More from Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn Memoir.

I notice that one of the things that drew President-Elect Obama to
choose Timothy Geithner as his Secretary of Treasury was their common
experience of growing up in various parts of the world. For Geithner,
it was Zimbabwe, India and Thailand. Timothy’s birth in polyethnic
Brooklyn in 1961 might have been a contributing factor, too.

"Foreignness"
can be a wonderful thing growing up, seeing people who look different
and talk funny. I was raised in Brooklyn with Yiddish spoken in my
home. It was my mom’s "mama loshen" or mother tongue. Just to say,
"mama loshen" warms "mein hartz". No wonder so much Yiddish endures in
English today. I smile with appreciation when my "goyishe" friends say
"chutzpah" or "kvetch" (it’s one syllable, denks, not two.)

I
heard a lot of numbers in Yiddish – "finniff und fertzik" —
eavesdropping from the top of the stairs as my Grandma Yidis, Aunt Etta
and my mom would argue about money.

My Tante Yitka, Yidis’
younger sister, moved from the Lower East Side to Bridgeport, CT, and
gained a certain Yankee inflection to her Yinglish. I stayed at her
home on Wayne Street during the summer. "Michael, you vant piece
vaterMalone?" she would say, offering me a piece of fruit.

Her
husband, my Uncle Herman Ostrofsky, was a Ukrainian-born cattleman and
butcher who would take me to his place of business. In a legendary
postcard, I wrote home to my mother about visiting the "shlaughter
house" with Uncle Herman. Must be why I’m such a superior speller today.

The
highest and best usage of Yiddish in my boyhood was my Mom’s uncanny
ability to translate popular American tunes into Yiddish and make them
rhyme. My Irish-American Dad had a great ear for languages and with his
lilting tenor would deliver these songs at Jewish family reunions and
bring the house down. They are etched in my memory. Ask me, and I’ll
sing for you, "Si du a kretchma en dem shtetl" ("There is a Tavern in
the Town") or "Oy, Kim a Heim, Bill Bailey."

I’m grateful for my bilingual upbringing and the study of English as a Yiddish dialect.