Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Yente at the Telephone

The Forward was known for its stable of erudite Yiddish writers, whose stories reflected the lives of the paper’s immigrant readership. One such prolific scribe was Jacob Adler, who, under the penname B. Kovner, wrote a much-loved humor column that sketched the everyday foibles of life on the Lower East Side. His most iconic character, Yente Telebende, known for her loud mouth and meddling ways, even spawned the creation of a new term in the vernacular: a “yente,” meaning a gossip.

Below, a tale as told by a “drugsman,” anglicized Yiddish for pharmacist.

Recently one of my next-door neighbors ran into my drugstore. Her name is Yente. The same Yente that gets written about in the papers, whose husband‘s name is Mendel Telebende and who has a son — Pinye.

“Mister Heifetz, Mister Heifetz!?” she exclaims with all her strength — “Here’s a nickel, now please connect me with my husband with your telephone. Mendel is his name, Mendel Telebende. Huriup, Mister Heifetz!”

“Where is your Mendel’s telephone number?” I ask her.

“How should I know?” she answers. “I think 144 Pitt Street, near Broome in a rear building, on the stoop.”

“I don’t mean the number of the shop where he’s working, but the number of the telephone,” I say.

“What do you need two numbers for?” asks Yente. “One number is not enough?”

I finally managed to find her Mendel’s phone number, called up “Central” and gave the receiver over to Yente in her hand.

“Halo, Mendel!” She starts screaming, “Halo! Is this you? Hey, Mendel don’t forget to bring back home my silk vest from work, are you listening Mendel? And a strap for Pinye. He threw Isaac down all the stairs ..[…?] wha? What are you saying? Halo! Is this you, Mendel? Wha?”

“Mister Heifetz, Mister Heifetz!” — yells Yente wildy — “What’s the matter with your telefon? Someone else is talking to me, not Mendel…. Where did Mendel go? Who drove him away?”

So I take the receiver from Yente, call up Central, and tell them to send away the clown who kept interfering in Yente’s call, and I give her back the receiver.

“Halo, Mendel!’” — yells Yente — “Huh? Mendel, is this you? Mister Heifetz, Mister Heifetz! Please fix the telefon, again someone else is speaking….”

So I take the receiver from her hand and listen. The person on the other yells — “Is that you, Gussie? Hello? Gussie, wait for me tonight near Shmelke’s theater, don’t forget, Gussie.”

When it was quiet I gave Yente back the phone.

“Get away from here you unkosher bone!” She yells, “Hello, Mendel!”

“Gussie,” the other voice, still again. “Gussie, don’t forget Shmelke’s theater. My love for you burns like a fire.”

Yente shouts: “You and your Gussie should be burned and destroyed together. Wait a minute, Mendel. You leave me waiting to talk to some Gussie? A dark year on you, Mendel. I hear your voice, why are you talking to Gussie? Who is Gussie? Are you nuts or what? You leave me standing and declare your love to strange women?”

And Yente starts arguing with Mendel on the phone. “Mendel,” she screams enraged, “leave that wretched woman already. Mendel, you’ll only have unhappy years. Mendel, stop, I am telling you, this monki bizness, what do you say? Someone mixed up the wire? May your hands and feet also get mixed up! Why didn’t they mix me up? Just you wait, you’ll get yours!”

“Mister Heifetz, what is this? Now it’s totally quiet. The telefon hot gestopt.”

“You ran out of time,” I explain to Yente — “five cents, five minutes. A penny a minute.”

Translated by Itzik Gottesman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.