Malcolm Gladwell has chutzpah (too bad he does not know what it means)

You would think that after the first seven episodes of this season of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, I would have learned my lesson. But the eighth episode was titled Chutzpah v. Chutzpah, so my interest in all things Jewish got the better of me.

The episode is about . . . I am not entirely sure.

Points of discussion include:

    • The difference between chutzpah as we use it "in America" (pronounced KHUTS-puh) and chutzpah as used in Israel (pronounced khoots-PAH). He says, interviewing his Israeli-born neighbor, that the former means audacity or nerve or guts, while the latter indicates a lowness or shamelessness.

    • Lots of anecdotes: 1) The creator of "Hogan's Heroes," Al Ruddy, walking into a meeting with CBS chair William Paley with no prior experience or qualifications, pitching a comedy about Nazi soldiers by acting out the roles and casting Jewish actors as Nazis; 2) Mafia boss Joseph Colombo founding the Italian-American Civil Rights League to counter stereotypes of Italians as criminals, extorting NBC to broadcast the Columbus Day Parade by threatening a hit on Johnny Carson (Carson had hit on Colombo's wife), and attempting to derail "The Godfather" until the producer, Ruddy, agreed to remove the word "mafia" from the script (which appeared only once in the original script, in any event).

    • Israel is a low-hierarchy, in-your-face society. This explains Abraham bargaining with Hashem over Sodom and Gomorrah, the Hebrew word "nu" as a conversation-rusher (a kind of "go on" or "get to the point already"), and Gladwell's neighbor confronting school administrators about closing the school because of snow (having the kids at home on these days made her life difficult).

    • Oral argument in the appeal of the Flores litigation, in which the DOJ lawyer argued that toothbrushes, soap, and decent sleeping conditions are not within the ordinary meaning of "safe and sanitary."

It does seem worth deconstructing how much is wrong here.

1) Gladwell never mentions that chutzpah originates in Yiddish; he repeatedly talks about how the word is used "in America," as if it is an American concept. American English absorbed the word and concept into Yinglish. That explains the different pronunciations. Yiddish places the emphasis  on the next-to-last syllable of words (SHA-bos); Hebrew places the emphasis on the last syllable of words ("sha-BAHT). English also places the emphasis on the next-to-last syllable, which is why Yiddish words slide into English so well. It makes sense that modern Hebrew (a language that did not exist until the late 19th century) would incorporate the Yiddish word, but with Hebrew pronunciation. So we are dealing with the same word, but in different languages having different pronunciation rules.

2) The bigger problem: I am not sure Gladwell understands what chutzpah means. Gladwell's premise is that the Al Ruddy story illustrates what we "in America" call KHUTS-puh, but would not be what Israelis call khoots-PAH; only the Joe Colombo stories qualify as the latter.

But would a Yiddish speaker call what Ruddy did chutzpah? Leo Rosten's "The Joys of Yiddish" offers several illustrations of chutzpah--the boy who kills his parents and pleads for mercy because he is an orphan; the man who shouts for help while beating you up; and the beggar who, given a choice between free challah and free black bread, chooses challah, and when told that it is more expensive, says "it's worth it." All reveal not simple audacity or guts, but shamelessness and self-servingness, perhaps with a touch of irony thrown in (what Gladwell says is khoots-PAH but not KHUTS-puh).

None of Rosten's examples is analogous to what Ruddy did. He was ballsy and audacious, because he had no business being in that room pitching a TV show. It also was potentially offensive for its time (this was a different era of comedy two years before "The Producers"), even though everyone in the room was Jewish. But it lacked that irony. Colombo, on the other hand, was a chutzpanik. Rosten would have been happy to include "Italian criminal forms group to protest media portrayal of Italians as criminals" in his definition.

In other words, KHUTS-puh (Yiddish) and khoots-PAH (Hebrew pronunciation) are the same: Neither would include Ruddy, both would include Colombo. Now some might disagree with this and argue that both do qualify. Fine. Then we are debating the meaning of one word (however pronounced), not the difference in meaning between two words.

3) Suppose Gladwell's premise is right: English-speakers in the U.S. would talk about Ruddy as chutzpah (even if Rosten would not), while Hebrew speakers in Israel would not. But that suggests that the Yinglish chutzpah has evolved and broadened to cover all instances of audacity or nerve or guts, without the shamelessness. Then, as my wife pointed out, we have a nice illustration of cultural appropriation, how a culture or language alters a word or concept by absorbing it. The lesson is not that Israel has a different word than we have "in America;" the lesson might be that American English altered or expanded the meaning of a word taken from a different language, while Israeli Hebrew maintained the original meaning. So talk about that. Or at least acknowledge a different explanation for the phenomenon.

4) The discussion of nu has the same problem. Gladwell describes it as a uniquely Israeli verbal push to move a conversation along. But, again, the word was part of Yiddish, was spoken in Eastern Europe, and was brought to America by millions of Yiddish-speaking immigrants a century ago. What is interesting (but not mentioned in the podcast) is that nu has not been absorbed into Yinglish as has, for example, oy vey. It thus died off as people stopped speaking Yiddish. Meanwhile, Hebrew has maintained the word.

5) As for his neighbor's tangles with the school administration over the inconvenience of snow days: I would describe them as obnoxious, inconsiderate, and selfish, to say nothing of clueless as to how broader institutions and the social compact operate. I can imagine the "are you kidding me" conversations school administrators had about her phone calls.

But not chutzpah. However pronounced.

I promise this will be my final Gladwell-related post. I think I am hate-listening at this point.