"His books have not just been good for the Jews; they have been great." – Joel Yanofsky, Literary Review of Canada
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Only Michael Wex could daven next to a guy U.S. government investigators allege to be the ringleader of “one of the largest immigration fraud schemes to have ever been committed in our country.”
This news comes on the back of police being called to the Markham Street Shul on Yom Kippur when a request not to use a... Read more here
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... Read more here
It's a constant source of irritation to Wex that the word chutzpah is often misused in English to mean having balls instead of its more accurate meaning of displaying unbelievable cheek.
So he was chuffed to bits when Tablet asked him to comment on the recent resurgence of the use of the word in connection with the US debt crisis.
To make sure you're not misusing this powerful Yiddish word, and to find out... Read more here
At Klezkamp last December Wex was interviewed by Pauline Katz as part of the Wexler Oral History Project for the Yiddish Book Center.
In this short clip he tells the story of how Esther Shumiatcher, a Yiddish poet from Calgary, funded her career through the sale of cowboy... Read more here
Last month Wex was in New York to take part in a panel discussion about the nature of Jewish humour.
The Art of the Kvetch: Jewish Humor as Secularism was presented by the Jewish Studies department at Eugene Lang College, part of The New School for Liberal Arts. The other participants were Noah Isenberg, author of Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism and editor and translator... Read more here
