The poems in Jeremy Robson’s eighth book of poetry, Chagall’s Moon, range from the heat of Alabama to a cool night in London, from a universe where Chagall’s lovers fly in a cloudless sky to a place where Beethoven, Picasso and Billie Holiday rub shoulders. Written in the aftermath of the depths of the Covid pandemic, they reflect the world’s current turmoil. But alongside images of nightly rockets falling on Ukraine and boats of refugees, the poems are also suffused with Robson’s warm, witty, personal reflections on love, loss and Jewish identity.

Say It in Yiddish
by Jeremy Robson

I never learnt that language nor ever will, and there aren’t that many who speak it still. Yet its fruity words and phrases hang like lanterns in my head, heard from childhood, the lingua franca of a lost generation.

Whenever I’m stuck for words, they surface, uncalled for, half-remembered. Always keep a patch in pocket, my grandfather used to advise, something up your sleeve. A wise man with no time for tall stories or braggarts, for bubbeh meissehs or shvitzers, he was always direct, often surprisingly so for such an upright Englishman. Fortunately much of his colourful shtik is lost in translation!

Thus the private lexicon of Yiddish words on which I drew gradually grew. I learnt that you didn’t go bust but mechula, swindlers and thieves were ganefs or shysters, a dickhead or fool a schmuck, a shlemiel, a bastard was a momser, a cheap garment a shmatta.

True, faute de mieux, phrases and words from other languages would come to fall readily from this English tongue Angst, wunderkind, zeitgeist, chin chin, faux pas, déjà vu, hasta la vista, ciao, savoir faire, siesta, über… Ooh là là, an endless list but je ne regrette rien, auf wiedersehen, vive la différence, c’est magnifique!

But when you really want to insult someone, whether a pisher, a shikker, a shnorrer, a yenta or a meshuganer, Yiddish takes both the strudel and the bagel. So bon appétit, but mind those false teeth as you chew, those falze tsener. There’s no use sighing, just raise your glass and say l’chaim.

Say it in Yiddish appears in Chagall’s Moon by Jeremy Robson, which is out now. See Robson reading from his new anthology at Jewish Book Week on Thursday 2 March. jewishbookweek.com

This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue of JR.