The Nation's Pulse / Gezunthayt for Yiddish!
Varon, Benno Weiser
GEZUNTHAYT FOR YIDDISH! Is Yiddish dying? If so, it's fading out with a bang. For decades it has been a standing joke that when a funeral procession passes by the premises of the Jewish Daily...
...Tchk, tchk-including meals...
...who needs it...
...The Oath" is the story of a merchant who on his deathbed extracts from his son the promise that he will abandon his university studies of agriculture and dedicate himself to the study of the Talmud...
...This one, however, makes for joyful reading, especially if you Simon and Schuster, $15.95...
...His whores and pimps are no more real than his demons and hobgoblins...
...The father explains that Moses lived until a hundred and twenty...
...Occasionally the a-propos is a bit farfetched, as in this sample of the Yinglish use of "from" instead of "of": To celebrate his mother's birthday, the son sends her a bottle of champagne and a jar of caviar...
...And yet, while Yiddish speakers and readers are fading out, Yiddish has produced in our days two of its greatest writers, the magnificent Isaac Bashevis Singer and the no less important Chaim Grade...
...without yourself, a transitive verb converted into an intransitive colloquialism), for-free (at no cost), How come (you didn't show up...
...What's with (for what's the matter with, what's wrong with) . . . ? A special effect is achieved by placing the adjective at the beginning of a sentence, as in smart he isn't...
...Wouldn't it be just as funny as if it was about two Irishmen...
...Two arms he broke!'' "The race...
...I dialed the wrong number...
...Yes, some may say that such words as Mensch, schleppen, Schmalz, and saftig are German...
...The climax," he tells, "was my audience with the Pope...
...A number of universities both here and in Canada have created chairs for the study of Yiddish, but these are no more likely to guarantee the future of Yiddish as a living language than have chairs in Latin or classical Greek for those two languages...
...Pause...
...Does that mean you're not coming over...
...For decades it has been a standing joke that when a funeral procession passes by the premises of the Jewish Daily Forward in New York, the publisher yells down to the pressroom to print one copy-less...
...excuse the expression, get lost, I need it like a hole in the head, it can't hurt, it shouldn't happen to a dog, I know from nothin(g), to eat one's heart out, likewise, no-good, no-goodnik, out of this world, do (or go) sue me, so what...
...Laybe Layzar's Courtyard" is set against the rich tapestry of life in Vilna and the adventures of a local Don Juan (who, one would assume, never goes so far as to sleep with the young woman he compromises...
...Even more remarkable is the degree to which the dying language has managed to infiltrate English...
...Now retired, he lives as a writer and lecturer in Brookline, Massachusetts...
...Rosten makes a convincing case for all of them...
...in correct English it would be, Don't ask me...
...Rosten writes: "The culture of the Jews is so steeped in orality, so responsive to wit, so studded with repartee, so impatient with the obvious, that it is not surprising that Jews prize swift deflation...
...Since receiving the Nobel Prize, Singer is being read in translation all over the world...
...is nonetheless a scientific treatise of sorts, and a book that is not to be rushed through...
...If the reader is surprised by the inclusion of one or the other of these expressions, he may frankly disbelieve that the following ones derive from Yiddish...
...What kind of man is he...
...Papa...
...He also demands from his daughter the promise that she will marry only a law-abiding scholar...
...These words have made it into English via Yiddish...
...I'll feed the children, clean up and do the cooking...
...We are all familiar with the one-and-only Isaac Bashevis Singer-which may explain why his contemporary, Chaim Grade, is only posthumously getting the recognition he so richly deserves...
...Grade is no avant-garde writer...
...But Mr...
...I know, I have reached the number of words my editor allowed me...
...the voice wailed...
...The ginger ale I loved, dollink...
...Some words, like chutzpah, no longer require italics or quotation marks...
...A sample: "Do you realize, Grampa, that it cost the U.S...
...His is solid literature in the grand style about a world that has ceased to exist...
...He asks: "Is Turkish...
...Or this one: The owner of three haberdasheries returns from a vacation in Europe...
...Though he does not read as easily, he deserves respect in his own right...
...A large chunk of Hooray for Yiddish...
...There may be an argument whether Yiddish itself is a dying language, but there can be no doubt that its readers are dying out...
...Which leads us to Rosten's use of jokes, to illustrate the use of certain words...
...This is Alton 6-4494...
...but those huckleberries tasted from herring...
...How's Papa...
...Here they go, stripped to the essentials: A young boy tells his father that a bearded sage has wished him to live to be a hundred and twenty-one...
...And though these novellas are set close to the outbreak of World War II* there is no inkling of the catastrophe to come...
...Here is a short list: big deal...
...indeed, a goodly number of Yid-dishisms have invaded English unbeknownst to most of their users...
...Knopf, $15.95...
...I adore Singer...
...drop dead...
...He is more earthbound than Singer...
...But the grandchildren of the surviBenno Weiser Varon lived as a newspaperman in Latin America and returned there years later as Ambassador of Israel...
...In Israel after the war Yiddish was for a time revived...
...And the reader can't help but admire how Grade weaves his suspense without the slightest amount of violence, crime, or sex...
...Why always two Jews...
...When the latter dies, she takes full command of his household and wife...
...A: "O.K...
...O-O-oy...
...VOh, Mama...
...But I would feel remiss if I didn't give a small sampling of the non sequiturs and repartees Rosten cites, so characteristic of Yiddish humor...
...Two Zulus meet...
...so what else is new...
...by Benno Weiser Varon know the Yiddish words and can therefore fully grasp the mastery of their translation...
...And there are the hybrids that America has taken to its bosom, such as alrightnik, fancy-shmancy, and crazy-doctor (not a demented physician, but one who treats crazy people...
...Terrible, Mama...
...Chaim Grade, by contrast, is an impressionist, not a surrealist...
...Enough already...
...MY K*A*P*-L*A*N...
...I expect no reader to use all of them, but I doubt whether a single one does not use some of them...
...The scandal must be seen against the background of the woman's pious Jewish neighbors and her father, whose single pleasure in life is to chastise his body by fasting and poring over some Talmud tome...
...The Pope...
...A new collection of Grade's fiction, Rabbis and Wives,t contains three lengthy novellas...
...Lovers of erotica won't get much out of Chaim Grade...
...a snack...
...These stories might have been written half a century ago (when they are to have taken place...
...There is could be (not identical with it could be), Don't ask...
...Says one: 'When is your son going to be Bar Mitzva?' So the second Zulu says-" B: "Forget it...
...My back is killing me, the children are acting like wild Indians, the house is a mess-and to top it off, I have six guests for dinner...
...But so is about 70 percent of the Yiddish vocabulary...
...What is often overlooked is that Singer is a master of imagination who simply uses the one milieu familiar to him as a canvas for his exuberant strokes...
...All the characters are masterfully drawn...
...You liked it...
...Yiddish continues to offer other delights as well...
...This synthesis is called Yinglish (I'm not sure whether seriously or jokingly) by Leo Rosten, author of the modern classic The Joys of Yiddish, and its recently published sequel, Hooray for Yiddish!* Though Rosten has published close to thirty books on a wide range of topics (his first stake to fame was O K*A*P*L*A*N...
...Last place he won...
...the intrepid kibitzer (who is now supported by the dibitzer-one who advises a kibitzer), the skulking gonef...
...Grade, meanwhile, is gaining posthumous recognition in the United States...
...Originally rejected in Jewish Palestine in favor of Hebrew, this attitude was reversed after the Holocaust, out of respect for the language of most of its victims...
...You angel...
...Stop, dollink, I'm coming right over...
...The Rebbetzin" is the story of a woman devoured by feelings of revenge and posses-siveness toward an eminent rabbi who broke his betrothal to her...
...Or this one on the use of "oy...
...Yiddish abounds in irony...
...But even if you can't, Rosten's subtitle, "A Book About English," says it all: the average English speaker will be delighted to learn just how much of his everyday language is rooted in Yiddish...
...She marries a minor scholar, makes him abandon the town where he is rabbi, and pushes him ahead in the town where her former fiance reigns...
...Do you stop a pianist who is playing Chopin because you heard that piece before?'" Jewish culture, he argues, is a joke-making culture...
...Is Portuguese...
...In the United States the Jewish Daily Forward ceased to be a daily last year and now appears only once a week...
...But why did the sage say 'a hundred and twenty-owe?' '' "Maybe he didn't want you to die suddenly...
...Or two Zulus...
...There are Yiddish words that have won acceptance in English dictionaries: the aforementioned chutzpah (need I repeat the classic definition...
...Please...
...Enjoy...
...His characters are also fictional, but real...
...A mother calls her daughter: "So how are you...
...There is the ubiquitous shtik (which can be a trick, or in showbiz jargon an actor's device to steal attention), and the shamus (originally a sexton or caretaker, who in American slang has become a detective, a private eye...
...deals with phrasings and syntax indigenous to Yiddish which reappear in spoken English...
...he is a first class philologist (with an overwhelming sense of humor...
...for instance (instead of for example), that's for sure, you want to hear something...
...What number are you calling...
...an idiomatic feedback, so to speak, which adapts English words to Yiddish patterns, intonation, inflection, and facial expressions...
...Another one: A: "Did you hear the story about the two Jews who-" B: "Stop...
...She calls him: "Oh, thank you, Seymour, for the fine present...
...v. to eat on the sly), shlep (drag), shmaltz (excessive sentimentality), shmo, standing for the obscene but more effective schmuck (I pass on translating it), the timid, unassertive shnook, tsuris (trouble), zaftik (plump, buxom), and who knows how many more...
...Papa died nine years ago...
...Spiced with witticisms and jokes, Hooray for Yiddish...
...Yet I had to wince when it was said that one reason he won the Nobel Prize was his portrayal of Polish Jewry...
...Sure he won...
...Alton 6-4491...
...about 10 billion dollars to put a man on the moon...
...vors no longer read Yiddish...
...It would be much more accurate to call him a portrayer of Polish Jewry...
...Wait...
...AH this is derived from Yiddish...
...This goes also for gezunthayt, which in German is gesundheit...
...Scorn is expressed by placing the direct object before the subject: ''Thanks she expects for losing my credit cards...
...Are you crazy...
...He warns: "And before you growl 'I read that one before!' let me say, 'So what...
...A 44 portly...
...Basically it is a lexicon and who would normally want to read a lexicon...
...I don't know whether all the following ones have made it into the dictionaries, but they should be getting there: kvell, meaning to gush (usually over the achievements of one's child or grandchild), kvetsh (one who continuously frets, complains, and sighs), mentsh (an upright, honorable, and decent person), a boo-boo, yak-yak, or yakkety-yak (chatter, gossip), mish-mash (hodgepodge), nosh (n...
Vol. 16 • June 1983 • No. 6
