Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.118 December 14, 1997 1) Leivick poem (Yaacov Dovid Shulman) 2) shpatsirn (abraham brumberg) 3) efsher genug shen fun davenen (leon rosenberg) 4) 'Fonye' (Martin Cohen) 5) etymologies (Joachim Neugroschel) 6) Nomberg's tsvishn berg (Lance W. Garmer) 7) Kabash (Lance W. Garmer) 8) "fonye" (Rick Turkel) 9) "Fonye" (Ben Weinstock) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:31:28 EST From: Yacovdavid Subject: Leivick poem On the most recent Mendele Personal Notices posting, someone asked for a translation of Leivick's poem on Treblinka. I myself translated this poem some fifteen years ago for a book that was unfortunately never printed. If the moderator of Mendele considers it appropriate, I would like to post this translation here. Treblinka Candidate by H. Leivick translated from the Yiddish by Yaacov Dovid Shulman No. I was never in Treblinka. Nor was I in Maidanek. Yet I stood upon their threshold, I stood upon their edge. The threshold is God's great world, A sill facing the world-to-come... I stand there and I wait, Great world, I wait for your command: You, dirty Jew, let's go--the gas chamber! Everything I see is divine. The forests are shaking with religious heads, And over every mountain, over every steppe Winds are wheeling, circling and dancing. Above, the sun is fair and pure, charged With an overflow of flame >From whose quick flares are tearing and streaming All the tongues of fire of Maidanek. In this--my life--I have already had Abundant offers promising delights Like the Inquisition. I stand Near the death camp of the world, on line, A signed and registered Treblinka candidate. Yaacov Dovid Shulman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 10:43:27 -0500 From: abraham brumberg <102142.2545@compuserve.com> Subject: shpatsirn This is with regard to Mr. Chassid's query about shpatsirn and Prof. Denman's comment that it can be said with considerable justification that the word is derived rom the MHD spatzieren. I raise my eyebrows. Just because the two words are so uncannily similar? Surely Prof. Denman knows that morphological similarity is no proof of etymological derivation. I am reminded of that late l9th century Yiddish poem (author unknown) with the haunting line "oyf zayn ponim geshpilt hot a shmeykhl \ a shpeter azoy vi di sho." Surely Prof. Denman would not want to suggest that the meaning of "shpeter" is "late," and has something to do with the hour in which it occurred? In point of fact Yudl Mark, in one of his writiten works (sorry, the title escapes me) proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "shpeter" in this poem is related to the word "shpotn", and that the line should therefore be translated a "derisive" smile, the simile ("azoy vi di sho") probably relating to the next line of the poem, which has unfortunately been lost over the course of time. (See MHD Spott) . A. Brumberg 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 21:03:03 -0800 From: leon t rosenberg Subject: efsher genug shen fun davenen Ich vays as sis an alte chochme. Anshuldikt mir: "MEYER, A LONELY WIDOWER was walking home along Delancy Street one day wishing something wonderful would happen into his life when he passed a Pet Store and heard a squawking voice shouting out in Yiddish: "Quawwwwk...vus machst du.. hot rachmonis, koomt arain" Meyer rubbed his eyes and ears. Couldn't believe it. The proprietor sprang out of the door and grabbed Meyer by the sleeve. "Come in here, fella, and check out this parrot..." Meyer stood in front of an African Grey that cocked his little head and said: "Vus? Kenst reddin Yiddish?" Meyer turned excitedly to the store owner. "He speaks Yiddish?" "Vuh den? Chinese maybe?" In a matter of moments, Meyer had placed five hundred dollars down on the counter and carried the parrot in his cage away with him. All night he talked with the parrot. In Yiddish. He told the parrot about his father's adventures coming to America. About how beautiful his mother was when she was a young bride. About his family. About his years of working in the garment center. About Florida. The parrot listened and commented. They shared some walnuts. The parrot told him of living in the pet store, how he hated the weekends. Next morning, Meyer began to put on his tfillin, all the while, saying his prayers. The parrot demanded to know what he was doing, and when Meyer explained, the parrot wanted some too. Meyer went out and hand-made a miniature set of tfillin for the parrot. The parrot wanted to learn to daven and learned every prayer. He wanted to learn to read Hebrew so Meyer spent weeks and months, sitting and teaching the parrot, teaching him Torah. In time, Meyer came to love and count on the parrot as a friend and a Jew. He had been saved. One morning, on Rosh Hashona, Meyer rose and got dressed and was about to leave when the parrot demanded to go with him. Meyer explained that Shul was not place for a bird but the parrot made a terrific argument and was carried to Shul on Meyer's shoulder. Needless to say, they made quite a spectacle, and Meyer was questioned by everyone including the Rabbi and Cantor. They refused to allow a bird into the building on the High Holy Days but Meyer convinced them to let him in this one time, swearing that parrot could daven. Wagers were made with Meyer. Thousands of dollars were bet (even odds) that the parrot could NOT daven, could not speak Yiddish or Hebrew, etc. All eyes were on the African Grey during services. The parrot perched on Meyer's shoulder as one prayer and song passed - Meyer heard not a peep from the bird. He began to become annoyed, slapping at his shoulder and mumbling under his breath, "Daven!" Nothing. "Daven...parrot, you can daven, so daven...come on, everybody's looking at you! Nothing. After Rosh Hashanah services were concluded, Meyer found that he owed his Shul buddies and the Rabbi over four thousand dollars. He marched home, pissed off, saying nothing. Finally several blocks from the temple the bird began to sing an old Yiddish song and was happy as a lark. Meyer stopped and looked at him. "You miserable bird, you cost me over four thousand dollars. Why? After I made your tfillin and taught you the morning prayers, and taught you to read Hebrew and the Torah. And after you.1ed me to bring you to Shul on Rosh Hashona, why? Why did you do this to me?" "Think of the odds on Yom Kippur!" leon rosenberg 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 22:56:26 -0800 From: Martin Cohen Subject: 'Fonye' Wolf Krakowski points out that " 'Fonye' was also used to denote the police, other authorities or 'the man'." Alice Honig adds that " the Tsar's "Chappers" (grabbers) went into YIddish shtetlach and into villages and "chapped" yiddish boys into the army for decades..therefore the tsars policies were a terror ." Sadly, as I understand it, the khapers were under the control of the local Jewish authorities rather than the Tsar. The local communal organization was responsible for providing the conscripts as young as age 12, to be contoned for 5 years prior to 25 years service in "fonye's army." The sons of poor families were the ones selected. They did not select the son of a wealthy man or rabbi. To be conscripted was sometimes described as becomming the "Tsar's son-in-law". The Tsar was sometimes referred to as "fonye gonif". Martin Cohen 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 08:25:22 -0500 (EST) From: ACHIM1 Subject: etymologies A lot of the soi-disant etymologies offered by Mendele subscribers could easily be tested if the contributors were to make use of technology's latest miracle: the dictionary. Since about two thirds of Yiddish vocabulary comes from various stages and areas of German, and since German has a vast and envious lexicography, one can track down pratically every Germanic borrowing in Yiddish. "shtibl" has nothing to do with "stable" (unless there were British garrisons in medieval Eastern Europe). It's the diminutive of "shtub" = "room, house, home" etc, which can be found in any Yiddish dictionary. it's cognate with German "Stube" = "room," etc., which can be found in any German dictionary. Contrary to Andrey Bredstein's rather imaginative but inaccurate etymology of the German adjective/adverb "widrig" as stemming from "Widder" (ram), the explanation is much simpler: it comes from the German preposition and verbal prefix "wider" (contrary, against)--not to be confused with "wieder" ( = "again") and is also cognate with the English verbal prefix "with" as in "withstand," "withdraw". As I've explained before, Nomberg's "viderik" derives from the use of the German adjective to mean "repulsive" (as well as "contrary"). German has a whole bunch of negative adjectives coming from "wider": "widerlich" "widerwaertig," etc. There are pages of "wider" derivatives in any decent German dictionary. and many of them have made it into Yiddish: "videranand" (contradiction), "vidertsn" "vidershtand" "vidershpenik" (look them up!!!). In Nomberg's IN THE MOUNTAINS, the vast German borrowings in lexicon and grammar are semi-justified by the fact that the three characters, only two of whom are identified as (highly assimilated) Jews, live in Munich and speak German to one another. The "daytshmerish" substance and flavor sets a specific tone that identifies the secular, bohemian, and German world that these people live in. In this connection, the narrator, although narrating in Yiddish, is never identified as a Jew. and Sonia, as the embodiment of the new European woman, is more like Leni Riefenstahl (in her mountain movies). Consciously or not, Nomberg finds Sonia so erotically appealing precisely because there is nothing Jewish about her--whereas his characterization of Schwarzwald is rooted in the anti-Jewish stereotypes so frequent in European literature. Modernism, in this case, means the total eradication of anything that sounds even vaguely Jewish. The fact that Nomberg was one of the most popular and best-selling Yiddish writers adds the usual spice and levity. Joachim Neugroschel 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 09:58:06 EST From: LWG34 Subject: Nomberg's tsvishn berg I concur with Joachim Neugroschel's translation of "widrig" as "repulsive," and am quite surprised that it would even be an issue. Regarding "Indyaner," I note that, on page 13 of the December 5, 1997, issue of the Yiddish Forward, there is an entire article about Dr. Noel Nuttels's medical service to the aboriginal population of Brasil; the author of the article, David Marcus, refers to these people as "Indyaner." I would suggest that "Indyaner" was (and apparently still is) an altogether loosely defined term that refers to a non-European aboriginal (tribal) people. (How many of us are guilty of similarly slovenly usage when we use the word "Arabs" to refer even to Iranians, who are actually Persians? We should thus not be surprised that Eurocentric individuals used "Indyaner" in ways widrig to our modern-day, anthropologically sophisticated sensibilities.) So, again, I concur with Joachim Neugroschel and believe that "primitive tribesman" is a fine translation of "Indyaner." Lance W. Garmer 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 10:32:50 EST From: LWG34 Subject: Kabash I submit the verb "kabash" (Qal form) for discussion. My mother, whose mother tongue was Polish, sometimes uses this word (both a's pronounced long) as a verb to mean "to put an end to something" or as a noun to mean "termination." (Examples: I kabashed his intrigues. I put the kabash on that.) The word is obviously not Polish, nor is it in Weinreich. In Hebrew, of course, it means "to tread down, subdue, press." Does any of you recall having heard such a usage of this word? Lance W. Garmer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 10:45:38 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: "fonye" Several people responded regarding the name "fonye," but no one has yet posted its ultimate source. I believe it comes from "Vanya," a nickname for the Russian name Ivan. Zayt mir ale gezunt un shtark. Rick Turkel 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 11:03:11 -0500 From: Bennett Weinstock Subject: "Fonye" My understanding is that "Fonye" is derived from "Vonye", the slang form of "Ivan", with "Ivan" representing the name of a typical Russian soldier. Ben Weinstock ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.118 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html