The expression “oy vey” (“oh, woe!”) has been used for generations to express sorrow, frustration, or pain. The Yiddish expression “oy vey” has reached far beyond the Semitic languages, and it is an expression in so many languages.
About twenty years ago, while listening to the Torah reading of Parashas Balak, I noticed what appears to be the ancient and holy source of this expression, in our parashah. The Torah states: אוֹי מִי יִחְיֶה מִשֻּׂמוֹ אֵ־ל “oy mi yichyeh misumo Kel” (“...Woe, who shall live when G-d does this?”) (Bamidbar 24:23). Onkelos translates these words as: “vai le'chayavaya de'yeichun kad yaavid Elaka yas ilein” (“woe to the wicked who shall live when G-d performs these things”). This well-known Jewish expression is, in fact, a combination of the Biblical Hebrew word “oy” together with the Aramaic word “vay” from Targum Onkelos. I presented this idea before my revered teacher, the Gaon Rabbi Dovid Cohen, shlita. He liked it and included it in his work Yiddish: The Holy Language (Addenda to the 5765 edition).
The word “oy”, and the expression “oy vey,” have always been distinctively Jewish expressions of sorrow and frustration; a heartfelt cry of pain over many hardships, great and small, that have befallen us throughout the generations, including tragedies. But sometimes “oy vey” is used humorously. The expression has become one of our means of survival, a sigh that allows us to release our pain and continue onward.
There is a profound irony in the fact that the wicked Bilam—who intended that his prophecies serve as curses, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu transformed them into blessing, is the one who introduced the word “oy” into our holy Torah. The word “oy” appears one other time in the Torah, in the previous parashah: “oy lecha Moav” (“woe is to you, Moav”), where it is attributed to the poets of Moav which some say was composed by Bilam. Thus, Bilam is the one who brought the two expressions of sorrow, “oy” and “oy [vey],” into the Torah.
Just as Hashem transformed Bilam's curses into blessings, so may it be His will that all of our cries of “oy” likewise be transformed into blessing. Indeed, the gematria of “oy” is seventeen, the numerical value of the word “tov” (“good”). May Hashem transform all our “oy” into “tov.” Amen.
