5: Comic monologue excerpt, Samuel Chanis’s “A Lesson on Knaidlach,” 1978, in Yiddish with English translation.
Samuel Chanis was an author of humorous sketches printed in American newspapers and read on the radio. In this closing excerpt of one of his monologues, he jokingly posits the origin of the matzo ball.
Suggested Activity: Ask your students where they think the origins of knaidlach likely lie, or ask them to discover the answer by reading the "Knaidel/Kneydel" entry in Gil Marks's Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (2010). Why would this author comically posit that they have ancient, biblical origins? Is he saying that culinary and textual identities should have (or do have) similar weight for Jews? Or that matzo balls are as fundamental to Jewishness as Moses and King Solomon? Assign your students to write their own joking origin stories for the knaidel.
Source: Samuel Chanis, “A lektsiye vegn kneydlakh” (“A Lesson on Knaidlach”) in Tsu shmeykhlen un tsu lakhn (For Smiling and Laughing) (Brooklyn: Published by the author, 1978), 141. Digitized by the Yiddish Book Center at < https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc201739/chanis-samuel-tsu-shmeykhlen-un-tsu-lakhn-a-zamlung-fun-50-umoristishe-monologn-un>, accessed March 1, 2018. Translated by Jessica Kirzane.