by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

March 17, 2009

Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic shlepped all the way from their fancy-shmancy Philadelphia homes to Temple Beth El of Somerset to share bubba meises and shtick about the colorful Jewish words that are part of the vernacular of American Jews.

As members noshed on bagels and a shmear at the March 1 program sponsored by the synagogue’s sisterhood, they shmoozed and laughed as the two women gave their shpiel.

Eisenberg and Scolnic, known as “the word mavens,” are the authors of The Dictionary of Jewish Words, a reference guide of 1,200 Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Aramaic, and English Jewish words in use today.

The book contains everything from holiday names to terms of endearment, slightly off-color Yiddish expressions, the alef-bet soup of Jewish organizations, foods, Israeli cities, and figures in Jewish history.

The authors, who met while Eisenberg was an editor and Scolnic a regular contributor to the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, have traveled the country speaking to audiences. They pick up anecdotes, reminisces, recipes and — in some cases — misuses of Jewish phrases and words, some of which they shared with the Beth El group.

There was the time a woman in Houston ordered a Shabbat brisket in a store and was given a Texas beef barbecue sandwich. Or when a man shopping in a suburban Philadelphia store asked a stumped clerk where he could find matza. As the customer described what matza was, the clerk suddenly realized what he was talking about: “Jewish wafers!”

Eisenberg said a woman in Harrisburg, Pa., recounted an embarrassing linguistic misstep at the local motor vehicle bureau where a clerk looked at her baby and remarked innocently, “What a cute little shmuck.”

And Scolnic told about the non-Jewish friend of her sister who came over on a Sunday morning when they were kids. Asked if she would like some lox, the girl replied, “I’ll just try one lock to see if I like it.”

They also spoke of the words that have more successfully and ubiquitously entered the American vernacular. They cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Italian-American Justice Antonin Scalia, without thinking it necessary to define the word’s meaning, wrote that the National Endowment for the Arts “had chutzpah.”

Afterward, the two women signed copies of their book and continued to exchange Jewish word stories.

“This was very good, even better than I thought it would be,” said Rose Ann Rosenthal of Somerset. “It was entertaining and had lots of audience participation. I also found out I knew more about Jewish words than I thought I knew.”

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