How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish Dictionaries?

UPDATE UPDATE (second update)
According to a tweet from the Director of Digital Strategy at WNET/Channel 13, the Yiddish "quiz" is down because Survey Gizmo suffered a cyber attack yesterday, nebekh. I'll wish a refue shleyme to Survey Gizmo and still hold out hope that WNET/ Channel 13 will just take down the quiz, or redo it with real Yiddish words and definitions.

As they say on TV, stay tuned...

/UPDATE UPDATE (end second update)

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UPDATE (first update)

It's come to my attention, even more recently, that PBS has removed the How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish quiz from their website! Now, who can say if it was due to the public shaming meted out by angry bloggers? But a little gentle shaming obviously can't hurt if you want to make the soi disant 'educational media' take responsibility for the quality of content they are putting out.

If you think I'm making a big deal out of nothing here, think about this: The act of writing history, especially one's own history, is a definitional, political act. The Story of the Jews is saying something about global Jewry today, both in its content, and in its choice of establishment, British but Jewish host, Simon Schama.

By using the How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish quiz to promote a seemingly serious work of history, PBS is also telling us something about which parts of Jewish history and culture to take seriously and which can be regarded as a joke. You can guess which is which.

But I'm not willing to consign a thousand years of history, literature, music, foodways and folk religion to a back-of-the-book novelty glossary. Yiddish culture belongs to me (and you) and shouldn't be peddled like plastic dog poo, especially not by people who should know better.

So yeah, I'm going to continue to speak up for the importance and integrity of Yiddish and Yiddish culture, whenever I see the need. I hope you will, too.

/UPDATE (end first update)
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How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish Dictionaries?

It's recently come to my attention that the well intentioned, though poorly informed, folks at PBS don't know the difference between Yiddish and English. They seem to be under the same impression as many, many Americans: that is, if it feels Yiddish, it must be Yiddish. After all, Yiddish isn't a real language, right? And futz sounds like a Yiddish word, so it must be a Yiddish word, right?

Wrong.

All this confusion could be cleared up in the time it takes to open a standard Yiddish dictionary. It occurred to me, though, that perhaps people don't know the difference between, say, a Yiddish dictionary and a humorous reference book on Yinglish. One is a dictionary. One is not. Uhh... I'm not a linguist, people. Just a humorless scold, here to help.

And since people like learning in quiz form, I now present to you How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish Dictionaries? No prizes, no shareable Facebook badge, sorry. I don't have the slick graphics and know-how of the PBS team. Alls I got are a couple of dictionaries. And a couple not dictionaries. So... without further ado...

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR YIDDISH DICTIONARIES?
The challenge: Choose which of the following are Yiddish dictionaries and which are humorous books on Yinglish or other non-dictionary reference books

A. The Joys of Yiddish

B. Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary

C. If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Say It In Yiddish

D. Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary

E. English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary

F. Sex and the Single Hasid

G. Verterbukh fun loshn-koydesh shtamike verter in yiddish

ANSWERS

Dictionaries

B, D, E, G

Not-Dictionaries

A, C, F

Now that we all know where to find real Yiddish words and their definitions (in dictionaries), places with an educational mandate, like PBS, will never end up with embarrassing, error-ridden material on their website. 

Yay! We all win!!!! Now let's go watch Simon Schama in The Story of the Jews!

me' khapt a nosh/ a homentash...

Purim sameakh/ a freylikhn purim, y'all. What are you doing reading this? Shouldn't you be pounding shots in a dark room in a terrible wig?

But, since you're here, and we're in a Purim mood, let's talk about hamentashen. What the heck is a hamentash (singular)? Is it from the Yiddish for Haman's (boo hiss) Pockets?

Not so fast, smarty pants. According to best-selling Canadian author Michael Wex:

Hamantaschen–pronounced homon-tashn in Yiddish–were originally mon-tashn, poppy seed pockets, that were eaten on Purim. The similarity between mon, Yiddish for poppy seeds, andHomon led to the name change, and with it a raft of after-the-fact attempts to explain what the pastry had to do with Haman, the villain of the Purim story. Variously said to represent Haman's ears and nose, his hat, and even his pockets, hamantaschen are more convincingly explained–if there is any explanation beyond homophony–by a pun on the various biblical verses in which the Children of Israel are said to have eaten ha-mon, the manna, which would also help to explain the popularity of the poppy seed filling.

Sorry, poppy seed h8ers. Go argue with tradition. And before you diss this tricorner classic, keep in mind its important place in Yiddish sexual euphemism:

The general appearance of  the hamantasch and its cousins in geometry, the knish and the pirogi, has given all three a special place in colloquial Yiddish as slightly coy vulgarisms for the human vulva, roughly equivalent to "pussy" or "beaver," neither of which is even vaguely kosher. Pireg–pirogi–is the most vulgar, hamantasch the cutest. Its triangular shape and varicolored stuffings make it a natural. Knish occupies the sort of middle ground that allows it to be used informally between consenting adults of either sex.

 esen a trois, anyone?

One last Wex related Yiddish factoid: Many years ago Wex taught me that in Yiddish, a nun is a monaskhe. Surely there's some interesting resonances there, or at least puns to be made, given the wonderful symbolic depth of the humble 'montash. Which brings me to our next hamantash related destination...

Over at Lilith magazine, there's an exploration of the hamantash as a symbol of ancient feminine fertility and power.

If Judy Chicago has never made a branded hamantash she really should

A must read is Susan Schnur's classic reclamation of the hamantash as the Womantash. As a feminist, it made me rethink my distaste for mon. After all, the little classic seed represents the fertile potency of Spring and is a powerful symbol of the feminine within the springtime stories of peril, triumph and rebirth. Can your apricot jam do all that?

Now go get drunk, seriously!!!

PBS or Heeb? Take This Quiz!!!

Dear PBS,

When your website content is almost indistinguishable from that of Heeb, it's probably time to stop farming out your website work to the unpaid interns.

PBS is promoting its new documentary The Story of the Jews, narrated by Simon Schama. So far, so good. It's the kind of thing my dad would TiVO so we could watch together and I would secretly roll my eyes at how they get everything wrong about Eastern Europe.

In any case, I haven't seen it. And if they want to make it appealing to snobs like me, this is probably not the best way. It's a quiz called How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish. It has 15 questions, testing your knowledge of well known 'Yiddish' words. Unsurprisingly, many of the Yiddish words are actually Yinglish, the 'translations' are mostly appalling, and the whole thing is mainly a quiz of how hard you can cringe through 15 mouse clicks.

The worst part is, it's not much better than Heeb's 2010 Test Your Jew IQ game. Remember that gem of American-Jewish cultural pride?

Know the lyrics to If I Were a Rich Man? Can you distinguish between actual Yiddish words and plain mumbo-jumbo? Heard of any Israeli cities besides Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv? If you’re not feeling nauseous by now, then this is probably the game for you!

Yes, because what self-respecting Jew doesn't feel nauseated by knowing common Yiddish words and Israeli cities??? 

PBS doesn't quite articulate it so clearly, but How Well Do You Know Yiddish quiz has the same self-hating minstrel vibe. Its mish mosh of Yiddish, Yinglish and fake definitions reeks of the same peculiar American Jewish shame.

A little side by side comparison of the games:

PBS:

Futz is not a real Yiddish word. It is Yinglish.

Heeb:

PBS:

The actual expression is 'hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik' and roughly translates to 'stop banging on about it.'

Heeb:

PBS:

Shtik means piece. 

And it just goes on and on...

Honestly, if PBS can't do any better than Heeb, I don't have a lot of hope for mainstream Jewish pop culture. As the well known Yiddish saying goes, 'We're fucked on both ends.'

UPDATE:

PBS has removed the Quiz from its website.

Love Lays Low

From my friend Daniel Kahn, a dark and funny new video for Love Lays Low, off his newest CD with the Painted Bird, Bad Old Songs.



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Constructed and directed by Polish artist Izabela Pia Szumen.

Where is Yiddish? Depends on Your Perspective

The Washington Post brings us an interesting chart from the Pew Research Center. The chart tracks language presence in the United States from 1980 to today. Because Yiddish had the most stark decline between then and now (from #11 in 1980 to dead last today) the Pew chart is labeled The decline of Yiddish, the rise of Tagalog. Which, ok, is pretty accurate.  The Washington Post's headline, however, is How We Stopped Speaking Yiddish. Which isn't just bizarrely non-descriptive of this charticle (the 'How' never comes up), it also speaks to the media's love of a good 'Yiddish in decline' narrative.

For comparison, Greek was at  #8 in 1980 with 401,000 speakers. Today it's at #14 with 307,000 speakers. In 1980 Yiddish had 315,000 speakers and today around155,000. (By the way, I'm pretty sure this is an underestimate given the population explosion in the Hasidic world and how that explosion does not show up in official records.) Between 1980 and today both Greek and Yiddish dropped six positions. 

So, why no tears for the dramatic decline of Greek? Italian? Polish?

While the Washington Post leads with the disappearance of Yiddish, Salon reprints Ross Perlin's Jewish Currents piece on Yiddish on the Internet. Perlin, a Yiddishist living in New York,  finds a thriving Yiddish world on line.

The Washington Post may have stopped speaking Yiddish, but there's a whole lot of folks typing, texting and publishing in it online. But you have to be interested in finding them.

Bentsi der Geshtokhener, Nebekh

Yiddish Murder Ballads

Another terrific post from Itzik Gottesman's Yiddish Song of the Week. This one features a recording of Leah (Leyke) Carey, star of the Yiddish stage.

Leyke brings us a Yiddish murder ballad, courtesy of her mother, who was in Zhitomir when the events of the song happened. Bentsi was not such a nice guy, an alfonse (pimp) who was dusted by a couple of his compatriots. Leyke sings Bentsi's tale in an impressive 15 verses.

There's some interesting vocabulary in the song. For example, a shayke is a gang. And ikh hob dir shoyn gefetst (I've done away with you). Stuff you don't use in your day to day casual Yiddish. I imagine. I mean, I don't know you. But I imagine.

Bentsi's turncoat friends are referred to as gite-briderlekh. Itzik translates gite-briderlekh as buddies but notes that it is slang for 'thugs'. I wonder, though, if this is the best translation.

I recall Max Perlman's theater song Ven du lakhst (When You Laugh). He also uses 'gite brider' in a negative sense, but it's not quite thugs. It's more like simply false friends who will abandon you when things are going bad.

ven du lakhst lakhn ale mit dir mit/ ven du vaynst, vaynsti far zikh alayn
gayt dir git feln gite brider nit/ gayt dir shlakht bisti elent vi a shtayn

BONUS: Here's Wolf Krakowski doing Perlman's bluesy lament of the world weary entertainer. That makes one bloody murder ballad of pimpery gone wrong and one reminder of why you shouldn't go into show biz. You're welcome.

This Thursday at 7 pm - Peretz in a Time of Revolution פּרץ אין אַ צײַט פֿון רעוואָלוציע

A rare Yiddish-only, evening program at YIVO, this Thursday at 7. Not to be missed. 

Dr. Michael Steinlauf (Gratz College) will be speaking (in Yiddish) on I.L. Peretz and the failed revolution of 1905.

"In this talk, Michael Steinlauf (Gratz College) examines Peretz’s ideas during the 1905 Revolution when he developed his fullest articulation of the glories and dangers of building a modern culture in the diaspora."

Read this interview with Dr. Steinlauf  then go sign up for the lecture!

I Can Identify

You know no one love/hates talking 'identity' more than I do. So I was thrilled to find out today that I was invited to take part in a sure to be provocative conference coming up this spring. It's called 'Rethinking Jewish Identity and Jewish Education' and it aims to bring together an eclectic group of people (that's why they asked me!) to think our way out of this identity quagmire.

As conference co-chair Jon Levisohn blogged earlier: Enough Identity, Already!

From the conference call for proposals:

The concept of “Jewish identity” has been fundamental to post-war policy discourse and scholarship on Jewish education.  With the possible exception of “continuity,” identity (and the attendant fears of its disappearance or weakening) has driven more philanthropic initiatives and educational policy than any other single concept.  

Yet recent research has exposed the problematic nature of this concept.  The combination of strong identity and low engagement, as demonstrated by the recent Pew Report, suggests that the very concept of Jewish identity can no longer shoulder the burden of Jewish educational efforts. The time has come to reconsider the notion of “identity” as the desired outcome of Jewish education.
Standard uses of “identity” by Jewish educators and policy-makers fail to capture the complex ways in which people understand their Jewish commitments, engage with Jewish communities, and enact Jewish practices.  

Approaching identity as an outcome offers a mismatched measure of Jewish education and poorly describes the various and shifting ways in which people live their Jewish lives.

Damn straight. 

The conference isn't until the end of March, but I can't wait!

If You Listen to One Mickey Katz Blues Parody Today, Please Make It This One

Gevaldik...




And just because we're talking about shit I love, of course, there's this:

Blackface White Faces

A friend alerted me to this the other day:




It’s an Israeli group called Kleibedik (it's a pun on Klezmer and leybedik [lively]) doing a “klezmer” medley. In blackface. With fake neon payes. The whole video is like a seven layer pie where every layer is “WTF.” I mean, the terrible arrangements of Barry Sisters and My Yiddish Mame and and and COTTON EYED JOE? Guys, shit goes deep and that’s BEFORE we even get to the blackface 
.

Which… I have no explanation for. Do you? It seems to be their shtik, as you can find videos online of Kleibedik performing live in the same get up. And the sad thing is that the audience is eating it up. It makes my heart hurt. It’s like multi-level minstrelsy. The blackface goes with the blackhat.. face. Oysh.

Israel has so much amazing Jewish culture, but when it comes to eastern European/Ashkenazi stuff too often it’s just a big box full of cringe wrapped up with a bow of horrible. I mean, is this truly how young Israelis process and relate to Yiddish? Don’t answer that.

It makes me wonder… why is blackface still so compelling to artists? And not just American artists or Jewish artists.  I’m not sure there’s one answer, but it gives me an excuse to talk about some of my favorite examples of modern blackface, both Jewish and non.

(For a really great, though academic, exploration of the history behind American pop culture, Jews and blackface, please read Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Melting Pot of Hollywood by Michael Rogin.)

But we're staying mostly in the recent-ish past and present now...

1980s

Taco, Puttin’ on the Ritz

Apparently this video had the blackface parts removed when it was first released, but you can find the original now on YouTube. What could blackface possibly have to do with anything here?

Two thoughts. First, when Irving Berlin originally wrote the song in 1929, apparently the original lyric referred to young fashionable Harlemites strutting up and down Lenox Avenue. According to Wikipedia, when it was recorded for the film Blue Skies in 1946, the lyrics were changed to “Park Avenue” and a whiter kind of image.

Second, Taco isn’t just Dutch, he’s Dutch-Indonesian. Perhaps Taco was attracted to the idea of first, reminding us of the original racial dynamics of the time and place where Puttin’ on the Ritz was written. And/or, as a bi-racial artist, perhaps he was intrigued by the ambiguity of blackface as a way of playing with race. Or, maybe, the video is directly referencing some movie I’m not familiar with. This is always a possibility. Feel free to educate me in the comments. 

So, I think I finally figured out what the deal is with Taco. Or at least, part of the deal. It's so obvious I can't believe it didn't occur to me when I first wrote this piece. But here's the thing: there's a Dutch tradition of blackface called Zwarte Piet. It goes back to the mid-19th century and is influenced by and parallel to our own. This is a National Geographic Article from 2018:

The character was popularized in a mid-19th century children’s book written by a man who was very interested in the Dutch royal family members, “one of whom bought a slave in a slave market in Cairo in the mid-19th century,” says Joke Hermes, a professor of media, culture, and citizenship at Inholland University. This slave, Hermes suggests, may have helped inspire the character of Zwarte Piet.

Before the Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863, the country was deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade. It grew prosperous by selling enslaved people to the United States or sending them to work in Dutch colonies, and some nobles “gifted” each other with enslaved black children, who are shown in paintings wearing colorful, Moorish clothing 

The exaggerated appearance of Dutch Zwarte Piet costumes may have also been influenced by American blackface minstrel shows, which toured throughout Europe in the mid-19th century. “The Dutch tend to argue that Black Pete is a Dutch thing, and other people outside the Netherlands don’t understand our culture,” says Mitchell Esajas, co-founder of New Urban Collective and Kick Out Zwarte Piet. “But it is part of an international tradition of racial stereotyping.”

Culture Club, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

Boy George is on trial and a whole jury of black face Jolsons are there to render a verdict? Again, Boy George strikes me as an artist who is playing with sexuality/gender and perhaps is attracted to blackface as akin to his own trademark ‘drag.’ I’m not sure. What do you think?

1970s

Two icons of Jewish male sexuality: Elliott Gould and Neil Diamond. Both Diamond and Gould were very conscious of their Jewishness and never shied away from it, though Gould, being a much more talented actor, has played a much wider variety of parts.  Nonetheless… it makes sense that even in the 1970s, the shadow of Al Jolson crept behind both performers- both as products of American pop culture and as out Jewish men in the public eye.

Neil Diamond, The Jazz Singer

Neil Diamond tackles the Jolson legacy, straight on, by remaking the Jazz Singer in 1980. (I'm counting this as 1970s. Too bad.) Was The Jazz Singer 1980 a disaster on pretty much every level? Yes. Was it so bad it’s good kinda bad? I’d say yes. And that’s exemplified by the way Diamond works blackface into the modern setting. See, Neil and his band are playing at an uptown club and they can’t have no white man on stage. Hence the need for black face. It's so gloriously cheesy you can't help but enjoy the appalling spectacle.

For comparison, here's some Jolson:

Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye

A modern (1973) remake of Raymond Chandler's LA noir. I can’t find a clip of the scene I’m thinking of, so you will have to see the movie yourself. You’ll thank me. 

But here’s an image of Elliott Gould in the scene I want to talk about. He’s playing detective Philip Marlowe and he’s been brought in for booking at the police station. After being finger printed he smears ink on his face and breaks into a sardonic version of Jolson’s ‘Swanee’. It's his way of expressing his contempt for the corrupt police who know they've arrested an innocent men.   According to Gould, the whole thing was improvised on set, which only adds another layer of intensity to his performance. 

(He was a damn good looking man, right?) And some more Jolson, for good measure. What do you think about contemporary blackface? Do you see it around? Is it ever appropriate? Can it be a legitimate part of American-Jewish culture?