Some years in the past, on the annual P.S. 3 ebook truthful, I got here throughout a Yiddish-English dictionary. This was a extra severe Yiddish-English dictionary than the considerably antic one I owned referred to as “Dictionary Shmictionary!” That one features a line drawing of a unadorned male, with physique components recognized by their Yiddish phrases—one phrase for “head” and eight phrases for “penis.”
As I thumbed by the intense dictionary, the primary phrase that caught my eye was mees—a phrase that even somebody with solely a smattering of Yiddish may be capable of establish as the basis phrase of meeskite, an unsightly particular person. The Broadway musical “Cabaret” features a track entitled “Meeskite.” Once I was in school, somebody I knew used to confer with a sure feminine he discovered unattractive as Mees America. (I want I may report that I assumed to reprimand him harshly for the misogyny mirrored in that phrase, however these had been completely different occasions.)
Within the dictionary I used to be holding, the primary definition for mees was certainly “ugly.” The second definition was “stunning.”
I discussed that uncommon mixture in “Household Man,” a memoir I printed in 1998. Within the intervening quarter century, I’ve usually thought of how a lot I treasure a language that might outline a phrase as each “ugly” and “stunning”—and the way a lot I regretted not figuring out the way to converse and perceive it.
The rationale for what may strike some as contradictory definitions was clear to me: concern of the Evil Eye. I may image one in all my great-aunts referring to an lovely toddler as a meeskite, as a result of calling her stunning may appeal to the malevolent consideration of the Evil Eye the subsequent time the toddler was within the kitchen and boiling water was on the range.
My great-aunts had been immigrants, however that doesn’t imply that I’d take into account that image international or old style. If requested right this moment to supply a one-sentence distillation of my beliefs, in the best way the Talmudic sage Hillel was challenged to clarify the whole thing of the Torah whereas standing on one foot, I’d say that I imagine within the First Modification, and I concern the Evil Eye. Driving in rush hour, I’ve caught myself as I used to be about to touch upon my shock at encountering lighter than anticipated visitors; I knew that such a remark may trigger the Evil Eye to provide a disabled eighteen-wheeler blocking all lanes across the subsequent bend.
A smattering of Yiddish occurs to be all of the Yiddish I’ve—a situation frequent amongst individuals who grew up in houses the place Yiddish was used when adults exchanged info that they didn’t need the kids to overhear. I do know quite a few Yiddish phrases. I do know some Yiddish phrases and even just a few selfmade, half-Yiddish phrases (e.g., the phrase coined by the late Esther Kopkind, of New Haven, Connecticut, to explain one thing that’s not definitely worth the bother: quel schlep). I prefer to assume that I may maintain my very own in a panel dialogue on the distinctions amongst phrases like schmegegge and schmendrik and schlemiel—or the eight phrases for “penis,” for that matter. However I’d do not know of the way to say, “Please go the salt” or “Does anybody right here converse English?”
I feel that my sister is aware of extra Yiddish than I do. Once we had been kids, the reason for that disparity was often that, being a lady, she was naturally nosier than I used to be and thus would pay extra consideration when our mom was talking on the telephone to her mom or saying one thing to our father that they didn’t need us to grasp. No person appeared to entertain the likelihood that my sister merely had a greater ear for languages than I did. However these had been completely different occasions.
My language expertise haven’t proven a variety of enchancment. My French has by no means progressed a lot past what I absorbed from a high-school French class that appeared to consist primarily of chopping articles about France out of the Kansas Metropolis Star—a newspaper that was not recognized for a deep curiosity in worldwide affairs. Over many years, my makes an attempt to beat the Spanish language have been repulsed. I assume that, ought to my demise end in some pleasant publication (the native Wednesday shopper, for example) deciding to publish an obituary, the headline can be “MONOLINGUAL REPORTER SUCCUMBS.”
My father, who was born in Ukraine, was delivered to St. Joseph, Missouri, as an toddler. He spoke English with the type of accent that might be anticipated of somebody whose residence city is thought for its historic connection to the Pony Specific and Jesse James, however Yiddish should have been the primary language of his residence. In our residence, he used it not often, usually for humorous impact. Some comedians of the Borscht Belt period had been stated to have believed that phrases starting with the letter “Ok” are inherently humorous. (They presumably made an exception for the Ku Klux Klan, which in its second incarnation had a keenness for Ok-words like “klavern,” for a neighborhood chapter, and “klonverse,” for a conference.) What these comedians thought of Ok-words was what my father thought of Litvaks—Jews with origins in what was as soon as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an space that included not solely present-day Lithuania but additionally Belarus and components of close by states like Latvia.
In “Household Man,” I acknowledged that I’d by no means thought to ask my father exactly why he discovered Litvaks risible. Having now carried out some not very strenuous analysis, I do know that Litvaks had been typically stereotyped by different Jap European Jews as chilly fish (the second definition in “Dictionary Shmictionary!” defines the phrase “litvak” as “a intelligent however insensitive particular person”—presumably irrespective of the place within the Pale of Settlement he comes from). Litvaks seasoned their dishes otherwise than Jews from locations like Ukraine. They pronounced any variety of phrases otherwise. One of many first jokes I ever heard as a baby was primarily based on the alternative ways of saying a pudding made with noodles or potatoes: Some individuals say “kugel” and a few individuals say “keegel,” however my aunt is Americanized; she says “pudgink.” (When it got here to that exact schism, our home was strictly “kugel” territory.) In Yiddish, Litvaks had an accent that was as soon as described to me as sounding like somebody making an attempt to talk Yiddish the best way a BBC announcer who’s overlaying the monarchy speaks English.
However I by no means heard any of that from my father. To him, the very phrase “litvak” was humorous. Wanting again on it, I feel that in my father’s view the previous joke-starter “two guys stroll right into a bar” might be made at the least faintly humorous by itself by saying “two Litvaks stroll right into a bar.” He was not alone in that perception. In “Son of a Smaller Hero,” an early novel by Mordecai Richler, the grasp chronicler of Montreal Jews, some Jewish pranksters come throughout a seaside that shows an indication that claims “THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO GENTILES,” and sneak again at evening to vary the signal to “THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO LITVAKS.”
The one Litvak we had shut at hand was my maternal grandmother, who was born in what was all the time referred to in my household as “close to Vilna.” She was not my favourite relative, and I began saying so lengthy earlier than I had a possibility to say her in print. Greater than as soon as, I complained to my mom about my grandmother referring to our canine, Spike, as “the hundt.” My mom would inform me that hundt was merely the Yiddish phrase for canine, and I’d reply, “Not the best way she stated it.”
I thought of that a few years later when, throughout a New York mayoral election marketing campaign, the comic Jackie Mason, a supporter of Rudy Giuliani, was criticized for referring to David Dinkins as “a elaborate schvartze with a mustache.” Mason’s defenders stated that the offending phrase merely means black in Yiddish. Not the best way he stated it.
Within the early sixties, I spent a 12 months within the South overlaying the civil-rights wrestle, and I as soon as noticed Ku Klux Klansmen of their full regalia. They had been picketing in assist of a division retailer in Atlanta that had resisted the desegregation of department-store lunch counters. All however one of many Klansmen wore white robes. One was in inexperienced, and he appeared to be in cost. I requested him what kind of Klan office-holder he was.
“I’m a Kleagle,” he answered.
“You imply a Klugel,” I stated reflexively.
The person within the inexperienced gown regarded puzzled, apparently having had restricted expertise with Jap European Jewish puddings. I modified the topic.
Ultimately, I had purpose to be puzzled myself. “Kugel” was certainly the one manner the dish was pronounced in my household, however a startling reality had lastly dawned on me: “kugel” is the Litvak pronunciation. I ought to have made the connection years in the past. I’ve lengthy been conscious that amongst South African Jews, who, famously, are nearly all Litvaks, “kugel” is so firmly embedded in Yiddish that it even has a slang which means. A hyper-materialistic and overdressed Jewish lady is known as (although not by me, nonetheless smarting from recollections of the Mees America episode) a kugel.
In keeping with the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Jap Europe, “kugel” was additionally the pronunciation usually taught in colleges even in non-Litvak areas of the Pale of Settlement. However certainly not within the colleges of St. Joe, Missouri. Did my father use it paradoxically? Did my grandmother in some way have management in our home of the way to pronounce sure conventional Jewish dishes? Had been there different phrases that I grew up saying as a Litvak would? Did that imply that if I ever did study conversational Yiddish I is perhaps taken for a Litvak?
“But when your grandmother was a Litvak,” a pal stated to me, “then you might be partly Litvak your self.”
“You realize,” I replied, “I truthfully by no means considered that.”
Even when it made me sound like a Litvak, I’d take nice pleasure in figuring out greater than a smattering of Yiddish. Leafing by “Dictionary Shmictionary!” just lately, I noticed that I would already know sufficient Yiddish phrases to cobble collectively a brief sentence or two, assuming a verb was not an absolute requirement. I may think about myself sooner or later casually saying to a dinner companion, in impeccable Yiddish that retains solely a hint of a Kansas Metropolis accent, “Please go the salt.”
Could the Evil Eye be too busy with nefarious schemes elsewhere to have heard that. ♦
