Text:

מאיפה משתין הדג

Mi’ayfo mashtin hadag
From where the fish pisses

Context:

The informant heard this from other Israeli immigrants growing up in Western Washington nearby Seattle. Although they don’t use it themselves (making them a passive bearer), people around them use it often. It is a proverbial phrase that can used within a sentence such as “I’ll show you where the fish pisses” or “Just you wait, one day I’ll show you where the fish pisses from.” To the informant, the main meaning of the saying is “I’ll show you something even more unbelievable.” It is followed by the statement that is almost impossible to believe. The statement is usually used in a boasting way (where the person is going to say something even crazier than the other person). It is meant to show superiority over the other person by being more knowledgeable. It can also be used as an exclamation such as when someone says something incredible and the other person tells them that it is beyond belief, like the English phrase “no way”. The third way it can be used is as a warning that there are better things to come. For example, someone is telling a story and their audience is getting amazed before the climax of the plot. The storyteller might say this phrase to warn the audience that “you haven’t seen anything yet” and that the most unbelievable or amazing part is still to come. The informant stresses that this phrase is very flexible and has a lot of uses in many contexts. This reason is why the informant likes the phrase so much.

Analysis:

The text of the phrase is comedic to someone reading it for the first time although the uses of the phrase do not quite fit that. It can be used in a very menacing way where one person tries to prove that they are better than another person. This might reflect some cultural value of proving your worth through knowledge, especially over another person. If it is important within Israeli culture to show how much you know, then the usage of this phrase is an example of that.

Fish are an important symbol within Judaism which might explain why they are the animal selected for this specific phrase. While other cultures have similar phrases that are structured similarly, this version uses fish specifically. Fish are a traditional food for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and are a symbol of fertility along with being associated with protection from the evil eye. Given that they are important, the use within a phrase that is meant to show something exciting or unbelievable makes sense.

The phrase itself describes something that is amazing or interesting. Fish are not mammals so knowing where they urinate from is less common knowledge. If someone didn’t know where a fish urinated from and they were told, they might find it interesting and see it as a testament to the other person’s knowledge or expertise.

Without much knowledge about the cultural and historical context of the Hebrew phrase, it is difficult to say what exactly it shows. With more phrases and a deeper understanding of Jewish history, a deeper connection may be revealed. It is likely, in any case, that knowledge and the ability to prove it is an important part of Jewish and Israeli culture.