Outrageously Funny Word Dictionary :: Jerusalem pea

👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully prickly little piece of late-night American swear vernacular. Prepare yourself—we're wading into a swamp of 20th-century weirdness here!

What exactly is a "Jerusalem Pea"? (Spoiler: Not what you think!) Now, the immediate assumption when someone throws out the phrase "bury your head in a Jerusalem pea" is, understandably, that it's about some sort of ridiculously oversized, aggressively green legume originating somewhere vaguely around the Balfour Declaration. Nope! Absolutely not. 100% false. Here’s how we actually get to this rather alarming idiom: During the early and mid-20th century (specifically, the late 40s and early 50's) there was a very specific, somewhat disturbing, and frankly rather depressing fad in American juvenile delinquency. It involved young men writing letters of condolence addressed to… Jehรัฐ'ל־ירושלם . That’s "Yerushal’m, Yerushal’m," the Yiddish spelling for Jerusalem. You see, these kids were sending these letters, full of grief and mournful little declarations about how they missed a dearly beloved, almost always dead or missing, relative who had either perished in the Second World War, was stuck somewhere in the military, or, let's be brutally frank, had just been an utter disappointment. They would address it as if they