Marilla

“Just Say Nu” New York Times Review

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!What’s Yiddish for double-dipping? With verve, élan and something only a non-Yiddish speaker would call chutzpah, Michael Wex returns to the linguistic mother lode that yielded “Born to Kvetch,” his brilliant cultural history of Yiddish. This time around, in “Just Say Nu,” he gets down to the everyday business of... Read more here

Wex

Sticking out a kosher little pig’s foot

With the midterm elections approaching almost as quickly as the Days of Awe, politicians are making promises about their behavior for the next four years while Jews prepare to offer the Lord a convincing account of their own recent actions. Performed honestly, these are noble pursuits, but self-interest can often cause them to be corrupted by the less-than-strictly-kosher activity called aroysshteln a... Read more here

Wex

Advice for Mel Gibson

Vos bay a nikhtern af der lung iz bay a shikern af der tsung, “What’s in a sober person’s lung is on the drunk one’s tongue”: people who have had too much to drink don’t know which of their thoughts should remain unspoken. Just ask Mel Gibson, whose recent statements to the Malibu police seem to have confirmed the prejudices that he denied when The Passion of the Christ was released. Gibson hot... Read more here

Marilla

Getting the Shmootz on Yiddish

A couple of months after Born to Kvetch came out, Wex was asked to be on Terry Gross's Fresh Air show on NPR. This interview has been replayed many times - we hope you enjoy it too. Click here to hear the interview in its... Read more here

Marilla

“Born to Kvetch” New York Times Review

Most children watching "The Three Stooges" didn't realize it, but an understanding of Yiddish was required to get a lot of the jokes. In one episode, when Larry hears that Moe is heading to a hockshop, he says, "While you're there, hock me a tshaynik." What must have sounded like pure nonsense to most viewers was a Yiddish pun, one that Michael Wex, in his wise, witty and altogether wonderful Born to... Read more here

Marilla

“Born to Kvetch” – Jbooks Review

It’s been called folksy and quaint. It’s been labeled a dialect and dismissed as “jargon.” Even its defenders tend to admit that it died 50 years ago. Yiddish, nebekh, has suffered so much defamation of character that it could probably win a libel suit. If Yiddish ever does sue, its first expert witness will be Michael Wex.In his extraordinary and important new book, Born to Kvetch, Wex debunks a... Read more here

Marilla

“Born to Kvetch” Washington Post Review

In Born to Kvetch Wex straddles both the high and low end of that spectrum in a work that manages to be simultaneously entertaining and erudite. Wex explains Yiddish culture by unraveling, in great detail, the words and phrases used by Yiddish speakers in the various areas of their lives. In doing so, he draws deeply on the complex traditional and religious roots of Jewish culture while engaging in what... Read more here