Abe ran a thriving business and was very wealthy. Many of his customers were gentiles and he was therefore, proud of his success but he was worried about his teenage son, Izzy, the heir to his business.
Izzy often used Yiddish words and phrases, some of them vulgar, in front of customers and greatly upset them. For weeks, Abe struggled with his problem. He was a widower and knew of no classy woman he felt could help. At last, the answer came to him. It was the perfect solution.
Abe went to see Father Brown, the local Catholic priest and a highly educated cleric whose command of English was flawless. Abe offered a $5,000 donation to the church if the priest would agree to take Izzy under his wing for a week and teach the boy to speak English the way he did.
Protesting loudly every step of the way, Izzy went to board with the eloquent priest. A day passed, then two, but Abe heard nothing. Finally, on the third day, he couldn’t stand the suspense and he called the church. Father Brown answered the phone himself.
Hoping for a miracle, but far from convinced, Abe asked how Izzy was getting on. “Oy,” replied the priest, “let me tell you, the first few days with Izzy were hell.
He called me ‘meshuggeh,’ he said my cassock was an ugly ‘shmatta’, and he never stopped complaining about my ‘kvetching.'” Father Brown sighed audibly. “Nu, but don’t despair, Mr Goldberg. I haven’t given up and after all, won’t any improvement be better than ‘bupkis’?”
meshuggeh . . . .crazy shmatta . . . . . . rag kvetching . . . . complaining bupkis . . . . . .nothing