  
|
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
|
|
GRAB A #2 PENCIL AND LET’S SEE HOW WELL YOU FARE ON THIS QUIZ.
1. What is the Yiddish word for a scholar?
A) lamden
B) ben toyreh
C) gelernter
D) All of the above
2. The average back-to-school spending for a person with school-age children this fall (“farbst”) is projected to be
A) $590
B) $634.78
C) $831.14
3. What evidence do we have that spelling is important?
A) A new sign on the Robert Moses Parkway (NY) said, “Jonse Beach.”)
B) Thomas Hurley III misspelled his answer on Jeopardy. (He scribbled“EMANCIPTATION” INSTEAD OF “EMANCIPATION” in answer to a question about the 13th amendment.)
C) J. Richard Gentry wrote a book titled, “SPEL IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD.”
D) “gey vays” (go know)
4. When Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court went to Cardinal Spellman High School,
A) On each floor, a nun stood guard at the crack in the wall to make sure neither sex crossed over into the other’s side without a teacher’s permission slip.
B) She had never studied Spanish grammar, conjugated a verb, or read more than a few sentences at a time: An advertisement, or a newspaper headline, maybe
a short article. She had never read a book in Spanish.
C) She had a geometry (“geometrie”) teacher nicknamed Rigor Mortis.
D) She had a perfect (“perfekt”) score on the Regents geometry test.
E. All of the above
5. Which of the following words is spelled incorrectly?
A) accommodate
B) lollipop
C) embarrass
D) glamourous
6. “Shiny Object Syndrome” means investing in educational technology without
a real plan to drive achievement.
A) True
B) False
7. Starting with the fall of 2013, incoming high school freshmen will be required
to take harder Regents exams.
A) True
B) False
C) “A deigeh hob ich?” (Is it my worry?)
7. Which comedian wrote, “And so I went to Central [High School] an they had a
thing called trigonometry (“trigonometrik”). I thought: I’ll be glad when I get
through these OMETRY things, man. Too many OMETRIES.”
A) Jerry Seinfeld
B) Bill Cosby
C) Kevin James
8. Which old-time comedian said, “I have a daughter (“tochter”) who goes to SMU.
She could’ve gone to UCLA, BUT IT’S ONE MORE LETTER SHE’D HAVE TO
REMEMBER. She’s an A student. All she knows how to do is ‘Ayyyyyyyyy.’”
A) Sam Levenson
B) Sheckey Greene
C) Don Rickles
D) Harvey Korman
9. Who said, “One study of college (“universitet”) students showed that both
men and women valued friendship, but they were deeply divergent when asked
what friendship entailed. Guys thought it meant doing things together, women
that it meant emotional sharing and talking”?
A) Ellen Goodman
B) Anna Quindlen (“Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake”)
C) Maureen Dowd (“Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide”)
10. A student at a Hebrew day school came home with a failing grade.
He said, “But, mameh, it’s not my fault...
A) The teacher wouldn’t let me use any of my lifelines
B) I couldn’t poll “der klas” (the class)
C) I couldn’t phone-a-friend (“khaver”/”fraynd”)
D) I couldn’t use a 50-50 (“fuftsik”/”fuftsik”)
E) All of the above
11. Who wrote, “...Mom’s obsession was the amount of food (“esnvarg”) I would get to take to school in my lunch bag...I had quantity, I had quality, and to top it off, I had Murray Goldberg as my broker (“mekler”).”
“Ray, for half that chicken parmesan, I can get you a tuna (“tunfish”) salad, a Yoohoo, and an ice cream (“ayzkrem”) to be named later. But we gotta go now.”
I used to love the bag lunch (“lontsh”). And Mom knew she did a good job. She
was proud (“shtolts”) of her work, and it never wavered. It was always the same
brown (“broyn”) bag, top folded down three times, and it wasn’t complete until
she whipped out the Magic Marker and wrote, on both sides of the bag:
RAY
A) RAY BOLGER
B) RAY ROMANO
C) RAY CHARLES
D) RAY LIOTTA
12. When the late comedian, Sam Levenson, was registered for elementary school,
the clerk required exact dates of birth. His mama refused and replied:
A) “It was the third day of Passover.”
B) “He was born on the night the Titanic sank.”
C) “Oy, Vey! Ask me another question.”
13. In “Noo Yawk” slang, a “phudnik” is a “nudnik” with a Ph.D. and a D.Ph is
humorous slang, based on transposing Ph.D., for a damned fool. (The
Yiddish “phudnik” is a similar construction, according to Robert Hendrickson.)
A) True
B) False
14. A bad essay topic can have disastrous results when applying to a selective “universitet”/”koledzh” (college). Which of the following are REAL college
application essays?
A) So where is Waldo, really?
B) Find X
C) “Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco
or Sam’s Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard (“zeneft”) a foot
and a half tall? We’ve bought it, but it didn’t stop from wondering about other
things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for
mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness...and dozens of other ideas
both silly (“narish”) and serious (“ehrnst”). Write an essay somehow inspired
by super-huge mustard.”
D) All of the above
15. No student wants to be called
A) “Shtik holtz!”
B) “dumkop”
C) (a) “goilem”
D) All of the above-mentioned
16. Which Rabbi had the following to say about homework?
“Homework? My dad didn’t just ask if I had finished it. He read it, lectured
me for doing shoddy work and sent me back for another try. As I needed it,
we would do an entire assignment together. He always found time.”
A) Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
B) Rabbi Mark Howard Wilson
C) Rabbi Bob Alper (the world’s only practicing clergyman doing stand-up comedy,
intentionally)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANSWERS:
1. D
2. B
3. A, B, and C
4. E
5. D The correct spelling is “glamorous”
6. A
7. B
8.
9. B
10. B
11. E
12. B
13. A & B
14. A
15. D A) means “dumb like a piece of wood”; B) means dumbbell; C) means a dull
person, clumsy and sluggish
16. B
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MARJORIE GOTTLIEB WOLFE wishes her grandson, Shane, good luck at
Lehigh University, and her granddaughter, Amanda, a wonderful year at
Binghamton.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M |
| N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z |
| Yiddish
Stuff Jewish Humor Schmooze News More Majorie Wolfe |
Principle Jewish Stories All Things Jewish Jewish Communities of the World |