BORN TO KVETCH: YIDDISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN ALL OF ITS MOODS by Michael Wex

SUNDAY, AUG 9, 2026, 10am-Noon PDT

A handbook of Yiddish phrases and usages you won't get in your Yiddish language class, written with the spicy humor, incisive wit and inside knowledge of a Yeshiva-trained badkhen (wedding entertainer).

But there's more! While kvetching (complaining) is a mood woven deeply into the Yiddish language, Wex is really about capturing the lived experience of yidishkayt--Jewishness--from an Ashkenazi perspective. It's an exercise in essentialism (the pintele yid) through linguistic exegesis.

On August 9, we begin our new meeting time at 10 am-Noon, in order to welcome the participation of friends and colleagues interested in Yiddish language and culture from Poland and elsewhere. See discussion questions below.

If you are interested in joining us for this and other events on Zoom, please sign up on this website by becoming a member. You can also send questions or comments to me, Gelya Frank, Shmoozamama, gfrank@usc.edu.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• List Wex's 2 or 3 main points about the rise of Yiddish among the Jews of Central Europe in the 9th century.

• Why does Wex argue that the roots of Yiddish are in the Talmud? Was Yiddish spoken in Babylonia?

• What qualifies Yiddish as a language, not a jargon?

•  One man greets another: Vus makhst a yid?  How are you doing? What are some classic responses? Might a female Yiddish speaker be less likely to respond: Bakn beygl in drerd?

• Wex explains the quality of spite (aftselakhis) or doing something just to anger another. Have you seen the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm?

• Nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen. When would you use this phrase? Is going to the Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve the same as playing cards or folding toilet paper on nitl?

•  What makes Yiddish curses distinctive as compared, for example, with curses in English? What is the underlying logic?

  
  

• WHAT KEEPS YOU READING THIS BOOK?

  
  

• WHAT ARE YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT YIDDISH?

  
  

• WHAT WILL YOU TAKE AWAY?