People often ask me how I get ideas for my articles in the Where What When. One of the ways is from the books that are left on my porch to be donated to the Jewish Used Books Collection. A perk of this collection is that I get to peek at the books before others buy them. Recently, a book landed on my porch that aroused my interest.

It is called Frum Speak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish by Chaim M. Weiser (1995). The book is a dictionary of words that are commonly used by many frum English speakers, although they are not part of the English language. Most of us recognize these words but would probably have trouble defining them. And, interestingly, the words can have different meanings depending on the context of the conversation, and they can be complimentary or derogatory depending on the speaker’s intention. Here are some words and their meanings from the book:

“Children are investments. Grandchildren are pure interest” goes an old saying. Everyone knows that the relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents is special. The question is why? What do grandparents actually do? How do their grandchildren feel about it? And is it always an idyllic relationship? 

Growing up, I did not know my grandparents well because they lived in England. Many of my classmates did not have grandparents living in the same city as themselves either. Some of them were children of Holocaust survivors, and their grandparents had been killed. Others were children of immigrants,

We all tend to feel at home and safe in our own neighborhoods. Even when we hear about crimes committed, we feel safe walking on our streets, going to our shuls, and letting our children play outside. After all, crimes happen, but they happen to others, not to us!

Last year, three days after Lag B’Omer, our illusion of safety was shattered. A crime happened in our neighborhood, on our streets, to a visitor in our community! Efraim Gordon, was murdered in front of the home of his aunt, Mrs. Reyder, right on Fords Lane, across the street from Etz Chaim. He was a visitor from Eretz Yisrael, a baal teshuva of two years, and was here for a wedding of a cousin. He was driving his cousin’s car and coming home from sheva brachos when he was murdered on the steps of the Reyders’ house.

How refreshing it is to jump into a pool in the hot weather.  How much nicer it is when you know how to swim and can really enjoy the water! 

In the classic book, Cheaper by the Dozen, Ernestine Gilbreth describes how her father insisted on throwing his young babies into the bathtub, sure that they would instinctively know how to swim because they had already been swimming for nine months. Ernestine’s mother was not so happy with this experiment, and I am not sure if this theory worked, but it was certainly amusing to read about. Despite Mr. Gilbreth’s theory, however, the best time to start teaching children is not when they are newborn but when they are four or five years old, according to Judy Mellman, a WSI-certified swimming teacher in Baltimore.

 Summer camp is a subject that consumes parents starting in the dead of winter. Should I send my child this year? Or should I wait for next year? Which camp should she go to? Should he go at all? How can I get the camp to accept my child?

My parents sent me to camp at the young age of 9 to try to cure me of my shyness. The camp had very strict rules, and parents were not allowed to visit or speak to their children for the full three weeks. My father often reminded me of the time he happened to be in the area and wanted to visit me but they wouldn’t let him onto the grounds. Instead, the counselor came to talk to him at the gate of the camp. My parents sacrificed to send me to camp, and I am sure they missed me, but they wanted me to have a great summer, and it was a priority to do what they thought was good for me.

I love these stories about how people went out of their way to do the mitzvah of returning lost things:

Temima got a phone call about a year after she returned from a trip to Gibraltar. “A stranger called me and said he was in Gibraltar and had found a siddur with my name in it. He wanted my address in order to return it to me. It turns out that the siddur was a small one that I had gotten from someone’s bar mitzvah. I told the man that he needn’t bother, but he insisted that he would not give up the opportunity to do the mitzvah. A few weeks later, the small siddur arrived at my house.”