Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Warning Yiddish Pornography


Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion




This post wasn't what I'd intended to blog about, until I listened to Q this morning. I thought, yep we all sure could use a laugh after all the serious goings on throughout the world, and Trump's absolute trash talk in the news, which I am beyond sick of constantly hearing and seeing online. And so today, I've turned to these very funny guys that I just have fallen in love with, Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion who have a brilliantly funny webcast, yidlifecrisis.com

I've always had a great fascination with Yiddish since I was a teenager. I wished I could speak it fluently like these two Schlemiels.This is partly due to the fact that my family ancestry comes from the old country and because I have a Jewish Germanic name. No one I know of in my family spoke Yiddish, but that doesn't mean they didn't. In all likelihood they did, I just don't have a lot of family history, as my great grandfather Meyer(s) was orphaned and I never knew him nor my grandfather.

Yiddish resonates with me, as I believe it does for many folks because it's so expressive and is a combination of a number of languages. Many of our words used in North America are Yiddish. Some of my favourites have to be Fartz, Shmuck, Kosher, Shmooz, and Tuchis.

Yiddish, literally means "Jewish", and is the language of the Ashkenazic Jews and a German-derived dialect, merging the sacred language of prayer, Aramaic, the ancient Near Eastern language of Talmud, and the languages of the Rhineland into a new dialect.

Every culture that was encountered by the Ashkenazic Jews, especially Slavic, was merged creating an expressive, poetic, and humourous language of Modern Yiddish-the mamaloshen, or mother tongue. Yiddishkeit is Jewishness, but usually means the totality of the Jewish heritage that is loved and passed on from generation to generation.

You can find these two mentshes here at YidLife Crisis and the Q featuring them is here.




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