Jewish Word | The Hairsplitting Complexity of ‘Talmudic’
More often than not, the word “Talmudic” isn’t about the Talmud.
Jewish Word | What a Schlep!
In 2008, a group of Jewish Democratic political operatives had an idea: If young Jewish voters traveled to Florida, they could convince their hesitant grandparents to vote for Barack Obama, thus ensuring a win in the vital swing state.
Jewish Word | What Is Cancel Culture—and What Does Judaism Say About It?
Comedian Kevin Hart was bumped from hosting the 2019 Oscars for years-old homophobic tweets.
Jewish Word | Pikuach Nefesh
In Chaim Potok’s 1969 novel The Promise, sequel to the better-known The Chosen, there’s a scene that piercingly illustrates the Jewish legal emphasis on saving a life.
Dispatch from Crown Heights: Two Universes, One Neighborhood
As Devorah Halberstam, a prominent local activist, drives through Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in her white 2017 Acura, she grows increasingly animated.
Jewish Word | Israeli Elections Slogans Get Personal
As Israeli elections near, Moment looks at the history of political slogans in the country’s elections. From Mapai to Rabin, Netanyahu and Benny Gantz.
Jewish Word | Shamash
n the 1946 film The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler mystery of the same name, Carmen—the promiscuous, drug-addicted younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character—sizes up Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, and asks him, “What are you, a prizefighter?” Bogart responds, “No, I’m a shamus.” “What’s a shamus?” she inquires. “It’s a private detective,” he answers. Yes, Bogart is using the Yiddish version—more popularly spelled “shammes”—of the Hebrew word, “shamash.”
Jewish Word | Fake Jews
This past spring, Trayon White Sr., a Washington, DC city councilmember, sparked an outcry by blaming a late season snowfall on the Rothschilds, the famous Jewish banking dynasty, who, he explained, control “the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”
Jewish Word | Maven
“Maven” is a relatively new transplant into American English. Written references to the word begin to increase in the mid-1960s and continued to rise through the early 2000s, according to Google Ngrams, which charts words’ popularity in books over time.
Jewish Word | When a Knish Is More Than a Knish
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump proclaimed at a rally that Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” in the 2008 primaries. Schlong, when used as a noun, is a Yiddish word for penis—and a pretty vulgar one at that. But when used as a verb, is it even a word?
A Short History of Little Words
It’s hard to escape the OMGs and LOLs of today, but don’t blame millennials—acronyms actually originated thousands of years ago with the development of the ancient Hebrew alphabet. Around the 10th century BCE, Hebrew letters emerged out of ideographic pictures and, soon after, groups of letters started to be used in place of frequently recurring words.
Jewish Word | Golem
Although such comparisons remain rare, for Jews and non-Jews the golem serves as a concept uniquely suited to expressing the fears and insecurities of the modern era. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in 1984, “The golem story appears less obsolete today than it seemed one hundred years ago. After all, what are the computers and robots of our times if not golems?”