Many years ago, I stumbled across a black-and-white Western film starring Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees’ star-crossed first baseman. While I certainly had better things to do, I had to wait around for the inevitable scene in which Gehrig’s character saves the day by tossing baseball-like objects at the villains.
This memory leads us, counter-intuitively, to Canadian Yiddish maven and author Michael Wex. Best known for his brilliant 2005 exploration of the mother tongue, “Born to Kvetch,” Wex’s latest is a work of fiction, saddled with the unwieldy title “The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist.”
Wex is perhaps the only man on earth who can make an analysis of the conjugations of Yiddish verbs into a subject that induces one to cackle inappropriately in public. Yet in the same way that the plot of the Gehrig Western was woven around opportunities for the athlete-turned-actor to demonstrate his baseball skills in a saloon, “Mushmelon” often seems like a vehicle for Wex to demonstrate his Yiddish mastery.
Take youthful protagonist Shraga Potasznik casually mentioning his favorite comic book: “‘Khamoro Kadisho,’ ‘The Holy Donkey,’ subtitled ‘Di vinderlikhe nesies fun Plapelisa, dem heyliken tannas Rebbin Pinkhas ben Yoirs ayzele, ayn khumoyr kudoysh ve-noyeym.'”
(In other words — English words — “The Marvelous Journeys of Plapelisa, the Donkey of the Holy Tanna Rabbi Pinkhas ben Yair, a Holy Donkey Who Could Speak.”)
With his nose buried in “The Holy Donkey,” Shraga bumps into Micah Mushmelon — literally, knocking out the Boy Talmudist’s tooth.
At less than 100 pages, this is a short novella, so Wex manages to sustain a whirlwind, caffeinated writing style throughout — but never more so than when he’s dealing with Mushmelon, a fast-talking, mystic eccentric with more mannerisms than Rain Man.
In the midst of a Yiddish-infused rant about how he tracked down a miscreant sprinkling pigs’ hooves in the vat at the kosher candy factory, the bloody-gummed Mushmelon “removed the Kleenex from his mouth, studied it and then set it afire right on the sidewalk with a lighter he’d pulled from his pocket.”
Then, without skipping a beat, more Yiddish ranting ensues. This is what the Monty Python boys would have referred to as “zany, madcap humor” and its jarring nature pulls you along — for a while.
Mushmelon is an amalgamation of Maimonides and Mel Brooks in a 10-year-old body shaped like the Liberty Bell. He is the heir to the great rabbinical line from the city of Hipst, which makes him — yes — the Hipster Rebbe. When one of these Chassids finds an Andy Williams LP hidden in a Cootie Williams sleeve, it’s a sign of much divinely inspired lamentation to come.
Shraga and Mushmelon soon set out to rid the world of the local Apikoyros (ultimate heretic) — requiring readers to acknowledge that, at least for this book, there is such a thing as an Apikoyros, and that Mushmelon is a semi-divine being who sat next to Shraga at the yeshiva in Heaven.
What’s more, the explanation of how Shraga relates to the Apikoyros requires a bout of numerology resembling talmudic Sudoku. Laden in Chassidic lore (i.e., bubble meises), this book does not end as enthrallingly as it begins.
And yet, a pair of characters known as “The Torah Sluts” are involved. So the book’s got that going for it — which is nice.
“The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist,” by Michael Wex (84 pages, Quattro Books, $15)