Born to Kvetch
Chapter 2: Six Feet Under, Baking Bagels
YIDDISH IN ACTION

Born to Kvetch extract:

There's a way of thinking that owes something to Talmudic logic and can be applied to absolutely anything, as in the idiom hakn a tshaynik, to knock a tea kettle. More often than not, this phrase is used in the negative: Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik, don't knock me a tea kettle—that is, you don't have to shut up completely, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop rattling on about the same damned thing all the time… Knocking or hitting or chopping a teapot is the kind of image that causes kids from Yiddish-speaking families to wonder about their parents’ thought processes, and generations have been disappointed to realize how pedestrian the image really is. Think of a kettle with a cover or lid on the top. You pour the water into the kettle, put the lid back on top, turn the burner on, go off to make a phone call and forget all about it. The more water boils away, the more the cover rattles. The fewer the contents, the less it has to offer, the louder and more annoying the noise. The lid is moving up and down, banging against the kettle like a jaw in full flap, clanging and banging and signifying nothing. Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik--don't bang away at me like the lid on an empty kettle.

The image is so striking that hakn a tshaynik has become one of the most popular idioms in the language, making its way into millions of Jewish and non-Jewish homes through the medium of Three Stooges shorts: Moe is on his way to a hock-shop; when Larry hears where he's going, he says, "While you're there, hock me a tshaynik." During a manhunt for the Stooges, who are suspected of having kidnapped a baby, Larry disguises himself as a Chinese laundryman; confronted by a cop who asks, "What kinda Chinaman are you?" Larry bursts into rapid-fire Yiddish, beginning with "Ikh bin [I am] a Chinaboy fun di Lower East Side," and concluding with, "Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik and I don't mean efsher [maybe]."

While the Stooges were banned in many homes because of their eye-gouging, nose-pulling, face-slapping and occasional propensity to violence, these activities were called discipline in my own household. What bothered my parents was their Yiddish, which can get pretty salty, especially when Moe dresses up as Hitler. Along with Lenny Bruce and early Mad magazines, the Stooges are responsible for exposing millions of children born after World War II to Yiddish and its ethos; "Don't hit me a kettle" could have come right out of Mad.

Tshaynik hakking was not confined to the commercial media, either. A Yiddish copy of the New Testament left in my family's milk box by some of our thoughtful neighbors in southern Alberta--they must have dropped it off in the middle of the night, just to give us a taste of what we were missing--rendered the sounding brass of St. Paul's well-known statement in 1 Corinthians 13 ("Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal") as .”..hak ikh nor a tshaynik." I definitely got Paul's point, but who needs a Bible that sounds like someone’s bobe? His message went in der linker peye, into my left sidelock, but didn’t make it as far as my ear.

For a guide to the pronunciation and transliteration used in Born to Kvetch, click here.

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