Donald Trump May be Vulgar, But George Washington, In At Least One Version, Also Used Yiddishisms

I want to be fair to Donald Trump.

Admittedly, my own use of Yiddishisms is limited to shlemiel (actually from a Hebrew root), shmoe, and (forgive me) schmuck (Yiddish-Polish).

President Obama calls political defeats “shellackings.” No sexual innuendo here, and I’m trying to clean up my own English vocabulary by eliminating screwed, reamed, and nailed. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, appearing on MSNC’s Rachel Maddow show, likened Donald Trump’s use of the Yiddish vulgarism, schlonged, to former presidential candidate George Wallace’s use of more cornpone insults, directed at “pinheaded bureaucrats” and liberal journalists.

Beschloss also joked that he had spent the day reading through George Washington’s Papers looking for Yiddishisms—and finding none.

Now, here I must come to Trump’s defense, sort of. However vulgar, he may be true son of George Washington when it comes to Yiddishisms. Did George Washington speak Yiddish? Not according to his leading biographers and conventional historians. But the opinion of conventional historians isn’t worth much these days. Take Beschloss, for example. In 2009, he said Barack Obama was the most intelligent man ever elected president. Now, Obama may fare well in future histories, but I doubt he is going to be rated smarter than Thomas Jefferson, of whom President Kennedy told some illustrious dinner guests: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Did Washington speak Yiddish? If you doubt it, consult Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Mason & Dixon (1997), a picaresque tale of two British surveyors who mapped the dividing line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and along the way meet Washington as well as Benjamin Franklin. Franklin doesn’t talk Yiddish, but Washington does—perhaps taught to him by Black-Jewish slave servants.

Implausible, you say? Well, the American founders lived through “times that tried men’s souls” that separated the patriots from the putzes. We, too are again experiencing trying times during which many of us (myself included)  feel that we are being “shlonged” not least by Donald Trump.

Also, did you know that in 1781, when Daniel Boone did some surveying across the Appalachians for Jacob Cohen and Isaiah Isaacs of Richmond, Boone signed a receipt for payment of his services that Isaacs notated on the back in Yiddish?

What would Isaiah Isaacs—or Daniel Boone—have thought of Donald Trump? Would Isaacs have expressed his opinion in Yiddish? Perhaps Thomas Pynchon knows the answer.