How Do You Say ‘Uppercut’ in Yiddish?

Image by Courtesy of YIVO

By Forward Staff April 28, 2015

A version of this post appeared in Yiddish .

According to the usual stereotype, Jews don’t know how to fight. In fact, Jews have been quite adept at defending themselves, and there is even a rich Yiddish vocabulary to describe how it’s done. A new exhibit, “Yiddish Fight Club,” opening April 30 at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, provides a history of this colorful lexicon.

The words and expressions found in the exhibit were taken from a linguistic study of fighting, published by YIVO in 1926, with entries ranging from, “knak,” (blow or hit), to “shteysl” (uppercut). The exhibit also provides the little-known history of Jewish criminals, boxers and professional wrestlers, many of whom are shown in historical photos.

“Even thought the stereotype of Jews is that they were intellectuals and yeshiva students, there were also more than enough street youths who didn’t hesitate to fight when they felt threatened, using an original Yiddish lexicon to express themselves,” said Eddy Portnoy, academic advisor of YIVO’s Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies and the curator of the exhibit.

At the April 30 opening Portnoy will give a talk describing the world of Jewish factory workers, pimps, prostitutes, thieves, gangsters, professional boxers and street fighters of the first half of the 20th century, as well as the earthy language that they used.

The Forward’s staff contributors are listed in our masthead.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO