OY! THE TWO LETTER POWERHOUSE

As I struggled to get out of my car after parking it on a hilly Austin side street, I involuntarily exhaled a rather loud, “Oy” as I almost lost my balance. My friend Nina who parked her car next to mine laughed out loud while commenting, “What would we do without Oy!?” We both agreed Oy! (which seems to need an exclamation point as part of its spelling) is often the only word that can adequately express the combination of dismay, annoyance or just plain frustration that occurs in our lives on a regular basis. Nina asked, “What do non-Jews say when such situations arise?” We stood in the parking lot of Katz’s Deli on Sixth Street in a light drizzle trying to come up with some English substitutes for the two-letter word that is probably the most well known of Jewish expressions. “Could they say ‘Oh, no!” or maybe ‘Oh, woe’? “ I wondered out loud.“How about ‘Dear me?” added my friend who is a Jewish writer like me. We both agreed it didn’t come close to expressing the depth of feeling that a spontaneous “Oy” can bring. “It’s the expelling of air that gives ‘Oy’ its power,” Nina said as we headed for the restaurant’s front entrance. “Somehow it offers the sense of relief that we need when it’s released from our gut.” As we enjoyed our deli lunches in this popular Austin eatery, Nina asked our waitress how the owner’s wife did in her first boxing match. Shocked, I listened while the young college student reported that Mrs. Katz, a twenty-five year old who had taken up boxing for exercise but was such a natural that her coach encouraged her to go professional, knocked out her opponent in the first 30 seconds of the second round. “Oy! You’re kidding!” I exclaimed, noting that Oy! can also be used to express surprise. Though I didn’t say it out loud, I could have easily added an “Oy! Was that delicious?” when I finished my tasty onion soup that used rye bread instead of sourdough in its recipe. Once home, I searched for my well-worn copy of Hooray for Yiddish by Leo Rosten and found it took the author two and a half pages to explain the many facets of Oy. In his inimitable light-hearted style, Rosten included a list of twenty-four uses of Oy, each with its own example. To sample just a few: “Pain (moderate): ‘Oy! That hurt.’ Pain (considerable): ‘Oy – oy!’ Pain (extreme): ‘Oy, oy, oy, gotenyu!’”Rosten also clears up the difference between Ah! and Oy! with this delightful example. “When you commit a sin, you love it and go ‘Ah….’ but then, realizing what you’ve done, you wail ‘O-o-oy!’ Though his first book, The Joys of Yiddish, was published in 1968, the many uses of Oy! have not faded but remain an active part of every Jew’s vocabulary. When I read on AOL News that Jerry Seinfeld had to be ordered by a judge to pay his real estate agent, Tamara Cohen, her $100,000 commission for the Upper West Side townhouse that he and his wife Jessica bought in February 2005, I shook my head and emitted a heavy “Oy!” Seinfeld had argued that the broker didn’t deserve the commission because she failed to show the brownstone on the Jewish Sabbath, the day the Seinfelds wanted to see it. Earlier Cohen had told the Seinfelds that she was Shomer Shabbos and could not work between Friday evening and Saturday sundown. However, the Seinfelds only wanted to see this property on a Saturday and made a deal to buy it without her though she had already shown them a number of other residences. I thought to myself, “You couldn’t wait one more day? Oy! Jerry. Shame on you!” Then there’s the matter of one Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer, who seems to have been involved in unethical behavior concerning his client and her case to get her hands on the huge fortune left to her by her late husband. As Nina’s mother lamented on the phone to her daughter, “Oy! Is there any chance he’s not Jewish?” But one look at this man makes it obvious that he could have recently graduated from Yeshiva University. But then there is the “Oy! Lucky me!” that I plan to be loudly emitting if I get a call next Monday from the staff at O Magazine telling me that I’ve been selected for the March Spa getaway with Oprah and Gayle. This groan of delight is Oy! in its finest moment. For sure, I couldn’t get through one day without that versatile, ubiquitous, absolutely irreplaceable Yiddish expletive - Oy!