Abstract
Jews in the United States use many Hebrew and Yiddish words in their English conversation. To what extent do non-Jews pick up these linguistic markers? This paper explains how Yiddish words have become part of the broader American lexicon through social networks, the media and entertainment, commodification, and metalinguistic discourse. Yiddish words like kibitz, bupkis, and schmuck acquired a comedic valence and an association with New York through their use by second- and third-generation Jewish entertainers. Some words, like klutz, maven, and pastrami, have become so entrenched in English that most Americans are not aware of their Jewish origins. The word chutzpah became part of political discourse, but its continuing association with Jews sometimes leads to controversy. Recently, non-Jews’ notion of Jewish language has expanded from Yiddish as a source of humor to the more serious use of Textual Hebrew in the religious domain and Modern Hebrew in Israeli-oriented contexts.
Non-Jews’ use of Jewish language represent diverse orientations toward Jews: from respect to romance, from humor to hatred. Those who are “Jew-adjacent” – friends, spouses, co-workers, etc. – tend to use Jewish English in respectful ways. Politicians speaking to Jewish groups use Hebrew and Yiddish strategically, yielding diverse reactions across the political spectrum. Some devout Christians study Hebrew and use elements of Jewish English because Jesus was a Jew. An insidious use of Jewish language is white nationalists mocking Jews with words like goyim and Shoah. These phenomena are discussed in historical context and in comparison to out-group use of language associated with other ethnic groups.
Thank you to Arnold Dashefsky and Ira Sheskin for inviting me to write this chapter and for their helpful suggestions. Thanks also to Daniel Stein Kokin, Ted Merwin, David Kaufman, Ben Zimmer, Jeremy Dauber, Bernard Spolsky, Sharon Gillerman, the reviewer, participants in my JewishLive Shavuot lecture, and many of my Facebook friends for tips that improved this chapter. This article does not address research/developments after July 2020.
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Notes
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Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kKb6r0RKDE&feature=emb_logo, 7:48. See also Cohen 2007.
- 2.
I incorporated some of these nuances in a recent survey, the 2019 Survey of American Jewish Personal Names:
“Jewishness (This item is required so you will see the appropriate demographic questions)
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I am Jewish and was raised Jewish
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I converted to Judaism
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I am in the process of converting to Judaism
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I am not Jewish and not converted/ing, but I have a Jewish spouse/partner
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I was raised Jewish but no longer consider myself Jewish
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I have Jewish ancestry but am not Jewish
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I am not Jewish, not converting, and have no Jewish ancestry or partner
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I don’t want to answer this question
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Other (please specify)”
Even with these nine options, 5% of the 10,976 respondents selected “Other.” Some used the space to give details about how they were or were not raised Jewish or to explain their belief in God or lack thereof. But many respondents indicated self-labels that do not fit into the categories above, like “half Jewish,” “‘double step Jew’ – both parents (neither Jewish) married a Jewish partner,” and “My Dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic, I was raised with both religions (but never made to identify as either) and now consider myself nonreligious.” Several respondents expressed Jew-adjacency, like “raised Jewish-adjacent,” “I lived in the kosher suite in college,” “taught in an Orthodox school,” and “I am not Jewish but have worked for a Jewish company and know and live many of the traditions.” One even mentioned language: “I am not Jewish, not converting, but my half of my Polyamorus spouses are Jewish as well as my very close best friend and I am learning Hebrew to be a better friend/lover/supporter.”
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The translator, a German (or Austrian) Jew who claimed to be a rabbi and converted to the Mormon faith, actually wrote his translation in Judeo-German. For a brief period, he was respected in the Mormon church but ultimately fell from grace after he was exposed as a con man.
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The survey is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8NQ3DPC. Results were reported in Benor and Cohen 2009 and Benor 2011.
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Sontag’s essay establishes a distinction between “homosexual aestheticism and irony” and “Jewish moral seriousness,” but others have problematized this dichotomy (e.g., Shneer 2007) and pointed to the importance of camp in queer Jewish intersections (e.g., Solomon 1997; Shandler 2006b; Shneer 2007; see also Hoffman 2009).
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All personal anecdotes are cited with permission.
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See some examples of non-Jews studying Yiddish at https://youtu.be/bcWlP_fpxwk
- 22.
In addition to the examples discussed above, an interesting area for research is non-Jews who work as nannies and housekeepers in Jewish homes, especially Orthodox homes.
- 23.
https://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/eric_cantor_takiff/. Also notice the junk Spanish (see below).
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- 28.
Jewish population estimates for Atlanta are 66,900 in 1984, 95,400 in 1996, and 119,800 in 2006 (see research by Jacob B. Ukeles, Ron Miller, and Ira M. Sheskin on the Berman Jewish DataBank: https://www.jewishdatabank.org/databank/search-results?city=Atlanta&state=Georgia&year=1996)
- 29.
This is a rough pilot study, as I did not remove names and misidentified results (e.g., Haven identified as maven). I hope others will expand this research. See similar analysis for Yiddish words in Jewish newspapers in Benor 2015.
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http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7,601,000,821,00.html
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- 37.
See also Horn 2006 on Jewish English in recent American literature, including coded references to Jewish texts.
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The spellings of these words, not yet solidified, varied, including forms like oy vay and mozeltoff.
- 40.
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https://youtu.be/kCnNqMNtOsw. See Cohen 2007 on Sherman’s Broadway parodies with more Jewish content and language.
- 42.
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- 44.
The comedic trope of the Yiddish-speaking Indian has a long history in Jewish comedy (Rubinstein 2010). See examples by Fanny Brice: https://youtu.be/DMfixeKOy3c and Eddie Cantor: https://youtu.be/2JP2r2irHMk
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See second clip at https://youtu.be/iN3sEHcXV2E
- 47.
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- 49.
- 50.
Season 6, episode 10: https://youtu.be/TfVdkhvQX6g
- 51.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YiddishAsASecondLanguage/LiveActionTV. “Everybody Loves Raymond” features an Italian American family on Long Island that shares some cultural traits with Jews (Krieger 2003).
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This paragraph is based on my observations.
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https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/03/28/religious-views-cory-booker-town-hall-sot-vpx.cnn. The quote is originally from Isaiah 56:7.
- 64.
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- 66.
- 67.
See discussion of “schmear” at https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60763-i5-k4424463-Bagel_with_a_schmear-New_York_City_New_York.html
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- 79.
See also the Hebrew National advertising campaign, which involved non-Jews, like a priest, using the word kosher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOeJ4rmDTvg
- 80.
Academic books about Yiddish and serious dictionaries are also metalinguistic commodities, but I do not deal with those here.
- 81.
- 82.
Exceptions include Danny Ben Israel’s Zubi!: The Real Hebrew You Were Never Taught in School (2011).
- 83.
- 84.
On the lack of standardization in the spelling of Yiddish and Hebrew words in English, see Steinmetz 2001.
- 85.
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- 88.
- 89.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theunBEARables/comments/ceckzk/the_goyim_know_shut_it_down_song/; https://in.pinterest.com/pin/607915649690175656/?autologin=true; https://sonichits.com/video/Morrakiu/Into_The_Oven. See discussion of some of these songs in Rosenberg 2018.
- 90.
See a video of Kennedy’s speech at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkberliner.html
- 91.
- 92.
See Trump using mock Spanish at https://youtu.be/aekRTJ0yHlI
- 93.
- 94.
See also a Jewish middle schooler’s critique of Madonna’s Hebrew use in Avni 2012, 329, and see https://this-is-not-jewish.tumblr.com/post/50224025914/have-you-covered-the-term-oy-vey-yet-is-it/amp
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Benor, S.B. (2022). Pastrami, Verklempt, and Tshootspa: Non-Jews’ Use of Jewish Language in the United States. In: Dashefsky, A., Sheskin, I.M. (eds) American Jewish Year Book 2020. American Jewish Year Book, vol 120. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78706-6_1
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