Of Yiddish, Litvaks, and the Evil Eye
Some years in the past, on the annual P.S. 3 e book honest, I got here throughout a Yiddish-English dictionary. This was a extra critical Yiddish-English dictionary than the considerably antic one I owned known as “Dictionary Shmictionary!” That one features a line drawing of a unadorned male, with physique components recognized by their Yiddish phrases—one phrase for “head” and eight phrases for “penis.”
As I thumbed by way of the intense dictionary, the primary phrase that caught my eye was mees—a phrase that even somebody with solely a smattering of Yiddish may have the ability to establish as the basis phrase of meeskite, an unsightly particular person. The Broadway musical “Cabaret” features a tune entitled “Meeskite.” After I was in school, somebody I knew used to check with a sure feminine he discovered unattractive as Mees America. (I want I might report that I assumed to reprimand him harshly for the misogyny mirrored in that phrase, however these had been completely different occasions.)
Within the dictionary I used to be holding, the primary definition for mees was certainly “ugly.” The second definition was “stunning.”
I discussed that uncommon mixture in “Household Man,” a memoir I revealed in 1998. Within the intervening quarter century, I’ve typically considered how a lot I treasure a language that might outline a phrase as each “ugly” and “stunning”—and the way a lot I regretted not realizing the right way to communicate and perceive it.
The explanation for what may strike some as contradictory definitions was clear to me: concern of the Evil Eye. I might image considered one of my great-aunts referring to an cute toddler as a meeskite, as a result of calling her stunning may entice the malevolent consideration of the Evil Eye the following time the toddler was within the kitchen and boiling water was on the range.
My great-aunts had been immigrants, however that doesn’t imply that I’d contemplate that image overseas or old school. If requested at the moment to supply a one-sentence distillation of my beliefs, in the way in which the Talmudic sage Hillel was challenged to clarify the whole lot of the Torah whereas standing on one foot, I’d say that I consider within the First Modification, and I concern the Evil Eye. Driving in rush hour, I’ve caught myself as I used to be about to touch upon my shock at encountering lighter than anticipated visitors; I knew that such a remark might trigger the Evil Eye to provide a disabled eighteen-wheeler blocking all lanes across the subsequent bend.
A smattering of Yiddish occurs to be all of the Yiddish I’ve—a situation frequent amongst individuals who grew up in properties the place Yiddish was used when adults exchanged data that they didn’t need the youngsters to overhear. I do know a lot of Yiddish phrases. I do know some Yiddish phrases and even a number of home made, half-Yiddish phrases (e.g., the phrase coined by the late Esther Kopkind, of New Haven, Connecticut, to explain one thing that’s not well worth the hassle: quel schlep). I prefer to suppose that I might maintain my very own in a panel dialogue on the distinctions amongst phrases like schmegegge and schmendrik and schlemiel—or the eight phrases for “penis,” for that matter. However I’d don’t know of the right way to say, “Please move the salt” or “Does anybody right here communicate English?”
I feel that my sister is aware of extra Yiddish than I do. After we had been youngsters, the reason for that disparity was normally that, being a woman, she was naturally nosier than I used to be and thus would pay extra consideration when our mom was talking on the telephone to her mom or saying one thing to our father that they didn’t need us to grasp. No person appeared to entertain the chance that my sister merely had a greater ear for languages than I did. However these had been completely different occasions.
My language expertise haven’t proven quite a lot of enchancment. My French has by no means progressed a lot past what I absorbed from a high-school French class that appeared to consist primarily of slicing articles about France out of the Kansas Metropolis Star—a newspaper that was not recognized for a deep curiosity in worldwide affairs. Over many years, my makes an attempt to overcome the Spanish language have been repulsed. I assume that, ought to my demise end in some pleasant publication (the native Wednesday shopper, for example) deciding to publish an obituary, the headline could be “MONOLINGUAL REPORTER SUCCUMBS.”
My father, who was born in Ukraine, was delivered to St. Joseph, Missouri, as an toddler. He spoke English with the form of accent that may be anticipated of somebody whose house city is thought for its historic connection to the Pony Specific and Jesse James, however Yiddish will need to have been the primary language of his house. In our house, he used it hardly ever, typically for humorous impact. Some comedians of the Borscht Belt period had been mentioned to have believed that phrases starting with the letter “Okay” are inherently humorous. (They presumably made an exception for the Ku Klux Klan, which in its second incarnation had a passion for Okay-words like “klavern,” for an area chapter, and “klonverse,” for a conference.) What these comedians considered Okay-words was what my father considered Litvaks—Jews with origins in what was as soon as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an space that included not solely present-day Lithuania but in addition Belarus and components of close by states like Latvia.
In “Household Man,” I acknowledged that I’d by no means thought to ask my father exactly why he discovered Litvaks risible. Having now completed some not very strenuous analysis, I do know that Litvaks had been generally stereotyped by different Japanese European Jews as chilly fish (the second definition in “Dictionary Shmictionary!” defines the phrase “litvak” as “a intelligent however insensitive particular person”—presumably irrespective of the place within the Pale of Settlement he comes from). Litvaks seasoned their dishes in another way than Jews from locations like Ukraine. They pronounced any variety of phrases in another way. One of many first jokes I ever heard as a baby was based mostly on the alternative ways of announcing a pudding made with noodles or potatoes: Some folks say “kugel” and a few folks say “keegel,” however my aunt is Americanized; she says “pudgink.” (When it got here to that exact schism, our home was strictly “kugel” territory.) In Yiddish, Litvaks had an accent that was as soon as described to me as sounding like somebody attempting to talk Yiddish the way in which a BBC announcer who’s masking the monarchy speaks English.
However I by no means heard any of that from my father. To him, the very phrase “litvak” was humorous. Trying again on it, I feel that in my father’s view the outdated joke-starter “two guys stroll right into a bar” may very well be made a minimum of faintly humorous by itself by saying “two Litvaks stroll right into a bar.” He was not alone in that perception. In “Son of a Smaller Hero,” an early novel by Mordecai Richler, the grasp chronicler of Montreal Jews, some Jewish pranksters come throughout a seaside that shows an indication that claims “THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO GENTILES,” and sneak again at night time to alter the signal to “THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO LITVAKS.”
The one Litvak we had shut at hand was my maternal grandmother, who was born in what was at all times referred to in my household as “close to Vilna.” She was not my favourite relative, and I began saying so lengthy earlier than I had a possibility to say her in print. Greater than as soon as, I complained to my mom about my grandmother referring to our canine, Spike, as “the hundt.” My mom would inform me that hundt was merely the Yiddish phrase for canine, and I’d reply, “Not the way in which she mentioned it.”
I considered that a few years later when, throughout a New York mayoral election marketing campaign, the comic Jackie Mason, a supporter of Rudy Giuliani, was criticized for referring to David Dinkins as “a elaborate schvartze with a mustache.” Mason’s defenders mentioned that the offending phrase merely means black in Yiddish. Not the way in which he mentioned it.
Within the early sixties, I spent a 12 months within the South masking the civil-rights wrestle, and I as soon as noticed Ku Klux Klansmen of their full regalia. They had been picketing in help of a division retailer in Atlanta that had resisted the desegregation of department-store lunch counters. All however one of many Klansmen wore white robes. One was in inexperienced, and he appeared to be in cost. I requested him what kind of Klan office-holder he was.
“I’m a Kleagle,” he answered.
“You imply a Klugel,” I mentioned reflexively.
The person within the inexperienced gown regarded puzzled, apparently having had restricted expertise with Japanese European Jewish puddings. I modified the topic.
Finally, I had purpose to be puzzled myself. “Kugel” was certainly the one approach the dish was pronounced in my household, however a startling truth had lastly dawned on me: “kugel” is the Litvak pronunciation. I ought to have made the connection years in the past. I’ve lengthy been conscious that amongst South African Jews, who, famously, are just about all Litvaks, “kugel” is so firmly embedded in Yiddish that it even has a slang that means. A hyper-materialistic and overdressed Jewish lady known as (although not by me, nonetheless smarting from reminiscences of the Mees America episode) a kugel.
Based on the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Japanese Europe, “kugel” was additionally the pronunciation typically taught in faculties even in non-Litvak areas of the Pale of Settlement. However absolutely not within the faculties of St. Joe, Missouri. Did my father use it satirically? Did my grandmother one way or the other have management in our home of the right way to pronounce sure conventional Jewish dishes? Have been there different phrases that I grew up announcing as a Litvak would? Did that imply that if I ever did be taught conversational Yiddish I may be taken for a Litvak?
“But when your grandmother was a Litvak,” a good friend mentioned to me, “then you’re partly Litvak your self.”
“You realize,” I replied, “I truthfully by no means considered that.”
Even when it made me sound like a Litvak, I’d take nice pleasure in realizing greater than a smattering of Yiddish. Leafing by way of “Dictionary Shmictionary!” not too long ago, I spotted that I’d already know sufficient Yiddish phrases to cobble collectively a brief sentence or two, assuming a verb was not an absolute requirement. I might think about myself sooner or later casually saying to a dinner companion, in impeccable Yiddish that retains solely a hint of a Kansas Metropolis accent, “Please move the salt.”
Might the Evil Eye be too busy with nefarious schemes elsewhere to have heard that. ♦
