I am currently reading this book called Born to Kvetch, which Illy gave me as a present last time I was home. Check out this hilarious (and educational) passage:

As a final example of the areas into which religious imagery can extend, we can look at the phrases sheyne moyshe ve-arendlekh, beautiful little Moses-and-Aaronses. Inevitably preceded by the words zi hot, she has, the idiom means “stacked.” Moses and Aaron sneak in by way of the Song of Songs, which is recited every Friday in much of the Yiddish-speaking world and every Passover throughout the whole of the Jewish world, and was thus familiar to large numbers of people who were not especially scholarly. One of its verses reads: “Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies” (Song 4:5).

Since the time of Rabbi Akiva, every traditional commentary on the Song of Songs has been at pains to prove that it has nothing to do with erotic poetry or physical love. It is generally taken as an allegory, usually of God’s love for the Jews…

In his comments on the [verse] quoted, Rashi refers to the medresh on the Song of Songs: “Your two breasts, which give you suck. That is, Moses and Aaron.” The two things that sustain the Children of Israel are the law, as given by Moses, and the sacrifices performed by Aaron the High Priest and his descendants. Of course, there is no mention of any of this in the text, and generations of schoolboys have noticed the disjunction between what the words are saying and what grown-ups insist that they mean. Over and over again, kids—boys in this case—took the commnetary on its own terms, then extended those terms beyond the sacred page: now that we know what “breasts” really means, it “would be misleading—even false” to call any breasts “breasts.” Where the Boers were read into a text, Moses and Aaron are being read out of one. The commentary has been applied to the things described, not to the literary description of those things, but it has also kept its character as a commentary on a specific verse of the Bible. If the breasts of the woman in the Song of Songs are Moses and Aaron, then all women’s breasts are Moses and Aaron, and all the really good ones are beautiful Moses and Aarons—and now we know what Hooters will be called if the company ever goes kosher.

Not the entire book is this entertaining, but I am nevertheless enjoying it mightily.