Wednesday, September 28, 2005

To Provoke in Yiddish, Try 'How Are You?' - New York Times

The olam is advised that the Times creepy love afair with the Jewish people manifested itself a second time today with a William Grimes authored review of Born to Kvetch, the "wise, witty and altogether wonderful " new book by Michael Wex.
A simple, American-style "drop dead" might be rendered as "a dismal animal death on you" ("a viste pgire af dir"), which, Mr. Wex, notes, carries the suggestion that "you should spend the rest of your tiny life in a Colorado feedlot, then be herded off to some nonunion slaughterhouse to be turned, painfully, into fast-food burgers for one of the less prominent chains."
So, tell me this: are (some) Jews whiny and pushy because Yiddish is whiny and pushy? Or is it the other way around? We're waiting for the long and scholarly article that explains it all.