Born to Kvetch

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods is a 2005 book by Michael Wex devoted to Yiddish. In this book, "Wex is a rare combination of Jewish comic and scholarly cultural analyst". The book became a New York Times Bestseller and was followed by a Yiddish phrasebook Just Say Nu. The book is about cultural and religious influences in Yiddish language, and how the Jewish worldview is reflected in Yiddish, putting the main focus on Yiddish as a language of opposition (or "language of aggravation, of exile and alienation" as Allan Nadler puts it) during their life in diaspora often within hostile cultures. The Yiddish word "kvetch" in the book title means "to complain", "to whine", expressing Wex's idea that Yiddish is...