The Joys of Yiddish

The Joys of Yiddish is a book containing the lexicon of common words and phrases in the Yiddish language, primarily focusing on those words that had become known to speakers of American English due to the influence of American Ashkenazi Jews. It was originally published in 1968 and written by Leo Rosten.

The book distinguished itself by how it explained the meaning of the Yiddish words and phrases: almost every entry was illustrated by a joke. This made the book not only a useful reference, but also a treasured collection of Jewish humor.

As is inevitable with any book that references popular culture, it quickly became dated due to the dramatic changes that American culture (and Jewish-American culture) underwent over the next 30 years. Rosten published revised versions of the book with different titles: Hooray for Yiddish! (1982) and The Joys of Yinglish (1989). In 2001, a new edition of the original book was published. Titled The New Joys of Yiddish, it was revised by Lawrence Bush, with copious footnotes added to clarify passages that had become outdated. Some material was also rearranged.

In 1998, Charles Schumer and Al D'Amato were running for the position of United States Senator representing New York. During the race, D'Amato referred to Schumer as a putzhead. The New York Times referenced the entry for putz in The Joy of Yiddish and maintained that the phrase did not merely mean "fool", as D'Amato insisted, but was significantly more pejorative: based on that entry, a better translation might be "dickhead". D'Amato ended up losing the race; some observers credit this incident with costing him the election.

Harlan Ellison's 1974 science fiction story "I'm Looking for Kadak" (collected in Ellison's 1976 book Approaching Oblivion and in Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction) is narrated by an eleven-armed Jewish alien from the planet Zsouchmuhn with an extensive Yiddish vocabulary. Ellison courteously provides a "Grammatical Guide and Glossary for the Goyim" in which, he says, "The Yiddish words are mine ... but some of the definitions have been adapted and based on those in Leo Rosten's marvelous and utterly indispensable sourcebook The Joys of Yiddish ... which I urge you to rush out and buy, simply as good reading."

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