ANDY ROONEY IS ABOUT TO
"TSURIKTSIEN ZIKH"*
*The Yiddish word meaning to stop working is "tsuriktsien zikh."

by
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe

Syosset, New York

Andy Rooney's essays have been part of "60 Minutes" since 1978. He is one of our most enduring commentators.

In 1984 he wrote ("Word for Word"), "Just as soon as my $2 million comes from Reader's Digest I'll probably be retiring. He retires on Sunday, October 2.

Rooney has written--and spoken--about everything from antisemitism, to celery, to mixed nuts, to Noo Yawk to "beysbol" (baseball).

Shown below is a Yiddish Guide to Andy Rooney. All of the material is taken from the following books:

"Sweet and Sour" by Andrew A. Rooney "Common Nonsense" by Rooney
"Not That You Asked" by Rooney
"Word for Word" by Rooney
"Out of My Mind" by Rooney

ANTI-SEMITIC
"I occasionally have been called anti-Semitic. It is a charge that should not be made lightly. I've been on the side of the Jews too long for that. I don't recall seeing any of my critics there on April 13, 1945, when I entered Buchenwald with the U. S. Army. I know something about anti-Semitism that someone who wasn't there will never know. No one entering Buchenwald that day could ever be anti- Semitic." ("Out of My Mind")

"BEYSBOL/BALL GEYM" (baseball game)
"Baseball players are pampered, too. Let's put baseball back where it belongs. Some of the big-league games ought to be played in empty lots where the grass isn't like putting green. The umpire shouldn't always be feeding the pitcher a new ball, either. The rule ought to be that a baseball game has to be finished with the same ball it started with. If the original ball is lost, everyone would have to go home and help his mother." ("Word for Word")

"FRISHTIK" (breakfast)
"I don't have it in for Wheaties or Shredded Wheat but why wouldn't hot chicken soup be the ideal breakfast? It's nourishing and it could replace the drink you want when you have juice, the hot jolt you want when you have coffee and the nourishment you need when you have eggs, toast, pancakes or cereal. Maybe we could have chicken soup with caffeine." ("Not That You Asked")

"HEYM" (home)
[on his dream house] "As the years go by, you always find you need an extra room and we'll have them. They'll be called 'Just In Case' rooms."

"HONIK" (honey)
"Honey. Everyone says they like honey but when we buy a jar it sits in the cupboard for a year. Sticky, too" ("Common Nonsense")

"HOTEL" (hotel)
"Many hotels have little scorecards they leave for guests to fill out...here are several comments I have that would apply to most hotels in America.
--There is too much knocking on your door in most hotels. I'm not doing anything sneaky, but I don't like hotel employee knocking at the door to check on something all the time.
--They can turn down the bed if they want to while I'm out for dinner, but please stop leaving me those two little chocolates on the pillows." ("Not That You Asked")

"INTERNETS" (internet)
"I don't know what happened to kids who used to make pocket money after school cutting the grass in the summer, raking leaves in the fall and shoveling snow in this winter. They don't come to our front door looking for work. I guess they're all home now on the Internet accomplishing nothing." ("Out of My Mind")

"KALEDZH"/"UNIVERSITET"
"I have an idea for colleges. Hold classes on all the days of the year that businesses are open. If they did that, students would finish college in three years and their parents could take the fourth year off...from paying tuition." ("Common Nonsense")

FYI: According to Eric Herbert, the average college cost is nearly 9 cents a minute. Here is the breakdown:

Total cost (4 years): $198,,222.00
Per Year: $49,556.00
Per Month: $4,130.00
Per Week: $953.00
Per Day: $136.00
Per Hour: $5.67.00
Per Minute: $0.09

"KHASENE" (wedding)
"ONZOGN" (to announce)
"Wedding announcements are chuck full of miscellaneous ("farshydn") facts you don't get any place else.

'The couple was married at the Salsa del Salto Bed and Breakfast in Taos.' I wonder if they slept there that night?

Or, 'Her father is Vice President for finance at RetractableAwnings.com in Miami.'

Too many weddings, like awnings, are retractable." ("Out of My Mind")

'KHIRURG" (surgeon)
"There are about 450 plastic surgeons in New York [2002], 750 in California and it says something about how different the cultures are in various parts of the Country to note there are only 69 in Minneapolis.

There isn't a person alive 60 years who hasn't considered the possibility that he or she could use a little surgical help. I suppose I'd look better and younger. I could dye my hair dark brown, too."

'KINO" (movie theater)
"Motion picture attendance is down sharply this summer...Have they [producers] given any thought to their prices? Obviously, one reason people are staying home is that it costs them nothing to watch a movie on television in their living roombut they have to shell out $9.50 a person to get into a theater [2006 prices]. A bag of popcorn is $3.50, and a soft drink $2.50. I'm waiting for theaters to start charging people for using the bathroom." ("Out of My Mind")

Note: The New York Post ran the following
headline on 5/6/10: IMAX MOVIE TICKET
PRICES HIT $19.50 IN MANHATTAN. (Kids and seniors get a break, "danken Got."

FYI:
In 1929, The Great Depression, a bag of popcorn cost you 5 cents. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, popcorn prices have seen an ironic 666% price increase, while ticket prices have increased a more moderate 66%.

"KNOBL" (garlic)
In a piece titled, "Garlic Increases Sex Potency!" Rooney adds, "You'll have to read further down in this last story to find that while garlic may increase your potency, no one will come near you."

"KREDIT" (credit)
"...saving money has gone out of style. Too bad because it was one of life's little satisfactions. The new way is to spend all you have and borrow as much as they'll let you and hope you can pay it off sometime in the future--so your credit will be good enough to let you borrow more." ("Common Nonsense")

And MY favorite credit story:
All eyes were on the radiant "kale" (bride)
as her father escorted her down the aisle. They reached the altar and the waiting groom. The bride kissed her father and placed something in his hand. The guests in the front pews responded with ripples of "gelekhter" (laughter). Even the rabbi smiled broadly. As her father gave her away in marriage, the bride gave him back his credit card.

"LIKHT" (light)
"The idea of making a joyous event out of getting a year older doesn't make sense. We all hate our age. Not only that, we find it ridiculous and humiliating not to be able to blow out the burgeoning number of candles on a cake. And we shouldn't be eating cake anyway." ("Out of My Mind")

"MATRATS" (mattress)
"It used to be that people put it [money/gelt] under their mattress, in the sugar bowl or in savings' banks, but none of these make any sense now. Neither the mattress nor the sugar bowl pays interest and the banks don't pay much more..." ("Word for Word")

"mode" (fashion)
"If we all came back to earth in 100 years, it seems likely we wouldn't find men wearing ties." ("Common Nonsense")

"MUMKHE" (specialist)
"My doctor sent me to an orthopedist, who sent me to a hand specialist. Hand specialists don't have a name for themselves like dermatologists, cardiologists, urologists or gynecologists.

'They're special, though, because they don't do anything else. I have some foot problems and you'd think this hand surgeon could look into that, but they don't do feet." ("Out of My Mind")

"MUZIK" (music)
"My idea of a good evening of music is a virtuoso performance by one talented singer or player of an instrument like a piano, guitar, saxophone, trombone or violin. There's something about the solitary sound that appeals to me more than a blend of many sounds from a hundred instruments." ("Out of My Mind")

Note: According to Yetta Emmes ("Drek - The REAL Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You"), "Genug is genug" means: Enough is enough. Stop already. The feeling you get listening to the rock band at your grandson's Bar Mitzvah.

"NOO YAWK"
"New York is a place where people come from somewhere else. They are doing what our ancestors did when they picked up and left Europe." ("Sweet and Sour")

"REKL" (skirt)
"Short skirts come and go every few years as the fashion for women...A woman never seems comfortable in a short skirt. Watch a woman wearing one and you can see how careful she's being. She can't sit down, bend over, get out of the car or climb a flight of steps without wondering about the angles of someone else's vision and about how much of herself is visible.

French women who can go topless at the beaches along the Mediterranean seem casual and easy with their bareness, but American women in short skirts are ill at ease." ("Not That You Asked")

"SELERYE" (celery)
[on Death By Celery Stalk] "My doctor thought I might be consuming salt I didn't know about. That's why he gave me these brochures and I must admit there are a couple of surprises in here. It turns out celery is lethal. I have to swear off celery.

Listen to this: 'You may use carrots and celery sparingly to season a dish--one stalk of celery to a pot of stew. The other day at a party, before I saw this bulletin, I ate two stalks of celery. If I drop dead of a heart attack anytime soon, don't blame me, blame the celery."

'SHUKH" (shoe)
[vs. dress sneakers] 'Cybill Shepherd was reported to have worn athletic shoes with a long evening gown to an Emmy Awards party. If her shoes hadn't been made with the gaudy stripes they use on sports footwear and if they hadn't had the name of the maker printed all over them, no one would have noticed. Hooray for Cybill Shepherd, I say." ("Word for Word")

"TSELULARER TELEFON" (cell phone)
"The people designing portable telephones in India or China or wherever they are, ought to take some time off. We don't need any new developments in their technology. We do not want our telephones to do the things they are designing them to do. All I want is an instrument that allows me to call home or the office. I don't want to 'add to your database.' I don't know what my database is or what my data in contains."

"TSUNEMENISH" (nickname)
"Sometimes a nickname seems totally wrong. You couldn't dream of calling some actors by a nickname. How could you call Robert Redford 'Bob'? Richard Burton was never called 'Dick.' It would seem strange to call Sir Laurence Olivier 'Larry.' And imagine calling Ernest Hemingway 'Ernie,' William Shakespeare 'Bill,' or Edgar Allen Poe, 'Ed Poe.'" ("Out of My Mind")

"One of the good nicknames in television news is Cokie Roberts. Cokie needed one, too, because her real name is Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs Roberts." ("Common Nonsense")

'UNTERVESH" (underwear)
"Does the average woman really imagine that she'll look like the women in the ads if she buys the underwear they're selling? Under the underwear, the women in the ads have one-in-a-million, near-perfect bodies. I should think the average woman would feel terrible every time she looked at an underwear ad. How is she ever going to live up to that image?" ("Not That You Asked")

"VEGN" (to weigh)
"VOG" (weight)
"When I look at those weight charts in a doctor's office, I laugh. According to them, I ought to weigh 145 pounds. They'd have me lose a third of what I am. I'll get down to 145 pounds the day the doctor starts making house calls for ten dollars a visit." ("Word for Word")

"YINGER" (Junior)
"President George W. Bush was lucky his parents gave him a middle initial 'W,' standing for 'Walker.' It inhibits anyone from calling him 'Junior.' A President shouldn't be called 'Junior.'" ("Out of My Mind")

"ZIKORN" (memory)
"Loss of memory is depressing and I have developed a theory that explains it in so satisfactory a manner that it no longer bothers me.

My theory is that the brain has a finite capacity. It can hold just so much information. When you get to be my age, you have put so much into it that your head overflows with facts and every time you add a name or a piece of information, it forces a comparable fact OUT of your brain. That's where the things go that I can't remember. It's not my age." ("Common Nonsense")

'ZITSORT" (seat)
"If that were Gloria Steinem standing there [on a commuter train] and I offered Gloria my seat because she's a woman, would she take it? I don't think she would. Would Gloria just smile and say, 'No, thank you,' or would she yell at me for being a male chauvinist pig, for being condescending and suggesting she was less capable of standing for forty-five minutes than I was?"
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___________________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of
two books:

"Yiddish for Dog & Cat Lovers" and
"Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."  To order a copy, go to her
website: MarjorieGottliebWolfe.com

NU, what are you waiting for?  Order the book!