Yiddish insults are renowned for being colorful, witty, and biting, but not grievously mean. This may be because the Eastern European Jews who spoke Yiddish often lived in crowded conditions, and it was not the best idea to seriously insult a next door neighbor you saw fifteen times a day. Nonetheless, the language lets speakers say exactly what is on their mind, and nowhere is this more true than in its insults:
May you run to the toilet every three minutes or every three months. (Zolst azoy farfoylt vern az tsign, tchoyrn, un chazirim zoln zid opzogn tsu forn mit dir in eyn fur)
May you turn into a pancake and he into a cat. He should eat you and choke on you - that way we will be rid of both of you. (Vern zol fun dir a blintshik in fun is a kats. Er sol dir oyfesn un mit dir zin dervargn - volt men fun ayn beyd ptur gevorn)
May your soul enter a cat and may a dog bite it. (Dyn eshome zol arayngeyn in a kats, un a hoont zol er a bis tun)
May you be invited to a feast by the governor and may you belch in his face. (Me zol din aynladn tsum gubernator oft a seydeh in du zolst im gebn a grepts in ponem arayn)
May a soft balcony fall on your head. (A vecher balkon dir in kop)
May a red beet grow out of your belly button, and may you pee borsht. (Zoln dir a vaksn burekes fun pupik, in zolts pishn mit borsht)
Taken from “If Your Can’t Say Anything Nice, Say It In Yiddish” by Lita Epstein
Happy birthday to Mel Bochner, an artist known for his career-long fascination with the cerebral and visual associations of words. The title of his painting on view now refers to Leo Rosten’s classic 1968 book The Joys of Yiddish. That many of these Yiddish words have entered the mainstream American vocabulary says a lot about the assimilation of Jews. How many words can you recognize in this painting?
The ‘pamby’ part of the equation, as far as I can tell, is fairly similar to rhyming things with words beginning with ‘schm-‘. So ‘namby-pamby’ is kind of like saying ‘Billy-Schmilly’, except with a lot more history.
For those who are interested, the “rhyming things with words beginning with ‘schm-‘” comes from Yiddish; specifically, a play in the Yiddish theatre that enjoyed huge popularity in the late 1870s (שמענדריק, אדער די קאמישע חתינה) wherein the title character, a bumbling fool, is called Shmendrik. The moniker Shmendrik is a play on the actual name Mendrik, which is itself a diminutive of the name Menachem.
As with many other aspects of Yiddish culture, the “__, shm__” formation caught on and has been adopted by the non-Jewish English speaking cultures of the world.
Hope you don’t mind being reblogged by etymologic! I knew a bit of that, but not all of it, and you did a great job explaining it! Thank you.
“Anybody who has the least familiarity with the national question knows that internationalist culture is not a-national. An a-national culture, neither Russian, nor German, nor Polish…but a pure culture is an absurdity. In order to attract the working class, the internationalist ideas need to be adapted to the language spoken by the workers and to the concrete national conditions in which they live. Workers should not be indifferent to the condition and the development of their national culture, for it is only through it that they can participate in the internationalist culture of democracy and the world socialist movement. It is obvious, but VI [Lenin] turns a deaf ear to all this.”
big debate on jewish left wing twitter about yiddish and radicalization. it ties in to a lot of things. for example, i do think the secular/religious binary is archaic and intellectually meaningless, but american history has shown us that the only acceptable way to be jewish is via religion and, therefore, religion has become tied to the state and its hegemony.
the only politically acceptable form of jewishness is zionism, and we’re taught it in every aspect of jewish life: synagogue, schools, non profits. this is why there’s some hope of radicalization via yiddish. april rosenblum talks about this: if assimilation stripped jews of both yiddish and socialism, then we’d like to think the opposite is possible.
at this point in time, though, the vast non profit industrial complex has control over most aspects of yiddish cultural life in north america. these institutions are run by the bourgeoisie for bourgeois purposes; yiddish organizations aren’t going to be socialist and certainly not anti zionist. (non profits simply cannot be truly revolutionary imo).
yiddish is also becoming more popular in israel, a country that at one point forbade its usage in order to homogenize jews and form a nationalist base. it’s no longer a threat there. israel removing arabic (which many jews speak!) from its designation as a national language can be seen as a continuation of its suppression of yiddish.
My hatred towards Zionism arises from the false and injurious position Zionism once adopted towards work in the Diaspora. As long as Zionism adheres to its Diaspora-hating position, my hatred will remain alive and the struggle against it will remain necessary.
“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
Hey everyone, uhhhh, my partner just got furloughed due to the pandemic so if anyone was thinking about grabbing something from my store, now would be an excellent time. Sharing this post would be highly appreciated as well. https://gumroad.com/roseberrycomix
Edit January ‘22 because for some reason this post is still getting notes: this was originally posted in summer ‘20. My partner and I have new jobs now. I appreciate shares and sales always, but please don’t feel obligated because that particular financial crisis has passed.
Newly gifted to the Joseph A. Labadie Collection: Der frayer gedanḳ (La pensée libre), a Yiddish monthly Anarchist journal published in Paris and Tel Aviv between 1949-1963. Read more!
In my #Proust readings to date, “lyrics for the Laverne and Shirley theme song” definitely takes 1st place in the “most unexpected thing I’ve had to Google” category. (Also, today I learned many alternate spellings for the term underlined here: schlemihl, schlemihl, shlemiel, etc.) #TheMoreYouKnow __ #LaverneAndShirley #Proust #losttimereporting #amreading #WithinABuddingGrove #books #vintagetelevision #schlemihl, #schlemihl #shlemiel #Yiddish https://www.instagram.com/p/BwvVDDepKY3/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=kq2fkts9bsxd
Microfilmed and print copies of newspapers and other material are available at the Center for Jewish History. Library and archive records can be found in our catalog.
J.D. Arden is a Reference and Genealogy Librarian at CJH where he curates and translates historical Jewish cartoons for this series Karikatūrah Mipaām ⚫ קָרִיקָטוּרָה מִפַּעַם on the 16th Street Blog and our social media platforms.
Karikatūrah (קָרִיקָטוּרָה): Hebrew; Comics (American English); from Italian caricatura; a deliberately exaggerated pictorial representation to produce a comic effect. Mipaām (מִפַּעַם): Hebrew; meaning “of long ago” or “from time.”
Microfilmed and print copies of newspapers and other material are available at the Center for Jewish History. Library and archive records can be found in our catalog.
J.D. Arden is a Reference and Genealogy Librarian at CJH where he curates and translates historical Jewish cartoons for this series Karikatūrah Mipaām ⚫ קָרִיקָטוּרָה מִפַּעַם on the 16th Street Blog and our social media platforms.
Karikatūrah (קָרִיקָטוּרָה): Hebrew; Comics (American English); from Italian caricatura; a deliberately exaggerated pictorial representation to produce a comic effect. Mipaām (מִפַּעַם): Hebrew; meaning “of long ago” or “from time.”
Microfilmed and print copies of newspapers and other material are available at the Center for Jewish History. Library and archive records can be found in our catalog.
J.D. Arden is a Reference and Genealogy Librarian at CJH where he curates and translates historical Jewish cartoons for this series Karikatūrah Mipaām ⚫ קָרִיקָטוּרָה מִפַּעַם on the 16th Street Blog and our social media platforms.
Karikatūrah (קָרִיקָטוּרָה): Hebrew; Comics (American English); from Italian caricatura; a deliberately exaggerated pictorial representation to produce a comic effect. Mipaām (מִפַּעַם): Hebrew; meaning “of long ago” or “from time.”
Microfilmed and print copies of newspapers and other material are available at the Center for Jewish History. Library and archive records can be found in our catalog.
J.D. Arden is a Reference and Genealogy Librarian at CJH where he curates and translates historical Jewish cartoons for this series Karikatūrah Mipaām ⚫ קָרִיקָטוּרָה מִפַּעַם on the 16th Street Blog and our social media platforms.
Karikatūrah (קָרִיקָטוּרָה): Hebrew; Comics (American English); from Italian caricatura; a deliberately exaggerated pictorial representation to produce a comic effect. Mipaām (מִפַּעַם): Hebrew; meaning “of long ago” or “from time.”
shlep is one of the best yiddish words and we don’t talk about it enough
there’s no other word that specifically means 1) i am going somewhere, 2) it is a long and not very pleasant journey and 3) i am complaining about it
genuine question, because I have apparently(???) been using this word incorrectly this whole time: does it/can it not also mean, “I will be going there, and also carrying A Bunch Of Stuff?” As in, “I’m spending the night at their house, but I won’t have time to come home after work, so now I gotta schlep all my stuff there and leave it in the back room until the end of shift?”
I have never heard this term used without Items Being Involved. You mean to say that one can schlep without having an armload of stuff? Or a giant backpack or something?
You can also be hauling stuff as part of the schlep
I feel like a schlep is always a haul, it’s just that sometimes the only thing you’re hauling is yourself.
Huh. I always thought schlep meant “an unkempt person”
That’s a schlub! Sounds similar to shelp.
Sometimes you feel like a schlub because you got schmutz all over your shirt, and you were already shvitzing to begin with, so now it just looks like you’re walking around in an old schmatte, and you can’t possibly go to schul like this, so you’ll have to schlep yourself home before shabbos and hope the journey doesn’t make you too schluffy.
