"May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers."

August 23, 2012 5:46 PM

Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews (Single-link Jewish Humor)
posted by neroli (33 comments total)

Eh, a real Jew has more snap: "May your piles be preexisting."
posted by jaduncan at 5:55 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh lord, it's something to email to my parents.
posted by Mizu at 6:01 PM on August 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

This one is very good:

May God give you a daughter-in-law who is as kind as she is beautiful, as patient as she is rich, as wise as she is devoted, a virtuous woman in every way. And then may a ballot initiative invalidate her marriage to your fat lump Rebecca.

posted by benito.strauss at 6:01 PM on August 23, 2012 [31 favorites]

Some of them are a little ho-hum (tired birther jokes, e.g.), but there are some gems in there too: "May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers."
posted by RogerB at 6:02 PM on August 23, 2012 [10 favorites]

Yes! The one in the title is probably my favorite.
posted by limeonaire at 6:05 PM on August 23, 2012

Also, someone should tell the Old Jews Telling Jokes people about this, if they don't know about it already.
posted by limeonaire at 6:07 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

"May you retire to a house of cream and luxury, and may it be next to New Orleans flood defences."
posted by jaduncan at 6:10 PM on August 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

I laughed at this one:
"May you spend your whole life supporting and voting for and sending money to Israel, and may you one day be actually forced to move there."
posted by Mezentian at 6:12 PM on August 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

May your son the doctor introduce you to his fiancée, Bristol Palin.

Noooo!
posted by Kevin Street at 6:13 PM on August 23, 2012

Clever!

Time for another Jewish joke:

Morris and his wife Esther went to the state fair every year, and every year Morris would say, "Esther, I'd like to ride in that airplane."

Esther always replied, "I know, Morris, but that airplane ride costs fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars."

One year Morris and Esther went to the fair, and Morris said, "Esther, I'm eighty-five years old. If I don't ride that airplane, I might never get another chance."

Esther replied, "Morris, that airplane ride costs fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars."

The pilot overheard them and said, "Folks, I'll make you a deal. I'll take you both up for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say one word, I won't charge you; but if you say one word, it's fifty dollars."

Morris and Esther agreed, and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of twists and turns, rolls and dives, but not a word was spoken. He did all his tricks over again but still not a word. When they landed, the pilot turned to Morris and said, "My, my, I did everything I could think of to get you to yell out, but you didn't."

Morris replied, "Well, I was gonna say something when Esther fell out, but fifty dollars is fifty dollars."
posted by growabrain at 6:14 PM on August 23, 2012 [13 favorites]

This is fabulous, and it's been sent to all my relatives.

My own:

'May you find that the most explicitly Zionist, most proponent of Jewish culture, camp, is a labor Zionist camp."
posted by OmieWise at 6:16 PM on August 23, 2012

May your daughter bear many children...due to a lack of contraception.
posted by jaduncan at 6:29 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

I really liked, "May your grandchildren baptize you after you're dead."
posted by gingerest at 6:37 PM on August 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

Oh, we've been having fun with this one over here.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:50 PM on August 23, 2012

Pronounced "woikers", of course.
posted by 2bucksplus at 6:50 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

"May your child give his Bar Mitzvah speech on the genius of Ayn Rand."
posted by zarq at 6:51 PM on August 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

"May you find yourself insisting to a roomful of skeptics that your great-grandmother was "legitimately" raped by Cossacks."

Yowza.
posted by Leezie at 6:52 PM on August 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground, and then may the ground be fracked.

HA
posted by elizardbits at 6:58 PM on August 23, 2012

May you find yourself lost and stranded in a village of Palestinian Muslims, and may you be treated only with dignity, kindness and respect.

Oh I ah uh wow
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:00 PM on August 23, 2012 [8 favorites]

"May your state outlaw the morning-after pill the day before your daughter comes home from the NFTY convention."

The NFTY reference was a nice touch.
posted by zarq at 7:01 PM on August 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

Bah! Schmetafilter!
posted by Monkeymoo at 7:24 PM on August 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.

After the fat lump Rebecca one, this is my favorite.
posted by ValkoSipuliSuola at 7:31 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

May your children be taught well by brilliant but poor adjuncts at the state school that was the only place you could afford to send them after education and financial aid funding were cut to nothing. May they major in literature or dance because they appreciate beauty more than you do, and may you forever after have trouble conversing with them at the Seder table. May their schooling leave you and them impoverished by student loans for decades, and may those loans be forgiven and discharged in a jubilee, along with the rest of ordinary Americans' crippling debts, while you mutter angrily about irresponsibility and absolutely no one listens.
posted by RogerB at 7:52 PM on August 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

Hardy har har, but curses probably aren't very necessary. The last Republican to win the Jewish vote was Warren G. Harding in 1920.
posted by Wordwoman at 7:59 PM on August 23, 2012 [5 favorites]

These are OK, but they seem a little contrived. The real ones can be vicious: "I hope you crap blood and pus." "May G-d visit the best of the ten plagues on you." Those both came from a book called "If you can't say something nice, say it in Yiddish".

My favorite came from my wife's grandfather: "Eats like a horse, shits like a bird." He said it about his wife.
posted by dfm500 at 8:26 PM on August 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

Meh. Tafilter.
posted by drhydro at 10:02 PM on August 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

May you feast every day on chopped liver with onions, chicken soup with dumplings, baked carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, and may every bite of it be contaminated with E. Coli, because the government gutted the E.P.A.

That's the FDA ya shlemiel!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 4:40 AM on August 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

These are great - sent to my father who will no doubt retaliate with far worse!
posted by leslies at 6:40 AM on August 24, 2012

Actually, only the carp is FDA. The rest is USDA, schlimazel.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 6:41 AM on August 24, 2012

It's actually both, but it certainly isn't the EPA!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:39 AM on August 24, 2012

That's the FDA ya shlemiel!

Actually, only the carp is FDA. The rest is USDA, schlimazel.

Those refer to a clumsy incompetent fool and the poor son-of-a-bitch with chronic bad luck. Famously, the shlimazel is the poor son-of-a-bitch who always winds up wearing the coffee that the shlemiel is always spilling.

May I suggest schmendrik, shmuck, shmo, or narish?

In truth, the only term that really fits the bill is the rather offensively ethno-centric "goyisher kop," which assumes the belief that non-Jews are not rational nor well-informed, and probably illiterate.
posted by snottydick at 7:47 AM on August 24, 2012

Hey, you're right. FDA does the science, USDA does the implementation. I was thinking regulation and inspection services. what a schmendrik schmuck schmo I can be sometimes. Nary a narish tho.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 7:51 AM on August 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Putz.
posted by eoden at 8:51 AM on August 24, 2012