Born to Kvetch Chapter 6: You Should Grow Like an Onion THE YIDDISH CURSE
Born to Kvetch extract:
"You should own a thousand houses... with a thousand rooms in each house... and a thousand beds in every room. And you should sleep each night in a different bed... in a different room... in a different house... and get up every morning... and go down a different staircase... and get into a different car... driven by a different chauffeur... who should drive you to a different doctor -- and he shouldn't know what's wrong with you, either."
Think of it as a kvetch with a mission, a bellyache that knows where it’s going; it’s a classic example of the klole, the Yiddish curse. It might be formulaic--you have to wonder if it’s subtlety or an oversight that every room in every house seems to be a bedroom--but it shows how much you care. This kind of elaborate curse--delivered in a Talmudic sing-song--isn't an imprecation, it’s a pastime, a form of recreation that lets standard Yiddish thought and speech run wild.
