In my September 6 column about a Yiddish translation of the Qur’an, I observed that many of the singular effects created by translating the sacred scriptures of Islam, a religion closely linked to Judaism, into an intensely Jewish language like Yiddish would no doubt be found in a Yiddish translation of the Christian New Testament, too. Two of you have written to confirm this with some interesting and even amusing examples.
Stephen Berr relates once reading aloud to his Yiddish-speaking immigrant father the story from the Gospels of how Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Palestine, sentences Jesus to death. “It was very strange for my father,” Mr. Berr writes, “to hear how Pilate’s wife pleads with her husband not to harm the ‘dozikem tsaddik.’ And when Pilate offers to free a convicted criminal ‘af dem yuntif,’ because it’s a ‘minhag,’ and suggests it be Jesus ‘vemn men ruft moshiakh,’ and the crowd shouts, ‘Zol er gekreitsigkt vern,’ and my father asked ‘Ver hot gezogt dos?’ and I replied, ‘Di yidn hobn gezogt dos,’ he blurted out: ‘Dos iz gor un gantsn meshuge!’”
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