by Marilla | Oct 15, 2010 | Born to Kvetch
We just heard that Born to Kvetch has been selected in Steven Poole’s non-fiction pick for tomorrow’s Books section of The Guardian in England. Born to Kvetch was originally published in the States in 2005 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller....
by Marilla | Oct 8, 2009 | Born to Kvetch
Born to Kvetch was published in England for the first time a couple of weeks ago and has just received its first review in the Jewish Chronicle. Some academics have been complaining about Born to Kvetch. This is, after all, a book that has zero inhibition regarding...
by Marilla | Sep 27, 2005 | Born to Kvetch
Most children watching “The Three Stooges” didn’t realize it, but an understanding of Yiddish was required to get a lot of the jokes. In one episode, when Larry hears that Moe is heading to a hockshop, he says, “While you’re there, hock...
by Marilla | Sep 26, 2005 | Born to Kvetch
It’s been called folksy and quaint. It’s been labeled a dialect and dismissed as “jargon.” Even its defenders tend to admit that it died 50 years ago. Yiddish, nebekh, has suffered so much defamation of character that it could probably win a libel suit. If Yiddish...
by Marilla | Sep 25, 2005 | Born to Kvetch
In Born to Kvetch Wex straddles both the high and low end of that spectrum in a work that manages to be simultaneously entertaining and erudite. Wex explains Yiddish culture by unraveling, in great detail, the words and phrases used by Yiddish speakers in the various...
by Marilla | Sep 24, 2005 | Born to Kvetch
Let others be born to be wild, born to run or born under a bad sign. According to Michael Wex, Jews were Born to Kvetch. Wex’s tome is more than just the standard-issue listing of the 97 ways to say “idiot” in Yiddish. It’s a reverse-engineering of the spirit of...
