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Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods - Hardcover

 
9780285638563: Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods
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Kvetching is to the Jewish soul what breathing is to the Jewish body. For Jews, kvetching is a way of understanding the world. It is rooted in the Bible where the Israelites grumbles endlessly. This book looks at the origins of this surplus of disenchantment, and examines how it helped to create the idioms and curses in Yiddish.

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Review:
Wise, witty and altogether wonderful. --The New York Times

He brings his years of experience and expertise to this wonderful and insightful book. --The Jewish Eye

He brings his years of experience and expertise to this wonderful and insightful book. --The Jewish Eye
From the Back Cover:
The entry for "kvetchn (the verbal form) in Uriel Weinreich's "Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary reads simply: "press, squeeze, pinch; strain." There is no mention of grumbling or complaint. You can "kvetch an orange to get juice, "kvetch a buzzer for service, or "kvetch mit di pleytses, shrug your shoulders, when no one responds to the buzzer that you "kvetched. All perfectly good, perfectly common uses of the verb "kvetchn, none of which appears to have the remotest connection with the idea of whining or complaining. The link is found in Weinreich's "strain" which he uses to define "kvetchn zikh, to press or squeeze oneself, the reflexive form of the verb. Alexander Harkavy's 1928 "Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary helps make Weinreich's meaning clearer. It isn't simply to strain, but "to strain," as Harkavy has it, "at stool," to have trouble doing what, if you'd eaten your prunes the way you were supposed to, you wouldn't have any trouble with at all. The connection with complaint lies, of course, in the tone of voice: someone who's "kvetching sounds like someone who's paying the price for not having taken his castor oil---and he has just as eager an audience. A really good "kvetch has a visceral quality, a sense that the "kvetcher won't be completely comfortable, completely satisfied, until it's all come out. Go ahead and ask someone how they're feeling; if they tell you, "Don't ask," just remember that you already have. The twenty-minute litany of "tsuris is nobody's fault but your own.
---from "Born to Kvetch

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  • PublisherSouvenir Press Ltd
  • Publication date2009
  • ISBN 10 0285638564
  • ISBN 13 9780285638563
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages320
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9780061132179: Born to Kvetch (P.S.): Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods

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