TB, Airborne
Traveling XDR class.

Now the truth can be told: if I were the other night intern, I would have been taking care of the phthisic traveler a few days ago. Even though I didn't have the pleasure of putting on a mask and going into his room in Bellevue (sorry, "a New York hospital," as the first Times article coyly put it), I feel compelled to provide some information about a question we're all wondering about: how easy is it to get tuberculosis on an airplane?

You can't do that experiment. (Though it would be fun!) What does the literature say? Google Scholar gave me links to two articles. One of them talks about TB transmission from an infected crew member to his colleagues. The other, by Kenyon et al., is titled "Transmission of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis during a Long Airplane Flight." We read in the abstract: "In April 1994, a passenger with infectious multidrug-resistant tuberculosis traveled on commercial-airline flights from Honolulu to Chicago and from Chicago to Baltimore and returned one month later. We sought to determine whether she had infected any of her contacts on this extensive trip."

In brief, their findings were as follows:

1. The researchers managed to get in touch with 802 fellow passengers, or about ninety percent of the people on the airplanes the woman traveled on -- a commendable effort.

2. Of these passengers, twenty-nine tested positive on the "TB skin test." Twenty-two of these had previous risk factors for tuberculosis, which means it's impossible to tell in this case (since the passengers weren't followed beforehand) whether their skin tests were positive before they ever took that flight.

3. Of the seven without previous risk factors for TB, six were on the longest flight the passenger took (a nine-hour jaunt from Chicago to Honolulu). They all sat in the same section, and four of them sat within two rows of the passenger.

The authors conclude, "The transmission of [the TB organism] that we describe aboard a commercial aircraft involved a highly infectious passenger, a long flight, and close proximity of contacts to the index patient."

How does this article relate to the now-famous globe-trotting lawyer? The kicker here is that the woman in the article was "highly infectious". To wit:

The index patient was a 32-year-old Korean woman, who according to relatives was taking no antituberculous medication but had previously been treated for tuberculosis — twice as an adolescent in Korea and once within the past two years in Japan — with unknown medication. She arrived in Honolulu in April on a tourist visa and was reportedly coughing and lethargic while staying with friends (Household 1) for five days. She then flew from Honolulu to Chicago and from Chicago to Baltimore, where she remained with friends (Household 2) for one month. Members of Household 2 reported a worsening of her symptoms, including progressive cough, lethargy, shortness of breath, fever, night sweats, and the eventual onset of scant hemoptysis. In May she returned to Honolulu, flying from Baltimore to Chicago and from Chicago to Honolulu. Eight days after returning to Household 1, she had an acute episode of hemoptysis, described as consisting of approximately 1 liter of bright red blood. Hospital evaluation revealed extensive pulmonary disease (Figure 1), and her sputum was highly positive (3+) for acid-fast bacilli and was culture-positive for M. tuberculosis. The patient died of pulmonary hemorrhage and respiratory failure five days after being hospitalized.

She died of TB shortly after the flights in question, and was highly infectious when she flew. Contrast this with the patient in this week's story, who has so-called "active" tuberculosis (the organism is in his blood) but does not appear to be either symptomatically ill or highly infectious (the amount of TB-causing organism in his sputum is low).

Was quarantining the passenger in this most recent case (or, rather, attempting to quarantine him) the right thing to do? Probably, since he is infected with so-called XDR (extremely drug resistant) TB, which is associated with a higher mortality rate. It's best to be on the same side, even though it's probably unlikely that anyone he traveled with got infected.

(However, I'll take the opportunity to mention that many organizations (schools and the like) use the TB skin test indiscriminately, without assessing their members' risk factors for TB, their infectiousness if they do test positive, and the resultant small likelihood of transmission even if they are infectious.)

When I pray for certain sick people

it's not that I don't want other sick people to get better. Of course I'd like all sick people to get better.

So why not pray for all of them?

There are time constraints.

If you had infinite time, and knew everyone's name, would you include the names of all the sick in your prayers?

All the sick I know (of) personally. The farther away a sick person is from my personal knowledge, the less strength my prayers have. The less I really want them to get better. Or: the less often I think about them. It's a complicated relationship, if I were to think about it more precisely: not just the strength of wanting, not just the frequency of wanting, but the intensity with which the person's condition occupies my attention. The difference between home and another place.

Ideally, you would wish with equal strength for everyone to get better.

I think so.

You recite traditional Jewish prayers, which ask for the sick to be healed "among the other sick of Israel." Do you generally include non-Jews in this prayer?

Not generally. I don't know if that's because I know fewer non-Jews than Jews, because I tend to actively seek out (names of) Jews to pray for, or because I find it more congenial to include Jewish names in a Jewish prayer.

"More congenial" is a pretty term for racial exclusion.

Why don't we pray for the entire world? Why do we stick to our people, to our mythic ancestors, to our Jewish God? Because there's a power to specificity. If there were a strong prayer, embedded in a particular poetic idiom, which embodied a wish for the cure of the entire world, at once, without regard to any divisions at all . . . I can't imagine such a prayer because each prayer has its own preconceptions. Everyone wishes from somewhere, has their own family to yearn from. There is no universal person.

Why not write that prayer? Why not be that person?

There are cultural constraints.

An Intern's Lexicon
Version 1.0
Descriptive only. Not prescriptive, endorsed, or reflective of these terms' actual scholarly or humanistic meanings.

A-stick (v.) to draw blood through puncturing the radial artery.

Baseline: at baseline (adj.) Describing a usual or healthy state before arrival in the hospital or before some insult or incident. "His baseline mental status is poor."

Code: 1. (v.t.) To attempt to resuscitate a patient. (n.) An attempted resuscitation. 2. (v.i.) To undergo an attempted resuscitation. 3. (v.i.) To die after an unsuccessful attempted resuscitation. 4. full code (adj.): Someone who is to be resuscitated in case of cardiopulmonary arrest. Opposite of DNR.

Cute: (adj.) Possessed of some attractive or positive attribute. Used of older patients. "That patient of mine in the step-down is so cute! He sits there with his blanket, reads the paper, and asks me how I am when I pre-round on him in the morning."

Dispo: (Short for "disposition.") (n.) Plans for discharge, or a patient's destination upon being discharge. "She's hanging out, waiting for dispo."

DNR: Short for Do Not Resuscitate.

Fail: (v.) (paradoxical reverse construction) To be unsuccessfully treated by a medication. "That gomer failed Vanc[omycin], so we put him on Imi[penem]."

Female: (n.) Woman.

Fix: (often jocular) (v.) To treat, especially acutely. "Your list is so small!" "I fixed everybody."

Gome: Short for "get out of my emergency room." Originally used in House of God, now generally used. n. An older, chronically ill, demented patient. -- Gomey (adj.)

Hang out: (v.) To stay in the hospital while no longer acutely ill. "Anything going on with Mr. Smith?" "He's just hanging out."

Ins-and-outs: Measurements of intake and output on the part of the patient.

Jeopardy: (n.) A backup system whereby certain residents are called in when others become sick or otherwise unavailable.

Male: (n.) Man.

Mental status: (n.) Cognition.

Psych issue: (n.) Psychiatric, psychological, or emotional complication. More generally, any expression of feeling.

Resp (v.) : Short for "respire." To breathe at a certain rate. "The patient is resping at 36."

With it: (adj.) Able to converse; interactive. "He was with it when he came into the hospital

Say It In Chabon
Or: Der yidisher polislayt-unyon.

The newest, baroquest Jewish novel is one I won't be reading -- not because I am opposed to it on principle but because my complexes will get in the way of any purely literary experience. To explain we have to turn the clock back to 1997 (or sometime before), when Michael Chabon happened upon the sublime little volume Say it In Yiddish, a book that provides practical phrases for the traveler to Yiddish-land. The notion of a country whose inhabitants might use Yiddish in daily life captivated Chabon with its otherwordliness, and -- so inspired -- he wrote a whimsical essay for the Library of Congress magazine Civilization about such a land (with, it bears mentioning, the requisite Ben Katchor illustrations for a Yiddish reverie).

Thus ensued a kerfluffle in the tiny on-line Yiddish world, or, more precisely, a flame war (which I took part in) on the Yiddish e-mail list Mendele, most neatly summarized by Chabon's response to his critics (thanks to Leizer Burko of yiddishland.googlegroups.com for digging this up):

Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 10:05:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Michael Chabon <mchabon@earthlink.com>
Subject: Weinreich's phrasebook

I am hesitant to wade into this fray, but the recent assertion by Mr. Mordkhe Shaechter [7.025] that "the author of that article has already apologized to B. Weinreich" compels me to step in. I have been following the recent exchanges over my article in Civilization ever since an interested party began forwarding them to me last week. They can, as far as I can tell, be divided among those who got it, those who most decidedly did not, and those, like Mr. Turkel [7.024], who feel qualified to comment without having read the article at all. Since I can neither speak nor read Yiddish in any but the most rudimentary fashion, I don't know what Mr. Adam Whiteman had to say.

People who get the piece recognize, first of all, that a book which explicitly advertises itself, on the cover, in capital letters, as a PHRASEBOOK FOR TRAVELLERS, naturally, logically, and commercially implies the existence of a country to be travelled to. A country. An entire nation. Not a neighborhood like Crown Heights. Not the annual meeting of a Yiddish language society or a Folksbeine. No one takes a Chinese phrasebook for travellers to Chinatown or a Chinese New Year's Parade. Even if someone might, such certainly would not be the imagined market for a series of traveller's phrasebooks.

This inherent implication is the central pillar of my ruminative essay (not a book review, not an analysis of the current state of Yiddish). There is a phrase given in the book, with Yiddish translation: Where can I get the boat/ferry to --------? My essay simply tries to imagine different ways to fill in that blank (that is, to imagine a place where one takes a ferry either to or from a country whose principal language is Yiddish). _Now._ Post 1958, when the book was published. Not in the twenties during some shortlived Soviet republic. Not in Israel shortly after its founding. But now, when the book, with its series of useful phrases for visits to auto mechanics and airline ticket offices, is still apparently very much in print. Where, in 1997, could you go that it would behoove you to know how to say, in Yiddish, "Which way to the casino?"

The second thing people who get the piece recognize, I think, is that however many people are still reading, speaking, and enjoying Yiddish, and however many young people are taking up the study of the language--however vital is the spirit of Yiddish revival--something has been lost. Something immense and profound. I don't know anything about Mendele and its ways. Perhaps this statement will bring the wrath of the entire subscribership down upon me. But I believe it. If this causes some of you to pity me, or shake your heads, or even wish, with Mr. Turkel, to excoriate me, so be it. There is no nation to take the Weinreichs' little phrasebook to; for every other language in the series, such a country exists. That difference saddens me.

In the course of a recent, and personally frustrating correspondence with Ms. Beatrice Weinreich, I did express my apologies to her--but not, as Mr. Schaechter seems to imply, for what I wrote. I stand foursquare behind every single word of that essay, without apology. What I regret is the hurt feelings and grief that my words evidently brought to a woman whose work I respect. It was a harsh blow to her to discover that someone thought her phrasebook was, among many other things, and in the saddest way, funny. (I gather from this list that I am not entirely alone in thinking so.) I have tried to explain to Ms. Weinreich that she, like some members of this list, had misinterpreted both the spirit and the letter of my essay. I love Yiddish. I love being Jewish. I love language and humor. All of these inspired my writing. The desire to hurt, offend, or insult Yiddish scholars and lovers of Yiddish did not make up even one atom of my motivation. My only desire was to report faithfully how the book made me feel, and the fancies it conjured in my imagination.

In her initial letter, and in her subsequent, generally unmollified reply to my reply, Ms. Weinreich argued, as have some members of this list, first of all, that the book could be useful for trips to Crown Heights or Williamsburg, for example; and second, that it might come in handy in Israel, or perhaps would have come in handy in Israel at an earlier time in the book's life. My principal rejoinder to these arguments has already been made: a phrasebook for travellers implies a country whose principal language is that of the phrasebook. Sure, there are, or could be, exceptions to this. There could be a phrasebook for travellers in Romany, say, that might be useful under certain conditions, or one in Latin that might at some time have come in handy in the Vatican. With regard to Israel, and the argument that there were or are many Yiddish speakers there who, as Ms. Weinreich attempted to convince me, felt or feel at sea in a land of Hebrew, I fail to understand how they would have benefited from an English-Yiddish phrasebook. Yiddish-Hebrew, perhaps. As for the English speaking traveller, if I had been going to Israel in 1959, say, I doubt I would have chosen an English-Yiddish phrasebook to be my companion.

AIl this is, however, completely beside my point. I wasn't interested in writing about whether this book was, or could be, useful; it is evident to anyone not blinded by sentiment or passion that such a book is, in a practical sense, all but useless. What interested me was imagining another world in which a Yiddish phrasebook for travellers would have an obvious referent, one with the official passports, customs agents, airlines, and ferry companies that play such a prominent (and, to me, poignant) role in the phrase book. The more I thought about, and imagined this country, the sadder I felt at its absence, a sadness which --for me, the only person I ever claimed to be speaking for--no amount of extinct Soviet republics, Chasidic neighborhoods, and Yiddish preservation and renewal societies will ever completely abate.

I'm sorry if this angers, hurts or irritates some people, or everyone who reads this post. I'm sorrier still for anyone who can't see the humor--the heartbreaking, wistful, uproarious humor--in the book. But I don't regret a word of what I wrote. On the contrary, Mr. Schaechter.

Michael Chabon

And from such an exchange, it turns out, came the impetus for The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Ten years after the mini-dispute, I, like Bina Weinreich, remain unmollified. I see the humor of the book (which has acquired near-classic camp status in some circles), and I appreciate the whimsy of Chabon's take, but ("blinded by passion or sentiment," perhaps) can't overlook his mistake: the assumption (so American-Jewish! so confidently ignorant!) that only languages with a country have a useful function, that only official state languages have any business arrogating to themselves any practicality (except for the two non-state languages of Romany and Church Latin [!]). That's an ignorance that even a brilliant prose style can't wash away, and whimsy can't cover up.

Here I am, still blinded in Yiddishland.

Elinor Nauen on Roberta Oliver

I promised Roberta that I wouldn’t say she was brave. I promised Roberta I wouldn’t say she “fought the good fight.”

Well, RO, I lied. I am going to say that to the end she stayed considerate, gallant and gorgeously courageous. Part of that was her usual modesty: She never said “why me?” She believed she’d had a good run, and she was at peace.

But Roberta was, of course, far more than her cancer or her death.

Our friendship began about 10 years ago, when I was just starting to get involved at Town and Village. We’d both been invited to a dinner, where I didn’t really know anyone. (To appreciate this anecdote, you have to know that I’m originally from the Midwest.) So, we were at this dinner, and she was telling a story, rattling along a mile a minute: TWO miles a minute.

And I said, Hey slow down, I can’t understand what you’re saying, you’re talking so fast.

And without missing a step, in that 1940s wisecracking-dame voice she had when she was still a smoker, she said, What, they can’t listen so fast out there where you come from?

A couple of years later, I happened to drive her and her son to Binghamton when he started college. What I remember most about that trip is the way she talked about Torah. Her infatuation (as someone called it), her joy in and mastery of the technical details, her passion and commitment inspired me to want what she had. If I am a halfway decent Torah reader, it’s in large part because Roberta “tortured” me—by which she meant that she refused to let me or anyone else do a sloppy job, not if she could do anything about it. She was endlessly patient in listening to me and many others practice our reads—and she never missed a mistake.

Roberta would be the first to say she didn’t have a beautiful voice, but when she leyned, her voice was radiant. Radiant and beautiful, out of love.

She loved being Jewish. She loved kirbys and The Gilmore Girls and salami. She loved shopping—and returning everything she bought the next day. And she loved her kids. How many times we would be on the phone and she would say, gotta go, it’s Paul. Or, It’s Katie! She lit up each and every time she said their names. How tender Paul and Kate have been under the recent stressful circumstances. How much I admire them—and their mother for raising two such wonderful young people. As well as Roberta’s magnificent mom Sarah, who started it all.

Roberta gave the best gifts, not only because she was generous, but even more, because she paid attention to her friends and knew what would please us. She was organized—I don’t know how the morning minyan will manage gala ads and the summer beach outing and daily Torah reads without her. She was fun and a good dancer.

But like any friendship worth its salt, ours was mostly a day-in day-out accumulation of listening, talking, hanging out. It’s not anecdotes or witticisms I will miss about Roberta, but the everydayness of our friendship. The privilege of her love and friendship.

Roberta (Rivka bat Avi v'Sarah), ז"ל

My friend Roberta died Wednesday night. She used to read Torah every week at our shul. She was careful with every word, every last trope -- and she never failed to bury an excellent reading of hers under a mountain of self-criticism the minute she came back to her seat ("I completely missed that zakef gadol!"). She demanded a good keriah from herself and others. She would fume and mutter under her breath when the gabbaim were not doing their job with the more error-prone.

She had been sick for a while; she wasn't old at all. Her mother will be at her shivah. And this is what I'm thinking: זו תורה וזו שכרה? -- this is the reward of the Torah?

Me and Jerome G.
Making your doctor better.

Jerome Groopman: "Because we doctors see so many people, thinking in the moment, we have to use shortcuts. If lay people become educated about how we think, with a few appropriate and directed questions, they could help us think better. They should ask, “Could this be anything else?” or “I’m worried this is something serious.” That is the genuine partnership."

See my Q&A in this week's Forward with the author of How Doctors Think.

Disclaimers apply
And modesty! Lots of modesty.

It's not that I really think I'm the best overall Jewish or Israeli blogger, but you might as well vote for me, since someone was nice enough to nominate me. (Please also vote for In Mol Araan as best food blog and Katle Kanye as best non-English blog. All nominees in these categories here.)

Happy birthday, Itzik!

I had fun at Itzik Gottesman's 50th birthday party last night, held at the Yiddish Artists and Friends club on East 7th Street. (He's the assistant editor at the Yiddish Forward, also an ethnologist and many other things besides.) The music was great, the dancing -- well, I tried to, a little bit, and then realized it was way too complicated for me. Let me say something else about the klezmorim: you should go buy The Broken Tongue, Daniel Kahn's CD of Yiddish-klezmer-funk (or, as his band's site puts it: "Alienation Klezmer Bund = Radical Yiddish Song + American Gothic Folk + Punk Cabaret + Klezmer Danse Macabre = Verfremdungsklezmer Bund."). Also, Adrienne Cooper's daughter can wail the guts out of a song. (I know she has her own name; someone told me but I forgot.)

While I'm mentioning Itzik, you should read his article in the Forward from a couple of weeks ago about how the Forverts is adapting to the changed (i.e. mostly Chasidic) Yiddish landscape.

Avrom Sutzkever: the blog
Not by him but about his work.

First post, with my translation of "Ode to the Dove" (part I).

Earlobes

On Leviticus 14:14, Rashi (or the Rashi found in many chumoshim my chumesh) uses a word קנארפעל knarfel to gloss תנוך אוזן earlobe. I have no idea what kind of word this is. I don't think it's Yiddish, unless it's a weird rhoticizing way of spelling קנאפל knafl heel ("heel of the ear"?). If anyone knows, that would make me less mystified, and would save me the effort I'm currently expending in trying to look it up. (Ideally I would find a reliable critical edition of Rashi which includes the "Yiddish" glosses, but I don't know where that would be.)

Update: The lobe thickens. I followed S.'s advice and just spent way too much time browsing Google Books (thanks for nothing!). Jerold Frakes' Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750 (see page 1 in Google Books) includes a few pages on the Yiddish and Tsarfatic glosses found in Rashi. Leviticus 14:14, and knarfel, are not among them. I guess then that whatever manuscript my bal-chumesh was working from either (a) had a later addition of this super-gloss, or (b) the publisher just stuck it in. I have yet to look at the printed Rashi manuscripts available through JNUL.

A conversation with a taxi driver

Driver: What language are you speaking to your daughter? Is that Dutch?

Me: Close! It's Yiddish. A Jewish language. Say [noticing Driver's accent], where are you from?

Driver: The Congo.

[. . .]

Driver: I love the Jews.

Me: Oh . . . !?

Driver: My King is a Jew.

Me: (thinks) Congo. Does Congo have a king? I know something awful is happening in Congo right now but I don't remember what. Was "Belgian Congo," right? Was there a king then? Belgian Jews? (says) King?

Driver: My King, who I love.

Me: (light dawns) Oh . . . Jesus?

Driver: Yes. I think the Jews are wonderful. You are so good with money!

Me: I wish I was.

Driver: You are born smart. You are blessed.

Me: Um . . . thanks!

Yiddish junkets

Brandeis, or . . . Birobidzhan?

Hamiltonians
are sometimes funny.

Thinking about thinking about medicine
Rx: Think better.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Jerome Groopman for the Forward on the occasion of his new book, How Doctors Think. I hope the Q&A will appear soon. Meanwhile, enjoy this discussion in Slate which is rather less polite and chummy than ours was. Perhaps I should have said to Dr. Groopman what I was thinking, which is: Research on the patient-doctor interview has been accumulating for the past twenty-five years; why are mainstream MDs discovering it only now? (It's also interesting that the Slate discussion does not touch on doctor-patient communication at all. Groopman: doctors need to be trained better! Sanghavi: systems need to be more effective! But, guys, getting the patient to tell the doctor what the problem is? This is simple? This is done to perfection inside the office?)

Annoying Hebrew slang
Courtesy of Eurovision, Teapacks, and Iran.

I recently heard Israel's entry to the Eurovision song contest, a Teapacks song called Push the Button (video, lyrics). It's a good thing the lyrics are available on-line, because I can't understand the words to most songs in English, much less in rapped Hebrew. I think I learned a new word:

שוטרים וגנבים מתרוצצים עלי
והם קופצים עלי, מתקרצצים עלי

Shotrim veganavim mitrotzetzim alay
Vehem koftzim alay, mitkartzetzim alay

This is translated somewhere as "Cops and robbers run all over me / And they're jumping on me, getting on my case." I didn't know the word מתקרצץ, but judging from chat groups it means something like "annoy, suck up to, give too much attention to, glom onto" (e.g. כשחיפשתי דירה בבית הסטודנט, התקרצץ אלי איזה זקן -- "when I looked for an apartment in the student house, this old guy started getting in my face"; or המלצר ששירת אותנו התקרצץ עלינו בצורה דביקה במיוחד -- "the waiter who served us glommed onto us in a really sticky way").

Where does it come from? My father read to me over the phone from Milon Slang Makif, Comprehensive Dictionary of Slang, by one Rosenthal, which connects it to the word קריצה, meaning "winking, blinking." (Interesting that the Milon defines the reflexive - hitpa'el - as "to be annoyed," while on the basis of Internet usage, and from the Teapacks song, the hitpa'el functions here as an intensifier - to annoy.) Presumably קרצץ is formed by duplicating the last letter of קרץ. (Google doesn't know much about קרצץ.)

Rosenthal's Milon Slang Makif connects the word to קרציה tick. (Thanks to Balashon and an anonymous commenter for corrections.)

And k-r-tz (קרץ) is a well-known root from Tanach and modern Hebrew. In modern Hebrew it means "blink" (as mentioned above), but Rabbinically and Biblically the word also encompasses "pinch, cut; snap [the fingers]". Here's where I should get off the train and let Balashon, with his greater knowledge and fuller bookshelves, drive the etymology forward. Or is that backward?

Liberal "Torah Judaism"
Much as I hate the term.

Is there "da'as Torah"? Are there scholars lay, rabbinic, or talmid-khokhemdik who immerse themselves in the Torah so completely that their system of reference is different from others'?

This is plausible -- with a caveat. These learned Jews aren't to be found just in the ultra-Orthodox streams of Judaism which have popularized the term. Even liberal Jews can have daas Torah. It's just that their -- our! -- Torah is different (cf. "seventy sides/faces/tongues/languages to the Torah").

After the blood and the lamb: beets

I welcome your envy: among the guests at our second seder was Ms. Chocolate Lady, with escort Mr. Lady-to-be. She made us chocolate mousse which is quite possibly the best thing I have eaten ever. Even tastier than the Jewish madeleine, I mean the afikoymen.

She also made us some beets, and I brought them for lunch to work today, a big tupperware that I meant to eat only half of. Big mistake, thought I, as I opened the plastic bag and saw a pool of beet juice on the bottom - now I'll have to eat up the whole thing so it won't leak into my backpack on the way home. So, worried about beet overdose, I started in. And they were delectable. There I sat, waiting for my patients to arrive, tie untucked into shirt, slurping up huge tasty beet hunks with trusty chunks of matzo. I was a beet-scarfing animal. I was a beet plague. I finished it all and I wanted more.

Lucky the door was closed. And I sanitized my hands before examination.

Meritorious mothers
From Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, chapter 12.

The Zachuth of the pious ancestry may generally be described as the זכות אבות (the Zachuth of the Fathers), but the term Fathers is largely limited in Rabbinic literature to the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God's covenant with whom is so often appealed to already in the Bible. The Rabbinic rule is, "They call not Fathers but the three (patriarchs), and they call not Mothers but four" (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah) [1]. The last statement with regard to the Mothers suggests that there is such a thing as the זכות אמהות (the Zachuth of the Mothers). This is in conformity with the Rabbinic statement in reference to Lev. 26:42 regarding God's remembering his covenant with the patriarchs, that there is also such a thing as the covenant with the Mothers [2]. In another place, they speak even distinctly of the Zachuth of the Mothers, "If thou seest the Zachuth of the Fathers and the Zachuth of the Mothers, that they are on the decline, then hope for the grace of God." [3] And it would even seem that they would invoke the Zachuth of the Mothers together with the Zachuth of the Fathers in their prayers on public fasts prescribed on the occasion of general distress [4] . . .

[1] Berachoth, 16b. See, however, D.E.Z., ch.1, where they speak of seven Fathers who entered into a covenant with God. In Sirach (heading to c.44), the expression Fathers is even more extensive.
[2] T.K., 112c.
[3] See Jer. Sanhedrin, 27d, and Lev.R., 36,6. Cf. commentaries, and see also Cant.R., 2,9.
[4] See Pseudo-Jonathan to Exod. 18:9 and Mechilta, 54a. In our liturgy, the invocation of the Zachuth of the mothers is very rare. A Piyut (hymn) by R. Gershom b. Judah, recited on the eve of the New Year, has a reference to the covenant of the Mothers.

Adventures in Toddler Bilingualism
Superfluous plurals.

My Yiddish- and English-speaking* 3-year-old, while playing blocks with me:

Du bist a boyer! ("You're a builder!")
Ikh bin a boyer! ("I'm a builder!")
Mir zaynen beyde boyersn! ("We're both builders'n!", i.e. with the plural form boyers and an added plural suffix-n)

*She also sings a lot of songs in Mandarin, but I don't think she can generate a sentence.