In the most talked-about Epstein File exchange, a lesson in Yiddish
When speaking of Donald Trump’s travails, Epstein invoked ‘tsuris’
A billboard in Times Square calls for the release of the Epstein files on July 23, 2025. Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images
By PJ Grisar November 17, 2025
The tranche of documents known as the Epstein Files is full of odd, grammatically dubious, correspondence. Perhaps the most scrutinized exchange also contains a Yiddish word. Fittingly, for such a shande as Jeffrey Epstein, it’s a word for distress.
In emails from March 2018, the financier and convicted pedophile’s brother Mark opened a dialogue asking after Epstein’s health. Mark signed off by asking what “is your boy Donald up to now.”
This seems to be a reference to Donald Trump, then in his first term in office. Epstein responded the same day to inform Mark that Bannon (likely Stephen K. Bannon, onetime senior counselor for Mr. Trump) was with him. Things take a turn for the blue here, with Mark suggesting Epstein ask Bannon if “Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.”
Many on the internet have posited that Bubba was a nickname for former President Bill Clinton (Mark Epstein denied it was). Some also stated that Bubba was the name of a horse owned by Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell (Mark Epstein has said they weren’t referring to a horse).
What is undeniable is Jeffrey Epstein’s response to this inquiry about strange kompromat: “and i thought I had tsuris (sic).”
“Tsores,” most often transliterated as “tsuris” means troubles or woes. It is one of those Yiddish words that has entered into North American parlance, with Leo Rosten writing in The New Joys of Yiddish that it has “gained considerable vogue in theatrical and literary circles.”
Epstein, who grew up Jewish in Sea Gate, the heavily Jewish gated community in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, likely didn’t need to travel in that literary demimonde to have picked up on this word.
The wry note Epstein struck about his worries could be a reference to his own legal troubles (the emails came about a decade after his infamous plea deal, and a few months before the Miami Herald published its investigation into it). In March 2018 Trump was in the thick of the Russia investigation into interference into the 2016 election.
If you recall, at the time there was discussion that Russia might have a “pee tape” of the president. That’s a lot of tsores to deal with, though Trump, for his part, likes a different kind of Yiddish word.
