Author Archives: Stephen Carr

Oppa!

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

Performance: While I was interviewing Yon, he dropped his keys and exclaimed “Oppa!” casually as he picked them back up. What is that? I asked. “Oppa is the word when we say it… whenever something doesn’t like go…as planned. its like Oppa! Oppa! Oppa! It’s like woooah.”

Is it like happy..? Or like…?

“It’s not negative…But its not happy. It’s like something you say when you’re startled. You say Oppa. Oppa.”

 

Response: This piece of folk speech came naturally in conversation while I was interviewing Yon. He dropped his keys and said “oppa” under his breath. I asked him what that was and he didn’t understand what I was referring to, but lit up when he realized he was explaining his own little swear. Oppa has no definition that is set in stone in Hebrew, and it more of a folk exclamation similar to whoops.

Jewish Chicken Soup Healing

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

 

Performance: “So one of the most common remedies is like chicken soup. So it’s, it’s like chicken broth essentially. Very traditional jewish stuff. But what I know… I know this stuff….works. Just has all those like sodium and vitamins in it, and it cures like every sickness. Other than that the big thing is like tea… like hot tea with mint, honey, and lemon juice. All three. That helps to make you better too and it works.”

 

Response: Soups seem to be folk remedies that often cure illnesses such as the common cold. I was shocked by how adamant Yon was about the success rate of his mother’s traditional jewish chicken soup. He looked at me like he was telling me the greatest secret I had ever known.

 

For a published study of this folk remedy check out this link to a Chicago tribune article:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19821118&id=0BBOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7121,995422&hl=en

Hebrew Death Hands

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

Performance: “Ok so we have this thing where you cross your hands like this.” Yon then places his hands out, palms towards himself, and overlaps his lightly spread fingers at a diagonal angle. “It spells death in hebrew. Ma-vet. Yeah. The lines in your hands SPELL mavet, which means death.”

And you do it why? because it’s creepy? Because it’s cool?

“Yeah, we just do it.”

 

Response: This was a very interesting piece of folklore. When you hold your hands at a certain angle, the creases and lines on your palms spell out the Hebrew word for death. Yon didn’t seem to really understand why I was asking why they did it, he said that they simply do. I think this is an example of a cool piece of identity which those who speak hebrew have with the human body. If I looked down at my hands from a certain angle and saw the english word “death” I would think it was pretty cool too.

Thistles for Children

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

Performance: “Ok so we have this plant. And it’s this plant where it’s like a branch and if you take your fingers and slide it up you’ve got all those sorta seeds… you know what i’m talking about? you have a name for it. and people like throw them? So what we do we take em and we throw em at someone’s shirt. and however many seeds stick into the shirts is how many kids he’s going to have.”

 

Response: This is an interesting piece of folklore. It is at both times a game and also magic, being able to predict the future. The obvious allusion which can be drawn is that the boys are throwing the literal seeds of the plant at each other in order to divine how many children they will in tern bear with their own seed. Though they likely do not see the similarities at the time, it is interesting that such an overt connection exists in this example of folklore.

Nighttime Prayers

Nationality: White
Age: 50
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Pacific Palisades, CA
Performance Date: April 29, 2015

Carol is a Floridian who left the state to study film production at Boston University. She has since started a family in LA and is as much an LA native as a Floridian at heart. She has no remnants of her floridian accent, and knows the entire secret menu at In N Out.

Performance: “I grew up with prayers, particularly nighttime prayers, that were unusual to my Roman Catholic upbringing. It was a shock to me that some of my friends made sort of “private a appeal” to God in their nightly prayers. They would say things like “God Bless Nana, and Mittens, and Uncle Fred…” – I would never have thought to be able to appeal to God in that way. Every night, on my knees, my mother and I would pray the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer which would end with  “And God help me to be a good girl tomorrow” not the long litany of prayers for others.”

Response: Prayer is an interesting form of folklore. How to pray is taught not by books but often by family. Carol found it interesting that the way she prayed was different from her friends, despite them being from a similar roman catholic upbringing. Carol’s childhood prayers were clearly more ritualistic than individualistic, and yet to her were just as real and personal.