"I don't want a niche – I want an empire!" – Michael Wex, Globe and Mail
...albeit a virtual one.
It's long been our hope that How to Be a Mentsh would end up being discussed in the various flavours of synagogue across the English-speaking world (no translations have been commissioned as yet). And now it's happened.
Rabbi Mark Fasman of the Shaare Zedek Synagogue of St. Louis, MO references the book in his January edition of "Message from the Rabbi" which discusses the three main components of Jewish identity today.
Rabbi Fasman uses Mentsh to illustrate how one of the fundamental aspects of the Jewish experience is being in goles or exile - being outsiders - which informs the strength of a Jewish community that takes care of itself.
You can read the full Message from the Rabbi here.
MichaelWex.com approves this message.
Someone recently asked me about the worst thing that you can say in Yiddish. After weeding out all the obvious contenders, I realized that the final frontier of Yiddish cursing also involves the ultimate reversal of any victim’s expectations: Zolst onkumen tsu mayn mazl, "you should have my luck.” In other words, “The worst thing I can wish on you is...that you should be me.” (more...)
We’ve got very religious snow this year in Toronto; it turns up every Monday, Thursday and Saturday, whenever the Torah is read in shul, and woe to the week with a two-day Rosh Chodesh that starts on Monday night.
We’ve got what Yiddish would call shney durkh tir un toyer, “snow through door and gate.” Normally, you’d say shlimazl durkh tir un toyer, "bad luck through door and gate," but our major misfortune right now is the snow. (more...)
I was recently asked how Yiddish refers to people who live together without what used to be called “benefit of clergy.” The short answer is, as infrequently as possible. Indeed, as soon as the news gets out, the woman’s older relatives will all nod sagely and whisper that they’d always suspected that the girl shpint nisht ken tsitsis dortn, “isn't spinning [i.e., knitting, weaving] any tsitsis there”; she's leading a less than virtuous life. (more...)
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 mother’s favorite terms of opprobrium: shlimazlnitseh, a bad housekeeper, the female embodiment of domestic clumsiness and ill luck. (more...)
