{"id":4602,"date":"2019-11-15T18:47:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T18:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4602"},"modified":"2019-11-15T23:47:39","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T23:47:39","slug":"word-of-the-day-chutzpah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/15\/word-of-the-day-chutzpah\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Chutzpah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chutzpah<\/em> (or chutzpa<\/em>) [h<\/strong>\u01b1t<\/strong>\nsp\u01dd]\nmeans \u201cunmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall\u201d or \u201caudacity, nerve.\u201d\nAccording to etymonline.com, the word enters the language in 1892 \u201cfrom Yiddish\nkhutspe<\/em> “impudence, gall,”\nfrom Hebrew hutspah<\/em>. The classic\ndefinition is that given by Leo Rosten: “that quality enshrined in a man\nwho, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the\ncourt because he is an orphan.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who don\u2019t know, \u201cYiddish \u2026 is the historical\nlanguage of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central\nEurope, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based\nvernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as from\nSlavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish writing uses the\nHebrew alphabet\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yiddish<\/a>).\nIn other words, Yiddish is a creole, just like English\u2014a language that is a\nblend of two (or more) other languages. Yiddish is spoken by about 600,000\npeople world wide, about 250,000 in the US, about 250,000 in Israel, and about\n100,000 in the rest of the world. The number of speakers has leveled out. The\npeak number of Yiddish speakers was 11 million, mostly in Europe before the\nHolocaust (https:\/\/jewishstudies.rutgers.edu\/yiddish\/102-department-of-jewish-studies\/yiddish\/159-yiddish-faqs#today<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, who are the Ashkenazi Jews? The Ashkenazi Jews, or\nAshkenazim, are supposed to be descendants of Ashkenaz, the son of Gomer, who\nwas the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah (Genesis 10:3, 1 Chronicles\n1:6). Ashkenaz is a nation in Jeremiah 51, \u201cSet up a standard on the earth; blow\nthe trumpet among the nations; prepare the nations for war against her; summon\nagainst her the kingdoms, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz; appoint a marshal\nagainst her; bring up horses like bristling locusts\u201d (27). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashkenaz is associated by the historian Jordanes, writing in\nConstantinople in the 6th<\/sup> century, with the far north, even perhaps\nthe Arctic. The Ashkenazim migrated from the Jewish homeland to the Rhine river\nin Germany and France. They thrived in northern and later eastern Europe prior\nto the Holocaust, and even today, the Ashkenazim make up a large majority of\nthe world\u2019s Jews (the other Jewish group is the Sephardim or Sephardic Jews,\nwho moved through North Africa into Spain and Portugal). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Ashkenazim make up a mere .1% of the world\u2019s\npopulation, and only 2% of the US population, they have achieved a great deal\nof success; indeed, they are over-represented in a number of categories. For\ninstance, 27% of US Nobel Prize winners in the 20th<\/sup> century were\nAshkenazim, along with 25% of Fields Medal winners, 25% of Turing Award\nwinners, and 50% of the world\u2019s chess champions. Albert Einstein, Time Magazine<\/em>\u2019s Person of the Century,\nwas an Ashkenazim. 21% of Ivy League students. 38% of Oscar-winning directors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are certain genetic markers to identify Ashkenazi\nJews. They are a group. And as a group, they have been found, through studies,\nto have a higher average IQ than other groups, anywhere from 107 to 115 on\naverage (the average average is 100). If you think you might be an Ashkenazi,\nyou can find out through genetic testing, like through 23andme. But be careful\nas there are a number of genetic diseases that happen more often to Ashkenazi\nJews, like cystic fibrosis, Gaucher disease, and Tay-Sachs disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With my last name, I\u2019ve often wondered if I have Ashkenazic\ngenes. Schleifer is the last name of the current president of the American\nJewish Committee, a global Jewish advocacy group. Ancestry.com says of my last\nname, \u201cGerman and Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for a grinder (of\nknives, scissors, and the like), from an agent derivative of Middle High German\nslifen, German schleifen \u2018to grind\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.ancestry.com\/name-origin?surname=schleifer<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I haven\u2019t contacted 23andme, nor do I plan to. Why? I\nsuppose that I would rather believe that I am descended from Ashkenazim than\nfind out for sure that I am not. The uncertainty allows me to go through life\nwith a certain chutzpah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is a picture of Albert Einstein from The Los Angeles Times<\/em> (https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/sciencenow\/la-sci-sn-ashkenazi-jews-dna-diseases-20140909-story.html<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chutzpah (or chutzpa) [h\u01b1t sp\u01dd] means \u201cunmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall\u201d or \u201caudacity, nerve.\u201d According to etymonline.com, the word enters the language in 1892 \u201cfrom Yiddish khutspe “impudence, gall,” from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4604,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602\/revisions\/4604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}