Speaking Yiddish

How did a young white bread shiksa girl from the south Chicago suburbs learn to speak Yiddish? 

The answer comes from the most unusual place… at Christmas dinners. 

In Chicago, the Jewish population was a mere shadow of its sister city of New York, so we didn’t have a lot of exposure. 

Case in point, on Sunday mornings my brother and I used to watch a local kids program called The Magic Door. Despite the use of the word shalom here and there, I didn’t realize that it was a Jewish program until I was an adult. We were completely scnookered and very naive. 

But on some Christmas dinners, my eyes were opened. Every Christmas, my father’s family would combine families for convenience at my aunt and uncle’s house. My aunt was Jewish, as were her parents. Even though they didn’t celebrate Christmas, they came for their gentile grandkids. 

My Irish Catholic grandmother, who rarely shirked at giving her opinion was paired with the other side of outspoken Jewish grandparents. This was not a recipe for harmony, but it was the ingredients for hilarity.

As an avid people observer, I relished the opportunity to be in the room where it happened at the table where they all made small talk. 

Phil, my aunt’s father, was a very gregarious man. He worked in sales and was never at a loss to entertain everyone with stories of the people he knew the things that they did. And was he a storyteller… he filled the room with his exuberance. 

My grandmother tried to get a few words in with her own stories, as did my dad. They were formidable adversaries for him, but ultimately no match.

Besides his swagger, when he told a story, what I noticed more was the words he was using. Words they were all saying to each other. Marvelous words with innumerable consonants that abrasively hacked and cacked on the way out-like a cat choking up a hairball. 

They were funny sounding wonderful words that incredibly described two sentences of explanation in one simple word. I was enthralled, drinking in every word he said.

If he said someone was farklempt, his family immediately knew that they were frustrated or beyond beside themselves. No explanation needed. 

When he said there was Meshuggah at his  shop, everyone instantly surmised that there was a bunch of nonsense, and perhaps someone was up to no good. Nothing more was needed. 

I was intrigued. Afterwards, I asked my parents what language they were speaking. But as they had little tolerance for anything beyond their scope, they just brushed it off as a Jewish thing. Which meant they either didn’t know or didn’t care.

Each Christmas I looked forward to Phil’s wild stories and my education in his unique language. I wanted to research it more, but unfortunately, I had no basis of information. There was no internet. 

I didn’t wanna ask Phil or my aunt about it, for fear of embarrassing them, so I just soaked in the words and based on context, tried to interpret their meaning. 

Of course, in the completely non-Jewish south suburbs of Chicago I didn’t dare use any of the words I learned. 

But then years later came the school of Yiddish in the form of the television program The Nanny.

Now an adult, I watched the program and the wonderful world of Yiddish came flooding back to me. All the fantastic words and sayings, that said so much with so little, once again permeated my mind. Somehow these words always seemed to capture the perfect meaning.

At this point, I had learned words in other languages. And now, I could use them all, carefully and sparingly, until they became a natural part of my vocabulary. 

And I found that a lot of these words have seeped into everyone’s use. Schlep means a very difficult way of dragging things around; or schmooze is commonly known to chat or suck up to other people; schmutz, dirt or something dirty; or even chutzpah, describing someone with a whole lot of nerve, usually undeserved. 

And then I moved to a 55 plus community in Florida with a lot of New Yorkers and some Jewish people. Now I could use my entire beginner set of Yiddish words without issue. Many even commended me for knowing the words and using them properly.

And with the internet, I find that Yiddish is not slang for Hebrew, as I formally thought. It is a German Jewish language that traveled to the United States with many of its immigrants. 

And so my education continues. I’m always listening and willing to learn more in this interesting language to further my study beyond the starter kit in Yiddish.