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Love Thy Neighbor refers to the Biblical phrase “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” from the Book of Leviticus and the New Testament. The phrase refers to the ethic of reciprocity known as the Golden Rule.

“do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12)

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My writing about Moise and the Amish, who are now my neighbors, is, to me, a personal diary, a story of a friendship, and of a flawed man – me – who is finally learning at the age of 73 (almost 74) that he can heal from his own intolerance and impatience.

I grew up in the fading days of the Judeo-Christian ethos, largely abandoned today by the politicization of religion and by extremist activists on both sides.

The tragedy is that there are no longer many common values for us to build on or share. Anything goes. Remorse, like sincerity, is a joke. Lying without shame is the new virtue.

That sound you hear is the devil dancing.

Love Thy Neighbor and “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You” were both Golden Rules of our major religions.

When I got to know my Amish neighbors, I was surprised to learn that these two foundations of religious, moral ethics are front and center in their value system, even as they have largely vanished from ours.

If Jesus Christ were ever to return to the earth, he would be more at home in the Amish Church than in any other I have seen, and he would be horrified at the awful greed and hypocrisy that has befallen much of Christianity.

I had no idea that some of the central values that rule Amish lives are the same that inspired mine, while many of them are alien, even offensive, to me.

I do love my neighbors, and they love all their other neighbors and me. That’s what they do.

I believe that the Golden Rule is the potential salvation of human life. If we really treated others the way we wish to be treated, we would find peace, prosperity, justice, even paradise.

Jesus had the right idea; too bad so many of his descendants have forgotten it. The Amish have not, they live it every day.

There is nothing in the Sermon On The Mount that I can’t accept, especially in comparison to the hateful dribble pouring continuously from religious and political leaders.

But I learned something else too since my neighbors have arrived.

Loving Thy Neighbor in 2021 is only popular if thy neighbor believes everything you believe and lives the same way you live.

Unfortunately, in America, the Golden Rule has descended into a hate-a-thon I am proud to not be a part of – more and more, we hate everyone different from us. Since many people in America are different from everyone else, there is often nothing but hate.

Loving thy neighbor is a controversial position to take now if thy neighbor happens to be Amish or doesn’t fully embrace the political winds of the moment.

As I read the preachings of Christ, there were few conditions on who we loved or on how we could treat other humans well and compassionately.

According to many of the messages I receive, you cannot love your neighbor if he is part of a Patriarchy, or if he treats his dog himself instead of going to a veterinarian or can’t support same-sex marriage within their church. (I take my animals to vets all the time, and I have always supported gay and trans rights and same-sex marriage.)

It seems they cannot be loved or treated as we would like to be treated ourselves; they must be ostracized, criticized, and kept at arm’s length. This is all new ground to me, but it’s coming into focus.

A lifelong person who has stayed outside the boundaries of conventional religion, I suddenly find myself a reluctant defender of the golden rules that promoted love, civility, and community. Those were the morals and ethics that guided us, even if we could never fully live up to them.

I don’t really find our new system of red and blue values better, or healthy, or leading us to a kindler or gentler way of life. They lead us to hate, lies and cruelty.

I will not be bullied into hating my neighbors; they have so much to teach me.

I am not a Christian, but I find it amazing that of all the messages I received, good and bad, the one that most resonates with me and inspires me and calls to me is the same one that governs Amish Life – Christ’s call to us to be generous, caring, humble and empathic.

To love our neighbors and to treat people the way we wish to be treated.

Not judging means not thinking I know best what is good for others. The Amish call it humility. One of my golden rules is that I don’t tell other people what to do. That stops judgment cold – there is no point to it.

I have come to see that the people who hate me because I love my neighbors are not moral; they are the amoral people who have lost their way.

They believe they are fighting for justice. Instead, they promote hate, not understanding, in me, in others.

People write me every day to tell me that I  have literally lost my mind and perspective and judgment because I love Moise and my Amish neighbors, which they deride as a “bromance” or “naivety” or “betrayal” of moral values, an indictment of my enabling of sexism, animal and child abuse and fanaticism.

How could one love people who treat their animals differently or believe men should be in authority when it comes to family life?

I can, and I will, and I don’t believe that men should be the absolute rulers of anything for one second.

Morally, I’m not sure how to respond to all this; I’m still trying to work it out. But, it is a truly profound shift in culture, values, and our own long-held beliefs about God and morality.

And it is hurting us as a people.

The New Testament seems to have little hold on our modern society. The Judeo-Christian ethic has been destroyed by partisanship, the country’s division into two nations with completely different morals and ethics.

The Amish give priority to the writings of the New Testament, especially the teachings of Jesus.

Only New Testament texts are read aloud in the church service, and three-quarters of these come from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which recount the life and teachings of Jesus.

The Amish especially revere and adhere to Jesus’s Sermon On The Mount, with its pledges to be meek, merciful, and pure of heart; to love and forgive enemies, and to put complete trust in God’s Providence.

Moise and his family have not undertaken to change me or educate me or preach to me in any way. They’ve never asked me what I think about faith. But, like me, they do not tell other people what to do or live or judge them for it.

They have changed me simply by existing, and letting me into their life, and by letting me know them, and teaching me to re-visit some of the truths and certainties that have guided much of my life.

They have changed me by accepting me in so a complete way and judging me in no way.

In the course of that experience, I have come to love this couple and their remarkable children. I refuse to see this as a bad thing, as many people insist on telling me it is.

The experience seemed profoundly important to me – it is a big deal to change and learning at my age.

However, I never give up on being a better human than I am, and I am forever surprised by how far I have to go, no matter how far I have gotten.

This journey is one of the most remarkable experiences of my life, and it really never occurred to me that it would become just another symbol and reflection of the hatred, intolerance, and rage that is engulfing our country.

I suppose I should be flattered. I’ve never been important enough to hate.

I’m just another thing to fight about; if I stopped loving my neighbors, these angry people would vanish into the fog.

I understand now that Donald Trump did not create this fury; he simply unlocked the door that kept much of it check. But, sooner or later, we would have to confront it as a people and in our personal lives.

He did us the great favor of waking us up.

I have pissed off many people by writing about the Amish and even more by daring to love some of them and respect many of the very different ways in which they live.

The idea of the aging Jewish/Quaker progressive becoming a dear friend of a 50-year-old elder in the Amish church’s deeply conservative Old Amish sect is nearly unbelievable.

Can we love our neighbor if he’s Amish? Jewish? Muslim? Asian? Mexican? Gay? Trans? Black?

If not, then what does religion mean at all?

I am told repeatedly that Moise’s wife and daughters must be coerced, oppressed, abused, and intimidated for them to remain in the grip of the Patriarchy. Still, I have found the opposite is true – they are mostly content, fulfilled, strong, freely spoken, and endearing.

It’s not a life I would want or want my daughter to live, but I admire these women and respect their choices. They are worth loving in every way.

I have repeatedly – every day – been told how the Amish abuse dogs, engage in unscrupulous puppy mills, work their horses to death and kill them without mercy.

This is not what I have found.  It is simply not the reality of what I see.

The Amish, who do not believe in veterinary medicine, have cared for animals for hundreds of years and have their own ways of treating them mercifully and well. And differently than most of us.

That is not a crime and should not ever be.

If the Amish culture is a Patriarchy, then all of its women must be victims, and the fathers especially cannot be loved or befriended. That is how we look at the other worlds.

If an Amish father chooses to heal his wounded dog’s paw using his own tools and medicines, then he must be hated as an abuser of animals.

When I wrote how Moise saved a dog’s life by staunching her bleeding and cleansing the wound before she bled to death after a saw severed an artery and took a paw off, I was accused – as I am daily – of liking him too much.

Of having lost my judgment and my often remarked on skepticism.

I have become an enabler of evil. Perhaps if they treated me better, I could listen to them more gracefully.

The problem isn’t just that I’m right or wrong. The problem is that I love the wrong people and that this has caused me to lose my judgment and perspective, even my mind.

As Dorothy Marsh says, she just doesn’t get it.

So I will try once more to explain it. To me, it’s simple to grasp.

Dorothy Marsh wrote, “I do think that You are letting Romanticized view of the Amish Influence your thinking and writing. Think about what you wrote above –he took her to the barn and Cut Off her dangling paw. Would you condone that way of treating an injury from anyone other than the Relatively backward Amish? No anesthesia — he just hacked off her leg! If you think this is an acceptable treatment for an injury of that magnitude, you have let this Amish bromance get really out of hand in your own head. I just don’t get it.”

Let’s deconstruct this.  And I sure have thought about it.

Dorothy knows nothing of how the dog Tina was treated or how much she was bleeding, or what tools or skills were brought to her full recovery in less than two days. Moise loves this dog, and I trust him to care for her well.

It’s not for me to tell him how to do that. I’m not his God or anybody else’s.

I see Tina almost daily; she is healthy, content, and much loved. To me, the injury was handled well and happily and with a good outcome. So I don’t need to make it mine.

I’m sorry, Dorothy, but I want to know more while you want to judge more.

What I am eager to learn from the Amish – and what I am beginning to learn – is how to engage respectfully, even lovingly, with people who are different from me and make different choices about life.

The point isn’t that I am wanting to do everything they do; the point is that I want to do very little of what they do but still chose to remain friends and neighbors.

I don’t judge them or tell them how to live or what I  believe. I don’t assume that my way is superior to theirs, just because they believe in God and I don’t, or they are Patriarchal, or ride around buggies and wear funny clothes.

Dorothy  – and many others -think the Amish have caused me to lose my mind. But I think I may be just beginning to find it. Thinking will do that for me.

Because of what I write, my thinking and writing must have been compromised. This is a new kind of social bigotry.

I can’t simply be wrong (or right.)

My Amish “bromance” is just the latest popular word to ridicule men who dare to show their emotions or, God forbid, speak of loving men. If they show a little emotion, they are ridiculed. I’m wise to it.

Would any woman choose or dare –  to use such a demeaning term to describe a friendship with another woman?

The Golden Rules are fading from our consciousness; they are replaced with something that seems wanting and cold to me: the new sin-loving someone different.

It is easier to understand why the country is being torn apart. We are diverse people, many of us different from everyone else.

Without a common moral compass, someone is thus hating everyone or being hated by someone.

 Jesus Christ and the Judeo-Christian ethic both promoted the idea that what we loved most was our differences. Now they are what we hate the most.

This is no big news to refugees, women, gay or trans people, or Mexicans and South Americans desperate to feed their families and escape violence by violating our borders. Unfortunately, we are now a country that hates them and persecutes them for fleeing to us.

Fortunately, the Amish got here when they did. They could never get in now.

The Judeo-Christian ethic always seemed stuffy and hypocritical to me in a world with so much prejudice and persecution.

The term first appeared in a book review by George Orwell in 1939, with the phrase, “the Judeo-Christian scheme of morals.” The term followed decades of work by Jewish and Christian leaders trying to create a liberal value system that emphasized our common ground.

The world is more complex and diverse now; there are many more elements to the world’s spirituality than Christians and Jews.

But I always loved the idea that the foundation of morals and law in the United States shared one between different people with different values and beliefs.

The Judeo-Christian ethic is in shambles now, but so are our current values and morals. Maybe it’s time for a new one.

I’m not a lover of nostalgia, the old days were not always better than the new ones.

But at least we knew morality and cruelty and greed were wrong, and not to be celebrated. No politician dared to go out in public and lie as nakedly as ours are doing.

We know now that the Judeo-Christian ethic failed many people in many ways – African Americans, gays, the poor, and women especially.

But it gave people of goodwill – and many political and religious leaders – something to unite around, something to aspire to.

It was just too white, too male.

Martin Luther King and John Lewis embraced this ethic and used it to broaden support for civil rights.

Even if we didn’t always do right, there was a sense of common values around what the right thing was. To me, the passing of this common ethic has created a giant sinkhole, good is just something for everyone to fight about, not a mountain to climn.

The idea of a common ground of moral values is the one that catches my eye and my heart. My writing about the Amish and the very mixed response tells me that the Amish are important.

The Amish have found common ground, love their neighbors, and treat people the way they wish to be treated. That’s why I love them and love writing about them.

That’s why I will keep on writing about them until they ask me to stop.

“Linda: Jon, I think getting to know this family has been good for you. I feel it when you write about them. I can feel your happiness in your writing.”

“Pamela: Jon, I am fascinated by your new neighbors. I look forward every day to learning something new about their lives. We should all follow their example and work as hard and hold family as close…the world would be a much better place. Thank you so much for sharing.”

The messages I’m getting lately are a lot sweeter than the ones I got when I wrote briefly about politics throughout the presidential election.

I’m surprised, and pleasantly so, by the generous and enthusiastic response I’ve gotten to my writing about Moise and his Amish family.

I do loving writing about them, and Linda and Pamela have gotten me to wonder why.

The interest in this writing is as deep or deeper as the response to my writing about the presidential election next year and much more positive.

I don’t get death threats every day or get called all those hateful names.

The response has been nourishing and very positive. I appreciate it.

That is a refreshing and much-needed change for me after 2020.

And perhaps also for others.

There is so much anger and suspicion between Americans who seem so contemptuous of people who are different.

Some people say it is refreshing to see me connect with a family that could hardly be more different from Maria and me.

But for me, I think the happiness you are sensing goes deeper than that.

Linda’s comment caught me off guard, and I thought about it all day. I know what she means – I love writing about Moise and his family, and that certainly makes me happy – but I don’t know that “happy” is the right word for it.

People sometimes forget that I am a professional writer, and it brings professional writers joy to write about interesting things that interesting people want to read about.

We are different from other people, just like the Amish are. We don’t always know why we are drawn to write about.

If I love what I am writing and you love what I am writing, yes, that makes me happy. So does praise.

I get plenty of criticism, but I am a simple human. Praise makes me happy.

One woman wrote to say I shouldn’t write about the family; it was invasive and made her feel creepy.

I replied by asking her what it was she thought I did for a living, plant potatoes? Finding interesting people and writing about them is what writers do, and yes, of course, it can be exploitive at times.

Beyond that,  I was most surprised to find that I had such a powerful connection to Moise and his children. I don’t know his wife Barbara as well yet; I hope to over time.

Writing about this family has been good for me.

It is a challenging story to tell. I intend to get it right.

I love having children around me and in my life, which has not been possible for a long time. My daughter and granddaughter live in Brooklyn, and while we love each other, we cannot be a regular part of each other’s lives.

The presence of these Amish children in my life is as remarkable as it was unsuspected. I am very fond of them, and we have connected with one another.

A couple of months later, I am now the children’s provider and guide for the books they are so eager to read.  This gives me a continuing role – but a very bounded one – with this family.

This was a hole in their lives. As an author, I could help to fill it.

Ironically, books have special importance in Amish families, as there is no TV, computer, Ipad or Iphone, no radio,  Facebook, games or Instagram.

Amish families are busy and frugal, and disciplined –  they rarely buy new things. The families believe deeply in God, and when they need something, they believe God will provide it.

The children needed books, and this strange neighbor appeared out of the mist to bring them books. This is accepted as the will of God.

It does get you thinking.

But this is 2021 in America, paranoia and mistrust are another pandemic,  and I am never alone with any of the girls and make sure their parents know precisely what I’m doing – what books, etc. Trust always takes some time to build, and it should. Both ways.

Moise also needs a neighbor and a friend in order to live his life and adhere to his beliefs. None of us can really live alone – it takes a village.

Moise needs people to make calls, guide him through a new environment, encourage his hard work and when necessary, be his emergency telephone and driver. And yes, to buy that lumber, those donuts, and pies.

He has also made it clear that if I ever need help, I should ask. I believe that is genuine.

I understand that the nature of the Arish culture is that close and continuous relationships occur within the family, not outside of it.

I know Moise, and I are very different, but we do share some powerful beliefs:

We both believe in the teachings of Christ when it comes to forgiveness and helping the poor and the vulnerable. The Amish are called to a life of simplicity, compassion, community, and family.

Lots of Christians talk the talk, but the Amish walk the walk.

Moise paid me the great compliment of telling me I was someone he could depend on, and he is not someone to flatter or manipulate anyone.

He says what he means.

I hope I have learned to do the same thing. We respect one another, rather than love one another in the nature of warm-blooded American friendships among men.

We are both doers.

When we set out to do it, we do it, and if we can’t do it, we try to do it again and again until we do it. We don’t have time for bullshit or small talk.

I think we both understand that the Amish and the “English” can’t be typical friends. We won’t hang out for no special reasons or spend a lot of time with each other.

Moise makes every minute of his life count, and jawboning with people to pass the time is not productive. All over my town, I see men chatting with one another idly.

I will never see an Amish person do that.

They don’t do that with outsiders, but they do have “Special Friends” and special relationships.

Moise is open and outgoing.  And proud of what he has done. He is eager to show me his work.

He had close friends with outsiders in his former community; the Amish sometimes seek “Special Friends.”

We won’t be hanging out in bars together, or watching sporting events, or going fishing, or yakking on the phone all night, or even for a minute

.

We will each occasionally talk about the progress Moise is making, the obstacles he faces, and solutions to the problems he encounters. He does not show his emotions to me, and I don’t show mine to him.

People who know the Amish say outsiders never get too close to them.

Yet Moise has taken the trouble to come to my house, look carefully through my blog and get to know in a way most people can’t or won’t. I have no expectations or illusions. We live in different worlds.

I do know a number of people who have developed close and very beautiful friendships with individual Amish people. There is no one single way to be Amish.

Many are different from one another.

I live in the now, and for now, the relationship has meaning to me. And yes, it does make me happy, if that’s the right word for it.

The first connection I made was to Moise’s sons and daughters. They are not like most of the other “English,” as the Amish call us, children that I meet.

When I first met five of Moise’s daughters at the family’s baked goods table (no shed then), they looked me in the eye, asked my name, and they asked me what I did, and I told them I was a neighbor and also a writer. They all lit up and told me how much they loved to read.

I meet “English” children all the time as bright as any child anywhere, yet many have not learned how to have a simple conversation with another human that takes place in person.

When I asked them what they were reading, the Amish girls said they had no books at the moment.  They said they would love to have more books.

One thing led to the other, and with Moise’s approval, I started bringing them books I had carefully chosen. Moise and Barbara loved the idea of my bringing books, and I chose the titles and subjects carefully.

The children are homeschooled and well-schooled; they read easily and well. Every time I went to the shed or their home, they were waiting for me, eager to talk about the books and gives me honest assessments of how they felt about them.

If they loved a particular author, they would ask if they could read more. For every book I brought, they offered me cash or a trade-in for food. I say no, I balk at the idea of taking money from children for books. I can’t do it.

I brought books for the boys in the family, they were also avid readers, and we went over books and titles.

My program has extended to three other Amish families, the girls, and boys of my neighbors.

I stop by whenever I see them out in the food stand and talk about the books they love, the books they didn’t love, and the books they would like to get.

Like the ancient vendor hauling sweets, they come running and yelling my name when I show up with my books. I love it. That sure makes me happy.

I’m getting good at it. Hardy Boys (Black Stallion) for the boys, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Amish romances and other women writers for the girls, picture books for young children.

I’m getting books now for Moise and Barbara as well; they have very little time to read. I just brought a bunch of Wendell Berry books to Moise; he’s reading the poetry first.

A week or so ago, Moise and Barbara stopped at our house.

They wanted to meet us, see our farm and farm animals, and ask me to be available to be called if anyone in their extended family, which covers many miles, dies suddenly.

I’m to take the call, write down the details, come up to their house and get them up no matter what I had to do, so they could make arrangements to get to the funeral, wherever it was.

It was a big deal and an honor to be chosen for that. We talked together for several hours, and two days later, Moise and I talked for three or four more.

But I’m not sure friendship can go much deeper than that. It’s pretty nice right where it is, and I don’t really need for it to go any further. My life is full of love and meaning.

I don’t quite understand the connection I have formed with Moise, but it has touched me.

My own minority sense of it is that Amish people are people, just like me, just like you. We all deal with sickness and death, quarrelsome families, children who need help.

I believe that is where friendships come from: when people discover they are not alone to feel things, we all human beings in human bodies with the same organs and idiosyncrasies.

Moise and I are very different.

I respect that his friendships and families within the country are the people closes to him and that I will always stand outside this enduring reality. I’m no sure he comprehends what a blogger is.

I respect his integrity, his energy, his tough and unrelenting sense of work.

He has transformed his property overnight into a thriving farm, lumberyard, and food market. I am happy to be telling his story.

Moise’s children are remarkable, a living and sobering testament to the value of growing up away from screens and social media. I hope I can watch them grow and find their favorite books and authors.

Moise is a person of deep and genuine faith, something I respect in a world of charlatans and hypocrites where rich TV pastors and pretend Christians talk of Jesus and compassion but have nothing in common with Jesus and show no compassion.

I think Moise is the real deal.

Such a friendship is naturally and profoundly bounded, we couldn’t get too close if we tried, and I don’t think either of us has a reason to do that or the time.

I think what really makes me happy, Linda, is the gift of knowing this fascinating family landing almost on my doorstep and drawing me into their lives.

I became a writer many years ago because I am fascinated by people and cultures that are different from me and mine. In America, sadly, many people fear and hate the “different” and the “other.”

I never have, probably because I am the “different” and the “other.” They make for the very best stories.

Writing about such people has always given me joy.

Mose and his family are a rich story. People know of them but know little about them.

I have been invited into their lives up a point to watch the way this family pulls its new life together, puts itself to hard work, and moves forward.

For me, this is a great adventure in writing and story-telling, the twin elements of my creative life (pictures too.) That might be what Pamela is wondering.

I can’t wait to find out.

This is my life,  what I have lived for the past half-century.

I’m just not sure that in the final analysis, it goes any deeper than that. But we’ll see.

Thanks for the question, though got my head spinning.

My grandmother spoke Yiddish and knew little or no English. But we managed to communicate in the ways of people who loved one another.

She did not live to see my blogging and social media world, but it would have been familiar to her in many ways.

The yenta is a formidable figure in Jewish History. Yentas consider everything their business, and no one is safe from criticism or unwanted advice.

Today, yentas are once again a regular feature of my life.

My grandmother complained about the yenta-kvetches all the time; she was always fending off busybodies, intrusive relatives, and people who love to find and share bad news and gossip.

She prided herself on minding her own business and refusing to judge other people (except Richard Nixon.)

I learned to identify these people because when they came over to my grandmother’s house, they would talk excitedly in Yiddish, and when they live, she would roll her eyes, spit three times to ward off the evil eye, and turn to me and sigh:

“Eiyee,” Johny, a yenta kvetch!”

Yentas don’t follow most rules of etiquette. They are loud, intrusive, and refuse to be criticized, corrected,  or deterred. I think the yenta’s I knew considered themselves holy extensions of God, tasked with setting others straight.

My grandmother said some other things, but I suspect they were curses in Yiddish; I didn’t understand them, she refused to translate them.

The yenta-kvetch is a yenta with some sting and a chip on her (mostly they were women then, but online, there are plenty of men embracing this work now) shoulder.

In fact, “yenta-kvetch” are among the very few Yiddish sayings or phrases that I picked up as a child and remembered.

Both terms are in the dictionary.

A yenta is loosely defined as “blabbermouth” or “gossip.” Synonyms for yenta are circulator, gossip, gossiper, newsmonger, tale-teller, talebearer, tell tales.

A “kvetch” is a habitual complainer: synonyms are beach, bitch, bleat, carp, complain, crab fuss, gripe, grizzle, grouch, grouse, growl, mumble, moan, whimper, whine, wail.

I was never very good at languages, and the women in my family would always switch to Yiddish when the conversation got interesting so the children would have no idea what was happening in their lives or the world.

My grandmother often spoke in her own tight circle about what has ironically become one of the deepest and richest strains on the World Wide Web: the “Yenta-Kvetch.”

I never expected to see them when I grew up and moved away. They are forbidding. They are multiplying like mice online of all places.

They tell me what to wear, what to buy, what to feed our animals, how to treat Maria. They correct my spelling errors, root out typos, ask me what brand I bought, and then tell me it is too expensive or flawed in some way.

There are political yentas, animal rights yentas (on the nasty side of yentahood), livestock yentas, food and marriage yentas, and life yentas.

The yenta-kvetches are the ones I fight the most with, the ones telling me I am not nice enough, or what to write, or how their sister Sarah died the most horrible disease from diabetes.

A yenta kvetch from Minnesota wrote to send me a long and detailed list of every person she ever knew who had toes and feet removed because they didn’t take care of their diabetes. “Pay attention to this,” she scolded. Yentas are not the most sensitive people.

I used to think of people like that as trolls or busybodies, but in recent weeks the voice of the yenta stirred up the sometimes faint memories of my youth. Now, they are no longer a Jewish issue; we all belong to them online.

They include every faith and belief system, the only thing they all have in common really is social media.

I hear from them almost every day.

They did something my grandmother never did; they have embraced new technology. In some ways, it was made for them; I feel they secretly helped create it, they may have been looking for was to grow and dominate.

Social media is ubiquitous, and so are the Yenta Kvetchers,  the meddlers and complainers of the modern world.

When I bought my handy snow blower, the yentas told me it was not powerful enough; it was too expensive, it wouldn’t work in upstate New York. Get the gasoline kind, wrote one, her Uncle Sam loved his before he keeled over of a heart attack.

Yenta-Kvetches online can be men or women. Just yesterday, Steven Zagres posted this message about a claim I made that a post of mine had gone viral: “A few thousand shares on Facebook is “going viral on the Internet.” Wow. Get over yourself, Jon!”

Steven was correct. When I started writing online, a few thousand shares meant going viral; It takes much more than that now. I corrected it. Wow, indeed.

I’m not sure how to get over myself; it’s the only self I have.

Steven could have simply pointed out my mistake to me, but he also had to complain about it, as if he had been victimized somehow by my ego. That is the voice of the yenta- kvetch. All of my foibles and mistakes are personal, aimed at them.

As my grandmother pointed out, they never have anything good to say about anybody. They don’t do compliments.

But it was the tone that gave Steven away. He is a kvetch, if not a yenta. But you don’t need to be Jewish any longer to be a yenta-kvetch; you just have to have WI-FI.

The yenta has long been associated with Jews. On the sixth season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David called Ted Danson, a “yenta.” Jewish children are often told not to be such a yenta when they ask grownups too many questions.

As I am wont to do, I started searching online and in my books for some yenta history. Of course, there was some.

I searched online through the most definitive Yiddish dictionary of all — Dr. Uriel Weinrieich’s Modern English-Yiddish Dictionary. He defines a “yenta” as a vulgar/sentimental woman. Another Yiddish dictionary offered five definitions for yenta: a gossipy woman, a blabbermouth, someone who can’t keep a secret, a vulgar and ill-mannered woman, a shrew, or a man who acts as the above women do.

It’s true that the yentas who e-mail me are not above cursing, but I can’t say most are vulgar.

Wikipedia had a completely different sense of the term.

They say “Yenta”  is a Yiddish woman’s given name, a variant of the name Yentl, ultimately thought to be derived from the Italian word gentile, meaning “noble” or “refined.” The name, they said, has entered what is called “Yinglish” – i.e., become a word referring to a woman who is gossip or a busybody.

Jewish historians say the use of the word yenta as a word for “busybody” came about after the humorist Jacob Adler, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward in the 1920s and 30’s, wrote a series of comic sketches featuring the character Yente Telebende a henpecking wife.

Jewish or not, if you are online much,  you will hear from them, or have heard from them already.

I may be one of the first bloggers to associate the term yenta with the rapid rise of busybodies and scolds and critics on the Internet. If Jacob Adler could change the content of the term, maybe I can too, because the definition of “yenta” sure fits many of the people I hear from regularly.

My theory is that every family has a yenta-kvetch, a grandma, aunt, neighbor, uncle, or sister somewhere around. Social media is a gift from God to the yenta-kvetch, for many tears of modding and whining and complaining.

Here are my give-aways for identifying the yenta-kvetch:

The yenta-kvetch loves to give advice, but it is almost always bad—bad advice about dogs, bad advice about food, bad advice about the cost of things, dreadful advice about health care.

I realized recently that if I followed the advice of the yentas closely, every person or animal I know and love would be dead many times over.

People with reasonable advice offer it as a suggestion; the yenta-kvetch only gives commands:

“You must worm your lamb immediately!” (The vet says, “worming is not usually recommended for the Northeast. I’d wait on that.”

The yentas came after me yesterday when I wrote that I was going to a manicurist on Monday.

Diabetics, they said, should never go to a manicurist, they didn’t know what they were doing and could hurt my feet. Many of them were diabetics who had taken a hospital course on diabetes.

I resisted the urge to invite them to come and trim my feet. Or to tell them a doctor had suggested my going. We’ll see how it goes.

One yenta told me my dog food (she saw in a pantry photographed)  killed her neighbor Sophie’s chihuahua,”get rid of it immediately.” One kvetch scolds me for taking Zinnia for rides in the car; she could suffocate if I closed the windows, I am told.

One e-mailed me to suggested her favored diet for diabetics. She told me to use it every day. I showed it to my doctor; she said the diet would kill me in a week or two.

Then, there are the correction yenta-kvetches. They kind of work for me. I use a proofreading program that makes more mistakes than I do, and I am Dyslexic.

So there will be some typos. And there is no shortage of pissed-off retired English Teachers on the Internet, and along with the yenta kvetches, I am covered.

I don’t really even need my proofreading software. My typos don’t get to live long. The yentas of the word kill them.

I must say that yenta-kvetches are good, if not necessarily nice, editors. They seem to be well-educated and meticulous. They read every word. I exploit them when I can.

Often yentas fight for correction credit. One woman lambasted me for fixing a typo without giving her credit for being the first one to tell me. She insisted it was her correction I followed.

Also, beware of the yenta’s Uncle Harry and Aunt Beulah stories. Their experiences rarely have any revelation to your experiences. But don’t tell the yentas that.