There is an old joke that defines chutzpah better than any dictionary ever has. A boy murders his mother and father, and at the sentencing he begs the judge for mercy — on the grounds that he is now an orphan.
That, my friends, is chutzpah.
So what does chutzpah mean? People ask me this all the time, usually after they have heard their accountant or their cousin from Long Island use it, and they want the real answer, not the polite one. The polite one is “audacity.” The real one takes a little longer, and it tastes better with a story.
The Definition Nobody Quite Believes
If you look up what chutzpah means, you will get words like nerve, gall, audacity, brazenness. All true. All incomplete.
Here is the trouble. English has plenty of words for someone who pushes too far — pushy, brash, shameless. But every one of those words is a complaint. Chutzpah is not a complaint. Chutzpah is almost an award.
When my late friend Murray double-parked his Buick in front of the deli, walked in, ate a full pastrami sandwich, came out, and argued with the meter maid that she was the one inconveniencing him — that was not pushiness. That was a performance. We were all a little impressed. That is the secret ingredient the dictionary leaves out. Chutzpah comes with a sneaking admiration, even from the people it offends.
Where the Word Comes From
The word arrives in English through Yiddish, which borrowed it from Hebrew, where chutzpah (חֻצְפָּה) meant insolence — and not the flattering kind. In the old texts, it was an insult. A person with chutzpah was someone who had forgotten his place.
You pronounce it with a throat-clearing sound at the front, the ch like you are trying to dislodge a piece of bagel. KHOOTS-pah. If you say it like “chootspa,” a grandmother somewhere feels a chill and does not know why.
Somewhere along the centuries, the word softened and sharpened at the same time — it got funnier. By the time it reached the kitchens of the Lower East Side, chutzpah had become the thing your uncle had too much of and your nephew did not have enough of. It is one of those Yiddish words that does heavy lifting no English word wants to do, and I have written before about a whole shelf of them worth knowing.
Chutzpah Is Not Confidence
People mix these up, and it drives me a little crazy.
Confidence is knowing you can do the thing. Chutzpah is doing the thing whether or not you can, and daring anyone to stop you.
Confidence asks for the raise after a good year. Chutzpah asks for the raise after getting caught napping in the supply closet — and brings a note about the importance of rest for productivity.
A confident man returns the soup because it is cold. A man with chutzpah returns the soup, asks for a fresh bowl, finishes it, and then tells the waiter the second bowl was also not quite right but he is willing to let it go this once, as a favor.
You see the difference. One is about ability. The other is about audacity wearing a very nice coat.
The Two Flavors: Sour and Sweet
Here is what took me seventy years to understand. There are two kinds of chutzpah, and they are not the same animal.
There is the sour kind — the orphan in the joke, Murray and the meter maid. Selfish nerve. Taking up space that is not yours. This is the chutzpah your grandmother warned you about while simultaneously admiring it in her brother.
And then there is the sweet kind. The chutzpah of the little tailor who looks at a king and says, why not me. The chutzpah of Abraham, in the Torah, arguing with God Himself over the fate of a city — bargaining Him down like a man haggling over a used couch. Now that is nerve with a soul in it. A holy stubbornness.
The sweet kind of chutzpah is what gets a frightened person to apply for the job, ask for the date, start the business, write the book at age sixty. It is the inner voice that says: the worst they can do is say no, and no never killed anybody.
My Grandmother Had It in Spades
My grandmother — may her memory be a blessing — stood four foot eleven in her good shoes and was afraid of absolutely nothing.
I remember the smell of her kitchen, schmaltz and onions and the steam off the chicken soup fogging the window in winter. And I remember her marching into the butcher’s, pointing at a chicken behind the glass, and informing the butcher — a man twice her size — that the bird was last week’s and he knew it.
He argued. She did not raise her voice. She simply stood there, pocketbook clamped under one arm, and waited, with the patience of a woman who has all day and all of eternity behind her. The butcher folded. He always folded. She got a fresh chicken and a small apology, and on the walk home she winked at me and said, “Zalman, never let them sell you last week’s chicken. In anything.”
That was chutzpah. Not mean. Not loud. Just an unshakable refusal to be quietly cheated. I have spent my whole life trying to live up to that little woman and her pocketbook. A lot of my funny stories, if I am honest, are really stories about her.
How to Have Chutzpah Without Becoming a Nudnik
A nudnik, for those keeping score, is a pest — a person who annoys you on purpose and for no reward. The line between chutzpah and being a nudnik is thinner than a slice of deli rye, so let me offer you what wisdom I have scraped together.
First, the sweet kind of chutzpah punches up, never down. You argue with the king, the butcher, the boss, the bureaucracy. You do not bully the waiter or the new kid. Nerve aimed at someone weaker than you is not chutzpah. It is just being a bully, which has no charm at all.
Second, real chutzpah is willing to look foolish. The man who asks the dumb question in the meeting, the woman who raises her hand and says “I don’t understand, explain it again” — that takes more nerve than any clever remark. The fear of looking foolish keeps more people small than any actual danger ever has.
Third, you have to be able to laugh — especially at yourself. Chutzpah without humor curdles into arrogance fast. The whole Jewish tradition of finding the funny inside the holy runs on this; it is half of what I scribble about over in the Kabbalah Kronicles.
So, What Does Chutzpah Really Mean?
After all that, here is my best answer.
Chutzpah is the audacity to act as though the rules that shrink everyone else do not entirely apply to you — used for ill by the orphan in the joke, and used for good by the tailor, the grandmother, and the man who finally writes his book.
It is the most useful trait a timid person can borrow and the most dangerous one a selfish person can own. The whole art of a good life, it turns out, is knowing which kind you are reaching for.
So go ask for the thing. Return the cold soup. Apply for the job that scares you. Just — and this is the whole secret — do it with a wink, and never aim it at someone smaller than you.
And if you want more of this kind of nonsense dressed up as wisdom, come read a few more of my Jewish stories, or take home a copy of King of Shabbos and read it on the porch where the neighbors can see the cover. Now that would take a little chutzpah. I think you have got it in you.