meshuggeners

So much of the book is heavy with meaning and counter-meaning, innuendo and awful implication, that translation would be a challenge even without its freight of rich consonantal Manchester Yiddish – its mitzvahs, shiksas, farshimelts, meshuggeners and yisgadals.

Guardian book club: Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson 2010

For the rest of us there was some serious catching up to be done and we weren’t going to manage that with meshuggeners like Manny Washinsky hanging around.

Kalooki Nights Howard Jacobson 2006