Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods – The Essential Guide to Jewish Heritage, Survival, and European Folklore (P.S.)

Born to Kvetch is a study of Yiddish idioms, and a delightful exploration of Ashkenazi culture. The word kvetch literally means “to press or squeeze”, like you’d do to get juice out of oranges, and its use in a culture where there is so much to complain about has risen to an art form. The kvetch is a way of making sense of a world where the blessing of the Torah is met with the pain of exile, where the demands of a righteous life involve deliberate low level antagonism of the goyish world in which Jews are embedded, lest the two become intermingled.

Yiddish is spoken these days mostly by Hasidic communities and a handful of Jewish language nerds. Even if my community, American Reform Judaism, is several generations away from Yiddish, these idioms get at my modes of thought, what it really means to be Jewish, in a way that few other books have. Bravo!