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Ever since, eighty years ago, Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow sat down to do a Yiddish version…

… of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it’s been pretty clear that yiddishizing almost anything is liable to amuse. Even the translation of “Pumshtok” back into English is good (“On the wall of the kosher restaurant / Hangs dirty bedding / And bedbugs dance in circles. There is a stink / Of gefilte fish and wet socks. / Oy, Bashe, don’t ask questions, why bother?”).

The idea of doing this to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is so immediately obvious, so madly self-evident, that UD can only be ashamed it never occurred to her. You can buy the whole thing here (only 74 pages, as opposed to the much more expensive, 1,000-page, totally discredited — most recently by NIMH! — other one). Or you can sample the table of contents here.

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The non-parodic DSM-5 is a funny fat man about to fall over from a speedball overdose.

Along with the discrediting, there will be more parodies.

Margaret Soltan, May 4, 2013 8:56AM
Posted in: march of science

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2 Responses to “Ever since, eighty years ago, Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow sat down to do a Yiddish version…”

  1. janet gool Says:

    Margaret,
    I’ve been watching this for days and waiting for someone to comment. Gornisht. So with my one year of Yiddish that I did eight years ago and some computerized help, I came up with this:
    די אלט מאמואל איז געווען גוט
    די ניי מאנואל איז דראק.

    Meaning – “The old manual was good. The new one is shit” or in transliteration”
    De alt manual is gayan gutt.
    De nai manual is drek.
    Sholem Alechem,
    Janet

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    janet: Laugh out loud! Thank you.

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