Title: Head in the Ground

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, proverb
• Language: Yiddish
• Informant: Bernard Avishai
• Date Collected: 10-24-18

Informant Data:

• Bernard Avishai is a visiting professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He is a Guggenheim fellow and the author of many books, including ‘The Tragedy of Zionism,’ ‘A New Israel,’ ‘The Hebrew Republic,’ and ‘Promiscuous: Portnoy’s Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness.’ He was raised in a Jewish household and has lived in Israel.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: “Old timers”, gathered and discussing the love life of a younger man, would use this proverb. Yiddish is often spoken by older generations, as its use has faced large decline recently. Thus, in some ways, this Yiddish proverb can be seen as connecting the older and younger generations.
• Social Context: This specific proverb was heard by the informant during his childhood and is one of the few proverbs the informant was able to remember from his childhood, perhaps due to its humorous nature. One can interpret this proverb as meaning that when a man likes a woman, he is not thinking clearly, and can easily be misguided. He mentioned that this is not the type of proverb he would have heard in his childhood home due to its topic.

Item:

Orally transmitted proverb:

“When your cock is standing, your head is in the ground”

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Informant’s Comments:

• The informant found the message of the proverb to be very unoriginal and commonplace, its origin being “human nature”.

Collector’s Comments:

• I found this proverb particularly notable for its absurd and humorous imagery of a rather taboo topic. It certainly made the proverb memorable.

Collector’s Name: Madison Minsk

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Lore
• Yiddish Proverb
• Relationships