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Kvetch — To complain, whine or fret, as in “He likes to kvetch at me when we serve kasha varniskes, because he doesn’t like it.”. Mensch (mentsch)— Literally “man,” an honorable, decent, stand-up person, as in, “I don’t care who you marry, as long as he’s a mensch.”.
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In Yiddish, mentsh roughly means "a good person". [4] The word has migrated as a loanword into American English, where a mensch is a particularly good person, similar to a "stand-up guy", a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague. [5]
The Hebrew word for ‘good’ is ‘Tov’ {טוב} and here, in this case, we can find the deeper meaning of this Hebrew word – which is also used as another word for a ‘covenant’. This use can be found in the following example from the Book of Samuel:
Here are our top 13 Yiddish words to use when you want to be nice. 1. Please. Official Yiddish uses the German word bitte for “please.” Real, earthy Yiddish speakers, however, will much more commonly say zei azoy gut, which means “be so good.”
1. Shalom (shah-LOME) שלום. Perhaps the best-known Hebrew word today is shalom, which means “peace” or “wellbeing.”. It also can be used for both “hello” and “goodbye.”. Explore shalom. 2.
The Hebrew word for man, adam, evocatively expresses this dichotomy. For example, the word adam is related both to the word adamah, earth, and the word domeh, likeness, as used in the phrase adameh la’elyon, heaven-like, 3 teaching us that the human being can either resemble its earthly origins or reflect its Divine design.
Pronounced: MITZ-vuh or meetz-VAH, Origin: Hebrew, commandment, also used to mean good deed.
