Today is Friday, the 13th. There are superstitions around Friday, the 13th. Do we Jews have superstitions? (Knock on wood) we don’t. Oh, silly me, of course we do, and we adopted many from the centuries we lived in Eastern Europe among people who were particularly superstitious (pooh pooh pooh). Does that mean that our shtetl-dwelling ancestors would have been superstition-free had they not lived in that environment? That’s doubtful inasmuch as “guests” of “host” countries gobble up so many of their customs, good and bad, and superstitions were among them (kena hora).

“Knock on wood” is not a Jewish antidote; it is a decidedly Christian one, the wood representing the cross. Of course, since most of us don’t know that, and those who do dismiss it because saying it is a virtually automatic response, we’re quick to do just that, i.e. knock on wood. But we go one step beyond. Since it’s hard to find wood nowadays, we’ll knock on formica, steel, or anything around us and still say, “Knock on wood” (unbeschrien).

For those of you who would never knock on wood now that you know the Christian origin, fear not. Scholars who waste their time* studying this tell us that it is of pagan origin. People believed that spirits lived in trees and by knocking on wood they would scare the spirits from leaving their abode to bother them.

Now a quick word about pooh pooh pooh, kena hora and unbeschrien: spitting three times is the action taken when hearing about some tragedy that you do not want to have repeated. As “they” say, its origin is unknown. Kena hora is the contraction of k’ayin ha-ra, “no evil eye,” and unbeschrien means “Don’t say it aloud” in German.

Now you know.

(*You should also know that as Cultural Anthropology was my minor, Sociology having been my major, one of my favorite subjects was superstitions among various ethnic groups. I never considered it a “waste of time” pooh pooh pooh)