riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish child, was propounded to me by my father: "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?" I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity gave up. "A herring," said my father. "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!" "So hang it there." "But a herring isn't green!" I protested. "Paint it." "But a herring isn't wet." "If it's just painted it's still wet." "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring doesn't whistle!!" "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard." John Updike's final novel in the Rabbit series, Rabbit at Rest, copies Rosten's joke from the entry on tsuris. Translations This book has a German translation published by Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 11. 2002 and 4. 2003 : Jiddisch. Eine kleine Enzyklopädie, a French one published by Éditions Calmann-Lévy , Les Joies du Yiddish and a Czech one published by Academia in 1998, Jidiš pro radost, , republished by Leda in 2013, . See also List of English words of Yiddish origin Yiddish words used in English Yinglish References 1968 non-fiction books Yiddish Books about Jews and Judaism Yiddish Jewish culture Jewish comedy and humor