Last week Wex was asked to comment on New York Times journalist David Brooks’ piece on his African safari vacation, and specifically on his use of the Yiddish word haimish (sic).
Although he has no problem with Brooks’ understanding of the word heymish (to give it the YIVO transliteration), Wex does have something to say about whether or not it’s appropriate to use in the context of a luxury holiday.
You’re living the reverse of Freud’s favorite joke, the one that Heinrich Heine put into the mouth of a heymisher luftmentsh named Hirsch-Hyacinth: “I sat beside Salomon Rothschild and he treated me quite as his equal, quite famillionairely.”
You can read The Heymish Safari in its entirety here.