From February 2023, the University of Amsterdam will offer Yiddish, the language that Jews spoke in European cities. Many words from Mokum come from this language: like cool, guts and lucky. Knowledge of Yiddish is important to Amsterdam’s history, because there are an exceptionally large number jold community lived in the city. We took to the streets to check if the Amsterdammers are still jofel.
Bart Wallet, professor of Jewish studies at UvA, is enthusiastic about the study. “If you go to the archives in Amsterdam, there’s a lot of Yiddish material in it. If you want to tell those stories, you have to know the language first.”
Without perhaps knowing it, every Dutchman has come into contact with the language that was once spoken by the Jews. Most people know the Yiddish word for Amsterdam: ‘Mokum’ – translated means ‘place’. But other words may be less known to the general public. NH/AT5 also discussed some of them with Irene Zwiep, UvA professor of Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac languages and cultures.
1. Pretext
“This comes from the word shmoos, which means chatter, subterfuge. Usually, Yiddish words are borrowed from Hebrew, the language spoken in the synagogue. But that doesn’t apply to this word, this is pure Yiddish.”
2. Secretly
“This is originally Hebrew and means silence. Just like ‘sorry’, this word has something criminal about it, so it is with more Yiddish words: for example cops (police officer) or penoze (underworld). This says something about the social stratum of the language, it’s related to petty crime. It’s a kind of thieving language. This corrects the image that Jews are said to be full of money.”
3. Left
“A Hebrew word that is three thousand years old. It means ‘heart.’ It’s such an important word that you can imagine it ending in Yiddish. In Dutch you can also say: ‘I have heart’, or ‘I don’t dare.'”
4. Toff
“This is also a very old Hebrew word and means ‘good’. ‘great’ is still valid.”
5. Hotel debotel
“That word comes from the Talmud, the central document of the jodendom and the heart of Joodish law. There is a paragraph in it that runs through all the ages of man. At 90, this is one awar oe-woteel is, or ‘of the world’: someone who is that old is actually no more. This has become overlewotel from overwhelmin Yiddish. What has now transitioned into “violent feelings of love” is particularly interesting.”
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