Some Yiddish understood the world over

By Dan Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –If people make the world go round, words make the world go round, too.

I mention this today because there’s an Indian gentleman named Anu Garg who now lives in America and runs a popular word maven newsletter, free of charge, for people who like words and word origins. Like me, and maybe, dear reader, like you.

Every week Garg writes short anecdotes about 5 different words that he groups in various categories, and the other week he ran a series on some choice Yiddish

words: luftmensch, gonif, kibitzer, schlemiel, schlimazel and more.

What I love about his newsletter in addition to  Garg’s own warmth and humor — and love of words — is the feedback he gets from readers each week. The feedback on the Yiddish words recently was, to my ears and eyes, priceless.

Being an inveterate word man and internet surfer, I contacted a few of Garg’s readers and asked them a few things that they had discussed about Yiddish words online.

Suzanne Sperry in Corvallis, Oregon wrote in to Garg to say:

“Thanks for the series on Yiddish words. I grew up in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Jewish — except for my family — and I learned a lot of Yiddish slang from my playmates, whose parents mostly were born in The Old Country. I remember one jump rope chant we used to sing as kids that began “schlemiel, schlimazel …”

Jonathan Gellman wrote about the word gonif and explained that “actually, with the spelling ‘gonoph’, ‘ganef’ has been in published English since Charles Dickens used it in his novel titled Bleak House in 1853 — with this sentence: ‘He’s as obstinate a young gonoph as I know.’ That came as a welcome surprise when I was reading that novel.”

I did not know that Charles Dickens knew Yiddish! So I wrote to Gellman in Manhattan for an amplification.

“Dan, I’m not a Dickens scholar,  but I do remember that Dickens started out as a court reporter and was quite familiar with the underworld of 19th century London,” Gellman told the San Diego Jewish World. “I’m glad to have opened this one door for you. As you go through it, who knows what you’ll find. May your Bloomsday be as rich as James Joyce’s.”

One of Garg’s word maven fans is a man from Turkey named Haluk Atamal, and when I asked him by email if he was Jewish or how he came to be so interested in Yiddish, he told me in an email in internet time::

“Thanks for your email. No, I am not Jewish and officially I am a Muslim man here in Turkey. As for Yiddish, it is part of my big love of languages, grammar, words and phonetics. Sort of a hobby, after music and photography, for 51 years now. I cannot claim to be an expert and speak only English apart from my mother tongue Turkish. I am, however, somewhat familiar with Hebrew, German, Dutch, French and Catalan. Hebrew is from my 3-month stay in Israel many years ago. Wishing that the music of words should light our way forever.”

Atamal came to my attention because in the word maven newsletter he told this story:

”Today’s word ‘kibitzer’ reminds me of a joke: A man is starting a journey in the Sahara Desert. Asking what he should take along, he is advised to take a pack of cards. His ‘I cannot play alone’ remark gets the answer, ‘You start playing and for sure there will be some kibitzers in no time.'”

I loved hearing that joke from a Muslim word maven in Turkey. What an amazing world we live in, those of us who love words the world over.

Michael Barr in Canada told the newsletter readers another joke based on the word “kibitzer,” which was one of the words Garg defined in his words of the week missive. Barr wrote:  “Back when I played bridge, we recognized three kinds of onlookers: kibitzers, dorbitzers, and tsitsitzers. A kibitzer had permission of a player and is permitted to talk to that player but to no one else; a dorbitzer had permission from a kibitzer and could speak to that person but to no one else; a tsitsitzer had no one’s permission and could speak to no one — he could only sit there and say tsi-tsi.”

When I contacted Barr for an amplification he told me: ”What more to tell. I probably read this somewhere, maybe in a bridge book. I should have said ‘tsitsers’ for the third kind. But it was a joke, obviously. We picked up on it and used it. That would have been around 1960.”

Barr added: “My mother’s father came over to Canada when he was one and, although he certainly spoke Yiddish and it would have been his mother tongue, English was really his language. Her mother was 13 and spoke English with a very light accent, although her first language would have been Yiddish. So my mother grew up without Yiddish. My father’s parents came over as young marrieds and although all 7 children were born in the US they never spoke (anything) but badly broken English. My father grew up in South Philly and everyone of his playmates spoke Yiddish. So he started English when he started school. But outside of a South Philly accent, his English was not accented. My mother learned halting Yiddish to speak to her in-laws, but they used it at home only to have a conversation, (as they say in French) “pas devant les enfants“(Not in front of the children).. So I never learned it either. Having studied German in college, I can now understand a bit.”

Barr told me one more good story and here it is: “Here is something that might amuse.  Montreal has a large (and growing) Chasidic population. When I walk to my office, I pass through their neighborhood. I saw a panel truck with Hebrew lettering on it. Although I have largely lost contact with Hebrew after I was 13, I could piece together the letters and they said ‘Heymishe Kleaners.’ I knew it wasn’t Hebrew because a double yud is impossible.”

As for Barr’s interest in bridge as a card game, he told me in closing: “My grandfathers and all the men in their generation played only pinochle and I used to play that with them after funerals, when they all came back to sit ‘shiva’ and the men eventually went off to play. The women yacked. But when a girl friend taught me how to play bridge, I realized it was a much better game and never looked back.”

A few Yiddish stories and jokes, just the thing to warm the soul as the winter of 2014-2015 approaches, what with all the worries in the world pressing down upon us. Long live Yiddish! Long live Jewish humor!

*
Bloom is Taiwan correspondent for San Diego Jewish World and an inveterate web surfer. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com