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This German museum's installation demeans Jewish wit

JL;DR SUMMARY The article critiques Mel Bochner's installation "The Joys of Yiddish" at Munich's Haus der Kunst, suggesting it diminishes the richness of the Yiddish language by reducing it to superficial stereotypes. 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

Jewish DiasporaYiddishJewish IdentityJewish HumorAmerican Jewish CultureMunichHolocaust MemoryMel BochnerHaus Der KunstYiddish Insults

Places mentioned

Munich, Bavaria, Germany
"These ten Yiddish/Yinglish insults are mounted on the cornice of the Haus der Kunst art museum in Munich, Germany."
Chicago, Illinois, United States
"When Bochners The Joys of Yiddish debuted at the Spertus Institute in Chicago in 2006, it was meant as a statement on the Jewish immigrant experience in America."
Lublin, Poland
"To convey the Yiddish humor that survived the Nazis, we might look to the Jews of Lublin."
New York, United States
"To do so in Chicago or New York as a comment on cultural assimilation is a sad reflection on American Jews cultural impoverishment."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 66040
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2025-11-06 05:31:18 UTC
Curated 2025-11-06 08:31:22 UTC