I was always being asked to stop hocking her chainik. I was a vants (a bedbug) and a pischer. “Be a mensch” meant: “Live up to your responsibilities. Ongepotchket, defined as “messed up, slapped together,” denoted in my mother’s mouth too many styles mismatched, unharmonious in effect. “Eli, enough already. An outfit that I thought gorgeous, because it contained all currently Children, like other domesticated animals, are extremely sensitive to tones of voice and the underlying emotional states in the large creatures on whom their comfort depends. All Rights Reserved. To me, no other word so I was a noodnik. 292 North St. My mother, however, did use schtup in the sense of “to give,” or to stuff in the pocket of someone, as in telling my father to “Schtup Phyllis $10 for the parking,” when I visited them in the city, or “Schtup the bellboy something.”. Usage: "Du bist a Faygeleh" or in English, "You are a faygeleh". My mother’s values were the values of reason, the wise mind, a yiddische kopf, “a Jewish head” or way of looking at things, although this was a phrase I never heard her use. Gehakte tzuris!”, Naturally I wasn’t the only brunt of my mother’s Yiddish critiques and rebukes. “What a ferschluggineh idea” or “What a ferschtunkeneh movie.” “What a ferkakte excuse.” “We have to go out to a ferkakte dinner party.” “Write that ferkakte thank-you note already.” My favorite fer– word these days is ferschlepte, as in “Spare me that whole ferschlepte krenk” or “Enough with that ferschlepte krenk already.” Krenk is sickness. Although my parents took advantage of postwar prices to be tourists all over the world, they never went to Germany, and while they were alive I never did either, not wanting to upset them. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. Alev ha sholem means peace be upon him, but to me, Oliver Shullum was a good guy, kind of like God or Santa Claus, who watched over the dead. Perhaps she had no interest in the concept. there are eager to destroy it whenever their attention is drawn to it. A vast majority of these guys, despite their loose talk and taut, shapely butts, have no doubt not experienced anal or oral sex with another man, pitching or catching. is at the heart of many a Yiddish vocabulary, I never once heard my mother use it. For instance, whenever my mother referred to someone who had died, she said, “Oliver Shullum,” as in, “Your grandfather, Oliver Shullum, would have loved to be here to see you go off to kindergarten.” At first this expression was bewildering, because I knew my grandfather’s name was not Oliver Shullum but Meyer Davidoff. Other children’s mothers kvelled over their achievements, but kvell was also not in her vocabulary. Write thank-you notes. at once comforting and unsettling to find haven where you least expected it, to find, after a lifetime trying to master French, Italian, and Spanish, in this of all countries, how much I wished I’d mastered my mother’s Yiddish. Some Yiddish mavens distinguish between schlemiel and schlimazel, the former being a klutz and the latter chronically luckless, as in “The schlemiel spilled the soup on the schlimazel.” Schlimazel, however, was not in my mother’s vocabulary. Are you an asshole? How many times must my grandmother have said to her own American-born daughter “A klug zu Columbus” and wished she had not had to leave Minsk? “Nebbish.” Amplified, occasionally, with, “Poor little fly on the wall.”. Would All of the Automotive People Please Stand Up? As Mother pronounced it, the word sounded like “ang-ge-potch-key.” She would often enjoin me to go potchkey around outside when she was busy in the house, or to potchkey in the sand at the beach. Ferschlepte krenk! My mother had a whole repertoire of words beginning with the Yiddish equivalent fer– (sometimes written far–), and most of them were used to denote a very bad situation. A goyische kopf spent lots on liquor for a party but not enough for food. Schmei means to stroll or window-shop. Call someone who speaks spanish a pajaro (parrot/bird). To be a mensch was the pinnacle of her moral code, and it didn’t matter that it meant “man.” Women could be mensches, too, although she sometimes used the English word lady for the moral perfection my sister and I should aspire to. The most vulgar phrase, but the one she used most often, was Gay kaken ofn yahm!—literally “Go shit in the ocean” but closer to our English “Go jump in the lake” or “Give me a break” and, in my mother’s mouth, no stronger. Lovingly, she called me ketzeleh (little pussycat), tzatzkeleh (little toy), hertzeleh (little heart), schatzeleh (little treasure), and zisskeit(sweetness). The opposite of Oliver Shullum was Kinna Horah. Using backslash to escape has buggies . Whatever it was, I got the point: stop it, shape up. “Your brother made the Dean’s List, Kinna Horah.” “Your cousin Sara, Kinna Horah, is getting married.” I realized in the fullness of time that Kinna Horah (kinehora) was pronounced postpositively to ward off bad luck. An even milder version was Gay bach bagels! What’s wrong with the old dresses?” “Everyone is getting a new dress.” “A klug zu Columbus!”. Accept the inevitable. But nebbish was just as often used ironically to mean “poor thing.” Example: “I was picked last in gym class.” “Nebbish! She had many expressions for sentimental trash, because that’s the kind of book she liked to read—before casting it aside as too sentimental, just a bubbe meise. Or maybe you're just a prick, dick, or son of a bitch? I was too young to be a yenta, too self-absorbed to be a kockleffel (kitchen spoon, busybody), too restrained to be a schmeikeler. Versalzen is to oversalt. My mother’s Yiddish was the Yiddish of American Jews at a particular historical moment, when the experiences of immigration and assimilation to a new culture were not far in the past. You’re all ferblondjet.” There were ferschtunkeneh (something that stinks), ferkakte (screwed up, ridiculous, literally very shitty), and ferschluggineh (pathetic). fashionable motifs, like a felt skirt with an appliquéd poodle studded in sequins worn with a sweater trimmed in fuzzy angora, might be ang-ge-potch-key, and rightly so, to my mother. It's worth noting that the most offensive of these slurs, faggot, spent whole centuries as a derogatory term for a shrewish woman before it became an insult to men who are nothing like me. The worst kind of tzuris was gehakte tzuris, chopped trouble, utter misery.
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