Born to kvetch : Yiddish language and culture in all its moods / Michael Wex.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wex, Michael, 1954-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yiddish language--History.

Yiddish language.

History.

Yiddish language--Social aspects.

Yiddish wit and humor.

Jews--Civilization.

Jews.

Physical Description:

xiii, 303 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2005.

Summary:

As The Main Spoken Language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases, idioms, and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive a millennium of unrelenting persecution: they never stopped kvetching-about God, gentiles, children, food, and everything (and anything) else. They even learned how to smile through their kvetching and express satisfaction in the form of complaint.

In Born to Kvetch, Michael Wex looks at the ingredients that went into this buffet of disenchantment and examines how they were mixed together to produce an almost limitless supply of striking idioms and withering curses (which get a chapter all to themselves). Born to Kvetch includes a wealth of material that's never appeared in English before. You'll find information on the Yiddish relationship to food, nature, divinity, and humanity. There's even a chapter about sex.

This is no bobe mayse (cock-and-bull story) from a khokhem be-layle (idiot, literally a "sage at night" when no one's looking), but a serious yet fun and funny look at a language that both shaped and was shaped by those who spoke it. From tukhes to goy, meshugener to kvetch, Yiddish words have permeated and transformed English as well.

Through the idioms, phrases, metaphors, and fascinating history of this kvetch-full tongue, Michael Wex gives us a moving and inspiring portrait of a people, and a language, in exile.

Contents:

1 Kvetch Que C'Est? The Origins of Yiddish 1

2 Six Feet Under, Baking Bagels: Yiddish in Action 29

3 Something Else to Kvetch About: Yiddish Dialects 47

4 Pigs, Poultry, and Pampers: The Religious Roots of Yiddish 59

5 Discouraging Words: Yiddish and the Forces of Darkness 91

6 You Should Grow Like an Onion: The Yiddish Curse 117

7 If It Wasn't for Bad Luck: Mazl, Misery, and Money 141

8 "Bupkes Means a Lot of Nothing": Yiddish and Nature 159

9 Making a Tsimmes: Food-Kosher and Treyf 175

10 A Slap in the Tukhes and Hello: Yiddish Life from Birth to Bar Mitzvah 197

11 More Difficult than Splitting the Red Sea: Courtship and Marriage 221

12 Too Good for the Goyim: Sex in Yiddish 249

13 It Should Happen to You: Death in Yiddish 265.

ISBN:

0312307411

OCLC:

58832297

Publisher Number:

9780312307417