Word Prompt – SHTEIG – Adena Berkowtz

Stop a passerby, Jewish or not, in New York City to define the word "chutzpah," and I bet a majority could do so. What about shteig? Not likely. It is a Yiddish word derived from the German meaning to ascend or rise. The yeshivish “shteiging away” means someone not merely learning Torah but engaged in a form of spiritual elevation.

Some years ago, Rabbi Julian Sinclair, in The Jewish Chronicle of England, shared an insight from Rav Yitzchak Hutner, zt”l, late rosh yeshiva of Chaim Berlin. Rabbi Hutner pointed out that the Rabbis in the Talmud applied words which meant the same thing but reflected the difference between the holy and secular; for example, haramah and hagba’ah. They both mean to raise up but haramah refers to spiritual elevation and hagba’ah to the physical acquisition of something. However, in Yiddish the word shteig can also mean to accumulate wealth and material goods.

Does it mean, as Rabbi Sinclair points out, that in the Jewish world of Eastern Europe the everyday and the spiritual were so intertwined that it was reflected even in Yiddish expressions? Can we get to that level today? I leave it to you, the readers, to decide!