(RNS) — A few days ago, I found myself watching old clips from “Saturday Night Live.” One of my favorites is Mike Myers as Linda Richman, which is apparently a loving tribute to his mother-in-law, using her real and invented Yiddish words.
I also have a whole list of English words that sound like Yiddish, like svelte, spatula and oyster cracker. But hidden beneath all of the jokes and the easily recognizable (and occasionally vulgar) Yiddish words that have crept into the American zeitgeist (I hope that you won’t think I’m a putz for such chutzpah), Yiddish is a language with a moral vocabulary we need right now.
Consider a Yiddish word our grandparents used that has fallen out of popularity: shanda, or shame.
Some would say, good riddance. Who needs shame anyway? It is an ugly emotion. It fills you with self-loathing and mortification. But it also has a sociological context. For generations, the idea and living reality of “shanda” served as fuel in our personal and communal Jewish engines. If something was a “shanda fur die goyim,” it meant whatever it was would bring shame, disrepute or embarrassment to the Jews, and it was something we should not let the gentiles see.
Why? We feared antisemitism. Shanda was our internalized sense of powerlessness.
Consider some of the exhibits in my imaginary American Jewish Museum of Shanda:
- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the atomic bomb spies.
- Their nemesis, attorney Roy Cohn. Two movies about his life and career focus on his relationship with Donald Trump: “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” (2019) and “The Apprentice” (2024). My late parents thought Cohn, whom they called a “self-hating Jew” and equally self-hating gay man, was a little lower than pond scum.
- Ivan Boesky, the disgraced arbitrager and inside trader who so greatly understood that he was a shanda that he asked the Jewish Theological Seminary to remove his name from their library.
- Bernie Madoff, of the Ponzi scheme, who targeted his fellow Jews and Jewish organizations, ruining countless lives and doing terrible damage within the Jewish world.
- And, most recently, the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
These were Jews who brought disrepute to the Jewish people. Hence, shanda!
But what else is a shanda? Jews for whom everything is a shanda — who live their lives as if everything is a potential embarrassment, especially the actions of the state of Israel. The haters have gotten inside their heads, paralyzing them with the possibility of shame. They are cringing Jews.
Another source of shanda is the current Israeli government, in particular, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. There are people who would say it is a shanda I would even say they are a shanda, which shows how broken the Jewish community is at this historical moment.
Far-right Israeli lawmakers Itamar Ben-Gvir, left, and Bezalel Smotrich, right, attend the swearing-in ceremony for Israel’s parliament, at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Nov. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo, Pool)
Smotrich has called for the erasure of Palestinian villages. Ben-Gvir has openly encouraged settler violence in the West Bank and the creation of settler militias. Promoting Jewish ethnic hegemony, fanning the flames of violence in the West Bank, seeking to dismantle judicial checks and balances, and openly disparaging the Palestinians as a people, all of this is a collective shanda. Their actions damage the reputation not only of Israel, and not only of Jews, but of Judaism itself.
For that reason, perhaps the word shanda is not strong enough. Perhaps it is better to say “past nischt” — “that is not fitting” or “it is not becoming.” Our grandparents used the phrase to describe behavior unworthy of Jews, conduct beneath the dignity of a people in covenant with God.
Shanda is about embarrassment in the eyes of others. It asks, what will “they” say? Past nischt is about embarrassment in our own eyes. It asks, what will we say? And more than that, what will our Jewish values, history and texts say?
The policies and rhetoric of today’s Israeli right-wing leaders, most notably Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, strike so many of us as profoundly past nischt because Judaism teaches that all humans are created b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. And, because the Torah tells us — supposedly 36 times — not to oppress the stranger, as we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Our own history of exile and oppression should have engraved upon us an eternal empathy for the vulnerable.
Their actions are past nischt because every act of cruelty done in the name of Jewish destiny diminishes not only Israel’s reputation, but the credibility of Judaism itself. Their fantasies and policies darken the covenantal vision of Israel as “a light unto the nations.” To tolerate such leadership without protest is to forget who we are meant to be.
The Hebrew moral equivalent of past nischt? We say Hillul ha-shem — a desecration of God’s name. It is telling that the only power that we have over God is over God’s reputation in the world. We must use that power wisely.
I circle back to those Jews who are afraid of what the world will say about Jews and about Israel. Your concerns are valid. The Jewish people cannot go it alone. But, to live your Jewish life in fear and trembling is also a shanda. I would invite you to stand up for your people, and to stand with your people. Interpret Israel’s actions as well as you can, which will not mean lockstep agreement.
Living a Jewish life with fear and trembling is also past nischt, as it betrays what Jews have always known — that we have a nobility of spirit that cannot be violated. We strive to do better.
As we enter a new year, I would hope American Jewish organizations will ban any extreme right-wing Israeli politician from speaking at their events. Why? Because when leaders who claim to speak in Judaism’s name trample on those values, it is not merely a shanda. It is past nischt.
May you have a good, sweet year — and one that is shanda-free and past nischt-free.
