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In Sholom Aleichem's short story "A Lost Lag B'Omer", there's this paragraph:

We called the young primer students the Sea Cats because they were short little tots, just learning the aleph-beys. To those of us already studying the Torah these little kids looked like flies or ants. We fancied we could demolish them with one huff. We felt certain that the minute they saw us armed from head to toe with swords, bows and arrows, and popguns, they would surely kick up their heels and run for the hills. Such stout warriors as we Torah students could not be dismissed lightly. The tiny primer tots were scared to death of us, afraid of even setting foot within sight of us. We Torah students were nothing to trifle with.
Actually, we had never fought the Sea Cats.
(translated by Curt Leviant, 1968)

Why the term "Sea Cats", though? The explanatory sentence mentions flies or ants. What do sea cats have to do with being tiny? Is this a relic of translation, where the meaning is lost if it's not in Yiddish?

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  • This is likely a translation issue. The original Yiddish is ים-קאַטערס (yam-katars). Yam is indeed sea, but katars is not cats (that would be קאַץ - katz), nor is it ducks, as I've found in an older translation. I can find references to קאַטערס and ים-קאַטערס in other old texts, but no translations (and my own Yiddish is terrible). I don't know if this is an acceptable question on the Judaism SE, but you could at least find Yiddish speakers there.
    – Juhasz
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 17:50
  • The original is on page 82, here
    – Juhasz
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 17:51
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    In Hannah Berman's translation in the Library of Congress, she also uses "sea-cats" as her translation.
    – Mike
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 20:57
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    @Juhasz - I might ask my grandparents, they speak Yiddish to a certain extent.
    – Mithical ♦
    Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 16:21

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