"His books have not just been good for the Jews; they have been great." – Joel Yanofsky, Literary Review of Canada
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Rob Ford - no brainiac
If you don't believe that brains are strictly a special-order item in Toronto these days, just take a look at our mayor. I haven't been able to find a single retail butcher who stocks them on a regular basis (though I have to admit that I haven't yet ventured into any of our city's more colourfully... Read more here
Calf brain latke anyone? Anyone?
Don't ask me how I ended up doing all this Yiddish; I started out as a hipster, the first kid on the block to have a Davy Crockett hat: my parents cut off the tail, used it to sweep up chometz on the night before Pesach, and called what was left a kinder-spodek. I owned a Purple People Eater t-shirt when the song was still new and dazzled my eighth-grade classmates at... Read more here
We didn't want to tell you about this until we got the cheque.
Wearing his trusty lab coat and with Farfl the Wonderdog by his side Dr. Wex embarks on research
Wex is writing a book about Jewish food for Scribner. He's hoping that Mrs. Wex will cook him some of the extraordinary things he is discovering during his research. Mrs. Wex is a little alarmed.
You can follow Wex's research and findings in... Read more here
Picture by Marilla Wex.
Here's a link to Jon Kalish's audio report on the memorial service for Adrienne Cooper that was held on January 1st in New York.
It's a nice combination of excerpts from the official program of song and eulogy with less formal interviews with a few of the people in attendance who knew Adrienne.
I was honoured to be asked to contribute to Adrienne's memorial and an excerpt of my... Read more here
Only Michael Wex could daven next to a guy U.S. government investigators allege to be the ringleader of “one of the largest immigration fraud schemes to have ever been committed in our country.”
This news comes on the back of police being called to the Markham Street Shul on Yom Kippur when a request not to use a cellphone on shul property on yontef ended in a scuffle.
Seriously, who knew that life in... Read more here
Last week Wex was asked to comment on New York Times journalist David Brooks' piece on his African safari vacation, and specifically on his use of the Yiddish word haimish (sic).
Although he has no problem with Brooks' understanding of the word heymish (to give it the YIVO transliteration), Wex does have something to say about whether or not it's appropriate to use in the context of a luxury... Read more here
It's a constant source of irritation to Wex that the word chutzpah is often misused in English to mean having balls instead of its more accurate meaning of displaying unbelievable cheek.
So he was chuffed to bits when Tablet asked him to comment on the recent resurgence of the use of the word in connection with the US debt crisis.
To make sure you're not misusing this powerful Yiddish word, and to find out... Read more here
