When Nate, the grandfather in my novel To Love Mercy, uses the terms shocher and shvartze to refer to African-Americans, the grandson Steve thinks to himself:

Sometimes Grandpa talks those words, I don’t know them, but they’re bad words or maybe not bad but you’ve got to say them in Yiddish not English. I don’t know if that makes them bad. But it might.

I heard Grandpa say one of them before. Not the other. I never heard the other. They probably both mean the same. I think I know what the one means. Shvartze.

Negroes?

He says Yeah Negroes except he says it like knee-grows. What do they teach you in school anyway?

This passage accurately reflects my own reaction when my grandfather, Nathan Joseph (the model for the character “Nate”) used the word shocher. I never heard anyone else utter this word except him. Nevertheless, I used it in my novel. I mean, it’s my novel, right?

Following publication, though, two intrepid correspondents (one was Rick Abeles, who’s married to my cousin Kathy Koretz, and the other I don’t remember — might have been Gary Goodman) cleared things up. They said shocher is Hebrew, not Yiddish, and it means “black.”

This morning Wife Carol and I were having breakfast chit-chat and for some reason the word ricious popped into my mind. This is a word my mother Marjorie-Lee and her mother (my grandmother) Leona Weber Baum, aleva sholom, used as an adjective to mean “anti-semitic.” They pronounced it “RISH-us.” My great-aunts The Weber Gals — Hattie, Carrie and Jo — all used it too. But I never heard anyone else use it.

I always thought it was spelled “ricious” but actually I have no idea. I always assumed it was Yiddish too but actually I have no idea. It doesn’t sound like Yiddish. Wife Carol (who was born into the Russian Orthodox faith) said it sounds to her like black slang.

(Black slang is another fascinating topic. Late in To Love Mercy, the character Sass uses the word dicty, meaning stuck-up. The word hincty means approximately the same thing. I had lots of fun Googling around for definitions and derivations before settling on dicty, which was the word lodged in my own personal memory bank.)

So … are you ready for the Obscure Yiddish Word Challenge*?

Send me your nominations, along with definitions and anecdotes as best you remember them from those long-ago family dinners. I’ll share what’s shareable next time.

*Oh, and … black slang would be cool too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. There’s a great street celebration in Baltimore Saturday, May 12, and I’m part of it. The CityLit Festival features literary stars like Connie Briscoe (Jewels: 50 Phenomenal Black Women Over 50), Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher (Supreme Discomfort, the new Clarence Thomas biography), Jabari Asim (The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why) … and li’l old me. I’m on a panel, “Peers, Sneers, and Cheers: Young Adult Writers,” from 1-3. I’ll also be at a table signing copies of To Love Mercy throughout the day. It’s 10-5 Saturday, May 12, in front of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Cathedral and Mulberry Streets. Check out the full program at www.citylitproject.org/index.php?q=node/167