Heeb

Rarely has a short, seemingly meaningless piece of journalism sent Jewdar into such Hulk-like paroxysms of rage. We speak of a little bit of fluff that appeared in last week’s Forward, an inexplicably positive review of something called Yiddish for Babies. The very first sentence began our journey into a rage-induced lost weekend.

"Oy gevalt. Yiddish is dying." Really? Oy Gevalt? A perfectly legitimate phrase, we know, but one which puts us on guard that something awful is about to follow. Yiddish is dying? According to whom? Apparently, it’s in the Encyclopedia of Endangered Languages, which makes sense if one compares Yiddish today with Yiddish in 1939. But considering that the number of young Yiddish speakers is actually growing pretty rapidly—has the author been to Boro Park lately?—it seems a bit premature to write the obit. And what would the loss be if Yiddish did disappear, according to the scribe? Apparently a generation would grow up not knowing terms like "schmear," "shayne maydel," and "alter kocker." (That last one, incidentally, may figuratively mean "grumpy old men," but it literally means "old shitter." Charming.)  

The piece then goes on to tout the merits ofYiddish for Babies, which, apparently, is doing its best to make Yiddish completely devoid of any meaning beyond cutesyness. The book is so awful it even brought out the She-Hulk in Mrs. Jewdar, who, got to the part about a baby—apparently dressed up to look like a "bubbe in Boca"—talking on a lime green rotary phone. As the better half noted, the grandmothers of today’s babies are only in their fifties and sixties. "That’s like making jokes about not being able to turn off the blinking light on the VCR, when nobody has a VCR."

Indeed, the missus was in rare form, so I’ll give her the last word. As the article concluded with a reference to "yiddisher kop" meaning "smart person," (Note: it means that, but only because the presumption is that someone with a "Jewish head" is smarter than someone with a "goyisher kop") she fumed, "If you really want to believe that Yiddish is so cute and charming, at least be honest about what Yiddish-speaking Jews traditionally believed: We’re better, goyim are worse, and if you give them an inch, they’ll pogrom all over you." 

Jewdar, for one, would buy that book for a baby. 

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