Jewish English Lexicon

Welcome to JEL, a collaborative database of distinctive words that are used in the speech or writing of English-speaking Jews. Think of it as the Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary of Jewish language.

The words in this database stem from several languages of the Jewish past and present, including the Hebrew and Aramaic of ancient biblical and rabbinic texts, the Yiddish of centuries of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and the Modern Hebrew of contemporary Israel. When Jews use words from this list within their English speech or writing, they indicate not only that they are Jewish but also that they are a certain type of Jew. Some are Yiddish lovers, some are engaged in religious life and learning, some have a strong connection to Israel, some have Sephardi heritage, and some are all of the above. Because Jewish and non-Jewish social networks overlap, these words are not used exclusively by Jews. Some are English words that certain Jews use in distinctive ways, and some are Yiddish-origin words that have become part of the English language.

JEL was started in 2007 as a class project in Sarah Bunin Benor's course "American Jewish Language and Identity in Historical Context" at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Students were asked to contribute words that they heard from their friends or read online or in print, as well as definitions, example sentences, and source languages. Many of the entries already appeared in one or more of the published Jewish English dictionaries, but many appear here for the first time, thanks to the students and visitors like you.

By design, JEL is a work in progress. We hope you will help us build and refine it. If you notice a word missing, add it. If you disagree with a definition or want to add notes, please click the edit button on that entry. All changes are moderated. We invite you to experience the lexicon by browsing, searching, sorting, participating in conversations on the JEL forum, and, most importantly, adding new entries. Past contributors have reported that once they started paying attention, their eyes (and ears) were opened to a whole new world of Jewish English language.

The Jerusalem Robbers' Gallery

Like many formerly gritty downtown districts around the world, Jerusalem’s is undergoing gentrification. Elegant buildings full of distinctive Ottoman-era or British Mandate-period architectural features are being torn down or gut-renovated, much to the dismay of history buffs and romantics alike.

Enter the Robbers' Gallery, a guerilla preservation effort that’s become a home for the architectural and cultural detritus that would otherwise wind up in Israeli landfills. The Gallery, which occupies a series of interconnecting rooms inside a 19th-century apartment, feels like a cross between an architectural salvage yard and a museum.

Its most distinctive, and numerous, holdings are the dozens of handcrafted wooden window frames from bygone centuries, some still filled with pieces of the original stained glass, and carved with Stars of David. Founder Yoram Amir mounts the wooden castoffs on brightly painted walls, alongside photographs depicting the evolution of modern Jerusalem and poetry about the ancient city.

The sunlit rooms testifying to a vibrant and noisy past overlook Jaffa Road, with only the low rumble of the new Light Rail and shoppers' multilingual chatter disturbing the quiet.

German Ritual Baths

Walk through most German cities today and you don’t have to look too hard to find commemorations of pre-Holocaust Jewish life – they're in the sidewalks, on plaques, and in memorials here and there. And yet it can still be hard to imagine an observant Jewish community in Germany before the war – not to mention way before the war. One thing aiding our imaginations are the Jewish ritual baths that are being restored all around the country.

Some of these mikvaot are remnants of medieval synagogues — which can make their contemporary appearance that much more jarring. In Cologne, for instance, a hyper-modern glass pyramid protects the mikveh’s excavation site right in front of the City Hall.

Thanks to the literal depth of some of Germany’s old mikvaot – Cologne’s is nearly 50 feet underground, and is reachable only by descending 79 steps – they’ve survived remarkably unscathed. Peering into their depths is like looking through a portal to another world, and the experience is powerful — and surreal.

Traditions and Preparations for a Jewish Wedding

Customary rituals and practices of Jewish weddings are almost no different from their Christian counterparts including those of other religions and culture. Although variations may exist and are conspicuous, they are basically similar in intent.

Just like any other religion and culture, there are traditions and customs that must be adhered to before a Jewish wedding. Some of these customs are based on the cultural heritage of the Jews but are still observed today regardless if some of them are thousands of years old albeit with minor modifications.
The following are some common customs before a Jewish Wedding:
The Engagement (Tena’im)

In Jewish law and custom, engagement carries a radically different meaning than the intention to marry because a Jewish engagement contract (Tena’im) also involves the undertaking of substantial legal and social consequences. The engagement ritual is officiated at the groom’s table where he signs the engagement contract (in Aramaic) which is afterwards given to a prominent Rabbi or close friend to read publicly. After the public reading, the mothers of both bride and groom perform the ritual of breaking a china plate as a symbol announcing to one and all that the engagement agreement is completed to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.

The Te’naim is a legally binding agreement between the bride and groom’s parents that contains the pertinent information like the date and financial arrangements of the wedding. The practice of entering into such an agreement goes as far back as the 300 C.E. in order to do away with unsystematic wedding preparations and avoid misinterpretations that may lead to disagreements and awkward relationships not only between the couple but also between their families. The practice is mainly observed by the Orthodox Jewish community.

Aside from the Tena’im, other rituals and customs of a Jewish marriage are the giving of the ring (Eirusin) which signifies that the future bride cannot marry someone else even if they are not yet legally husband and wife; the bride’s acceptance of the ring (Qiddushin) and finally, sharing a home and consummating the marriage (Nissuin). The maximum allowable period for this is one year to prevent men from performing eirusin without committing to nisuin. When the allowable period has lapsed, Jewish courts can compel the man to support his bride. In the 12th century, the custom has evolved into the performance of eirusin in the morning followed by wedding celebrations with nisuin subsequently being performed before sunset. Modern day Jewish wedding rituals and customs are now done all in the span of one day due to business and work commitments and the changing times.


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Fagin the Jew

The antihero of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist is the "villainous-looking and sinister" Jewish moneylender, Fagin. Fagin is referred to as "the Jew" 257 times throughout the first two-thirds of the novel, often in the context of him doing something nasty, salivating over his gold, or beating poor Oliver.

While working on the final third of the novel, however, Dickens forged a friendship that would change the course of his writing—or at least, that is, his writing about Jews. He bought a house from a Jewish couple he would later befriend, and the wife, Eliza Davis, wrote to him reprimanding him over Fagin's character, saying he'd "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew." Dickens eventually agreed, and excised every inclusion of the word "Jew" from the book's final 13 chapters. In a public reading of Oliver, he omitted every stereotypical description of Fagin, and in his later novel Our Mutual Friend, he created several Jewish characters, all of them sympathetic.

Despite Dickens’s stab at reform, the legacy of Fagin endures. In 2003, Will Eisner published a book, Fagin the Jew, which wrestles with the figure; and last year, a historian claimed that the real-life model for Fagin wasn't Jewish at all, but--just as disastrously--was black.

Women As Role Models

The Shulhan Arukh, the Code of Jewish Law, specifies that while the Hanukkah lights are burning, no one is to engage in work, especially women. Why women? There are two famous stories of Hanukkah that have brought special merit to the valorous role of women in the holiday.Judith Hanukkah

 

Judith and Holofernes

Two stories related to Hanukkah focus on the heroic efforts of women.

The Apocrypha is a collection of books from the biblical period which were not chosen to be part of the Jewish Bible (but were accepted in the Catholic collection). In addition to the First and Second Books of Maccabees, the Apocrypha contains the Book of Judith, a book preserved in the Greek but not in the Hebrew Bible. It tells the story of a beautiful Jewish woman by the name of Judith, who single-handedly saved the Jewish town of Bethulia….

The story goes like this. An evil general, Holofernes, lays siege to the town. All seems lost until Judith tells the elders of the town that she has a plan to defeat the enemy. They dismiss her offer as foolish and prepare to surrender to Holofernes. Judith tries once more to convince the elders that she can save them, and this time they reluctantly agree to allow her to leave the camp for one day.

Judith prepares herself for her bold scheme. She dresses provocatively and prepares a sack containing food and wine. She approaches the enemy camp and is immediately captured and brought to Holofernes. He is very impressed with her beauty and her prediction that he will capture Bethulia. She suggests they go to his tent alone and celebrate.

Once in Holofernes' tent, Judith feeds him the salty cheese she has brought with her. Holofernes becomes quite thirsty and drinks large quantities of wine until he falls asleep, drunk. Judith takes Holofernes' sword and cuts off his head. She covers the body with a blanket, puts the head in a sack, and returns through the sleeping camp to Bethulia.

The elders cannot believe that Judith has returned safely. She reveals the severed head of Holofernes and the elders place it on the walls of the city. Meanwhile, the enemy soldiers awake and discover the decapitated body of their leader. In the distance, they see Holofernes' head hanging from the walls of Bethulia. They decide that if a Jewish woman could be so ruthless, they do not want to fight Jewish men in battle, and so the army retreats and the city of Bethulia is saved.

A midrash (in Hebrew) dealing with a variation of the Judith story was read on the Shabbat or Shabbatot of Hanukkah during the Middle Ages. Dated sometime after the 10th century CE, the midrash is remarkably similar to the narrative of the Greek version.

Artist and critic Beth Haber notes that the story of Judith has inspired a long list of artistic representations, ranging from the rather violent depictions of the beheading of Holofernes by Andrea Mantegna to the stone sculptures of Judith on the north portal wall of the Chartres Cathedral. Michelangelo himself painted figures of Judith and her maid on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Elisabetta Sirani and Fede Galizia used Judith as subject, while Caravaggio's famous painting is far more sympathetic to Holofernes than to Judith. A series of six paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi runs the gamut from the violence of the act itself to the resolve and determination in its aftermath. In addition, the Judith story also inspired a number of religious epics in many European countries, as well as musical oratorios by famous and not-so-famous composers.

 

Hannah and Her Sons

Another story of heroism involving a woman is associated with Hanukkah. The story of Hannah and her seven sons is recorded in the Second Book of Maccabees 7:1-41. [Hannah is a name from Rabbinic midrash; the Second Book of Maccabees refers to her as "the mother."] Unlike the militant story of Judith, Hannah's story is a tale of martyrdom.

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All About Chanuka

During the period of the Second Temple, the Greeks issued drastic and evil decrees against the Jews forbidding them to study the Torah or to observe its mitzvoth. They violated their daughters and desecrated the holiness of the Temple. The Greeks were determined to destroy our belief in G-d.

The sons of the Hasmonean High priest rebelled against them and eventually defeated the great Greek army, saving the Jews from the oppressive decrees and restoring the purity to the holy Temple. The Jewish kingdom of Israel was re-established under the rule of the Hasmoneans and lasted for more than two hundred years.

After prevailing over their enemies, they entered the defiled Temple to purify it and found only one small jar of oil that had the intact seal of the High Priest. All the other jars of oil were defiled by the Greeks. This was on the twenty-fifth of Kislev. Although the oil in the single jar was sufficient for only one day, yet when they lighted the menorah in the Temple it lasted for eight days until they were able to extract pure olive oil.

The sages of that generation decreed that the eight days beginning on the twenty-fifth of Kislev be set aside as days of rejoicing and thanksgiving. Each night for eight days candles are lit at sundown to proclaim and recall that miracle.

The name Hanukkah comes from the Hebrew word 'chanu' meaning 'they rested' and the Hebrew date '25' pronounced in Hebrew 'ka' because on the twenty-fifth of Kislev the Jews rested from their enemies.

Another reason is to remember the dedication and consecration (from the Hebrew word 'chanech') of the Temple which was purified from our enemies. Therefore it is important to celebrate by eating a bit better and to be joyous during this time. It is traditionally a time to get together with our friends and families, eat together, sing together, and re-tell the story of Chanukah, that it not be forgotten, but it be forever engraved in our hearts. Fasting is not permitted during this time. Charity should be given out liberally.

Work is permitted during the eight days but women customarily refrain for working while the Hanukkah lights are burning and we should not permit them to disregard this tradition. The actual practice of women refraining from work lasts only for the first thirty minutes, since that is the minimum time for the candle to be lit. The reason for this custom is two fold. First, the wicked Greeks decreed that a young bride must cohabit with the governor before her marriage and secondly is that women were actively involved in the final deliverance from the oppressor. The daughter of Yochanan, the high priest, was a very attractive young lady. The cruel ruler requested her to be with him. She accepted his request and prepared for him dishes of cheese which caused him to be thirsty. She then gave him wine which intoxicated him. When he fell asleep she cut off his head and brought it to Jerusalem. When the Greek armies saw their king was dead, they panicked and fled. From this comes the custom of eating dairy dishes on Hanukah.

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