A 'MENSCH'* FOR ALL SEASONS
*A "mensch" is an honorable, decent person; someone to emulate

I'm one of those women who suffer from "Jewbilation"--a Yid-English term used by Rabbi Benjamin Blech--meaning pride in finding out that one's favorite celebrity is Jewish.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing the Broadway show, "700 Sundays," starring Billy Crystal. The title refers to the amount of time Billy spent with his dad before he passed away. Billy was just a "yung" 15-year-old--"Not alot (sic) of time for a kid to have with his dad."

Just hearing these two lines was worth the $100 ticket: "Yiddish is a combination of German and phlegm." And, "This language of coughing and spitting; until I was eleven, I wore a raincoat."

According to Michael Wex ("Born to Kvetch"), "The Talmud tells us that: Nine hundred thirty kinds of death were created in the world...The most difficult of all is diphtheria, the easiest of all is a kiss." Billy Crystal's dad died of a "hartsatak" (heart attack).

Billy Crystal's show, book, and movies, offer us a lovely Yiddish lesson:

"Vunderlekh" (wonderful)
"You look MAH-velous!"

"Muzik" (music)
"The house smelled of brisket and bourbon. That's the music I grew up on."

"Menyu" (menu)
[Katz's Deli, "When Harry Met Sally"] "I'll have what she's having."

"Tselularer telefon"; "tselke" (cell phone)
[after he was forced to constantly interrupt his B'way performance] "By the sixth one I say, 'Look folks, this is really tough material to get through, if you wanna talk on the phone, go talk on the phone, we'll put the lights on, turn them off, I'm gonna leave for just a second and collect my thoughts. I'll be right back.'" (Huge applause)

"Farblonzhet" (lost)--one's way
"We're lost, but we're making good time." [City Slickers]

"Mishpokhe" (family)
"Heroes don't have to be public figures. They can be right in your family."

"Bris" (circumcision ceremony)
"Sunday Number Two: my circumcision. This I took personal. This is no way to be brought into the world. I'm on a pillow, totally naked, eight pounds, nine ounces. I looked like a boiled chicken. I'm brought out in front of the family by a guy with bad breath and a beard. He puts me down on a table, grabs a razor and... I'm screaming in pain... and then I heard my Uncle Herman yell, 'Let's eat!'"

"Shpayen" (to spit)
"These people [family] love to eat and talk at the same time, so if you're on the other side of a sour cream conversation, they'll spray their breakfast all over you."

"Farts"/"Fortz" (fart)...taboo
[about Grandpa Julius] "Once he was done coughing, the farting would start. A true Whitman Sampler, every kind you can imagine, and some you can't possibly think could come from a human being."

"Tsuker" (sugar)
"Glezel tai" (glass of tea)
"I loved to have breakfast with him [Grandpa Julius] because that was like going to a science fair. First, he would take the sugar cube, and put it between his teeth. Then he'd put his teeth in his mouth. He could then take the glass of tea, and he'd sip it through the sugar cube."

"Redn on a mos" (to chatter without end)
"She [Aunt Sheila] lives in Boca Raton, Florida...It's a perfect place for her to live because in Spanish, Boca Raton means 'mouth of the rat.' She's been down there for years, and never once has she had a tan, because she's always inside, talking on the phone."

"Zunoyfgang" (sunrise)
"Zun-untergant" (sunset)
"He [Leonard] said, 'You don't understand. When Julie was a little girl, we used to play wedding together. And I would say to her, Julie, at your wedding, you and I are going to dance together to 'Sunrise, Sunset' and now--Yeah...from Fiddler. Is there another one...?'"

"Oysesn" (eating out)
"Okay, Listen, we're going out to dinner to celebrate the baby. Do you want to come...? I know it's two in the afternoon but it's dinner time. It's Boca..."

"Beysbol" (baseball)
"Baseball was the great equalizer. All we had to do was throw the ball to each other and say, 'Nice catch,' or sometimes, nothing at all."

"Bombe" (bomb)
"The Bomb" was on our minds all the time...We were practicing duck-and-cover drills in school, in case of an enemy attack. They would hurry us into the hallway, we'd sit on the floor with our arms folded, our heads down, but legs crossed. This position was going to save me when the Russians dropped the big one on us."

"Komiker" (comic)
"I loved Bill Cosby...He had brothers. I had brothers. He played at Temple. I belonged to a temple."

"Panik" (panic)
"The phone rings and I panic, because when you're a Jew and the phone rings late at night, it means somebody's dead... Or, worse, they want money..."

"Raysn kriye" (to tear/tearing)
"He [funeral director] pinned a black mourning ribbon on us all. They cut it, and then he chanted the Jewish prayer for the dead...which for this guy was a total disaster. He was spitting all over us."

"Fraynd" (friend)
"What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way."

"Shiva"/"shive" (mourning period)
"It's called a Shiva. But to me, the right word is 'shiver' because the feeling of Pop's death just made me tremble all the time."

"Sherer" (barber)
"Once a month I got my hair cut from this wonderful barber in Long Beach. Remember barbers?...I would sit in the chair. He'd put the smock around me. And I'd say to him, 'Cosmo, leave it long in the back, okay? Long in the back.'

"Sure, Bill. Like one of the Be-ah tuls, huh? Everyone wants to look like one of the Be-ah tuls...He then started to clip my hair off..."What are you doing!" "Your mother called."

"Koyshbol" (basketball)
[Crystal played against Erasmus Hall H.S.]
"And our cheerleaders were on the other side of the court singing (to the tune of Hava Negilah), 'Please don't hurt our players. They're very nice boys, and they bruise easily. OY!'"

"Pekl" (package)
"It was so great to get a letter...Then one day I got a package in the mail, which totally confused me because it was the only package I got all year that didn't have a salami in it." [It was a book from Sammy Davis, Jr.]

"Zay(t) gezunt" (good-by)
[Crystal leaves for Marshall University]
"I walked to the plane and never looked back, and then I heard three words that she [mom] would yell after me that would change my entire freshman year at school, "DON'T WASH WOOL!"

"Fliplats" (airport)
"You take someone to the airport, it's clearly the beginning of the relationship. That's why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship."

"Kostn" (to cost)
"Prayz" (cost)
"Uys-haltung" (maintenance)
"There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance."

"Bukh" (book)
"When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends."

"Zitsn" (to sit)
[Time Magazine interview, 10/17/05]
"I knew pretty much what I wanted to talk about [in "700 Sundays"]--people I loved and who I met, and people who touched me and made me the man I think I've become. But for the sake of a theatre experience, you can't keep them sitting there for nine hours. It's not Nicholos Nicklejew."

"Bakvem" (comfortable)
[one piece of advice for the next host of the Oscars]
"Comfortable shoes."