January 15th, 2014 - How to curse in Yiddish

Greetings, you mensches! Today's lesson came from a love of learning about cultures that are not my own. During my Holiday Month project, I celebrated a holiday each day during the month of January.  I celebrated Chinese holidays and African holidays and Muslim holidays, and I loved them all.  But of all the holidays that I celebrated,  I enjoyed the Jewish holidays the most.

It was mostly because they were the holidays that I was least familiar with, growing up in small town Maine with a negligible Jewish population.  But it was also because they resonated for me in a very real way.  They were religious ceremonies that were more about remembrance and celebrating ones family heritage.  They were reminders to enjoy your faith, not lament it.

This was reinforced when last year, I attended my first temple service for my Spice of Life project. Joel Fingerhut graciously let Elizabeth and I tag along with him, and I was amazed by how positive the whole experience was for me.  It was like no other religious service I attended.  Gone were the strict dogma and promises of damnation without compliance that I remembered from my youth (ok, so my cynicism has probably colored many of these recollections, but you get the gist of the idea).  Instead, I felt like I was attending an orientation meeting for the Justice League.  I was encouraged to be righteous.  All I needed was a cape and some Batarangs and I'd be all set!

So in keeping with my love of Jewish culture, I asked Joel to once again act as my Yiddish guide.  This time around, I wanted to learn something really important.  I'd done the cooking the first go around, and the second time I had learned about the faith.  This time, I wanted Joel to teach me how to curse in Yiddish.

Ok, so I sound like the little girl from The Monster Squad before she sends Dracula and his henchmen back to the Phantom Zone.  But with a little practice, I'm sure I can get it.  You try!

A groys gesheft zol er hobn mit shroye, vus er hot, zol men bay im nit fregn, un vos men fregt zol er nisht hobn.

What amazed me about the lesson was how specific the Jewish curses were.  Sure, you had your "full of shit" (farcockt), and your "Holy shit" (Oy gevalt).  You also had shmegegi, which is the word for "idiot," and kush mich in toches, which means "kiss my ass."  But then you had some that might require the insultee to be strapped to a chair while the insulter hurled verbal missiles at them.

For example, you have A ruech in dayn tatns zun arayn, which translates to "May a demon take your father's father."  Or Zolst azoy farfoylt vern az tsign, tchoyrn, un chazirim zoln zid opzogn tsu forn mit dir in eyn fur, which means "May you rot so badly that goats, skunks and pigs will decline to travel in the same cart as you.

Or this little gem, which may be my favorite besides the one that I tried with Joel: Vern zol fun dir a blintshik in fun is a kats. Er sol dir oyfesn un mit dir zin dervargn - volt men fun ayn beydn ptur gevorn.  Which translates to, "May you turn into a pancake and he into a cat. He should eat you and choke on you - that way we will be rid of you both."

Burn!


Other things I learned/looked up:

1) I had seen it on Facebook last year, but I crowd-sourced this one and it was confirmed that you can bring mini-bottles on airplanes and serve yourself. My flight to Vegas next week got a lot more interesting!