Verklempt: The Yiddish Word that Wasn't

"The sight of these majestic, art deco-looking creatures almost took my breath away and in true Streisand fashion, I felt myself getting verklempt." [...]anyone who regularly watched Saturday Night Live in the 1990s knows "verklempt" isn't Barbra Streisand's linguistic baby but rather that of a woman named Linda Richman, who is quite possibly Babs's number one fan and who regularly gets verklempt-i.e., emotionally choked up-when talking about the singer. Because the Linda Richman we've seen get verklempt is a character Mike Myers played on SNL's "Coffee Talk," the recurring sketch in which he impersonated his then-mother-in-law Linda Richman in a heavy New York accent peppered with Yiddish words, some real, some not. Learning about the real Linda Richman's life, detailed in a book she wrote in 2001 titled Id Rather Laugh: How to Be Happy Even When Life Has Other Plans for You, one can imagine Richman was often sadly verklempt. [...]in March of 2023, the New York City Jewish arts collective Havurah launched a quarterly print-only magazine called Verklempt', dedicated to showcasing Jewish art and literature.