Hooray For Yiddish!; A Book About English

New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, Inc. (A Touchstone Book), 1984. First Touchstone Edition [Stated] First Paperback printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. Format is approximately 6 inches by 9.25 inches. 363, [3] pages. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Black mark on bottom edge. This is a cheerful lexicon of Yiddish words which have become part of the English language, plus English words and phrases which have been transformed into Yinglish; the whole garnished with stories, jokes, parables, reverent quotations from the Talmud, and a glittering gallery of writers, rabbis, sages, and wits, with impulsive side trips into the faith, folklore, genius and history of the Jews--from their servitude in Babylon to their magnitude in Beverly Hills. Entries on Yiddish words, phrases, and sentence forms that have become, or are becoming, parts of the English language are accompanied by stories, jokes, parables, and Talmudic insights. Containing a medley of words in different states of adoption into English, Hooray for Yiddish! is organized alphabetically--in its own way. Garnished with stories, jokes, parables, epigrams, acerbities, and Talmudic insights, Hooray for Yiddish! takes us on illuminating side trips into the faith, folklore, tradition, genius, history--and, of course, language--of the Jewish people. When you finish, you will be speaking Yiddish like a native. So enjoy! Leo Calvin Rosten (April 11, 1908 - February 19, 1997) was an American humorist in the fields of scriptwriting, storywriting, journalism, and Yiddish lexicography. Rosten showed an interest in books and language very early and began writing stories when he was only nine. During the Great Depression, when he was unable to find other work, he taught English for recent immigrants at night. These experiences eventually became the source of his most popular works. Rosten studied political science, economics, and psychology at both the University of Chicago, where he obtained his doctorate in political science, and the London School of Economics. From this time date his life-long friendships with Milton Friedman, W. Allen Wallis and other economists who would become influential in forming American neoliberalism. Like them, Rosten became a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Like other University of Chicago graduates, during the war he worked in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, both as deputy director at the Office of War Information and as assistant to Lowell Mellett, one of Roosevelt's aides. After the war, his connection with Allen Wallis led to his involvement with forming the Social Sciences division at the RAND Corporation. Although Rosten, who was already involved in Hollywood at this point, did not work full-time at RAND, he was an influential consultant on human psychology and put RAND in contact with several influential academics such as Hans Speier and Bernard Brodie. He also suggested that RAND contact the Ford Foundation for funding. Rosten is best remembered for his stories about the night-school "prodigy" Hyman Kaplan, written under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross. They were published in The New Yorker from 1935 and collected in two volumes published in 1937 and 1959, He is also well known for his encyclopedic The Joys of Yiddish (1968), a guide to Yiddish and to Jewish culture including anecdotes and Jewish humor. It was followed by Hooray for Yiddish! (1982), a humorous lexicon of the American language as influenced by Jewish culture. Another Rosten work is Leo Rosten's Treasury of Jewish Quotations.