggs was known as a mendl, just like the male personal name: “Gets mir a mendl eyer,” meant “Give me fifteen [i.e., a carton of] eggs.”
Mendel is a very common name, but a mendl of eggs will never be a Kyle in English. In other parts of the Yiddish-speaking world, a mendl was called a mandl, which can also mean “almond” or “tonsil,” but mendl is a lot more fun: it can also mean “sheaf,” and might well be the reason why the Salvation Army never quite took off in Yiddish. I can’t imagine anyone being converted by a hymn that speaks of “bringing in the mendls, we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the mendls.” It sounds more like a threat than a prophecy.
For a guide to Yiddish pronunciation, click here.
The Yiddish World of Michael Wex Recommends - Passover Rescue Page!
And Finally....Wex’s Kvetch of the Month:
I’ve got nothing to complain about; the chocolate Easter bunnies in my corner supermarket all have reliable hekhsheyrim, and some of them are even kosher for Passover. Meshiekhs tsaytn, as they’d say in Jewish, the messiah will be here any day.
It reminds of watching television with my grandmother when a commercial sponsored by one or another “Jesus is the reason for the season” Christian groups came on. As the commercial came to a close, the announcer on the voiceover solemnly said, “For god so loved the world that he gave His only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” to which mybubeh, a gifted amateur theologian who loved nothing better than to talk back to her television, replied:
Bull-SHIT! I’d go for Jesus the son of Pantheros [a Roman soldier identified by ancient scandal-mongers as Jesus’s father] before I’d go for that!
Git Yontef! Wishing all our readers a happy and peaceful Passover. Look out for your next edition of Vekslblat in April.