Don’t Knock Me a Tea Kettle

Michael Wex will look at a few well-known Yiddish expressions and their sources to see what they tell us about the history, nature, and attitudes of the language and about why Jews felt that they needed a language of their own.   

Michael Wex is the author of three books on Yiddish, including the bestselling Born to Kvetch. He has taught the language at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan and is a mainstay of the contemporary Yiddish scene. A native speaker whose Yiddish songs have been recorded by such bands as the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, Wex has translated material ranging from classical Yiddish literature to testimony for war crimes trials. He has also translated The Threepenny Opera from German into Yiddish. His most recent book, Rhapsody in Schmaltz, a study of Ashkenazi food, was published in 2016. His most recent major project, Baym Kabaret Yitesh, an all-Yiddish cabaret show, premiered at Yiddish Summer Weimar in 2019.