Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Miss Congeniality’s Mishegas

In the category of “Latest Yiddish Word To Find Crossover Appeal,” the March 7 Academy Awards telecast produced a dark-horse winner: mishegas, which roughly translates to “madness or folly.” While introducing this year’s Oscar nominees for cinematography, actress Sandra Bullock — who took this year’s leading actress Oscar for her role in “The Blind Side” — dropped the word to describe the esoteric techniques employed by directors of photography.

Bullock’s Oscar-night Yiddish got a thumbs-up from Yiddishist Michael Wex, author of, most recently, “How To Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck).” “The idea of mishegas as picky details about things that don’t really interest you is, more or less, correct,” he said.

That mishegas would make it into the Oscar spiel of a non-Jewish actress like Bullock is emblematic of “just how much Yiddish has entered the argot of the film business,” Wex said.

Other Hollywood favorites, according to Wex: Chaim Yankel, which is used to mean “a nobody,” “a what’s-his-name,” as in, “We can’t get George Clooney, so get me Chaim Yankel” — and the Yiddish word for “pins and needles,” shpilkes, as in “I’m sitting on shpilkes, waiting to hear from my agent.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.