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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Culture ‘The Pitt’ tackled the trauma of the Tree of Life attack. Here’s how survivors of the synagogue shooting reacted to the episode.
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Antisemitism Decoded How an ‘all-American boy’ became a Mississippi synagogue arson suspect
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Culture The mysterious case of Barbra Streisand and the missing half-pound of Zabar’s sturgeon
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish הונדערט צוואָנציק יאָר זינט דער גרינדונג פֿון „אַ בינטל בריוו“120th anniversary of the Forverts advice column “Bintel Brief”
לייענט אַ בריוו פֿון 1949 פֿון אַ לייענער וועמעס זון האָט חתונה געהאַט מיט אַ קריסטלעכער פֿרוי
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Culture What will become of the Dutch farm school that saved my father from the Nazis?
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Opinion I’m a Zionist. I support Palestinian rights. My campus has no space for people who believe in peace
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Opinion Long before Trump’s second-hand Nobel, a laureate sought to curry favor with Nazis by regifting a prize
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