I've yet to recover from the news that Betty Boop, that sexy cartoon personality of the interwar years who boop-oop-a-dooped her way into America's heart, was reportedly fashioned after the fun-loving, rebellious daughters of the Lower East Side. And now word on the street is that Fred Flintstone, another celebrated American pop culture character, also took his cue – or at least his sound – from Jewish immigrant culture.
Yiddish may not be what it once was – the lingua franca, the daily language, of Ashkenazic Jewry – but it continues to make itself felt and heard in new and unanticipated ways, or what Jeffrey Shandler calls "post vernacular" forms of expression.
While the Rutgers University professor singles out board games and other artifacts that make use of Yiddish, two contemporary phenomena are additional grist for his mill.
Recently, Tablet magazine inaugurated A Yidisher Pop, an online gossip column which innovatively linked our modern-day preoccupation with celebrity to that age-old language.
Elsewhere in the digital universe, the Forward features an online cooking class in Yiddish, "Eat in Good Health," in which the plummy tones of Eve Jochnowitz give the trills of Julia Child a run for their money as she sets about instructing contemporary foodies on how to prepare a brisket and other staples of the traditional Jewish diet.
Closer to home, on GW's campus, a minyan of students comes together twice a week to learn about the subtleties and intricacies of Yiddish under the tutelage of professor Max Ticktin, a devotee and longtime student of the language. Some are drawn to Yiddish by the prospect of connecting with their grandparents, others by its linguistic complexities.
Whatever their motivations or their medium, those who make a point these days of integrating Yiddish into their daily lives are to be commended for sustaining and nurturing a vital part of their cultural patrimony.
Betty Boop (from Wikipedia). She knew how to bat an eyelash, but did she call it viye in Yiddish?
