Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Wimpels Made Simple
Sidney Jacobson of Chester, N.J., writes: “My wife recently came into possession of a curious, bannerlike cloth about 8 inches wide and 8 feet long, and with the assistance of two rabbis, we determined that it was called a Wimpel. Yet although it was apparently a presentation made to my wife’s grandfather at his circumcision…
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Culture Walk Softly and Carry a Big Shtick
The contemporary American vernacular has dozens of Yiddish words in it, most of which — maven, schlep, kosher, etc., etc. — mean pretty much the same thing in English as they do in Yiddish. Occasionally, though, Yiddish words domesticated in English have taken on new meanings. This is a natural linguistic process, even though to…
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Culture We Will, We Will Rock You
Plus ça change, plus ça reste le même chose. The dispute that has recently arisen in Israel concerning the wording of the Yizkor prayer for fallen soldiers, said on the country’s annual Yom ha-Zikaron, or Memorial Day, reminds one of nothing so much as a similar quarrel that nearly delayed the Jewish state’s declaration of…
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Culture Philologos: What’s That On Your Head?
Helen Hill of Miami writes: “My mother, who grew up in a Polish shtetl, used the word perukha in Yiddish to describe a lady’s head covering such as a sheytl or turban. Presumably, this came from perruque, which I believe is French for a wig. But how did French get into shtetl Yiddish?” A sheytl,…
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Culture The Language Bibi and Bam Used
“On the Same Page?” asked a front-page caption of the June 3 edition of the Forward, beneath which were parallel excerpts from President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech on U.S. policy in the Middle East and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s May 24 Congressional address. The second pair of matching quotes had the U.S. president saying:…
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Culture Shabbat by Way of Babylon
The holiday of Shavuot has arrived — and with it, a d’var Torah, a commentary on a biblical passage, customarily delivered by a rabbi or member of a congregation, from Edward Reingold of Michiana, Mich. For his subject, Mr. Reingold has chosen the verses in Leviticus 23 that tell us when Shavuot is to be…
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Culture Fermisht but Not Fergotten
Here’s a question from Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School: “Many Yiddish words begin with the prefix fer-, such as ferklemt, ferblondzshet, ferkakt, ferdreyt, fermisht, etc. What’s the common denominator? Is there a linguistic connection to the series of English words that includes ‘forgo,’ ‘forbid,’ ‘forget’ and ‘forswear’? Something tells me that these two sets…
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Culture How To Live Like God in Odessa
Seth Cohen writes from Mamaroneck, N.Y.: “I just read, in [the Web site of] Jewish Ideas Daily, a review of a book about the history of Odessa. In it were mentioned two contrasting Jewish views of that city as expressed in the Yiddish sayings, lebn vi got in Odes, ‘to live like God in Odessa,…
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