I'm Plotzing Over Jacob's Love for Yiddish

I’ve been teaching Jacob some basic Yiddish.  FYI – I love linguistic subtleties.  Just knowing that the mere altering of a single vowel would allow me to refer to Jake as my guy, my gay, or my goy, is something I find intrinsically interesting. 

For instance, I differentiated between the words ganef and schnorrer with the following example: running around a hotel suite to pack-up all the sundries makes one a bit of a schnorrer, whereas making a clandestine journey to clean-out the maid’s cart while she’s distracted makes one a ganef. 

So far, his favorite Yiddish words include bissel, bubele, bupkes, chutzpah, farkacht, farklempt, feh, klutz, kvell, kvetch, macher, mentch, mishegas, nosh, nu, ootz, oy, plotz, putz, schlep, schlock, schmaltzy, schmatte, schmendrick, schmooze, schmuck, shmutz, shpilkes, shtick, shtup, shvitz, spiel, tchatchke, tsuris, yenta, yutz, and zaftik. 

I tell ya, that boychik of mine is a real yiddisher kop!  Meanwhile, I never realized that depending on who’s speaking them, many of these words blur the line between an 80-something bubbe and a 30-something fagela…  Go know. 

And as for me?  My favorite Yiddusha phrase of the day (although it’s not one that I adhere to in any way, shape or form) was uttered by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: “No chuppa, no shtuppa” with regards to premarital sex.  Apparently, Boteach was the rabbi in that town from Footloose.