Born to Kvetch by Michael Wex

A great way to start off the year--I was laughing out loud on page 5! Wax is a professor as well as a comedian and he acquits himself admirably on both counts. This isn’t as lightweight as Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish and not as cutesy. Be prepared--this is a bit more academic than the jacket copy leads you to believe, though not so much as to be off-putting. I thought it was really a marvelous, funny look at the language and the layers and layers and layers of actual experiences that went into the creation of so many Yiddish words and phrases.