YIDDISH, A SECRET REVEALED; YES, I UNDERSTAND YIDDISH!

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Yiddish, a language I grew up not understanding or, more accurately, a language I grew up understanding a little bit while pretending that I didn’t understand it at all. Growing up in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Logan and later even further out in West Oak Lane, I soon found it an advantage to pretend not to know Yiddish. It was spoken all around me by my mother, father, maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, aunt, and others. Most often it was used as a way for the adults in my life to communicate with each other when they wanted to conceal something from me.

As the first kid in the family, I had no one I wanted to share this hidden knowledge with. Better to keep it to myself. Otherwise the secret would get out, and then no one would use Yiddish around me ever again, anyway not to conceal secrets.

Learning by Osmosis

Funny thing about language. When you hear it long enough, especially when you are very young, words, phrases and whole sentences start to sink in even when the speakers don’t want you to understand what they are saying. Hence one of the earliest Yiddish sentences that I came to understand on my own was “Du vilst nemen dilla spiladicha?” Translation: “Do you want to take him to the movies?” Hearing that sentence I could make certain that my behavior improved and that I did whatever else I thought necessary to ensure that I did in fact get taken to the movies.

A note about writing Yiddish in the Roman alphabet. I am transliterating, that is using the Roman alphabet to come as close as possible to attempt to reproduce the more Germanic pronunciation of the words as I remember them. Yiddish came into being as a dialect of German around the 10th century in an area around East Germany. It is written using the Hebrew alphabet, the letters of which run from right to left. The Jews of this region—in fact, of all of central to western Europe—are known as Ashkenazi Jews. Hence one can say that the language of Ashkenazi Jews was Yiddish. It was also the language of the Chasidic Jews, that is, Jews known for their very conservative dress, where the men dance with each other at celebrations and definitely not with women—with the exceptions of weddings when at least a handkerchief must separate them.

Lithuanian Origins

Another point I should make is that I am attempting here to reproduce the Yiddish I heard as a child among Jews where the dominant speaker was originally from Lithuania, that is, my maternal grandfather, named Solomon Bricker. Solomon Bricker was what was known as a Litvak, that is, as someone from Lithuania. The influence of my father may also be present. Though born in the United States, his linguistics origins were Austria and Hungary. There is a long history of teasing between Jews from Lithuania or Litvaks and Jews from other places, and my father. Louis Saft, was not shy in poking fun at the Litvaks around him, in other words his in-laws.

What else do I remember of the Yiddish I heard growing up? My grandfather, Solomon Bricker, was often in the middle of disputes between his two daughters, Helen, my mother, and her sister, Jeanette, the younger of the two. “Don’t drey mine cup,” he was often heard to say using a mixture of Yiddish and English. I took the meaning of this sentence to be: “Stop beating my head [with your arguing or bickering.]”

What Else”?
Gay slofen remains with me as well. This is a command from adults to children, “Go to sleep” is the meaning. Another “gay” sentence I often heard was “Gay gezunta heit” or “go in good health.” Other words and phrases remain as well. Essen is the command from the German “eat.” Shana madel is a pretty girl. Balabusta was a word I heard from the women of the family which always struck me as funny and which I took to be a somewhat derisive epithet for someone who overdid in her cooking or house preparation.

Oy gevalt and oy vay are well known Yiddish expressions that also have stayed with me. Both mean the equivalent of “how awful.” In fact, these two are both so common that they have long been on the verge of being accepted into everyday usage in English. A Yiddish word that in fact is even closer to being accepted is schlepp, which means to carry when that which is carried is heavy and uncomfortable. A New Yorker might say, “I schlepped those two packages all the way from Macy’s on 34th Street to East 72nd Street. I’m exhausted.”

Words for Body Parts

Then there are the Yiddish words for the parts of the body, the most famous of which is tochis and its diminutive tussy, used with children. “Backside” is the part of the body that these words refer to. I usually take both words in a humorous way. However, it is possible to use a word like tochis in a more serious, obscene and even harsh way. For more on words of this type and for more on Yiddish in general, see the books of Leo Rosten, specifically The Joys of Yiddish and The Joys of Yinglish.

What about chutzpah, the word for nerve, daring, gall or risk taking in Yiddish? Like schlep, chutzpah is now so widely used that it is about ready to become part of standard English—or already is. I have heard Protestant ministers use the word without showing any need to translate. Why didn’t I mentioned this heavily used word sooner? Strange to admit, chutzpah was not part of my childhood vocabulary. In fact, I don’t think I ever heard the word until some time after I started working in New York City in 1964.

Do I read any Yiddish publications today? No, but perhaps it can be said that I come close. Among the many publications that I read on a regular basis is The Forward, that is, its English language version. The Forward got started on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the latter part of the 19th Century and initially was published entirely in Yiddish. One of the claims to fame of the all Yiddish Forward is that it introduced the writing of Isaac Basheyev Singer to the world. Singer was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website. You can call the publisher directly at 888-795-4274 ext. 7876 or use the publisher’s website Xlibris.com.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft

REFORMING HEALTH CARE AND THE BERNARD MADOFF SITUATIONS--MY THOUGHTS ON BOTH

The Barack Obama Administration has now turned its attention to health care. This is another trillion dollar burden on the U.S. taxpayer, and given all our other burdens—“zombie bank” bailouts, subprime foreclosure crises, U.S. auto industry bankruptcies—it boggles my mind how the Administration is going to deal with this one.

But it must!!! I agree that the time is now to attempt to deal with this immense problem. There won’t be another opportunity in my lifetime, maybe not in the lifetime of our children and grandchildren to fix this mess, and meanwhile health care will become more and more of a drag on the nation’s economy. All the crises facing the Obama Administration are complicated and don’t lend themselves to easy solutions, but this one is the most complicated thus far. Why?

Financing Not On Firm Footing

One reason is the nonproductive way in which health care is paid for in this country. The system assumes a fully employed population with employers footing the bill. Right now, however, we have unemployment approaching 9% in some areas. Who pays for the 9% out of work? And why should employers have to shoulder the responsibility in the first place? Employers need to be investing in expanding existing businesses to increase employment opportunities, They should be investing in research and new product development. They should be investing in improving existing products and keeping prices competitive. They should not be burdened with having to foot the bill for the nation’s health care system.

And what about the cost of health care in the United States? It changes hourly. Everyone wants to reap the benefits of the nation’s health care research and development efforts, which is a huge complicated endeavor. Nothing is to be accomplished by pointing some finger of blame at the nation’s pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry is doing what we want them to do. We want them to save our lives, and that’s what they are attempting to do. Oh yes, they're also making a lot of money in the process.

We have an extremely health care greedy population. No one wants to die. Everyone wants to postpone the inevitable for as a long as possible. Everyone wants to live forever, and we expect to enjoy the benefits of our thriving medical research and development activities forever.

In the laboratory a researcher comes up with a yet another technique that appears promising for curing cancer. Let’s take the case of the technique for growing human cancer attack spores on tobacco plants for attacking cancer, which I have written about previously.

Researchers Need Compensation

The pharmaceutical firms are willing to allow a few researchers to conduct such speculative research, but they expect to be compensated for staff time and benefits. This is a fairly new effort, not long on the books. The research shows promise , and so now it is time to test the technique in the field. The services of several more staff are required. We are leaving out issues like the compensation of patients who allow themselves to be used as guinea pigs.

Now lets add several degrees of further complication by looking at all the specialties in all of medicine. All the researchers working at all the pharmaceutical and medical research facilities in all these fields want what they consider fair access to the research and development dollars available.

Enormous Management Challenge

How do you manage such a huge field with so many competing interests and one that is in a constant state of flux? Part of the challenge is the mere fact that the field since it is requiring taxpayers dollars in the first place needs managing at all. Then there are so many stake holders, not just all the U.S. users of health care. Major stake holders like all the physicians and all the nurses and all those in the medical technical specialties. And how about the medical equipment engineers and all the designers and builders of all the equipment like scanners, etc., and all the medical insurance interests?

What an enormous undertaking!

Infuriating Case of Bernard Madoff

Another topic that has my attention is the infurating story of Bernard Madoff, who bilked many people out of sizable amounts of money using the notorious Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi investment scheme people are lured into placing their money with the expectation that their initial investments will be turned into much more money, the result of the brilliant investment strategies on the part of the operator of the investment enterprise.

In fact, the operator’s so called “brilliant investment strategies” are the result of taking new contributor’s money and turning it back to veteran contributors in the form of so-called dividends. In other words, a Ponzi scheme has no real assets. Only the continued gullibility of new investors keeps it going. When the lack of true assets is revealed, the whole scheme falls apart like a collapsing house of cards, and everyone who placed money with the scheme operator is a loser.

What Makes Him Tick?

I don’t know Bernie Madoff at all, but I can’t help wondering about the man. What makes Bernie Madoff tick? Is he merely a greedy and heartless schemer? At least one person who lost a fortune to Madoff is reported to have committed suicide. If you are Madoff, how do you live with that fact?

I want to believe that he started out with the best of intentions, but perhaps I am cutting him too much slack. Rotten to the core—that may be the Bernard Madoff that we have seen in the media. Still I want to believe otherwise. He starts out with the best of intentions, but then the pressure to appear successful takes over. Bernier Madoff was smarter than everyone else. Right? Bernie Madoff didn’t disappoint other people, especially not if they enjoyed positions of power and leadership in their respective fields. Right? Not if they are someone like Steven Spielberg, famed Hollywood moviemaker. How can you submit a monthly investment report to the likes of Steven Spielberg and not show a continued record of success?

Reputation to Uphold, Right?

Imagine the self-imposed pressures on this man to continue to show a record of brilliance as a manager of other people’s money? He had a reputation to uphold, right?

Such is the mess we get ourselves intro when at core we are not honest with ourselves or with others—when we have no mechanism for dealing honestly with ourselves and others, when honesty is no part of our personal ethos. We are a crook through and through. We squander other people’s fortunes. People, once friends, commit suicide because of us.

I have written about this before, especially in my poetry. At heart relations between all of us are based on intangible virtues like trust. No amount of government-imposed regulation frees us from that reality. We can all take advantage of misplaced confidence if we have an inclination to lie, to cheat, to not tell the truth. Trust is the indispensable virtue. Trust is everything.

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft