HUMAN EVOLUTION, LANGUAGE AND
KNISHES (SEX)
BY: ELIYHO MATZ
Knish Me, I’m Jewish!
[As
Taken From the Internet]
The
documentary, If Knishes Can Talk, by Heather Quinlan, has just débuted
at various places around New York City, as well as around the country. In her film, Quinlan wanders throughout
New York City to explore the English accents and dialects of its residents, and
through her exploration of the boroughs she finds a diversity that brings the
audience to what Marshall McLuhan was saying all along, that “the medium is the
message.” And what exactly this
message is I will try to explain. In her documentary, Quinlan’s subjects, a variety of diverse
and engaging New Yorkers, serve to represent the unique way in which the New
York region speaks, talks, and expresses itself in New York English. The documentary is funny and
educational. The filmmaker has
done an interesting job filming and exploring New Yorkers in their use of a
common lingo, English.
I
personally like accents. Anybody
who speaks to me immediately recognizes that I am not from New York City. I was born in Israel, near Tel Aviv,
and American English is my third foreign language. In the early morning I take a Gypsy taxi to the subway
station. The driver, Pedro, is
from Argentina and speaks to me in a special dialect of English. It is exciting to see how he manages,
with his unique American English, to navigate the streets of metropolitan New
York. The person who sells me my NY
Times every morning is from Pakistan.
He stands on the corner near the subway entrance, clad in Pakistani
dress, and welcomes me every morning.
His English is completely incomprehensible to me, but he has been there
for a number of years and manages to sell the New York newspapers to a variety
of customers.
The
subway conductor, who is from Guyana or India, makes announcements in “funny”
English. Thus the NY passengers
look at each other wondering, trying to figure out what is he actually
saying? But it does not matter;
the “E” train is already moving quickly to Manhattan.
Upon
arriving in Manhattan, my first stop is the neighborhood Puerto Rican
restaurant, a long-time establishment, well kept, that offers authentic Puerto
Rican food. The workers fall into
two groups: native Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. I have managed for years to have a wonderful breakfast there
– how I order my breakfast I will explain later.
The
superintendent of the building adjacent to our office, whom I have known for
fourteen years, was born in Puerto Rico. Now in his mid-sixties, he came to New York about 45 years
ago, and he speaks a dialect of American English that after fourteen years of
“conversations” with him I still cannot figure out what he says.
A
homeless man whom I used to buy breakfast for once in awhile, who I think was a
Jewish New Yorker, once, on a cold winter day, told me that his blood “does not
‘circumcise’ in his body.”
Most
New Yorkers speak with some sort of unique accent, and in contrast even “pure” born-and-bred
Americans sound a bit out of place in the City. It has always been my interest to try to explain the phenomenon
of language. I regularly ask
people who enter our stationery store, “What is the value of knowing a foreign
language?” Most immediately
answer: communication, exploring cultures, help in traveling, etc. I prefer my own interpretation, and I
most often explain with the story I once read that originated in England, and
goes as follows:
A
mouse observes a slice of cheese in the corner and wants to grab
it,
but it hears “meow” and says to himself, “It’s too dangerous, I’ll wait.” On the second day he observes a large
chunk of cheese. Again he wants to
grab it, but once more he hears “meow” and says to himself, “I’ll wait.” On the third day he observes a very
large chunk of cheese, but this time he hears the sound of a barking dog. It is well known that cats and dogs do not
get along, so he reasons that it safe for him to go and grab the cheese. But as soon as he gets close to the
cheese, the cat pounces on him and eats him up.
When the cat
finishes eating the mouse, she turns to her little kittens
and says, “See, it’s
good to know a second language!”
Most people laugh when they hear the punch line. Then I ask people what did the cat
do? Most are confused, and then I
explain that the cat was using language as a trick. For, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein explained many years
ago, in reality, not well known to most people, is the fact that language is “a
game of words.” Of course,
scientists up to now have not figured out how our brain processes thoughts and
how thoughts are related to speech or writing. This fact notwithstanding, language can be understood as
some sort of a trick that we use to explain, speak, explore, make love, make
war, etc.
I
used the cat and the mouse story at the Puerto Rican restaurant many years ago,
but the workers failed to understand it at first. It was only after I had the story translated into Spanish
that they caught on, and they all laughed! Consequently, every morning when I arrive at the restaurant,
I open up the door and say, “Meow;” my breakfast is then prepared, amidst the
“meows” of the workers who call me el
gato!
It is well known to most
anthropologists that human evolution is a complex subject to tackle. We definitely have developed: we speak,
write, walk, study -- and multiply, that is, we have sex. How we have developed as humans is
still a mystery. How and why we
speak, act and function is not clear.
It is by now general knowledge that we evolved as human beings, and like
other species we have the urge to survive. It is in our genes.
Women, who are half of the story of human evolution, have developed their
own survival technique: approximately every thirty days they menstruate. The period, which is unique in human
evolution, means that the woman loses protein and iron in large
quantities. The iron and protein
must be replaced, thus leading to the “Hunter-Gatherer” theory. The man uses a bow and arrow to hunt,
brings the meat, and as a result of his action he receives sex, or love, or
both. The invention and use of
language are still a mystery. Is
it possible to think or calculate that the rise of language correlated in one
way or another with the basic needs of women during their period? Let’s say that the woman instructs
Schmuel the hunter in a low-pitch voice: Schmuel, go hunting and get me some
meat, otherwise I am starving and dying.
The human relationship between woman and man has a long history of deep
misunderstanding, in which language plays a large part. What is the modern hunter-gatherer
symbol today? It is Cupid with a
bow and arrow on St. Valentine’s Day, a symbol that we all cherish – a new
version of an old story. And then
we arrive at romance stories, but we will start with a New York story.
New
York Jews became prominent in the City only in the last 100 years, between 1900
and 2000. One of their foremost
writers, Henry Roth, in his renowned book Call It Sleep, explores the
Jewish life of the immigrants.
Roth’s work is probably one of the most explicitly portrayed American
Jewish novels to bring us a clear depiction of one’s transition from an
immigrant Jew to a citizen Jew, and the growing up of an American Jewish child
in New York City. Furthermore,
Roth brings us this fantastic dialogue that deals with “knishes” and is written
in the New York English/Yiddish vernacular:
-- Knish?
“Between de legs. Who puts id in is de poppa. De poppa’s god de
petzel. Yaw de poppa.” She giggled stealthily and took his
hand.
He
could feel her guiding it under her dress, then through a pocket-
like
flap. Her skin under his
palm. Revolted, he drew back.
“Yuh must! She insisted, tugging
his hand. “Yuh ast me!”
“No!”
“Put yuh han’ in my knish,” she
coaxed. “Jus’ once.”
“No!’
“I’ll hol’ yuh petzel.” She reached down.
Roth’s novel itself is saturated with a Yiddish-English
mix. In any case, as is clearly
stated here, the word knish is
Jewish-Yiddish slang for the word vagina. I’m not sure that the maker of the
documentary knew this fact, and it is ironical that she based her title on this
word without understanding its deeper implication.
If we believe that there is, or
perhaps must be, some sort of relationship between language and the female vagina,
then it would be instructive to explore some other literary sources. For example, James Joyce, in his famous
book Ulysses, presents his character Molly Bloom with a monologue that
explores the vagina. In Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera, the author explores the
narrative of the protagonist and his love of a certain woman that stretched
almost seventy years until he finally touches her vagina. In Miriam at Thirty-four, Alan
Lelchuk explores the sex life of his Jewish American heroine, about whom the late
professor Gershon Shaked (my Israeli Literature professor at Hebrew University
in Jerusalem) commented that her ultimate sexual goal was a better orgasm. Further exploration in American Jewish
writing is the famous book, played out on stage, The Vagina Dialogues by
Eve Ensler. Tennessee Williams, in
A Streetcar Named Desire, the play in which Marlon Brando became famous
for his role as the character Stanley Kowalsky, mentions that “Stanley carries
his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher’s” for Stella, thus
the ensuing dialogue:
STANLEY: Catch!
STELLA: What?
STANLEY: Meat!
Thus is suggested the evolving relationship between the
hunter and the receiver via the language of the kill. Is it possible that Quinlan’s film can change its name to If
Bagels Can Talk, or If Blintzes Can Talk, or If Matza Balls Can Talk, thus
avoiding the use of the word knish --
unless the author is definitely sure that there must be some connection between
the knish and language.
It
is sort of strangely illuminating that a Talmudic rabbi is quoted in the Talmud
as saying: Kol b’isha erva. This ruling basically meant that Jewish
men should avoid listening to the voice, sound, or speech of a woman, for, to
translate, this Talmudic ruling says “the voice of a woman is in the vagina,” a
warning meaning that it might lead to sex. It is sad that this ancient Talmudic ruling is creating
confusion in the Israeli military even today, as well as in the general
society. For when a female singer
appears before a military audience, religious soldiers leave the room.
