| I was shlepping my valise up to my place after visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter (about whom I kvell endlessly, as is a Zayde’s right) in Bloomington (a six hour shlep – again with the shlep?? – if you can do it with minimum of stops). So coming home from this visit to my mishpocheh, I was thinking about the vast legacy of Yiddish to the Jewish people.
Now I guess I have a Yiddish vocabulary of, at best, 100 words, and little ability to build even a rudimentary sentence. But those 100 words live in my head. So, I shlep and not drag. I alternately kvell and kvetch. I don’t think of myself as having too much chutzpah, but sometimes … Occasionally when engaged in liturgical singing, I revert to my childhood pronunciation, using the Ashkenazi instead of the Sephardi pronunciation. So it’s shoimrei Shabbos instead of shomray Shabbat, and like that. I like to think that I have basic Jewish knowledge about a lot of things, but sometimes I know bupkis. When it comes to things like astrophysics, I definitely know bupkis. All too often these days I find myself bummed by all of the mishigas in this world, but it’s there because we seem to have an overabundance of schmendriks and meshugenahs who make so much schmutz that all too often I could just plotz. But in the end I realize that this has always been the way of the oilam, so I say to myself, nicht gefahrlich and I get on with my day, go to get a coffee and schmooze with whoever will have me for a conversation partner. When I’m done with said coffee, on rare occasions accompanied by a shot of slivovitz, I say gei gesunte heit, and go home for a schloofie. Shabbat shalom, Feivel Coin |
