"The Gorgeous George of Canadian literature" – Michael Wex
Wex's new novel The Frumkiss Family Business comes out on August 24th - just over a month away!
We have now finalized the tour dates for the Autumn on the Events page - Wex is particularly thrilled to be invited to the International Festival of Authors this year.
You will notice that all of Michael's appearances are confined to Canada since Frumkiss is being published by Knopf in Canada first. We are... Read more here
Here's an interesting query about Jewish surnames:
I'm interested in the origin of European Jewish surnames, such as "Bloom" meaning flower, and Shecter which I learned from your book is shechet. Is Kaufman a buyer, or merchant? Zukeo is sugar I guess. Then Sugarman was a purveyor of sugar?
You're definitely on the right track. One thing to watch out for, though: people would change surnames at the... Read more here
Here's an interesting query we had recently about a Yiddish expression a reader remembered from a Mickey Katz song.
My friend uses the expression (excuse the transliteration): "its good for the maugen" whenever we are eating celery which he got from his father. I have not been able to find a specific translation of the yiddish term in any glossary, but the meaning seems clear from the context. I noticed... Read more here
A little more on weddings.
If someone complains about tantsn af tsvey khasenes (mit eyn por fis), “dancing at two weddings (with one pair of legs),” they’re saying that they can’t do two things or be in two places at once. You can talk about tantsn af fremde khasenes, “dancing at other people’s weddings.” This has less to do with party-crashing than with devoting yourself to someone who... Read more here
The Fourth of July was the second day of rosh-khoydesh Tammuz, which means that there’s a sudden rush on weddings before the mid-summer hiatus that we call the dray vokhn, a period of mourning during which all celebrations are banned. Wedding planners and anxious mekhutonim are busy busy busy uniting Jewish children before the city empties out when the mourning comes to an end.
The Yiddish idea of the... Read more here
