Ask a Manager: My Manager Started Using Yiddish

[minoanmiss]

1. My manager started using Yiddish after she found out I’m Jewish

I started a new job last year with a very small team that is entirely white. After I put in a leave request for the Jewish High Holidays last year, my immediate manager began peppering our conversations with Yiddish words — “I’ve got to schlep this over to the loading dock” or “I’ll work on my schpiel before the meeting” or even just “Oy.” I hadn’t been there very long (maybe six or eight weeks) before I put in the leave request and “outed” myself as a Jew, so I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but … we live in the deep South. There’s a very small Jewish community in our area and it’s not uncommon for people to tell me I’m the first Jew they’ve ever met.

We’ve been working remotely since I began with an expectation that we will go back into the office in person a few days a week soon. I’m worried the Yiddish-isms will be more frequent in person. Any advice on how to handle this?

Any chance she’s Jewish herself? If she’s not and she’s throwing in Yiddish because she wants to relate to you better or make you feel comfortable or show she likes Jews … that’s not okay (similar to if she started throwing in Spanish words after discovering you were Latina), even assuming it’s well-intentioned.

That said, “schlep” and “schpiel” and even “oy” aren’t uncommon to hear from non-Jews; they’ve made their way into English more than, say, “tsuris” or “meshuggeneh” have, so it’s possible that the timing is coincidental. But if it’s a definite change since she learned you were Jewish — and especially if it’s more than the three examples you listed — personally (and as a fellow Jew) I might just say outright at some point, in a tone of genuine curiosity, “I wonder if you realize you use a lot of Yiddish words around me. Is it because I’m Jewish?” If her response indicates that she is indeed breaking out the Yiddish specifically for you, you could say, “I’d rather you talk to me the same way you do to everyone else.” (Obviously, this only works if you’re comfortable saying that and your sense is that the relationship allows for it; realistically, the power dynamics will sometimes make that feel risky.)