By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –Yiddish travels far and wide. Just ask Chloe Kogan. She makes humorously-illustrated greeting cards with Yiddish proverbs inside, such as “A Fool Falls On His Back And Bruises His Nose” and “Better An Egg Today Than An Ox Tomorrow.” And this card I love, too:
“Dress Up A Broom And It’ll Look Nice Too.”
As a bar mitzvah boy and non-speaker of Yiddish who nevertheless grew up in a home where Ma and Pa Bloom used Yiddish when they didn’t want the five kids to know they were talking about and by listening to their dinner table banter was able to pick up a lifelong love of Yiddish words and phrases, I was so happy to come across a Jewish woman in Vermont who is doing her bit to spread not only the joy of Yiddish but the warmth of Yiddish, too.
Meet heimishe greeting card maven Kogan, and yes, there’s a Jewish story everywhere. Vermont, too.
About a year ago, 30-something Kogan — a native of Montreal who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood there and now calls Vermont home — created a website that sells Yiddish greeting cards. It’s called “Yiddish Warmth” and it’s what the entrepreneurial spirit inside Kogan calls “unorthodox greeting cards featuring illustrated Yiddish proverbs.”
Always wanting to know more about a woman who wants to spread some Yiddish warmth around, I emailed Kogan and set up an interview for San Diego Jewish World.
When asked where the idea and motivation for her novel greeting card line came from, Kogan gave me some background.
“I’ve been making really personalized and silly and fun greeting cards for loved ones my whole life, and my mother has always told me, for as long as I can remember, that I should do it professionally,” she said. “But I could never bridge the gap between making these customized cards for friends and family, and starting a business making generic cards for people I don’t know. I mean, I felt as though every ‘Happy Birthday’ joke card has already been made.”
Enter “Yiddish Warmth,” her brainstorm of a heimishe idea.
“The line allows me to make art and to write (which are two of my big pleasures), but more importantly to help people experience and celebrate this big part of Jewish culture,” she said. “I want to play some part in keeping Yiddish alive, that’s paramount to me. I feel like it’s my responsibility and my privilege as a Jew to try to help carry our legacy forward, our language and our wisdom. Obviously, that’s a huge theme in Judaism: preservation of the past, thecontinued survival of our peoples’ customs and way of life.”
She loves what she is doing, too.
“The Yiddish Warmth line is my way of creating cards and gifts that are extremely personal — drawing on my family as well as the world of Judaism at large — and the cards can be widely enjoyed and understood I feel because of the timelessness of the Yiddish sayings that my drawings are based on.”
So who’s buying?
“Even though I’m still getting the ball rolling with the Yiddish Warmth line (the website went fully online about 8 months ago), I have been so touched by the wonderful comments I’ve received from customers and visitors to my site. The most common remark has been they had no idea these cards existed, and they have a family member who would get such a kick out of them.”
Sales?
“Sales have been okay so far, and, while greeting cards are my main focus, I am going to be adding a number of gift items like t-shirts and bumper stickers to the website in April, and once they’re online I expect sales and interest to pick up even more. Not to mention something new I’ve just started testing, which is e-cards.
Customers come from around the world, Kogan told me, noting: It’s still a novelty for me to have people I’ve never met buying and enjoying these Yiddish cards. The people who have purchased through the website so far have been in America and Canada, but visitors to the site in general have come from Brazil, Russia, Brtitain, and, I’m
proud to say, Israel.”
Kogan told me she considers herself both culturally and spiritually Jewish, and associates most closely with Reform Judaism.
“The fact is, though, spirituality is a journey that I’ve been on since I was little, especially due to my being the child of an interfaith marriage, my mother being Christian and my father Jewish — lapsed Jewish, but still undeniably Jewish.”
“I grew up with a really clear concept of G-d and a very clear concept of myself cast in the light of Judaism,” she added. “I felt a deep connection when we would go to my aunt’s for the Passover seder, for the holidays, for Rosh Hashanah. I felt a deep peace and a clear sense of self and identity in that context. And all of this despite the fact
that my dad, who was a first-generation Canadian, was brought up by immigrant parents who had come to Canada to make a conscious and deliberate effort to leave the shtetl behind — to assimilate. For me, I feel, my connection to Judaism is such a testament to the strength and endurance of Judaism.”
I was curious to know how Kogan came by her attachment and love of Yiddish proverbs. She told me that as a child, when she was growing up, she was curious and in love with Judaism and wanting to know everything about it.
“So I’d ask Dad these direct questions, like, ‘Tateh, how do you say such-and-such in Yiddish?’ and he’d say, ‘I don’t know!’ But then Yiddish would just bubble up out of his mouth, out of the blue. He’d come out with some Yiddish exclamation or curse or word, and I’d say, ‘What was that?’. But he couldn’t explain it.My dad grew up hearing sporadic snippets of the mamaloshen but his parents never sat him down in any way to teach him that when you’re really upset or frustrated, you should say oy vey.’ And when you see a bunch of craziness, call it mishegoss.My dad’s language was peppered with Yiddish color and liveliness and texture, and I hung on every one of those words and expressions like a lifeline.”
So from an interfaith marriage, Kogan found herself in her own way and came to the greeting card business as a way to express herself.
“I was fortunate in that I not only grew up within a Jewish family in Montreal, but there were a lot of Jewish families around us, too. Including my best friend when I was little. She lived across the street and her family were practicing Jews. I feel blessed that I grew up immersed in the Jewish community in Montreal. My parents would go for a walk every night after dinner, and sometimes I went with them, and during the High Holidays you would smell the honey cakes and other treats baking, and you’d see people all dressed up going to Shabbat dinners or Passover seders. You could feel that Jewish presence everywhere, and with that came Yiddish — a colorful language for a colorful people.”
“I feel so blessed and grateful and I’m excited to share my passion for Yiddish and my journey as a proud Jew with people all over the world! through my website and cards,” she added.
Yes, a colorful language for a colorful people. You got that right, Chlo!”
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com
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