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Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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“SHTICK”: The Daily News (4/11/14) carried the following headline:
NO SURPRISES. CBS SHTICKS TO SAFE PLAY
“kil” (chilly); “kalt” (cold)
David Letterman announced that he will step away from “The Late Show” sometime in 2015. The show is taped in the historic Ed Sullivan Theater, 1697 B’way. It’s easily located by the show’s marquee featuring the show’s name. (By the way, be warned: Dave likes to keep the studio chilly in all weather. Dress accordingly.)
And remember Yiddish climate control:
“LIke a finely tuned Stradivarius, we are finely tuned to an indoor/outdoor temperature
of exactly 74 degrees. At 75, you’ll hear, ‘Turn on the air before I chalosh!’ At 73 degrees? ‘You feel that draft on my neck! Pneumonia, I’ll get!’ We believe that if G-d
didn’t want us to have central air, we’d all be lizards.’”
Marnie Winston-Macauley, “The Joy of Jewish Humor, 2013 Calendar”
Note: “chaleshen” means “to faint” and “chaloshes” means “weakness, nausea, faintness, and unconsiousness.”
“komedie” (comedy)
“tsuriktsien zikh” (to retire/to stop working)
“groys epl” (Big Apple)
Mayor De Blasio spoke with CBS honcho, Les Moonves, about keeping the comedy program in the Big Apple AFTER Letterman retires. L.A. Mayor, Eric Garcetti, tried to hire the show out West.
“prayz” (cost)
“kostn” (to cost)
Garcetti said, “Los Angeles can produce the best shows at the best cost and we want to make sure people continue to see that. It would be a great shot in the arm for the city.” The Associated Press reports that many New Yorkers agreed the show should stay in NYC.
“tson” (tooth)
“naygerik” (curious)
Letterman’s successor has been named--STEPHEN COLBERT (“The Colbert Report”). Colbert said, “I’m thrilled and grateful that CBS chose me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go grind a gap in my front tooth.” Some say, jokingly, “They wanted another guy with glasses. I love that they’re putting someone smart and curious, not fluffy and not the flavor of the day, but someone really substantial in there...”
Robert Morton says Colbert is “the only person I could conjure who would be a suitable replacement.
Colbert will earn $10 “milyon” (million) to $12 “milyon” annually over a rive-year contract. As yet, CBS has not committed to keeping the show in New York. So, it’s the age-old West Coast vs. East Coast battle.
TripAdvisor has examined millions of travelers’ reviews posted on its website (“vebzayt”)
to come up with the top destinations for this year. The winners are New York City for top U. S. destination (for fourth year in a row).
Shown below are some fascinating quotes about New York City and California:
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NEW YORK
“tate-mame” (parents)
“veter” (weather)
“After living in New York a while, my parents and I decided to move to California, where there would be more opportunity for me. The weather is great, plus we would live three hours longer.” Yaakov Smirnoff
“New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.” Djuna Barnes
“held” (hero)
“goen” (genius)
“geveyntlekh” (ordinary)
“The stars of the [New York] Yiddish theater were my heroes. They were geniuses: David Kessel, Ludwig Zatz, Menashe Skulnik, Boris Tomashefsky, Molly Picon, Jacob Kalish, and Muni Weisenfreund, who went on to become Paul Muni. Yiddish theaters were all over New York City. Around 1935, on a given Friday night, people would have a choice of twenty-six theaters to go to. Live shows, a drama, a musical. Ordinary people finished a week’s work and said, ‘Let’s go to the theater.’
“oysgeputst” (dressed up)
“kleyd” (dress)
“veynen” (to weep)
People got all dressed up. Women who worked as seamstresses for nine, ten dollars a week, would put on the one good dress they owned that maybe they bought for six dollars in Klein’s on Union Square and go to the theater to have a good cry It was a tremendous event...” Al Lewis, Growing Up Jewish in America, An Oral History, by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer
“Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!” Walt Whitman
“In terms of theater, there’s not a more supportive theater community than in New York. It’s really kind of a thrill to go there. I mean, don’t forget, I’m a boy from the suburbs of Sydney, so getting to New York is a huge, huge thrill.” Hugh Jackman
“New York now leads the world’s great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn’t make a sudden move.” David Letterman
“Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.” David Letterman
“bukh” (book)
“Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book--and does.” Groucho Marx
“rakh” (rich)
“orem” (poor/needy)
“yung” (young)
“It is said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came her from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.” Joan Didion
“unterban” (subway)
“sof-vokh” (weekend)
“oyfes” (poultry)
“On Blake Avenue (B’klyn) you could find appetizing stores, fish and poultry markets. On Sutter Avenue and Pitkin Avenues were movie palaces like Loew’s Premier and Loew’s Pitkin. On Hopkinson Avenue across the subway tracks in Brownsville were the Stone and the Stadium, where on weekends anyone could get into a double feature for a nickel.
“shtupvegl” (pushcart)
“koyne” (customer)
The pushcarts on Blake Avenue were not unlike shtetl scenes Issac Singer described in Frampol...Peddlers were up each morning screaming their wares half in Yiddish, half in English. They’d argue over a customer.
“I had her first,” one would say.
“Gey in Dreyet.” (“Go to hell.)
Jerry Stiller, “Married To Laughter”
“lebn” (life)
“Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.” Irving Berlin
“Amerike” (America)
“The glamour of it all! New York! America!” Charlie Chaplin
“”dire-gelt” (rent)
“girik” (greedy)
“New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed...a race for
rent.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
“velt” (world)
“I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, ‘There’s no place like New York. It’s the most exciting city in the world now that’s the way it is. That’s it.’” Robert De Niro
“dakh” (roof)
“People in New York love having roof parties.” Todd Barry
“musey” (museum)
“But if I had to choose a single destination where I’d be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I’d choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Tim Gunn
“lox” (smoked salmon)
“Growing up in Pittsburgh, I always thought I was living in the East. Then I moved to New York, and I realized the Allegheny Mountains separate the East from the rest
of the country. New York Jews are used to seeing a piece of lox sliced in front of them.
Midwestern Jews get presliced, prepackaged lox. That’s the essence of midwestern
Jewry. It’s prepackaged.
Brooks Susman
“Growing Up Jewish in America - An Oral History” by Frommer & Frommer
“frayndlekh” (kind, adj.)
“My favorite thing about New York is the people, because I think they’re misunderstood. I don’t think people realize how kind New York people are.” Bill Murray
“frishtik” (breakfast)
“radyo” (radio)
“When {Rudy] Valley lived in New York, he breakfasted daily at Kellogg’s Cafeteria on Seventh Avenue. For ages his bill was twenty-three cents. After several years, the tab went up to twenty-eight cents. At the club to meet Groucho Marx, who was going to appear on his radio show, Valley complained, ‘Kellogg’s is trying to get rich quick!’” Milton Berle, “B.S. I Love You - Sixty Funny Years with the Famous and the Infamous”
“gevisn” (conscience)
“I can’t with any conscience argue for New York with anyone. It’s like Calcutta. But I love the city in an emotional, irrational way, like loving your mother or your father even though they’re a drunk or a thief. I’ve loved the city my whole life--to me, it’s like a great woman.” Woody Allen
“enlekh” (alike)
“ehrnst” (serious)
“Of course, New Yorkers don’t by any means all speak alike...To be even less serious. New Yorkese, or its exaggerated sibling Brooklynese, has been defined as what you have a bad case of it you recite the sentence,
THERE WERE THIRTY PURPLE BIRDS SITTING ON A CURB, BURPING
AND CHIRPING AND EATING DIRTY WORMS, BROTHER, AS “DERE WERE
TOITY POIPLE BOIDS SITTIN ONNA COIB, BOIPIN AN CHOIPIN AN EATIN
AN EATIN DOITY WOIMS, BRUDDA.”
“khapn” (to catch)
“shpayzkrom” (grocery/supermarket)
“Native New York kids still have a catch (whereas other American youngsters PLAY CATCH)...The New Yorker will usually ask for change for a dollar, not OF a dollar; and he will GET A HAIRCUT, never HAVE a haircut...They always GO TO THE BEACH, never GO TO THE SHORE, as neighboring Jerseyans in the same metropoltan area put it. They don’t go to the supermarket, but to Waldbaum’s, Gristede’s, D’Agostino’s, King Kullen, etc. Their frequent synonym for YOU’RE WELCOME is a modest NO PROBLEM. New Yorkers call New York City the CITY or NEW YORK, never New York City. If they come from any of the other four boroughs and are going into Manhattan, they say, “I’m going to the City.” The New Yorker’s habit of “talking with his hands,” a kind of frenetic ballet accompaniment to the music of his voice, is often associated with Yiddish, but it is a habit common to many language groups in the city, especially to Italian speakers. Robert Hendrickson (“New Yawk Talk - A Dictionary of New York City Expressions”)
“trinkgelt” (tip/gratuity)
Tom Bosley came to New York in 1967 for three weeks. He never went back. There must have been a thousand customers at Lindy’s waiting for their coats! Reminiscing about his days at Lindy’s, Bosley told us about how small his tips were. At times, actors gave him a nickel. “An actor,” Bosley told us, “gave me a dollar once. I got so excited, I gave him a good coat.” Milton Berle
“shnel” (quick)
“minut” (minute)
A “New York minute” is a very quick minute, a very short time. “He had it done in a New York Minute.” Robert Hendrickson
CALIFORNIA
“vayn” (wine)
California is known for its film industry, wine country, and citrus fruit crops. Someone wrote to Yahoo! Answers:
“I heard Californians are more laid back and down to earth than New Yorkers. People would tell me they would visit New York and said that the people there are rude and not as down to earth as Californians. Also, they say that their hospitality and attitude is cold as the weather and that weather is warm and sunny in California because the people there are warm and friendly. Is that true?”
“veter” (weather)
The Best Answer:
“I think that you will meet the good and the bad in both places. I wouldn’t say one
is friendlier than the other. I live in CA but have been to N. Y. a couple of times.
Personally, I think that even though NY has worse weather, NYC has more things to
do and the atmosphere is more exciting than CA. I know some other people from CA
who have been to NYC and said they would move there if it wasn’t for the weather.
I feel the same way.”
Anon.
“Best way to live in California is to be from somewhere else.”
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
“What does she do?”
“She’s a producer.” Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn’t mean much more than
‘she’s a member of the human race.’”
Julian Fellowes, Past Imperfect
“layt” (people)
“There are no real Californians. There are only people who live there and people who don’t.” Laura Kalpakian, Steps and Execs: A Novel of Family
“got” (God)
“God will break California from the surface of the continent like someone breaking off a piece of chocolate. It will become its own floating paradise of underweight movie stars and dot-commers, like a fat-free Atlantis with superfast Wi-Fi.” Laura Ruby, Bad Apple
“shlof” (sleep)
“Vos” (What)
“haynt bay nakht” (tonight)
“It’s an amazing thing how I came all the way here (CA) from the East Side of New York to be here tonight. You know, I come from rough circumstances. I come from a family of fourteen children. I’ll tell you how this happened. Every night before they retired, my father said, ‘Do you wanna go to sleep or what?’ My mother was hard of hearing and said, ‘What?’” Jackie Mason, “Jackie, OY! Jackie Mason from Birth to Rebirth”
“aktyor (actor)
“aktrise” (actress)
“Living in California, everyone learns to adapt their actor or actress within.” Courtney Carola, Where We Belong
“ganeydn” (paradise) or “ganaiden” (Garden of Eden)
“California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see, But believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot If you ain’t got the do re mi.” Woody Guthrie
“plazhe” (beach)
“midber” (desert)
“There are not many places in the world where you can get to the beach in an hour, the desert in two hours and snowboarding or skiing in three hours. You can do all that in California.” Alex Pettyfer
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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.”
She will be speaking on “The Humor of Judge Judy” at the Levittown Library (Levittown,
New York) on May 28 at 1 p.m.
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