On the Interpretation of Kebabchik

Ever since Freud’s pioneering investigation of dreams, we have known how capable the unconscious mind is of puns, complex verbal allusions, and intricate word play. But can dreams also put this ability to use in performing arithmetical calculations that most of us would have difficulty doing in our heads when awake? As one says in Yiddish, hert a mayse: Listen to a story.

I was chatting not long ago with an American-born friend living in Israel. “You know,” he said, “I had a dream last night that I can’t make any sense of. In it, I’m reading a memoir by an American author who describes a course he took in college with a famous professor. Now and then, he writes, this professor would interrupt the class he was teaching and say, ‘Let’s kebabchik.’ That meant something like, ‘Let’s just enjoy ourselves now.’ That was my whole dream—or at least as much of it as I remember.”

“Kebabchik?” I asked.