"I don't want a niche – I want an empire!" – Michael Wex, Globe and Mail
Despite, or perhaps because of the number of Yiddish-speakers who use walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, Yiddish has remained stubbornly resistant to efforts to empower the disabled. My father, who had only one leg, saw no irony in screaming kalyekeh or loomer (“cripple”) at cars with disabled stickers on their windows or with using the same words, along with hoyker (“hunchback”–it usually applied to someone hunched over the steering wheel), as insults pure and simple, without regard to the real physical condition of the person being insulted. (more...)
Three of the most common and effective epithets hurled at the competition by Yiddish-speaking drivers are yold, shmendrik, and kuneh-leml. (more...)
Henry Ford might have been one large, cuddly bundle of Jew-hatred–he did write the preface to my copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion–but he also helped to enrich the Jewish people with the one thing for which it had been yearning since the publication of the Bove Bukh, a verse epic about a Yiddish-speaking knight: Henry Ford helped give us armor. (more...)
Whenever people find out that I work in Yiddish, they almost inevitably ask me to tell them my favorite Yiddish curse. These days it’s a kazarme zol af dir aynfaln, "a barracks should collapse on you.” (more...)
This coming Tuesday Wex will be launching How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) in New York.
At 6.30pm at the Workmen's Circle on Tuesday 27th October Michael will be giving a talk on his new book and signing copies.
This is the US launch of Mentsh and is one of only a handful of appearances he will be making in the States before Christmas.
If you're anywhere near the city please come and say hello. This is Wex's only visit to New York this season - don't miss him!
