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The Yiddish Word I Can’t Stop Saying All Summer Long

JL;DR SUMMARY As summer heats up, the Yiddish term 'shvitzing' becomes a relatable and humorous expression for sweating, introducing a cultural connection to the word's playful usage. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

YiddishNew YorkJewish CommunitiesCultureSummerPop CultureShvitzingSweatingSaunaLanguage Influence

Places mentioned

New York, United States
"Some Jews go out to look for it purposely at the sauna, dubbed the shvitz, at the local JCC gym or in special Jewish-Russian bathhouses, which were particularly popular in New York."
Coney Island, New York, United States
"The shvits at Coney Island, near Nathans, was a place for young men to sweat off and sleep off their inebriation."
Israel
"Growing up in Israel, I didnt know that shvitz, from the German schwitzen, means to sweat, but I did know the word schvitzer."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 55295
Cairo Source ID 33
Retrieved 2025-06-24 05:30:53 UTC
Curated 2025-06-24 08:31:25 UTC