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Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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Jake Ehrenreich ("A Jew Grows in Brooklyn") said, "There
are inevitable Billy
Crystal 700 Sundays comparisons. I remember going to see Billy's
show. I almost fell out of my seat..."Oh, no, he's
using slides and video!" Luckily, a friend
sitting next to me put it in perspective:
"Schmuck, you should only be so lucky that
anyone mentions you in the same breath
with Billy Crystal!"
Shmuck--with its various spellings--is not
a nice word. Samuel Rosenbaum ("A
Yiddish Word Book for English-Speaking
People") defines "der shmok" as penis; also,
stupid, insensitive, boor.
Shmuck should not be confused with the
Yiddish word, "shmegegge." The "Living
Language, Yiddish 2010 Calendar," Edited
by Shaina Malkin and Rifke Feinstein, define
a shmegegge as "First he arrives late to his
interview, then he can't find his resume.
What's with the guy."
Leo Rosten ("Hooray For Yiddish") defines
"shmuck" as "obscene as all get-out, but
effective. From German Schmuck; ornament..jewel...gewgaw."
Rosten admits that a handful of readers of
"The Joys of Yiddish" wrote protesting his
including such a "dirty" word as shmuck.
He replied, "A dictionary is not a hymn book."
In an e-mail from Will Shortz [9/19/03], he
wrote that there was a scandal when the
word "schmuck" was accepted by the
crossword puzzle editor of The New York
Times, apparently unaware that the word
is "a person of bad character" as well as
a course vulgarism for "penis." This occurred when Will Weng was
the NY Times
crossword editor from 1969-77. Shortz
wrote, "And times change. I would use the
word SCHMUCK in a puzzle now, fully aware
of its etymology. In its English meaning, the
dictionaries label it "slang," not "vulgar."
"The Week" [4/6/2007] contained a short
piece by Thomas Vinciguerra. "What's a
writer," James Warner famously asked "but
a schmuck with an Underwood?" Today, a
more relevant question might be, "What's a
journalist but a schmuck posing as one?"...
all that one needs to be a reporter or an
editor it seems, is the desire to be one. Sean Penn has written about
Iran and Iraq
for the San Francisco Chronicle; Rosie O'
Donnell went straight from comedy to being editorial director of McCalls. Roseanne
Barr was, improbably, hired as
guest editor at the New Yorker. Bono has
the same title for an upcoming issue of
Vanity Fair.
Michael Wex titled his 2009 book, "How to
Be a Mentsh (& Not a Shmuck"). He wrote,
"...shmuck is one of the 'dirtiest' words in
Yiddish, the sort of thing that could make
your mother try to wash your mouth out
with soap, even if you're fifty years old when you say it."
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA,
said he had no problem with the title. (He
doesn't use the S-word!)
Why my interest in this word? There's a
movie set for release this summer--July 23. It's called "Dinner for Schmucks." The
comedy stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd
and is directed by Jay Roach; he knows from crude titles.
The movie tells the story of Tim (Paul Rudd),
a guy on the verge of having it "alts" (all).
The only thing standing between him and
total career "hatslokhe" (success) is finding
the perfect "gast" (guest) to bring to his
boss' annual Dinner for Extraordinary
People, an event where the winner of the
evening brings the most eccentric character
as his guest. Barry (Steve Carell) is a guy
with a passion for dressing mice up in tiny
outfits to recreate great works of art. The
movie is about an unforgettable feast about
two unlikely friends and one very memorable "mitog" (dinner).
And, finally, Jeffrey and Lila Dubinsky
("Mother Gooseberg's Book of Jewish
Nursery Rhymes") also uses the word
"shmuck":
Jack
Skipped Macy's
Jack skipped Macy's
Jack skipped Saks.
On the street he bought
cheap slacks.
Jack got home and
split the seam.
"Next time, shmuck, buy
Geoffrey Beene."
------------------------------------------
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe's favorite "shm"
words are "shmeykhl" (smile), "shmirkez"
(cream cheese), and "shmaltz" (animal fat).
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