Wex

Pesach in January

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!After twenty-five years in an apartment previously occupied by Glenn Gould, I’m about to move into a beautiful, roomy house in one of Toronto’s most impeccably gentile neighborhoods, ten minutes by foot from the nearest shul. Looking the place over while the previous owners were still in residence reminded me of one of my... Read more here

Marilla

Michael Wex at Klezkamp

Michael Wex and Henry Sapoznik ham it up (if you'll pardon the expression) at Di Hoo-Ha The entire Wex family just returned from another great week at Klezkamp. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Yiddish Cultural event which takes place near Kerhonkson in upstate New York. It was truly a vintage year - registrations were up, the dress-up ball Di Hoo-Ha was a massive success and Mrs. Wex had... Read more here

Wex

Dreaming of a White Christmas

As this festive season of the year draws to a long-awaited close, I have to confess that, like so many members of other communities, I’ve been dreaming lately. Not of a white Christmas, particularly, but of “White Christmas” itself, the Irving Berlin song that has become virtually synonymous with the American idea of Christmas. It’s no secret that Berlin was Jewish. Like Al Jolson, he was the son... Read more here

Wex

Wex at Chanukah

One hotel room, non-smoking, Anytown, U.S.A. A book of matches with the words “Success Without Kollel” printed on the cover. Eight small, braided candles; nine, if you count the shammes. A battered prayer-book, its pages daubed with candle wax and stained with tears, said to have been presented to Jerome “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges on the occasion of his bar-mitzvah. One lonely Child of... Read more here

Wex

What makes a pauper rejoice?

“Ven freyt zikh an oremen?” asks the Yiddish proverb. “What makes a pauper rejoice? Az er farlirt un gefint, When he finds something that he’s lost”––because a pauper can’t afford a replacement. This is especially true when what’s been lost is one’s youth. I was interviewed last week by a journalist whom I’ve known since we were in high school. Though never close, he and I have always... Read more here

Wex

A person of the Book

This is the fourth of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books. Michael Wex - not a rabbi. I could never see any point to getting out of school. Coming from a family that occasionally clawed its way into the lower middle-class for up to two years at a time, I was acutely aware of the fact that the kind of jobs available to people like me embraced nothing that anybody ever dreamed of being: general... Read more here

Wex

Where does “nu” come from?

I’ve been doing a great deal of research lately into the origins and history of the Yiddish word nu and have made a discovery that has changed my whole outlook on life. If you think that nu comes from German, you’re wrong; if you try to trace it back to Slavic, you’re going to hit a dead end. As I’ve just found out, we’ve been nu-ing since we were slaves in Egypt, and maybe even before. It turns... Read more here