My mother, who is not Jewish, routinely exclaims Yiddish sayings like “oy vey”. Apparently she picked them up from those liberated from the concentration camps when stationed with her father, a US Army colonel, in postwar Germany.

So, even though I am a gentile, there is a certain warm familiarity in Yiddish sayings. I didn’t know the meaning of any of that until I was older. I thought everybody’s mom said that kind of thing when frustrated.

It’s a strange world.