Wex

Looking like a beaten out willow twig on Sukkes

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Between ritualized gluttony, ritualized fasting, hours and hours of ritual prayer and almost as many hours of trying to sleep in a Succah (often preceded by even more hours of ritual cursing while trying to build the Succah), the average observant Jew looks and feels vi an opgeshlogene heshayne, a beat-out willow twig, by the... Read more here

Wex

Go talk to the wall

Gey, red tsu der vant, “Go, talk to the wall”—Israelis and their enemies alike seem to feel misrepresented by one or another sector of the media, who are toyb vi di vant, “deaf as the wall,” to their particular point of view. The Yiddish wall does so much more than keep the insides of buildings off of streets and lawns. It figures in many idioms, a surprising number of which have to do with... Read more here

Wex

The kosher meat industry sheds crocodile tears

Should the federal grand jury currently investigating possible anti-trust violations on the part of certain unnamed kosher meat suppliers uncover evidence of unkosher business practice, I’ll bet dollars to dales—that’s Yiddish for poverty—that we’ll soon see more than one representative of the firms in question weeping tsibele trern, “onion tears,” and adopting a yires-shomayim peniml, “a... Read more here

Wex

Eating tsimmes on Rosh Hashanah

Two days of Rosh Hashanah, two nights of eating tsimmes. As Jewish as any food this side of kugel, tsimmes is far more likely to glow in the dark. Described by Uriel Weinreich as a “vegetable/fruit stew,” the tsimmes comes in nearly as many varieties as there are fruits and vegetables to stew. There is the plum tsimmes, the raisin-tsimmes, the apple-tsimmes and the pear-tsimmes. There are tsimmesn to... Read more here

Wex

Hakn a tshaynik about the holidays

With Jewish New Year cards on display all over town and Halloween candies clogging supermarket aisles, there’s no question that the holiday season is already upon us. From six weeks before Rosh Hashana all the way to Memorial Day, tshatshkeh-makers and greeting-card companies hak us an endless tshaynik—bang us an endless tea kettle—about holidays that can now be ruined months before they take even... Read more here