Rachel Rosenblum

August 31, 2014

A Meshuggener Language
I grew up with the cultural influence of a predominate jewish community, the traditional
yiddish tongue of my grandparents was my societal norm. To my astonishment, my way of
communicating took a drastic turn when I entered catholic school. My new peers simply did not
understand when I told them they had a little schmutz on their face. My vocabulary
metamorphasized from one influenced heavily by my jewish roots, to a more main-stream anglosaxon way of speaking.
My grandfather has made a habit of storming into our living room, a roast beef deli
sandwich in hand, shouting about his wifes meshuggener friends always kibitzing. Essentially
he was complaining about the crazy, gossiping women. These words were engrained into my
vocabulary from a small age. A walk was always a schlep, sweat stains and wet foreheads
meant you were schvitzing, and the gardner trying to take you money was a with out a doubt a
shmuck.
On Sunday mornings my great grandmother would make the schlepp to my grandparents
house in the expectation of some bagels and lox. She spoke fluent Yiddish and would always
make it a point of teaching my siblings and I a word of the day. Her shtick was never leaving the
house without perfect make up and hair, and she made sure she spoke as elegantly as she
looked. These yiddish words didn't seem to make a big impact on my every day life, because
they seemed normal to me.
My friends at temple all understood and used the same language as I. They too had the
same upbringing and shared my culture. We all understood popular words in this historical
language of the Ashkenazi Jews. My parents always taught me to hold onto my culture, and
cherish the dying language that it featured. The Yiddish language developed from the 9th
century from a jewish community featuring a pervasive Germanic centered language. Now in the
present day individual words have mixed into the English language, some of which most do not
realize derive from the Yiddish language. These common words were paired with more
traditional Yiddish phrases in my every day spoked language. I would soon come to realize that
most would not understand this.
Before my Junior year of high school I transferred with my younger sister to a catholic
school, which in turn, drove my conventional grandparents meshuggener. My classmates at this
school were very different then the jewish population that surrounded my previous education. I
was the only Jew among 2,000 white, catholic teenagers. My peers did not know what a Latkah
was, let alone gelt.
Adhering to the rules of Catholic School, I attended mass monthly with my classmates.
They sang songs about god and love that I had never heard before. Soon enough I was
muttering the catchy tunes on my way home. I learned latin words and phrases that consumed
their religion. There were popes, and saints, and symbols of which my classmates already new

the names to. They taught me the religious symbols that were necessary to pass my class, and I
even educated them in some of my favorite jewish holidays. My first year in school, my new
found friends came over for one of the nights of Hanukkah.
The school and my peers were overwhelmingly welcoming, but I noticed something had
changed. My entire life had been spent unintentionally quoting the ancient language of my
ancestors. It was second nature to me, however, the words slowly slipped from my vocabulary.
My friends just did not understand when I used words from the Yiddish language. They stared at
me as if I had sprouted a second head when I grunted oy vey under my breathe. My peers
came from a different culture and upbringing. They had grown up in catholic school
environments, attending church on Sundays and embracing baptism and confirmation. Years
prior, while I was becoming a Bat Mitzvah they were taking the Eucharist. My peers were
shaping the way I spoke and communicated.
On the weekends when I now visited my grandparents, the words they spoke sounded a
tad bit peculiar. Their voices and words were familiar and reminiscent of my childhood, but they
no longer struck a cord in my present life. I had adapted my friends way of speaking. I joked to
my them about Father John, the school priest, and started calling my Nana and Papa grandma
and grandfather when I discussed them with my friends.
This transformation would not have been so dramatic if it had not been paired with the
ever pressing issue of communication through technology. I talked to my friends every day, all
the time. Their language and phrases surrounded me from when I woke up in the morning with
my phone placed on my pillow, to when I laid my head down to sleep. My dad started warning
me every time I used the work like in a sentence, and I had to make a conscious effort to type
out the full spelling on the word you. I wouldn't say my culture was slipping, but the familiarity of
my ancestors language was slowly dying.
After graduating from high school I began to spend more time at home with my family.
The jokes, laughter, and Yiddish antidotes that had filled my childhood have remained the same.
I try to remember the words and use them more frequently, but my spoken language has
adapted to a more modern life, predominately filled with christians.
It still brings me extreme pleasure to hear my grandfather request a bissel of salt on his
matzah balls, but it is a nostalgic pleasure. I embrace and love my culture, but I have evolved to
fit into the community in which I live. Every once in a while I will slip up and complain about the
schvitzing weather of Elon while I schlepp to class all the way from the Danieley Center
Neighborhood.