One of our readers would like to know the origins of the word nebekh. He’ll have to complete a crash course in the lively art of Yiddish abbreviation first.
Joel Rooks was raised in Swampscott, Mass., in a Jewish family that owned a women’s retail clothing store. George Nathan Birnbaum grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family at 259 Rivington St., on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Birnbaum grew up, took the stage name George Burns and became a star of vaudeville, films and television.