Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (P.S.) [Paperback]

Michael Wex (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: August 15, 2006

A delightful excursion through the Yiddish language, the culture it defines and serves, and the fine art of complaint

Throughout history, Jews around the world have had plenty of reasons to lament. And for a thousand years, they've had the perfect language for it. Rich in color, expressiveness, and complexity, Yiddish has proven incredibly useful and durable. Its wonderful phrases and idioms impeccably reflect the mind-set that has enabled the Jews of Europe to survive a millennium of unrelenting persecution . . . and enables them to kvetch about it!

Michael Wex—professor, scholar, translator, novelist, and performer—takes a serious yet unceasingly fun and funny look at this remarkable kvetch-full tongue that has both shaped and has been shaped by those who speak it. Featuring chapters on curse words, food, sex, and even death, he allows his lively wit and scholarship to roam freely from Sholem Aleichem to Chaucer to Elvis.

Perhaps only a khokhem be-layle (a fool, literally a "sage at night," when there's no one around to see) would care to pass up this endearing and enriching treasure trove of linguistics, sociology, history, and folklore—an intriguing appreciation of a unique and enduring language and an equally fascinating culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Fortunately, despite its title and cover photo, this is not a kitschy book about a folksy language spoken by quaint, elderly Jews. It is, rather, an earthy romp through the lingua franca of Jews, which has roots reaching back to the Hebrew Bible and which continues to thrive in 21st-century America. Canadian professor, translator and performer Wex has an academic's breadth of knowledge, and while he doesn't ignore your bubbe's tsimmes, he gives equal time to the semantic nuances of putz, schmuck, shlong and shvants. Wex organizes his material around broad, idiosyncratic categories, but like the authors of the Talmud (the source for a large number of Yiddish idioms), he strays irrepressibly beyond the confines of any given topic. His lively wit roams freely, and Rabbi Akiva and Sholem Aleichem collide happily with Chaucer, Elvis and Robert Petrie. Academics, and others, will be disappointed at the lack of source notes, and a few errors have crept in (the fifth day of Sukkot is not Hoshana Rabba, for instance). Overall, however, this treasure trove of linguistics, sociology, history and folklore offers a fascinating look at how, through the centuries, a unique and enduring language has reflected an equally unique and enduring culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Wise, witty and altogether wonderful....” (New York Times )

“Required reading.” (New York Post )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061132179
• ISBN-13: 978-0061132179
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Yiddish
  • #30 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Yiddish

More About the Author

Author of Born to Kvetch, columnist, bon vivant and raconteur, Michael Wex has been called "a Yiddish national treasure;" Born to Kvetch, the bestselling book ever written about Yiddish, was hailed by The New York Times as "wise, witty and altogether wonderful."

A native of Lethbridge, Alberta, Wex has worked in virtually every area of contemporary Yiddish. Some of his songs have been recorded by such klezmer bands as Sukke, The Flying Bulgars, and 2007 Grammy winners, The Klezmatics.

Wex's teaching and lecture activities-a unique combination of learning, stand-up comedy and probing investigation into the nature of Yiddish and Yiddishkayt-have taken him from Toronto to Budapest, and to many points in between. His approach is so unique and appealing that his annual series of classes at Klezkamp (a yearly Yiddish cultural event in upstate New York) has been renamed Wexology-and not at Wex's instigation. The only complaint ever heard is that people are enjoying themselves so much that they forget to take notes.

You can find Michael Wex at www.michaelwex.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

148 of 156 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What every jew needs to know, September 24, 2005

By 

Rachael Kafrissen "Rootless Cosmopolitan" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (Hardcover)

You can buy a book about Yiddish. You can buy a book about Jewish life. You can buy a book about religious observance. Or you can save the shipping costs and buy Born To Kvetch, one of the best books I've ever read about the Ashkenazi Jewish experience. I would compare this wonderful new book to Maurice Samuel's The Gentleman and the Jew for it's erudition and vision.

And Michael Wex is a whole lot funnier than Maurice Samuel. You will be laughing uncontrollably (WARNING: may cause embarrassment if you read this on the subway in the morning, as I did) while you learn more than you ever wanted to about the Talmud, the yiddish word for toilet paper and the REAL meaning of kvetching.

Don't hesitate, buy it today and be cursing your friends in yiddish tomorrow.

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one thing you will have not to kvetch about is this book, September 28, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (Hardcover)

Aside from the rave reviews on this site I have read two other longer rave reviews, William Grimes in the 'New York Times' and Josh Lambert in J-books. Both claim that this book is not only tremendously funny but a very deep probe into the nature of Yiddish, and in fact Diaspora Ashkenazi experience.
This is what Lambert has to say about the lead idea of the book.
"Yiddish, Wex argues, is most comfortable when it's complaining. It's "a language that likes to argue with everybody about everything." He explains this as consistent with the Mishnaic scholars (who "disagree 99.8 percent of the time") and the principle of "aftselakhis"-"the impulse to do things only because someone else doesn't want you to." The kvetch, or complaint, is thus the basic unit of Yiddish thought, as developed over hundreds of years of Diaspora living: "kvetching becomes a way of exercising some small measure of control over an otherwise hostile environment."
It is rare when we find a book which not only enriches our thought but makes us laugh outloud.

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hits the nail on the head, October 31, 2005

By 

moose_of_many_waters (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (Hardcover)

English books on Yiddish generally fall into two categories: the oh isn't it a cute colorful language angle; the scholarly tome that sucks the life out of the language.

Mr. Wex has done Yiddish a great service and has written a book that avoids both of these pitfalls. Beneath the humor - and this is a very funny, well written book - is a very serious examination of Yiddish as a language inextricably tied to its religion. Very few people could have written a book as insightful as this one and still made it entertaining. Mr. Wex has the background - a Yeshiva bocher turned secularist - and mindset to carry it off with aplomb.

Some people might complain that the examination of Yiddish language and culture in this book is too harsh and well... kvetchadik. But there is pride for a language and culture long gone throughout this book. More than any book on Yiddish that I've read, this one rings true. The description of the culture of Chasidic education of children is particularly unflinching and mordantly accurate. Footnotes would help this book a great deal. But this is a fine achievement. Now if only they wouldn't have put someone else's photo next to the NY Times review. ;)