Marnie Winston-Macauley - A Little Joy, A Little Oy: Jewish Wit and Wisdom

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A Little Joy, A Little Oy: Jewish Wit and Wisdom copyright 2001 by Marnie Winston-Macauley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

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an Andrews McMeel Universal company
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www.andrewsmcmeel.com

Prepared with the assistance of Simon Louis Winston-Macauley

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001086431

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Dedication

To the memory of those who taught me Yiddishkeit , Shirley and Louis Winston, and for those who preceded them

To the long and happy life of Yiddishkeit for my son, Simon, and for my nephew, Justus, and for those who shall follow them

Contents

Preface

D ecember 1993. The scene: Riverdale, New York, an almost entirely Jewish enclave directly north of Manhattan. I am wearing a gold lam strapless I picked up at an upscale resale shop, reduced from $2,000 to $150, that no doubt was originally gently worn by a bulimic heiress. True, the waist was around my neck, however at that price I would have worn a kitchen curtain.

I digress.

My boss at the time, the late, ever fascinating, Douglas Marland, head writer of the daytime drama As the World Turns, is picking me up for an evening of theater.

As I tumble into the car, he looks at me oddly. Okay, yes, the dress frightened him. (He was terrified I would show up next to him at the Emmys looking like an aging neon hooker.) But more to the point...

Here we are, a few days before Christmas. Houses in every hamlet across America are strung with red and green lightsand then there is here. A tiny turf in the Bronx with nothing but the faint orange glow of Menorahs peeking out of windows demurely into the winter night.

Where the heck are we? he asks, awestruck. Tel Aviv?

Undaunted, I explain. Which kicks off a discussion of what it was like to grow up in the fifties as a Jewin a non-Jewish neighborhood, which I did as a kid.

Brilliant, verbal, and glib, this master storyteller is rendered speechless.

Finally... You know, it never once occurred to me what it must feel like to be an outsider on Christmas. And he remained pensive for the rest of the evening.

He got it. You see, he, too, was an outsider. A farm boy who spent every waking moment he could at the moviesdreaming.

In that instant, we both finally understood that silent bond we had always shared.

The Jews are like other people, only more so.

P ROVERB

August 1961: The scene: London, England. The author is twelve years old and traveling with the family. Dad is driving. Actually, he is swerving, hopelessly lost somewhere in the East End. When our Rover careens into a pushcart, he finally decides to ask. Getting out of the car, Dad approaches the proprietor of the cart, and they briefly shake hands.

After resorting to miming, because the Cockney is incomprehensible to us, Dad impulsively utters the sigh: oy.

The man suddenly stops with the blimeys and, bursting with excitement, shouts, Farshtaist [understand] Yiddish?

To which Dad replies, Nu, vo den? [So, what else?]

And the two men shake hands again, this time with palpable warmth. As though they are meeting anew. Two lantsmen countrymenwho lived thousands of miles apart, who had never met, and who never would again. Yet there was an undeniable connection.

A shared bond.

And with that one handshake, I, at the age of twelve, instantly understood. A feeling that took five thousand years to evolve. A feeling that even fifty thousand words cant evoke quite as well, half as poignantlybut I hope these will help.

Acknowledgments

F inding just the right balance between the joys and the oys was a magnificent taskand an overwhelming one. Over two hundred and fifty sources were used, and even they were but a nick (okay, a decent scratch) beneath the surface. But one does not accomplish this kind of research by books or even the Internet alone. It takes people. Special people of great devotion, unerring patience, and endurance (not to mention guilt and payoffs).

For their generosity in allowing me to pick their brains, their humor, and part of their lives: the leg ends, brilliant all. In alphabetical order, Bernie Allen, Marty Allen, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Pat Cooper, Pudgy! and Mike Cardella (her husband, creative director), Sandy Hackett, Jay Leno, Freddie Roman, and Stan Zimmerman. I add to this a bright, talented, comic newcomer, Dale Mathias.

Verify, verify, verify! This is the motto of any good nonfiction writer or reporter. As you shall see, some of the information herein is different, stimulating, enlightening, and, yes, weird. Or hard to get. To help me go that extra furlong, Michael McDonough, at Music Theatre International (MTI); Professor Tony Rothman, Illinois Wesleyan University; the Oklahoma Historical Society; Temple Emanu-El; Congregation Shearith Israel; Moment magazine, Levi Strauss & Co., the B. Manischewitz Company and, of course, Broadways Jerusalem II (The Flying Pizza People!).

And then there are my editors. Bless every one of them: Jennifer Fox, Michael Nonbello, and Kris Melcher. When we started this project, some may have thought oy was... maybe a little Scottish, out there in Kansas City, Missouri. Well, this talented, ambitious group rose to the cultural challenge, once again proving what mensches they are. And for getting it off the bookshelves and into your hands, the credit goes to Kristine Abbott, director of publicity, and Deborah Broide, our guardian angel in New York.

On a personal note, to my Aunt Norma Greisman, the family matriarch, who, a mere stripling in her mid-nineties, helped her ignorant niece wade through the Yiddish. Also much gratitude to the Jerusalem-born Elana Silberstein, Nevada realtor extraordinaire, who is a fountain of Jewish and Israeli humorand graciously shared it. Were it not for the computer genius of Dmitry Lev, Elevated Computing (Las Vegas), half of this manuscript (which crashed) might still be in the ether.

And, to the loves of my lifewho helped save mine on this huge project. My husband, Ian, a brilliant editor, who actually didnt fight with me too much and let me be the boss of him (swear, no Monica jokes). And especially to my assistant, the only one who knows what a cache file is and how to get rid of one, our son, Simon Louis Winston-Macauley. His research, his humor, his conceptual and intellectual judgment were faultless. Not only did he help create and validate the work but he gave his mother a little nakhes (pride)even though, alas, he didnt let me be the boss of him.

I know what one must do to be Jewish. He must assume his Jewishness. He must assume his collective conscience. He must assume his past with its sorrows and its joys.