Primrose Road

There is a Yiddish theater or two in Tel Aviv and Hamlet was translated into Yiddish several times in the early 20th century.

But there is, I believe, a very important reason why a Yiddish Hamlet has never been staged in Israel.

The Yiddish word for "to be," it so happens, is (coincidentally) a Hebrew slang word for the central male anatomical feature. The Hebrew is "zayin," the Yiddish "zayn," but they're pronounced the same way in most dialects.

"Zayn oder nisht zayn; dos iz di frage."

I cannot possibly be the first person to have thought of this ...