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From: ldenenbe@bbncc5.UUCP (Larry Denenberg)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Re: Comedic Curses
Message-ID: <1293@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Jan-86 16:43:33 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.1293
Posted: Sat Jan 25 16:43:33 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jan-86 20:19:54 EST
References: <971@psivax.UUCP> <2894@randvax.UUCP> <4214@kestrel.ARPA>
Reply-To: larry@bbncc5.UUCP (Larry Denenberg)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 34

In article <4214@kestrel.ARPA> ttp@kestrel.ARPA writes:
>I remember some of these from some book or other on the joys of
>yiddish, or maybe yidnglish, or maybe a book about anger, or the
>"old" country. Anyway:

The book is {\it May You...!  How to Curse in Yiddish} by Joe Singer.
Some of my favorites:

May you sweat in labor a hundred and sixty years, then give birth to a
nice turle-hedgehog-porcupine.

May your children not forget you as they kneel to pray. 
  (Jews never kneel in prayer.)

May you be blessed with a son so smart he learns the mourner's prayer
before his Bar-Mitzvah speech.

May your mother-in-law not have to be carried to your funeral.
  (You should die young enough for her to walk there under her own steam.) 

May your enemies get cramps in their legs as they dance on your grave.

May there be more than one of you to bear the mountain of misery and grief
I wish upon you.

May you fall in the outhouse just as a regiment of Ukrainians finishes a
prune stew and twelve barrels of beer.

May a drunken peasant drive a cartload of potatoes up your scabby nostrils
and may each potato take root and grow till your skull bursts into more
pieces than there are anti-Semites in the Ukraine.

/Larry Denenberg
larry@bbncc5