According to the dictionary,davka means ‘precisely,’ ‘just.’ But the way it is used in Israel, as seen in a number of solicited e-mails, implies more than the simple definition.

From: Linda Grant
Sent: 31 January 2005
To: [various]
Subject: davka
Dear Israeli friend,
I am conducting an investigation into the meaning and usages of the word davka, which has no English equivalent and is possibly an essential aspect of Israeliness. I would be grateful if you could provide me with an example of a sentence using this word, such as: “There are 50 items on the menu, but davka, they don’t have the one I want.”

There will be a prize. It is a pair of special 3D glasses that turn Christmas into Hanukka, purchased at the Jewish Community Center, Washington, D.C., and used, very effectively, on the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, New York City, proving, as we knew all along, that the anti-Semites are right and it’s really Jew York.

I look forward to your reply.

—Best wishes, Linda Grant

From: Daphna Baram
Sent: 01 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
Interesting. My friends in the army used to call me Davka, because it sounds a bit like Daphna, and because they claimed it goes well with my personality (my high school friends used to call me Bafla under a similar pretext).

The word davka has various uses, and I’ll try and demonstrate a few of them.

Benign: “I thought it would be a terribly boring party but davka it was nice.”

Stubborn or spiteful: “I was in a hurry and was late for my meeting so she davka took her time and spent an hour in the shower.”

Different grammatical use: “He was being all nice and charming and wanted to take me out for some fancy dinner, but I’ve done a davkaon him and stayed at home sulking.” (In Hebrew: “asiti lo davka.”)

Contemporary: “The fact that he says that he is the enemy of racism and fascism wherever they are davka proves that he is actually an enemy of Israel and therefore an anti-Semite.”

I think I qualify for the kind of glasses which turn Hanukka into Christmas, but keeps the jelly donuts and latkes in it.

—Dx

From: Ophir Wright
Sent: 01 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
“You’re not going to tell me who to marry, I’m davka marrying the shikse.”
“Out of all the fine Jewish girls in the world, you davka had to find a shikse.”
“You know, having met the shikse, she’s davka a mensch.”
“You bitch, did you have to davka bang my best mate.”
“I’ll do it davka, just to spite you.…”
A Jewish Bogart would have said, “Of all the bars, in all the world, you davka had to walk into this one.…”

—Ophir

From: Eric Silver
Sent: 01 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
Hi, Linda
I think davka is Aramaic. My favourite definition is an Israeli driving the wrong way down a one-way street— on purpose.
Luv, Eric

From: Yan
Sent: 01 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: davka contest
Hi there,
I shall enter the contest, probably. A remark re the following: “There are 50 items on the menu, but, davka, they don’t have the one I want.”

“But” does not go with “davka,” it is just not necessary. In Hebrew, the sentence will look approximately like this: “These momzers have 50 items on the menu, davka gefilte fish is out!”

Another use of davka—somebody does (to you) something opposite of the expected/desired. Children use it frequently in the following way: “I asked him to lend me his bicycle for a ride, and this bastard has done davka. Slapped me a few, too.”

—Yan

From: David Passow
Sent: 01 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
Dear Linda,
Davka is an Aramaic word (long before Israelis), which means “it so happens” or “it so happens that precisely….” Like so many terms from a different language, the nuance is almost as important as the literal meaning. Does this help?
Regards,

David Passow

From: Etgar Keret
Sent: 02 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
Hi, Linda
I went for a Polish mother-style sentence: “I davka liked your old haircut much better.” (:
Etgar

From: R. Domb
Sent: 05 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: davka
Dear Linda,
I could spend ages on researching “our davka” as it is referred to in a Hebrew Book for Beginners. However, it seems to me that the example you gave is a “Yiddish davka,” whereas Israelis use it more in a negative or defiant way: “I davka love him” means that he is not really worthy of love but nevertheless I love him. Well, I could go on, but you probably had by now inspired examples so I look forward to read one day what you wrote about it. Etgar will probably come up with something amusing, Lehitraot,

Risa

From: Hillel
Sent: 06 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: davka
Davka?! Well, let’s see.
As a sample sentence, how about, “I wanted his help, and he did me a davka” (i.e., he did the opposite of what I wanted). I don’t know why, but if I examine myself, I haven’t used the term lately, and I haven’t heard it used by others that much, either. These things are either In or Out—for those of us who are, consciously or unconsciously, Dedicated Followers of Fashion (the Kinks, right?). Or maybe it’s just a question of personality.

Is it an essential aspect of Israeliness? Davka, I’m not sure.

By the way, in the late ’60s, New Left pro-Israel progressive Jews in the States actually published a periodical called Davka, I believe based in California. If I’m not mistaken, the editor was Aaron Manheimer.

One of your Israeli friends,

Hillel

From: Linda Grant
Sent: 06 February 2005
To: [various]
Subject: Results of the davka contest
Dear Israeli friend,
I am pleased to announce the final results of the davka contest. Thank you for your entry, if you entered.

First prize, of a pair of 3D glasses that turn Christmas into Hanukka, goes to Ophir Wright of Rannana, Israel, for his simple, elegant entry which inserted the word into a well-known phrase or saying: “Of all the bars in all the world, she davka had to walk into mine.”

Highly commended: Etgar Keret, of Tel Aviv, Israel, who entered what he described as a Polish mother davka, which rendered some of the complex malevolence of the word: “I davka liked your old haircut much better.” Honorable mention to Daphna Baram of Oxford who pointed out that she davka was the kind of person who preferred a pair of X-ray glasses that turned Hanukka into Christmas. Thank you to David Passow of Jerusalem and Eric Silver, also of Jerusalem, for identifying the word as coming from the Aramaic.

Best wishes, Linda Grant

From: Ophir Wright
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Results of the davka contest
I’m davka pleased with the outcome of this. Thanks.

From: Judah Passow
Sent: 06 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Results of the davka contest
Rick’s (Humphrey Bogart) line in the scene is actually “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

—J.

From: Yan
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
CC: Ophir Wright
Subject: Results of the davka contest
In the best traditions of any rotten liberal democracy, I PROTEST!
The grounds for this PROTEST are:

1. The original invitation was sent to my work mail, against the regulations (as the mail with the results, too), and I just plain forgot to submit my entries.
2. Mr. Wright is cheating! I can’t prove it yet, but I feel it in my waters. You just wait till I find the source of his entry. Then it is 10 years of litigation.
3. I was busy.
4. How do you like them 1-3?

Cheers,Yan

 

From: Ophir Wright
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Yan; Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Results of the davka contest
To your item number one—mere technicality. You admit freely that you received the invitation. So, we can assume that you were either malingering away from work, or that you had jumped on this as a prepared excuse for not participating.

As to your item number two, I say ignorance of the classics is no excuse. I made the judge fully aware that my contribution was based on Bogart’s classic line. In fact, not many know that he was actually Jewish. In rehearsals, he just couldn’t refrain from placing the word “davka” in that most famous of lines (but it was edited out by the anti-Semite director). It fit the bill and the scene, which depicted the flight of two Jews escaping Nazi, and more importantly French (may their nation be wiped from the face of the earth) persecution.

Rick in this scene davka chooses to go against his own self-preservation, and love for a woman, which, if you think about it, results in a Double Davka.

Your item number three borders on the pathetic and brings to the surface your “bad loser” complex.

Item number four prompts me to note that in your entire protest appeal, you didn’t use the word davka once, which confirms my previously noted diagnosis of Latent Loser disorder. I would suggest that before you carry on with the rest of your life, do at least one of the following:

Consult with Mr. Peres, who’s worked out a comfort zone for his loser streak, and stop reading all those f—ing intellectual books you’re into.

Get in front of the box, you might learn something of real value.

And finally, davka because you are a loser, I love you.

—Ophir

From: Judah Passow
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Re: Results of the davka contest
Not only were Casablanca’s writers anything but anti-Semitic—they were very much Jewish. The script was written by the Epstein brothers (Phil and Julius) and Howard Koch (subsequently blacklisted during the McCarthy era for being part of the Jewish/communist conspiracy in Hollywood).

The film has davka an unimpeachable Jewish pedigree—the screenplay is based on an unproduced script for a play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s, written in 1940 by Murray Bennett, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York. Hal Wallis (born Harold Wallis in Chicago to Jewish immigrant parents) bought the script for Warner Bros. and produced the film. He gave the director’s job to Mike Curtiz, who, of course, was born Mihaly Kertesz in Hungary, the son of a prosperous Jewish family.

Why and how do I know all this? I spent four years sitting in a small screening theater on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston watching everything made in Hollywood between 1938 and 1956 and everything made in France between 1965 and 1969. I then wrote a senior thesis entitled “The Origins of Cinéma Vérité Camerawork in Film Noir,” which resulted in my being instantly hired by NBC as a cameraman and fired by them five months later when they got sick and tired of my evening news footage looking like outtakes from a Godard film all the time.<br
>—Judah

From: Ophir Wright
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Results of the davka contest
GOD Almighty, I was just being sarcastic and mixing fact and bullshit. I shudder at the thought that a huge distribution list of people will read it.

As far as J’s historical review is concerned, made my day really, what with all those Jooz involved.

—Ophir

From: Daphna Baram
Sent: 07 February 2005
To: Linda Grant
Subject: Re: Results of the davka contest
Thank you, I’m honored to be on the honorary list and think that Ophir won his glasses by right. I was also surprised to learn that Etgar knows my mother. I’ll have to investigate this next time I go home.

I’m very curious to know what you are up to, but I’ll wait patiently, and will just send you davka anecdotes whenever I get any. Last week I made a vain attempt to translate the concept, and called a friend of mine in an e-mail Anshel “to spite” Pfeffer. He was very offended and said that he doesn’t mind being called “davka,” but that “to spite,” so he said, “implies that I am a bad person.” He is English so I’m taking his word for it and will never attempt to play games with davka again….

—D.

Copyright © Linda Grant 2006, extracted from The People on the Street published by Virago @ $16.95.

Linda Grant is an author and journalist living in London. Her book, The People on the Street:
A Writer’s View of Israel, will be available in the United States in the spring through the Independent Publishers Group.