Lewis Kupperman writes, “There is a Yiddish expression meaning to make mincemeat of someone or something that sounds like to make ‘ushenblottie,’” and he wants to know if I’m familiar with it. Mr. Kupperman’s “to make ushenblottie” is Yiddish makhn ash un blote — that is, “to make ashes and mud” of a person or…
This week’s column, you should be warned, is X-rated. Don’t blame me for it. You can blame firebrand Anastasia Michaeli and gasoline-tongued Ahmad Tibi, both members of Israel’s Knesset. Soviet-born Michaeli — an ex-telecommunications engineer and fashion model who married an Israeli, immigrated to Israel in 1998 and converted to Judaism — belongs to Foreign…
Reader Reuven Kalifon wonders why Ashkenazi tradition calls the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet “daled” even though its name is spelled ת-ל-ד (read right to left, daled-lamed-taf) and the final, dagesh-less taf is always pronounced as an ‘s’ in the Ashkenazi world. This is the same taf that we have in the letter bet,…
Forward reader Bill Morris writes a letter about the pejorative associations that some non-Jews who are not at all anti-Semitic have with the word “Jew,” observing, “I have non-Jewish friends who still balk at saying ‘Jew’ — one friend always says ‘Jewish person.’” It’s not only non-Jews. I’ve also occasionally heard American Jews — almost…
Hadarat nashim, translatable as “the exclusion of women,” is a Hebrew phrase with which few Israelis would have been familiar several months ago. Now there are even fewer, if any, who are unfamiliar with it. After first coming to the public’s attention late last summer over the issue of excusing Orthodox soldiers in the Israeli…
A reader who may prefer to remain anonymous sends me an email in which he describes recently hearing his sister call his elderly mother a “machashefer,” a term with which he was not familiar. The letter continues: “I asked my sister what she meant by ‘machashefer,’ and she said it’s a witch. She then told…
We can’t seem to get away from l’chaim. At least it’s a happy word. In two previous columns, as you may remember, I spoke of l’chaim as a Jewish toast deriving from the Kiddush, the blessing said before drinking wine on Sabbath eves and holidays; dismissed several explanations offered by readers as to why Jews…
Two interesting comments have come from readers about [my November 25 column][1] on the Jewish toast “l’chaim,” which I traced back to a medieval custom, still practiced by Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews, that is connected to the Kiddush, the traditional Sabbath and holiday blessing over wine. The first of these, from Harold Zvi Slutzkin…
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