The Yiddish F Word, The Maternal Oy, Gold Cap Memories

The Yiddish F Word

          A week ago a television newscaster in Alaska, discussing the legalization of marijuana—a topic which is apparently very dear to her—saw her career go up in... well... smoke—after she made this on air comment at the end of a rant: “And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice, but... [expletive] it, I quit.”

          Maybe she should have used a different word. After all, viewpoints don’t necessarily end careers, but expletives frequently do.

          Here’s a suggestion for newscasters from Dutch Harbor to Cold Spring Harbor.

          I have an old neighborhood friend who uses that word in almost every conversation. Even when he leaves messages on my phone, writes letters or sends emails, it's always there, such as: “I can’t believe that [expletive] guy in my office” or “I had such a [expletive]’ headache today.” 

          I’m not a fan of the word. It’s not a prudish thing on my part by any means. When I’m really mad, I love a good [expletive] as much as the next guy. It’s just that overuse has rendered it meaningless, and because of its vocal severity, you can easily bite your lip and hurt your throat when using it. Who needs more problems than the one that caused you to want to say it in the first place?    

          So, on this Jewish New Year, let me suggest to the world what I suggested to my friend. Let Yiddish save the day. Why not have a national referendum to replace [expletive] with fecacta, pronounced fə-cŏk'-ta, the Yiddish word many of us use to cover the same ground. In fact, fecacta is at once more mellifluous and a stronger, angrier-sounding word than the real deal! It is expressive, and easier on the tongue and throat, despite the fact that it has similar consonants. Plus, it would be relatively new to a majority of Americans, so overuse won't be a problem for at least a hundred years. 

          “I'm gonna sue that fecacta lawyer’s ass off.”

          “How do you use this fecacta remote?”

          Not bad! The problem, of course, is just how to propose and implement such a national referendum. I suppose I could ask my old friend for advice. He seems to have an answer for everything. At least he says he does. In fact, his ego is bigger than the whole fecacta neighborhood.

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 The Maternal Oy

       I heard my mother say “Oy” the other day when she walked into my kitchen. I had no idea what she was oying about, but I knew it must be serious because her oys are few and far between, reserved only for those times when something really oyish deserves a strong maternal oy.

       I was confused. It was a beautiful day. Everyone was getting along. So I had to take her oy seriously. Even though oy is not in my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and is automatically underlined by Microsoft Word as being misspelled, I’ve always known what it meant. I grew up with it. It’s part of me. I inherited it, like high cholesterol and an under-active thyroid. It’s the kind of word that’s just part of the wonderfully expressive world of Jewish words around the world, along with vey is mir and ferklempt. Many people know what they meant. You don't even have to be Jewish.Often they're expressive and even comforting words.

       Oy is one of the less comforting ones, however, simply because it can be used to follow anything from “Honey, the mortgage check bounced,” to “Dad, I left my laptop on the plane.”

       The oy in question occurred just as my mother and my wife Bonnie walked into the kitchen together. There hadn’t been any issues between them that could have created an oy situation. Bonnie was building her own custom cake business and was very excited about it. So that was far from an oy situation. None of our kids had unnaturally colored hair, tattoos or ungodly piercings. So what could it be? 

       It was the mystery of mysteries, and for the first time in a long time I was scared to walk into my own kitchen. But I was the man of the house, and everyone inside was my responsibility. So if there was an oy situation in the kitchen, it was my duty to go in there and check it out. I’d have to be a mensch.

       Earlier that morning, before my mother had arrived, Bonnie began preparing several special cakes for new customers. The cakes, still unadorned, were in the refrigerator, but on the kitchen table, laid out on trays, were the individual design elements that would later be affixed to the cakes—all crafted by hand out of fondant and gum paste. Lots of them. Smooth and glistening. Most of the cakes were for religious confirmations, and what my mother saw splayed all over my kitchen table were dozens of large, robust, pink and white crucifixes.

        So that’s what prompted the scary maternal oy. But at least it was a sweet one.

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Gold Cap Memories

       I didn’t like Hebrew school very much for a couple of reasons. First of all, Shoshana, the prettier of the two girls in class, never paid much attention to me. Some of the other boys in class were more roguish and savvy-tongued than a freckle-faced, strawberry-haired kid like me. (I was only cute and sensitive, nothing more.) Shoshana laughed at their antics, not mine. She always tried to sit next to them, not me. A kid named Jeff, in particular, seemed to hold a special attraction for her because he had a gold cap on one of his teeth that he liked to flash around.

       I didn’t like Hebrew school very much because the cantor once mistook me for another boy. That was insulting. I was nearing the end of my bar mitzvah lessons with him and apparently doing very well. I memorized the words, had no trouble carrying a tune, and wasn’t shy about singing aloud. One day in Hebrew school, while I was walking through the hallways, the cantor stopped me, put his hands on my shoulders and said,

       “Your brother will never be as good as you.”

       That, of course, was a compliment, except for one major problem. I didn’t have a brother.

       In retrospect, maybe he didn’t mistake me as much as he mistook someone else, but still, it was insulting. Trust me.

       I didn’t like Hebrew school very much because it had always been difficult for me to learn another language. I had trouble learning Spanish in high school and trouble learning Hebrew at Suburban Park Jewish Center. I never got good grades in that part of the curriculum. I suppose I can’t really blame Hebrew school for that, but I did. Maybe I would have had a more forgiving attitude about it if Shoshana sat next to me and if the cantor knew exactly who I was.

       But somehow I got through it. I had my bar mitzvah. I graduated. And now, many years later, it is important to note that this freckle-faced, strawberry-haired kid who didn’t like Hebrew school very much went on to write “The Jewish Book of Lists” and “Reel Jewish: A Century of Jewish Movies,” and has written on numerous occasions for Jewish magazines.

       So Hebrew school must have done something right. And to be fair, so did my parents. After all, I never needed to get a cap on my tooth, gold or otherwise.