Wex

The evil inclination

The yeytser horeh, the evil inclination, is still alive and well among our children. My thirteen year-old daughter just informed me that a friend of hers has been grounded after coming home from what was supposed to have been a Yom Ha’Atzma’ut party with “a hickey the size of a matzoh ball.” It’s probably a good thing. According to the medresh, "Were it not for the yeytser horeh, no one would...

Wex

Yiddish and the Dave Clark Five

Early last week I found myself using the Yiddish phrase kosher fardint without any hint of irony. This doesn’t happen often. Although there’s no necessary reason not to use kosher fardinen (the infinitive form) to mean exactly what it appears to mean, “to earn in a kosher way, to obtain something by means of honest toil and effort,” it seems to be used more often in the sense of “it serves him...

Wex

The worst thing you can say in Yiddish

Someone recently asked me about the worst thing that you can say in Yiddish. After weeding out all the obvious contenders, I realized that the final frontier of Yiddish cursing also involves the ultimate reversal of any victim’s expectations: Zolst onkumen tsu mayn mazl, "you should have my luck.” In other words, “The worst thing I can wish on you is...that you should be me.” Ale tsuris vos ikh hob...

Wex

Religious snow in Toronto

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, you’d say shlimazl durkh tir un toyer, "bad luck through door and gate," but our...

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...