More in ‘language’

The results are in: the words “shpiel” and “klutz” have been thoroughly absorbed into the American vernacular, while “mensch” and “kvetch” remain primarily in the linguistic domain of Jews. A third of Jewish Americans who did not grow up in New York have nonetheless been told that they sound like they’re from that city. Sixty-eight ...

Israel’s Education Ministry decided today to ban the word “nakba” from school textbooks. Arabic for “catastrophe,” this controversial term, used by most Arabs to describe the eviction or flight of Palestinians in 1948, has been judged “propaganda” by the Netanyahu government and, as such, a threat to national security. “It is inconceivable that in Israel ...

We are leaving for Israel—for three months!—on May 5, for my husband’s sabbatical, and somehow I don’t think my Hebrew will be fluent by then. David’s Hebrew, after years of study and time in Israel, is pretty good. Me . . . well, I can definitely make my needs known, as long as my needs ...

The American Jews, the Jewish writers, are descendants of immigrants of the first part of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they fell in love with English and American poetry and life. It was a love affair, there was nothing contrived about it. You went to school, you read these great books and ...