Chutzpah Chutzpah Chutzpah () is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word "" (), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation but the form which entered English through Ameridish has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in film, literature, and television. The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has. In Hebrew, "chutzpah" is used indignantly, to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior. In traditional
Beyond Chutzpah Beyond Chutzpah Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History is a book by Norman G. Finkelstein published by the University of California Press in August 2005. Finkelstein's doctoral dissertation was to disassemble a book by Joan Peters, "From Time Immemorial" (1984), which claimed that Palestine had been largely empty in the early 20th century, and that both Jewish and Arab ethnic groups were immigrants. Finkelstein declared the book a fraud. Two decades later, Finkelstein saw the record of the Israel-Palestine conflict as much less complex than previously. Finkelstein claims that the official Zionist "Exodus version,"