The Pitselech Are Reviving Yiddish
Image by COURTESY OF SIMON & SCHUSTER
Oy gevalt, Yiddish is dying. It’s listed in the Encyclopedia of The World’s Endangered Languages, which means that an entire generation is at risk of not knowing such phrases as nosh, shmear, pitsel and shayna maidel. Indeed, where would we be as a people without some good bagels and shmear? Unless bubbes, zaidies and alter kochers (grumpy old men) keep teaching us Yiddish words, they might be lost to the dreck (garbage) forever.
Leave it to Grammy Award-winning art director and graphic designer Janet Perr to help bring Yiddish back into vogue, first with the quirky book “Yiddish for Dogs,” and now with her new book, “Yiddish for Babies: A Language Primer for Your Little Pitsel.” The picture book teaches 29 Yiddish words with entertaining pictures of babies in various states of “Yiddish”: playing with a dreidel, letting out a geshrei (scream) and looking ongepotchket (gaudy) decked out with excessive amounts of jewelry.
The book’s aim is to help babies understand their parents when they start yelling things like, “Stop kvetching, dinner will be ready soon,” which the book reads next to a mother with a hot pot in her hand.
The book also teaches babies to look and act just like their bubbe in Boca. “Nu? Did you hear we’re having a playdate later?” one baby says to another on an outdated flamingo-colored rotary phone. “Yay,” the other baby responds, through a key-lime phone.
But the book is not just for babies. One of the last pages teaches parents the phrase yiddisher kop (smart person). So they can kvell: “Baby’s on her way to Harvard. She’s a real *yiddisher kop.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
