“A Gutn Robot, Ver Ken Gefinen?”
This movie takes place right before the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Nomi tells Moby that he can prepare for the holidays by being a good person — well, a good robot — referring to the traditional idea that the weeks leading up to the High Holidays are a special time of reflection and action. Their conversation reminds her of a line from Proverbs, to which she alludes with a smile and a robot-themed twist. She asks rhetorically: “?אַ גוטן ראָבאָט, װער קען געפֿינען” A good robot, who can find?
The verse from Proverbs (31:10) that she is thinking of is the opening verse of a poem praising an eyshes-khayil, a woman of valor:
The entire poem is known as Eyshes Khayil and is sung by some on Friday nights at the Shabes dinner table, so this specific verse would be quite familiar to those with that custom.
The line that Nomi adapts — אַן אשת־חיל, װער קען געפֿינען? — is from the Yiddish translation of Proverbs by Yehoyesh-Shloyme (Solomon) Blumgarten, known by his pen name Yehoyesh. Born in 1872 in what is now Lithuania, eventually emigrating to New York City, Yehoyesh was a Yiddish-language poet, writer, and scholar. He is best known for his masterful translation of the entire Bible (Tanakh) into a modern literary Yiddish that was deeply rooted in the long Jewish tradition of translating and interpreting the biblical text. When Yehoyesh’s Tanakh was published in the 1920s it was greeted with enthusiasm both by secular and religious readers as an extraordinary work of translation and a major contribution to the Yiddish-language canon.
So behind Nomi’s allusion to the line from Proverbs is a broad web of cultural connections: from the ancient language of Tanakh to Yehoyesh’s transcendant early twentieth century translation to the widespread custom of singing Eyshes Khayil at the Shabes table.
