Is there anything in life that a little cannabissel can’t help? What about a piping hot bowl of cannabidolach soup? If you love cannabis and you’re familiar with Yiddish or some of your best friends and associates are — then you might want to check out Schmegoogle: Yiddish Words for Modern Times.
Penned by bestselling author Daniel Klein — who was a comedy writer for Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson in the 1960s (ask your bubbe about them) — the book takes the historic language of Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose families originate in Europe) and updates it for modern times — including for those who like a bissel of cannabis to cope with the everyday tsuris.
• Extremely Old Resin Hits: Researchers Find Weed Residue at Biblical Temple in Israel
• 10 People Share the Stories of the Time They Got Too High for Life
• Notes from the Underground: How to Buy Weed in Tel Aviv During COVID-19
In the “food and weed” section, there are almost a dozen terms that you can learn involving Yiddish and marijuana — and in most cases with Jews, a couple of them also involve food.
Take for instance “cannabidolach” — a portmanteau combining cannabidiol and “kneidlach” — Yiddish for matzo balls. How would you use it in a sentence? According to Schmegoogle “after eating a bowl of chicken soup with cannabidolach, even last week’s pastrami tastes good.”
The book adds that CBD “gives matzo balls a distinctive earth flavor” and if you don’t believe them “check out your local deli.”
Every pothead — be they jew or gentile — has encountered the blitzfress, which is “eating in excess when high on marijuana.” And while the publisher says the book’s food and marijuana section “could make for fun sidebars or an excerpt to coincide with the fall ‘high holidays,’” there are other holidays that you can learn about in the book.
For instance, who needs 4/20 when you have “Sederday Madness,” a new international weed holiday to be held on the first night of the Passover seder? Passover already involves the displaying of bitter herbs, slouching in chairs on purpose, and sitting around with your extended family hoping they don’t notice you’re high, so incorporating this should be simple.
Arguably we all have a friend who is a “potshticker” — a person “who does comedy routines while high.” These jokes usually go over better if you’re farklobbered at the time, a portmanteau combining clobbered and farklempt, meaning choked up with emotion.
And if you tend to go for low-brow humor, then try out your shtick on a “ganjachazer” — a portmanteau of ganja and “chazer” a pig or piggish person, used to connote “a pothead who spends so much time in fantasyland that they neglect life in the real world, like washing dishes, sweeping floors, and bathing.”
Now, many of you don’t need to buy a book to get insulted in Yiddish, you’ve got parents or grandparents who will do that for free. But still, we’re all stuck at home this summer, and this could be just the right gift for the mensch in your life.
Leave a Reply