Wex

Religious snow in Toronto

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!We’ve got very religious snow this year in Toronto; it turns up every Monday, Thursday and Saturday, whenever the Torah is read in shul, and woe to the week with a two-day Rosh Chodesh that starts on Monday night. We’ve got what Yiddish would call shney durkh tir un toyer, “snow through door and gate.” Normally,...

Wex

Living in Sin

I was recently asked how Yiddish refers to people who live together without what used to be called “benefit of clergy.” The short answer is, as infrequently as possible. Indeed, as soon as the news gets out, the woman’s older relatives will all nod sagely and whisper that they’d always suspected that the girl shpint nisht ken tsitsis dortn, “isn't spinning [i.e., knitting, weaving] any tsitsis...

Wex

Pesach in January

After twenty-five years in an apartment previously occupied by Glenn Gould, I’m about to move into a beautiful, roomy house in one of Toronto’s most impeccably gentile neighborhoods, ten minutes by foot from the nearest shul. Looking the place over while the previous owners were still in residence reminded me of one of my mother’s favorite terms of opprobrium: shlimazlnitseh, a bad housekeeper, the...

Wex

Dreaming of a White Christmas

As this festive season of the year draws to a long-awaited close, I have to confess that, like so many members of other communities, I’ve been dreaming lately. Not of a white Christmas, particularly, but of “White Christmas” itself, the Irving Berlin song that has become virtually synonymous with the American idea of Christmas. It’s no secret that Berlin was Jewish. Like Al Jolson, he was the son...

Wex

Wex at Chanukah

One hotel room, non-smoking, Anytown, U.S.A. A book of matches with the words “Success Without Kollel” printed on the cover. Eight small, braided candles; nine, if you count the shammes. A battered prayer-book, its pages daubed with candle wax and stained with tears, said to have been presented to Jerome “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges on the occasion of his bar-mitzvah. One lonely Child of...