Artfl, if you think Jewish women in the shtetl had no way of getting dignity or respect except through their husbands, you don’t know much about Jewish women or the shtetl.

I like how that line is used in the song, “Perfidia.” I’m not sure if it’s in the original, Spanish language version, but it is in the English version. You all probably know it, but if you haven’t, here’s a good version by Linda Rondstadt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bN946sNhvHc

schnorer… 🙂

[though not quite… ]

Schlemihl and Schlimazl
[hossenfeiffer incorporated… ]
remember laverne and shirley?

Schlemihl and Schlimazl

From the stock folklore figures of fools and knaves have emerged specifically Jewish figures, the schlemihl and the schlimazl, who particularly dominate the stories set in the ghettos and shtetls of Europe.

How to tell them apart? A schlemihl, it is said, is a man who spills a bowl of hot soup on a schlimazl. Not quite a simpleton, the schlemihl cannot cope successfully with any situation in life. The schlimazl, on the other hand, does not lack skill, but he faces life with the deck stacked against him. He suffers from bad (schlimm) luck (mazl), as exemplified by Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye, the dairyman, in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

i mentioned this too…

ie. mentioned the used of the two terms in popular tv show (laverne and shirly) and mentioned tevy.. (then i went to look it up this morning, an voila… (voila is not yiddish… 🙂 )

“When Schlemihl Went to Warsaw” is a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer about a man who, although a schlemihl, has the good fortune of dwelling among the fools of Chelm. With the help of his wife, he transforms his own gullibility into a situation whereby the foolish elders of Chelm decide to pay Schlemihl a salary for babysitting his own children.

According to folklorist Nathan Ausubel, both schlemihl and schlimazl are products of the “same economic swamp of ghetto stagnation.” In their hopeless, bumbling inability to rise above their circumstances, these characters symbolize the consequences of strictures placed on Jews in shtetl and ghetto. The same swamp gave rise to a particularly debased form of schlemihl – the henpecked husband. Aleichem’s tailor in “The Enchanted Tailor” is one, as is Tevye.

The henpecked husband is a pitiable schlemihl as in the story of the shrew who delighted in demonstrating to friends the absolute control she had over her husband:

In the company of several of her women friends, she suddenly shouts at her husband, “Schlemihl, get under the table!” Obediently, he silently crawls under the table. “Now, schlemihl, come out!” she commands. “I won’t. I won’t,” the husband squeaks back. The wife’s women friends stare at the husband under the table in disbelief. “I wont come out. I won’t come out. I’ll show you I am still master in this house,” the husband squeaks.

Given the uniquely Jewish setting of such stories, and given the appearance of the schlemihl as a Jewish underdog suffering yet one more indignity, one might conclude that the henpecked schlemihl is a figure typical of Jewish folklore. The fact that women in the Jewish shtetl had no means for gaining dignity or respect except through their husbands adds credence to this notion. In her bitterness over being shackled to a schlemihl, the Jewish wife might easily develop into a shrew.

However, satire on the shrewish wife and the henpecked husband is an ancient literary convention which occurs in writing throughout time and all over the world and is not necessarily associated with particularly harsh circumstances of women. Yet, as in other cultures, the henpecking takes on a particular flavor, in this case a Jewish quality.

Kapo should be on the list.

Narr with two r’s is standard German for fool and Verbrecher is standard German for criminal. A confidence man (‘con’ man) is a Hochstapler (as in Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull: Hochstapler).

I’ve found that as a (reasonably good) German-speaker, I can usually understand about 2/3 of spoken Yiddish….

Legend has it that Eskimos (Inuit) have hundreds of words to describe snow. We Jews have hundreds of words for “pains in the neck.”

We have them because we need them.

In re the President: I don’t know if there’s a Yiddish word for “a man who digs the foundation out from under his own home — and yours — all the while proclaiming how virtuous he is. When the house collapses, he’ll blame you and pat himself on the back simultaneously”.