Philologos
By Philologos
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News Waiting for Youdi
An e-mail correspondent who signs as “Will” has the following query: In Samuel Beckett’s novel “Molloy,” there is a character known as Youdi who has godlike features, much like Godot in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” What do you make of this? Will addresses this question to a Jewish language columnist, one assumes, because of the…
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News Between Two Evenings
From Morton Steinberg comes this query: “A word in Hebrew that has always troubled me is tsohorayim, ‘noon,’ which is in the dual plural form. Is the proper greeting for ‘good afternoon’ tsohorayim tov [with the adjective tov, ‘good,’ in the singular] or tsohorayim tovim [with the adjective in the plural]? And why is the…
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News Naming the Cheated
Paul Baron of Stony Creek, Conn., wants to know if there is a Yiddish word for “cuckold.” One can, of course, speak in Yiddish of a “betrayed husband,” just as one can do in English, in which cuckold is a semi-archaic word no longer much used for a man cheated on by his wife. However,…
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News YPSL Pride
Thomas Glick writes: In various biographies of [lyricist] E.Y. (‘Yip’) Harburg, it is stated that ‘Yip’ is short for Yiddish yipsel, ‘squirrel.’ I’ve never been able to find this definition in any dictionary. More likely an anagram for a socialist organization? Mr. Glick is right on target. A squirrel in Yiddish is a veverke, and…
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News Krav Maga Method
It’s a pleasure to write about Jonathan Rosen’s fine new “Joy Comes in the Morning,” because it was Rosen, then editor of the Arts & Letters section of the Forward, who hired me to write this column 14 years ago. Unfortunately, not being a book reviewer, I’m forced to limit myself to two words in…
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News That’s Fuej to You
— M’sieur! Vous etes feuj? — Tu parles ou tu traites? — Non, M’sieur! Je parle. This little bit of French dialogue, occurring in a newly published novel by Michael Sebban titled “Lehaïm,” takes place between a Parisian Jewish high school teacher and a teenager from an Algerian slum neighborhood. It translates as: “Sir! You’re…
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News Cracking the whip
Dr. M. Lipkowitz writes in an e-mail: Some time ago you wrote a column on the biblical word b’reshit. I can’t locate it on the Web site and would appreciate your either sending me a copy or advising me of the date of the column so that I can find it. Alas, I wish could…
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News Cracking the Whip
‘Who by water and who by fire,” says a line in the Yom Kippur prayer U’Netaneh Tokef, which speaks of the different kinds of death in store for those not inscribed in this year’s Book of Life — and if some of the extremist enemies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Gaza disengagement plan…
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