Wex

Too much matzo on Pesach

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The idea crops up periodically, generally on Passover, when the khomets-starved brains of certain West Coast executives––addled, some say, by a surfeit of matzoh-brei––go into overdrive and begin to smell money where the rest of us see nothing but Nyafat: “Why don’t we do a Jewish version of The Godfather?” I... Read more here

Wex

Passover – the breaking of unwanted bonds

Passover is all about the breaking of unwanted bonds: three different people have e-mailed me this week about an idiom that likens the dissolution of a business relationship to the breakdown of a marriage. If things go wrong between partners or associates, you can say that they are oys mekhutonim, “no more relatives-by-law.” The image derives from divorce—technically, it describes the divorced... Read more here

Marilla

Schott’s Yiddish Vocab

Today on the New York Times Ben Schott's Vocab Blog is tackling Yiddish. And Wex is the moderator! At the time of writing (less than 24 hours after the blog went live) there are over 380 comments where readers have asked questions, answered questions and added their voice. Who said Yiddish is dead? So go to this page on the New York Times website to add your voice to the question and answer... Read more here

Marilla

Passover dishes

Just in time for Pesach Michael Wex discusses Passover dishes. In this lecture given at the National Yiddish Book Center in 2008 Wex talks about all the different types of kosher dishes and what they did back in the old... Read more here

Wex

Passover, roller derby and khad gadye

It happens every year. The lines in the Passover-shopping section last night awakened long dormant memories of Roller Derby and kheyder. There was plenty of shoving in both, but the Roller Derby players made a better living than my rebbes, even though they all engaged in behavior that would have landed them in the Haggadah had they done so anywhere else. The Yiddish version of Jimmie Rodgers' "He's in the... Read more here

Wex

Michael Wex and the Kosher Easter bunny

I saw it. I bought it. I ate it after Pesach and I loved it. I’d dreamed of it for years and it didn’t disappoint. A chocolate Easter bunny with a hekhsher is exactly the sort of thing that led my family out of Europe: full participation in general society without any sacrifice of Jewish integrity. A hekhsher (plural, hekhsheyrim) indicates that something is kosher; it’s a warrant that validates the... Read more here

Wex

Hernias in Yiddish

I’ve been lifting weights like a madman lately, trying to work off the winter’s tsholnt before bikini season hits, and so far all I’ve got is a kileh, the most-beloved Yiddish word for “hernia.” Old school Yiddish-speakers will be quick to tell you that the two afflictions that once characterized Yiddish and were apparently endemic to its speakers, are the hernia and hemorrhoids, which both enjoy... Read more here