Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 7.053 August 20, 1997 1) Yiskor Bukh far Bobruisk un Umgegent (Don Mopsick) 2) M. Litvin and Simkhe Shvarts (Alan Todres) 3) Neither Aleykhem, nor Sforim is the writer's last name (Zellig Bach) 4) az me lebt (Carol Zemel) 5) Inappropriate usage (Mikhl Herzog) 6) Yiddish translations of Verlaine (Kathryn Hellerstein) 7) "boychikl" (Lyber Katz) 8) az men lebt (Nathan Kravetz) 9) Lithuanian & Yiddish (Hugh Denman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Aug 97 06:48:59 -0500 From: Don Mopsick Subject: Yiskor Bukh far Bobruisk un Umgegent I am a beginning Yiddish student and the Coordinator of the Bobruisk Interest Group (BIG) under the auspices of JewishGen (http://www.jewishgen.org). My interest in learning the Yiddish language came as a result of the search for my ancestors, virtually all of whom are traceable to the city of Bobruisk, Belarus or its surrounding shtetlekh (as far back as the great-great- grandparent level, or about 1830). I was lucky enough to be able to find and purchase a copy of the "Yiskor Bukh Far Bobruisk un Umgegent" published in Israel in 1967 and written mostly in Yiddish with some Hebrew. The book is 872 pages and contains virtually the collective memory of the town's Jewish community. I have begun translating the Yiddish version of the 107-page historical monograph by Yehuda Slutzky (deceased). I have gotten far enough (23 pages) into it to realize that the project deserves the loving attention of a professional, ideally a Bobruisk native. I have not yet polled the members of my group for an exact dollar amount, but some have indicated a willingness to contribute limited funding for professionally translating this and other segments. Of particular interest to me are chapters about the fate of the Jews in Parichi, a town south of Bobruisk, during the nazi terror. These efforts will have direct consequences on the research efforts of Anglophone Bobruisker researchers in my group as well as yielding specific ancestral data for some members. Our intention is to publish the translated segments on our Bobruisk website at http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlinks/bobruisk/bobyskor.html. As far as I know, this will be the first time the information will be made available to a wide audience of Anglophone Jewish researchers If you are a Bobruisker or descendant learned in Yiddish and/or are interested in helping us, please contact me at mophandl@txdirect.net You can see our translation of the table of contents at http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlinks/bobruisk/bobyskor.html Zayt Gezunt, Don Mopsick San Antonio, TX 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 18:05:26 -0400 (EDT) From: HATODRES@aol.com Subject: M. Litvin and Simkhe Shvarts M. Litvin: Further to Al Grand's question about M. Litvin (7.050) and Iosif Vaisman's reply (7.051), the Leksikon Fun Der Nayer Yidisher Literatur (vol. 5, 1963) gives the following: Mordkhe Litvin was born in Shavel [Shiauliai] Lithuania in 1903. He studied humanities at Kovno University and moved to Paris in 1939. During the Nazi occupation he was a partisan in the French Resistance in southern France. Returning to Paris after the war he was active in left-wing cultural institutions and in their publications. A number of works of translation are referenced, until 1962. He also wrote under the pseudonyms M. Valder and M. Dinkes. I presume that additional and more up-to-date information might be available from Bibliotheque Medem in Paris, http://www.col.fr/yiddish/medem.htm Simkhe Shvarts: Iosif Vaisman can refer to vol. 8 (1981) of the Leksikon for an informative article, with references, about Simkhe Shvarts, apparently a highly creative man. A link of sorts with this publication is his dramatization of Mendele's "Fishke der Krumer". He was born in Podeloy, Romania in 1900 and died in Buenos Aires on August 14, 1974. He established and operated a theater in Tshernovits (1930 - 1935), for which he wrote the material, directed, and acted. He went to Paris in 1936 where he studied theater and sculpture, and established a successful marionette theater. Moved to Buenos Aires in 1952. A noteworthy sculpture is evidently his memorial to the fallen fighters for Israel, in the B. A. cemetry. Alan Todres. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 23:18:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Zellig@aol.com Subject: Neither Aleykhem, nor Sforim is the writer's last name In the _Yiddish Vinkl_ in the English _Forward_ (May 9, 1997, p. 11) its compiler wrote: "Recently [the writers] Seforim and Aleichem [double sic] have been publicly honored." The first is a reference to the World Wide Web site named after our own _Mendele_ whose name we proudly bear on our masthead. Of course, the name is not Seforim -- the plural of the Hebrew "seyfer" [book] is sforim, without an /e/, and it is not the writer's last name (nor is "moykher" his middle name (Mendele M. Sforim?...). The second is a reference to the fact that a section of East 33rd Street in New York City where the Yiddish _Forverts_ is being published, was named Sholem Aleykhem Place. "Aleykhem," too, is not a last name. While "Sholem" was the writer's given name, he chose to combine his first name with the popular and traditional expression of greeting _Sholem Aleykhem [peace be unto you]. The combined pen name "Sholem Aleykhem" carried a singular, deeply emotional meaning, a genuine message of fellowship between the writer and his readers, an ever-present warm-hearted reaching out, and a symbolic gesture of a strong and friendly handshake. His readers, the Jewish masses all over the world, responded with a joyous sense of _"aleykhem sholem"_, the traditional and popular answer to the greeting sholem aleykhem, and embraced him with unbounded love and respect. When he died in New York in 1916 at the age of 57, he was mourned all over the Jewish world as if he were a beloved member of one's own family. His name therefore was, and will forever be, the combined Sholem Aleykhem, and not a falsely, unjustly truncated "Aleykhem" that dishonors the essential meaning of his choice of pen name symbolizing the intimate bond between him and his readers. Zellig Bach 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 10:21:21 -0400 (EDT) From: czemel@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: az me lebt I recall an article (published some 15 years ago) by Leslie Fiedler in the New York Review of Books describing, among other things, being busted for smoking/possessing pot at a party in his home. The essay began with the expression "Az me lebt...," which Fiedler translated roughly as "If you live, sooner or later everything happens..." It certainly seemed witty, jewishly ironic and apropos, and close to Ellen Prince's interpretation of the phrase. (I think the charges against Fiedler were dropped, but obviously Buffalo was--and is--a hot spot to be in.) Carol Zemel Buffalo, NY 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 13:33:50 EDT From: mherzog@magnum.wpe.com Subject: Inappropriate usage Regarding Mirl Schonhaut Hirshan's posting in Vol. 7.050: Much as the author of the posting did not intend to offend, I think we'd do well not to give a _hekhsher_ to the Nazi term _Judenrein_ (whether spelled Judenreyn_ or _Yudenreyn_) by applying it as she did. I wasn't spared the wrath of my listeners some years ago when I made the mistake of using the same word in a similarly inappropriate way. We needn't look for new contexts in which to apply it. Mikhl Herzog 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 13:41:49 -0400 (EDT) From: khellers@sas.upenn.edu (Kathryn Hellerstein) Subject: Yiddish translations of Verlaine Sholem aleykhem! I come into the conversation belatedly re. Verlaine translated into Yiddish, so what I write may be redundant. Surely you know of the work of M. Litvin, _Frantseyzishe poezye: Iberzetsungen un komentarn_ (Paris: 1968 and 1986), 2 vol. In the 1986 volume, on pp. 85-87, Litvin presents 3 variant translations of Verlaine's poem, "Il pleure dans mon coeur." Al dos guts, Kathryn Hellerstein 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 14:02:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Lyber Katz <0002083904@MCIMAIL.COM> Subject: "boychikl" In zayn diskusiye vegn libe terminen dermont a. yosif ross (7.051-7) dos vort "boychik". A vaytere farklenerung, "boychikl" is a vunderbarer, ober efsher eyntziker, bayshpil vi azoy yiddish zapt arayn elementn fun di arumike shprakhn un makht a nayem vort vos hot mer kheyn vi der original! Genumen "boy" fun english mit a rusishn (slavishn?) diminutiv "chik" un zugegebn a "l" es zol klingen yiddish --- is faran an andere shprakh vos ken zikh azoy adaptirn in dray shprakhn mitamol? zaynen faran andere azeyne dray-shprakhike verter in di farshidene lender vu yidn gefinen zikh? In his discussion of terms of endearment, A. Joseph Ross (7.051-7) mentioned "boychik". A further diminutive, "boychikl" is a wonderful, perhaps unique, example of how Yiddish absorbs elements of the surrounding languages and creates a new word with more charm than the original! It took "boy" from English, the Russian (Slav?) diminutive, "chik" and added the a diminutive "l" to make it sound Yiddish --- is there another language that can so easily adopt itself to three different languages at once? Are there other examples of such three-language words used in the various countries that Jews settled in? Lyber Katz 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 11:57:56 -0700 (PDT) From: nathan kravetz Subject: az men lebt Az men lebt...My preferred take on this is the very common "What goes around comes around." If you've seen it once, you'll see it again. Nathan Kravetz Los Angeles 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 22:24:03 +0200 (MET DST) From: Hugh Denman Subject: Lithuanian & Yiddish With reference to David Herskovic's query concerning the relationship between Lithuanian and Yiddish [7.052:9], I believe that, in fact, a small number of Lithuanian words were indeed borrowed into the varieties of Yiddish spoken on Lithuanian-language territory and I recall reading brief lists of such items somewhere [I'm sorry I can't cite examples off-hand]. However, such lexical items do not seem ever to have gained more than very local acceptance. It is important to realise that Lithuanian was never spoken in an area much bigger than the tiny, newly independent republic on the Baltic and that until the Romantic revival of the nineteenth century its social status was extremely low and its use confined to rural areas, whereas the Grand Duchy was a vast political entity extending from the Dvina to the mouth of the Dnepr whose official administative language was not Lithuanian but a type of Belorussian and within whose confines there were far more speakers of Belorussian and Ukrainian than speakers of Lithuanian. Incidentally, it is something of an over-simplification to say that the Grand Duchy was "absorbed" by Poland under the terms of the Union of Lublin (1st July 1569) since inter alia the dynasty at that time was of Lithuanian origin. As one of the few Brits who participate in Mendele, I might add that the "Jewish Chronicle" is not only just about the oldest of all surviving Jewish periodicals, but still one of the best. However, alas, when it comes to commenting on Yiddish almost any fool feels qualifed to rush in where angels fear to tread and in this respect the "JC" is unfortunately no exception. Hugh Denman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 7.053