dates stolen from my mother

My mother was born on May 4, 1943. She would've been 80 this year. Unfortunately, the American cultural Zeitgeist shanghaied May the 4th and made it into Star Wars Day: May the Fourth Be With You. Ugh. And thanks to the January 6th invasion of the Capitol, Mom's gi-il (death day or Yahrzeit,* if you will) is also buried under a mountain of cultural sludge. Culture notwithstanding, I'll keep those dates in my heart as best I can, no matter what the rest of the country happens to be doing. January 6 and May 4 are Mom's days in my book.

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*Yahrzeit (יאָרצײַט, lit. "year-time") is the romanization of the Yiddish. In German, it would be Jahrzeit. Yiddish is a Germanic language written with the Hebrew alphabet. This is important to remember: a lot of so-called "Jewish" words that have trickled outside of the community to the rest of us goyim are not necessarily Hebrew, as one might think: they're often Yiddish. (Goy/goyim, "Gentile/s," is Hebrew.) But a further caution: Yiddish does also contain Hebrew words. It is large; it contains multitudes.

Here's a list of commonly heard Yiddish expressions. At a guess, you either already know many of them or can guess their meaning. I'd say I know about 30-40% of that list.