In which a blog accounts for itself, Part I

I figure it's as good a time as any to address the name I chose for this weblog. There's a good chance my readers already know, but I look forward to the day when people will discover this site who aren't actually friends of mine. Then maybe they'll check the archives.

The Hebrew words for bridegroom and cantor are, respectively, hatan and hazzan. (Terminal emphasis in both cases.) The Yiddish pronunciations of these two are chassn and chazzn. (Both sometimes spelled without the C; both with primary emphasis.)

At Ashkenazi Jewish weddings, it's a custom to have a chassns tish, or bridegroom's table, at which various marital contracts are signed and much merriment is imposed upon the husband to be.

So it's a pun, you see.

Q: What's a cantor?
A: In a Jewish context, a cantor is the public prayer leader in a synagogue service. Cantors also tend to be charged with whatever musical education a synagogue wishes to impart upon its congregants. I'm currently training for the job.

Q: Why do you spell it tish? Yiddish is a German dialect, so wouldn't tisch be more appropriate?
A: If we were working with true German, yes. But one does not typically write Yiddish using the Latin alphabet, and there are no widely accepted conventions for doing so. In any case, the solid and efficient German orthographic system would rather closely resemble a load of overcooked spaghetti squash after just one encounter with a voiced sibilant spelled out as a double-Z, and I see no need to be the agent of metamorphosis.