“Ich red Engelesh!”

Zoog mir in Yiddish

By Sol Awend, GenShoah SWFL

My mom and dad were liberated from Dachau. They met, fell in love and got married. Had me and, two years later, my father died from cancer. My mom and I came to America and settled in St. Louis, Missouri where she met and married another survivor. A year later, my brother was born.

Logistics… I’ll wait a minute until it sinks in…

As a 4-year-old kid, growing up in America was an adventure, the sights and sounds of all the moving parts were so exciting. Cars, buses, fire trucks and airplanes groaning, screaming and hissing. Everywhere you went there were signs; billboards with smiling fellows lighting cigarettes for smiling women smoking. Ads for Coca-Cola were everywhere. And at night, they all lit up!

One name really stuck out from all the rest. I thought he had to be the richest person in America, because wherever you looked, there he was. His name? “Ice Crème,” pronounced “Issa Crema.” And when I really found out what, not who, it was, my whole world turned cold and chocolate chip.

Then again, thinking you know the language and knowing it are two different concepts. To me, the American adventure continued when I went to school. There was one problem. They didn’t speak Yiddish and I didn’t understand English. Neither did my parents.

It was time for lunch one Sunday afternoon, and I came home and sat down at the table, famished. “Ma! Voos iz doo t’zeh essen?!” I asked. Without skipping a beat, she answers with a straight face, “Nah, doo ost deh ah sendevahbeech!” I still see her smiling proudly. She was speaking Engelesh!

But then again, it wasn’t all fun and games either. As he tells it, my dad had to take the bus for his job. He got on the bus and the driver asked him which stop he wanted. My dad stood there, paralyzed, suffering from the ailment I encountered. The driver spoke no Yiddish and my dad understood no English.

I will never forget what happened some five years later in Memphis, Tennessee. Our family was visiting friends. One afternoon, the ladies went shopping; the guys were going somewhere else. It involved a bus ride and when it arrived, we got on. It was an episode of Rosa Parks in reverse.

The Black passengers were sitting towards the back of the bus, while everyone else was up front. Except for one person: My dad. He walks to the back of the bus and sits down amongst the different colored riders. There was a commotion and when he was urged to move he said, “No!”

In broken English he declared, “Vy I hev to mov? His hartz iz not like mine? Vee are deh same!” Everyone was stunned. He sat there, smiling and looking at his seat mates, who also broke out in geh laac’hteh. Even though they couldn’t really understand each other, everyone knew what would be talked about at the dinner table that night.

Perhaps one reason Yiddish has lasted for so long is its adaptability. Remember when cellphones came out? The Internet was blossoming? Terms sprouted up to identify them. An email became a blitzpost, and your cellphone became deh sellkeh. And my mom, having a name for everything, helped move the conversation along.

It seems we had somvehs to go and were hustling out the door. Cheerfully, my mom yells out, “Fah guess nisht Deh Kaakeh mykeh!” I was so caught off guard that I had tears running down my leg from laughing so hard. And there stood my mom, smiling. “Ich red Engelesh,” she commented.

I’m sure we could all compare stories and the laughter would be so healing and beneficial.

Here then, are the explanations of the words and statements from the stories above.

1. “Ma! Voos iz doo t’zeh essen?!” (Ma! What is there to eat?!)

2. “Nah, doo ost deh ah sendevahbeech!” (Here’s a sandwich!)

3. “Geh laac’hteh.” (Laughter)

4. “Ich red Engelesh!” (I’m speaking English!)

5. “Fah guess nisht Deh Kaakeh mykeh!” (Don’t forget the whatchamacallit!)