“Stop being a yenta!” my mother would exclaim when I’d try to listen in on her phone calls. There was no social media in the 90s, so my mother’s only mode of communication was to talk on the phone for hours – to her mother, a”h, her friends, our neighbors.
It’s not that I
wanted to know the gossip on the other line for any nefarious reasons – I
simply craved information about other peoples’ lives. It helped orient me in a
big, confusing world of social norms and expectations.
My brain has
always been a little bit different. I get hyper-focused on certain special
interests, remember minute details of certain events, but can’t ever remember
where I left my keys. As a young person, I struggled to figure out friendships
as relationships became more about common interests and less about proximity.
Being a “yenta” helped me study
people’s lives and get a better picture of how the world works. What my mom
meant by “stop being a yenta” was
stop being so nosy; no one likes a gossip. As I grew up and learned how to
navigate often painful and confusing social situations through the varied
relationships of adolescence, I realized that my yenta tendencies had less to do with gossip and more to do with
understanding the people, their problems, and the world around me.
The etymology of the
word yenta is murky. Apparently, it
originally derived from a Roman word meaning “genteel.” In the early 20th
century, the yenta became a common
character in both Yiddish theatre and popular Jewish comics, from where it came
into its modern “Yinglish” meaning of busybody or gossiper. We can thank Jerry
Bock and Sheldon Harnick, who adapted Sholom Aleichem’s stories of Tevye the
Milkman and brought Yenta the Matchmaker into the forefront of American culture
in the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Maybe my yenta-ness comes from shtetl anxiety. For thousands of years,
Jews have been forced to leave their homes and wander to new places. Never able
to trust their neighbors, they were forced to create insular and
self-sustaining communities. Most of the time, our host nations had no interest
in our well-being, so we took care of our own well-being. As a people, we’ve
evolved to be aware of our surroundings and cultivate the resources we need for
our own survival! We’ve always been a tight-knit, in-everyone-else’s-business,
interconnected group. My proclivity towards noseyness is simply a Jewish survival
tactic.
* *
*
I chose a path of
disorientation when I became religious in 2013, entering a world with new
Yiddish/yeshivish nomenclature, unfamiliar social norms and expectations, and a
whole new group of people to study – frum
Yidden. The Eruv List became a textbook
for me to study, inviting me into the world of at least one North American
Orthodox Jewish community. In one handbook, I could learn what schools teach
the community’s children, which shuls offer Daf Yomi, what restaurants offer
Shabbos take-out packages, and so much more. The confusion became clear, the
overwhelm became organized.
Picture this: It’s
Friday night, the kids are asleep, the table is cleared, and I’m cozied up on
the sofa with my favorite Jewish phonebook.
“What are you
searching for?” my husband asks.
“I want to see
where our son’s rebbe lives!”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t
know anything about him, and knowing his address helps me visualize his
neighborhood and place him into context!”
“Why do you need
context?”
“Why don’t you?!”
I’m so deeply
curious about people. Knowing which block they live on gives me insight into
who they are and how they operate. Where might they daven? Do they know our
friends from that block? If we invite them for Shabbos, is the walk tenable?
*
* *
This is why the Eruv List is one of my favorite Shabbos
reading materials. In a fractured world full of controversy and division,
seeing our little “cordoned off” community in the pull-out map section reminds
me of how beautiful it is to live within such a tight-knit community, where we
truly have more in common than different.
Eight years ago,
when I was newly postpartum, exhausted, and confused, I cherished the
opportunity to open up the Eruv List,
locate the number for the pidyon haben gemach,
and walk my infant in his Snap n’Go to pick up a silver platter from a
stranger’s house. (Totally normal for us Orthodox Jews!) When someone asked me
to procure a bris pillow for them, I
dove right into my research, and lo and behold! I found numerous listings for
renting tiny white onesies and giant ruffled cushions.
So please, on
behalf of all the yentas out there, I
humbly request that you make sure your Eruv
List listing is accurate. We want to know if you changed your number, got
rid of your landline, moved across town, or started a new service for the
community. And please add your cell phone number so you can be found. It’s not
just about helping to socially orient us yentas;
it helps make you a more reachable human in a community where we rely on each another
for success and sustainability.
