hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today Michael wax will
be teaching us more about Jewish
language and culture and how to be a
mensch and not a schmuck so let’s start
by having you tell us the main premise
in your book everybody has two sorts of
possible ways that they can live in the
world you can consider other people and
think about what effect your actions
might have on others before you perform
them this is a manage a ‘shmock is
somebody who just goes ahead and does
whatever they feel like but they’re not
mutually exclusive you know most of us
fall somewhere on the trajectory now
let’s clarify some language for the non
Jews out there what does a mensch and a
schmuck translate to literally mensch is
a person a human being a schmuck
literally is a penis now in terms of
yourself are there any telltale signs to
know if you’re a mensch Irish market you
basically if you’re always right you’re
probably a schmuck if you never make a
mistake you’re probably a schmuck if
you’re congratulating yourself on how
much of a mensch you are you’re probably
a schmuck you know the thing about being
a mensch is instead of directing your
complaints to other people you look at
yourself and go well you know I I could
have done that better I could have
handled that in a different way tell us
how these characters for lack of a
better word influenced Jewish culture
not so much influence it’s the Jewish
culture is very much about being Waffen
while trying not to be the other and
that’s that’s got a lot that I mean it
goes all the way back to the Talmud
where they talk about you know one of
the big problems that people notice very
early on is you can do all of this stuff
you cannot eat pork and you can keep the
Sabbath and you can pray 72 hours a day
and you can still be a really unpleasant
not very nice person can you tell us
more about the relationship between the
Yiddish language and the Jewish culture
what you have here is a language you
know spoken day to day language that was
designed very much so and to a little
degree to some degree very deliberately
to reflect Jewish rather than any other
values and in this case of course the
other values were Christian if you
compare Yiddish with German you can even
see in phrases and sentences where the
vocabulary will be almost identical the
feel and the actual meaning of things
just totally different you know a shul
in Yiddish of course a synagogue isn’t
really the same as the German school
understood while people studied in there
well yeah that actually did have some
influence on it but again you know
reflecting very very different ways of
life well thank you very much thank you
watchmojo.com and today Michael wax will
be teaching us more about Jewish
language and culture and how to be a
mensch and not a schmuck so let’s start
by having you tell us the main premise
in your book everybody has two sorts of
possible ways that they can live in the
world you can consider other people and
think about what effect your actions
might have on others before you perform
them this is a manage a ‘shmock is
somebody who just goes ahead and does
whatever they feel like but they’re not
mutually exclusive you know most of us
fall somewhere on the trajectory now
let’s clarify some language for the non
Jews out there what does a mensch and a
schmuck translate to literally mensch is
a person a human being a schmuck
literally is a penis now in terms of
yourself are there any telltale signs to
know if you’re a mensch Irish market you
basically if you’re always right you’re
probably a schmuck if you never make a
mistake you’re probably a schmuck if
you’re congratulating yourself on how
much of a mensch you are you’re probably
a schmuck you know the thing about being
a mensch is instead of directing your
complaints to other people you look at
yourself and go well you know I I could
have done that better I could have
handled that in a different way tell us
how these characters for lack of a
better word influenced Jewish culture
not so much influence it’s the Jewish
culture is very much about being Waffen
while trying not to be the other and
that’s that’s got a lot that I mean it
goes all the way back to the Talmud
where they talk about you know one of
the big problems that people notice very
early on is you can do all of this stuff
you cannot eat pork and you can keep the
Sabbath and you can pray 72 hours a day
and you can still be a really unpleasant
not very nice person can you tell us
more about the relationship between the
Yiddish language and the Jewish culture
what you have here is a language you
know spoken day to day language that was
designed very much so and to a little
degree to some degree very deliberately
to reflect Jewish rather than any other
values and in this case of course the
other values were Christian if you
compare Yiddish with German you can even
see in phrases and sentences where the
vocabulary will be almost identical the
feel and the actual meaning of things
just totally different you know a shul
in Yiddish of course a synagogue isn’t
really the same as the German school
understood while people studied in there
well yeah that actually did have some
influence on it but again you know
reflecting very very different ways of
life well thank you very much thank you
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