I’ve decided that being Jewish is a ‘condition’. Like a disease, but not life-threatening. Like eczema. And the term ‘condition’ is appropriate because, like everyone else in the world, we are conditioned. Ours is just a bit different. Maybe because there are so few of us, maybe because we have a collective history that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, but we’re conditioned to find good things in Jews or find good things in other people and try to make a Jewish connection. Conversely, we try to disown Philip Green at every opportunity. Its the same thing. Big up the good, downplay the bad.

The language of the Jews is not strictly hebrew. That’s the language of prayer. So, many European religious Jews won’t use hebrew as a ‘language’ but only in prayer. To use it otherwise is somehow blasphemous. So in all of old Poland and Russia and Germany and Holland, they spoke Yiddish. A kind of pidgin German which endures today in all communities where ‘black hats’ are the prevailing trend. Even in Israel which, being a secular nation, has hebrew as its official language, the ultra orthodox there stick to Yiddish. Because its more fun.

Ok, that may not be their strict motivation, but Yiddish is undoubtedly more fun than most other languages. And certainly more expressive. The Yiddish expressions that have endured among the non-Yiddish speaking peoples (all of those who don’t do the black hat/long beard thing) are very difficult to translate. Because other languages have words sort of equivalent, but they lack the feeling, the emotion, the depth.

A ‘shlemiel’ is an idiot. But so much more than just any idiot. A shlemiel is such an idiot that he (or she, its very egalitarian) is almost a schmuck. Which is like a tosser, but raised to several powers of idiocy. To ‘shlep’ is to drag. But much more. To wrench, but with pain attached. If it doesn’t hurt, you ain’t schlepping.

Pride is a more complex thing. There are two wonderful Yiddish words for pride. But more than pride. Nachas is the pride you receive from someone doing something wonderful. Its the noun, pride, but its bigger, its bursting with pride, its tears in the eyes, its massively heart-felt. Whereas ‘kvell’ is the verb. To kvell is to do all of the above. You kvell because your grandchild came first in a maths test (he cheated, but that’s ‘chutspa’, something else for another day), so you get lots of ‘nachas’ from him.

Gwyneth Paltrow wins an Oscar, we find out she had a Jewish dad. Yippee, one of our own. David Beckham’s grandad was a Spurs supporting Jew, that’s like finding out my rabbi won the world cup with Brazil.

And last night, during the becoming-ever-more wonderful Olympics, the quite amazing American girls won the team gymnastics. Their captain is Jewish. So I was allowed to kvell a little. It was like every jew in the world was doing triple back somersaults with double twists, even the black hats. Though I took nachas from the whole team. Jew, Christians, white, black, hispanic. Amazing.

Now let me go check out Usain Bolt’s family tree…

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx