Shmegegee, shmuck, putz, meshugana…this is the Yiddish I grew up around, a Yiddish that permeated many Jewish households on Long Island. Until I was a teenager, I didn't know that my father could speak Yiddish. I didn’t know anybody could speak Yiddish, that it was a full language with verbs and ...
“You’re a Liar!” Early in 1985 I was invited to speak at the Yablon Center, a formerly communist (they now called themselves linke, leftist) Jewish culture club that met in a modest storefront directly across the street from the gleaming-white colossus of NBC’s “Television...