Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.173 March 18, 1998 1) Oyfn/afn (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan) 2) Sound changes (Mendy Fliegler) 3) Odem a mentsh, katshke rik zikh (Ellie Kellman) 4) Introduction and Charna (Yosef Gilboa) 5) Appreciations & questions (Fred Sherman) 6) Raphael Mahler (Ron Robboy) 7) Yuri Suhl (Ron Robboy) 8) gutahr (Rhonda B. Friedman) 9) Leo Rosten (Peter Gutmann) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 09:09:53 EST From: SHirshan Subject: Oyfn/afn As a lover and collector of words, over the years on Mendele I have held fast even on some of the rollercoaster rides through derivative pilpul, awed by the rules and rigidities of our linguists. Feygl Infeld Glezer's posting (7.169 #5) fueled my brakes and gave me pause. I have wondered whither and whence and wherefore cometh the rule that melts so strong and respectable a word as OYFN into the slurry, wimp-like AFN. Never do I remember the shule teachers using AFN. Never have I heard Belarsky, Ben Bonus, Bikel, Bruce Adler, Jan Peerce, etc. sing "AFN Pripetchik" or "AFN veg shteyt a boym.." I am aware that Weinreich perpetuates the rule in "College Yiddish", but I ask why? Also, if the gender of shvel is di - shouldn't it be oyf DER shvel? Is a puzzlement. Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan Boynton Beach, Florida 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 09:31:58 -0200 From: emenems@juno.com (Mendy Fliegler) Subject: Sound changes Khaver Monaster Ramer hot es far mir take oysgefinen: mayn tate's (O.haSH.) shteytl in Poyln hot geheysn Horodenke. Biz der tsayt nukh di tsveyte velt milkhume, ven di Rusn hobn dus ibergenemen, un yetst heyst es '_G_orodenke' farandersht. Ikh hob es gefinen oyf a mape oyfn 'Internet' un yetst balangkt dus shteytl tsu Ukraine. A dank. Mendy Fliegler. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 11:30:16 -0500 From: e.kellman@utoronto.ca (Ellen Kellman) Subject: Odem a mentsh, katshke rik zikh Sarah Faerman asks if anyone has heard the Yiddish expression "odem a mentsh, katshke rik zikh" (Mendele Vol. 07.170). Sholem Aleykhem uses the expression in the monologue "Hodl" in the _Tevye der milkhiker_ series. Tevye relates a conversation with Pertshik, in which Pertshik tells Tevye that he is the son of a cigarette seller, but lives in Yehupets (Kiev) and is preparing for university entrance exams. Tevye's ironic comment is: "Nu-nu mekhteyse, odem a mentsh, tsiper a foygl, katshke ruk zikh." (Folksfond oysgabe, page 99). Sarah Faerman's understanding of the expression as poking fun at someone who puts on airs certainly fits this instance. The idiom is obviously based on the practice of glossing Hebrew terms in Yiddish for the purpose of instructing children. Thus, Adam is human being, tsipor is a bird, but katshke, which is a Slavic word, doesn't fit the pattern, so it is shunted aside. Words of Hebrew origin are often regarded by Yiddish speakers as more high class than those of Slavic origin, and this may be part of the humor in this rather untranslatable idiom. Ignats Bernshteyn includes two variants of the saying in his collection _Yidishe shprikhverter_, under the entry "Odem": 1. odem a mentsh, katshke drey zikh (oder: ruk zikh); 2. odem a mentsh, shkarpetke a beged. Bernshteyn gives the following explanation: "Di beyde rednsartn zogt men vegn a mentsh vos vil mer shaynen, vi er iz be'emes." (Both expressions refer to a person who would like to appear more illustrious than he really is). Like Sarah Faerman's mother, Sholem Aleykhem came from the Kiev area, and the Tevye monologues are set there. I don't know how widespread the expression is, although a friend of mine whose parents hailed from near Warsaw remembers hearing them use "Odem a mentsh, katshkele rir zikh." Ellie Kellman Toronto 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 18:47:54 -0800 From: AJ Gilboa Subject: Introduction and Charna My name is Yosef Gilboa. I live in Rehovot and work as a scientist at the Weizmann Institute. My background in Yiddish is kind of spotty, since my parents used it as a "secret language" and my last surviving grandparent died when I was 3 years old. My interest in Yiddish revived when I started studying German as an undergraduate. I came across Mendele on the net and was immediately fascinated. Right now, I'm searching for the meaning of the Yiddish name, Charna, other than the "obvious" Russian word for black. Hope someone can help find a more satisfactory etymology. Yosef Gilboa 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 98 09:41:27 -0700 From: Fred Sherman Subject: Appreciations & questions Appreciations: 1. All Mendele correspondents. I can't remember the last unpleasant comment I've seen. Siz take a simkhe un a freyt. I hope it hasn't cramped anyone's style or prevented anyone from taking serious issue with someone. 2. To those people, like Elliot Gertel for example, who add an English--or Taitch--version onto their Yiddish posts. I'm not requesting that everyone do it. It must be time-consuming for the writer. I just want you to know how much it's appreciated and how much it helps many of us get a better grasp of mamaloshn. 3. Ellen Prince's explanation of Russian H-substitutions. Now I understand why they don't play much khokei in Gollyvud. (Why is the Russian genetive singular spelled with a g but pronouned v? I never learned in class.) Questions: 1. My mother was born in the town of--Yiddish/Russion--Ludmir/Vladimir Volynsk. How would you label the brand of Yiddish she spoke (and what little I've absorbed by osmosis)? 2. Among the languages she absorbed working in a marketplace (poilish, russish, etc.) was "Khokholish". No one I've spoken to seems to know what it is, although one man cringed. Explanation? 3. I dimly recall, from a Joe & Paul record, the benefit of drinking "a gantse botl Moskevitz's kestr oil" to cure your husband's cough. "Glok mir, a pur shtunde shpayter vilt er moyre hobn tsu hisen." Where does "glok" come from? A variation of "glayb" or what? Fred Sherman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 15:03:36 -0800 From: rrobboy@cts.com (Ronald Robboy) Subject: Raphael Mahler Diana Wilner (7.146) asks for more information on Raphael Mahler (1899-1977). He was born in Galicia, began his long and productive career in interwar Poland, lived in New York City in the 1940s, and according to the informative article in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, moved to the State of Israel in 1950. I have a cousin who, like Khaverte Wilner, took classes from Mahler in a Yiddish school in New York. (My cousin is just recovering from heart surgery and was frustrated that he could not remember the name of the school, but remarked that they were evening classes in the early 1940s.) Principally a historian, Mahler wrote in Polish, Yiddish, German, English, and Hebrew. Many of his works appear in more than one language, so it often takes a little investigation to determine which was the original of any particular work. Of those originally written in Yiddish, I believe, his studies on Karaism and on the conflict between Khasidism and the Enlightenment stand out. _Der kamf tsvishn haskole un khsides in galitsie_ was published by YIVO in 1942; its English translation, _Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment_, was issued by the Jewish Publication Society (Philadelphia, 1985). He was also the an editor of the yisker bikher, _Tshenstokhover yidn_ (New York : Yunited Tshenstokhover Relif Komitet un Leydis Okzileri in Nyu York, 1947) and _Sefer Sants_ (Tel Aviv: Sandzer Landsmanshaft in Nyu York, 1970). Mahler was long associated with left Labor-Zionism, and after moving to Israel was active in Mapam, so that among his extensive bibliography, one encounters such items as _Borochov for Our Day: The Socialist-Zionist View of the Jewish People_, by Raphael Mahler, David Flakser, and Daniel Ben-Nahum; with an introduction by Avraham Schenker; edited by Richard Yaffe (New York: Progressive Zionist League-Hashomer Hatzair, 1958). Probably his most important work, the multi-volume project on the History of the Jewish People in Modern Times, was evidently never completed. I believe it was originally written in Yiddish, but it was first published in Hebrew, _Dibre yeme yisrael, dorot aharonim_ (Merhavyah: Sifriyat Po'alim, 1952-1970), still its most complete form to date. I've never seen the Yiddish edition, which appeared under the title _Geshikhte fun yidishn folk, nayeste tsayt: fun sof 18tn y.h. biz tsu der hayntiker tsayt_ (New York: Ykuf, 1957-); but it appears to be similar to the well-known English abridgment, _A History of Modern Jewry: 1780-1815_ (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1971; New York: Schocken, 1971). Even as politically and culturally conservative a scholar as Jacob Neusner has acknowledged the depth and richness of this book, and this so despite, as we read in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Mahler's "explaining his theory of Jewish history in accordance with historical materialism...with social and economic evolution, and [with] the class war and changes of governments...." I hope all Mendelistn are grateful to Diana Wilner for recalling this exemplary historian and thinker for us. Ron Robboy 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 15:04:00 -0800 From: rrobboy@cts.com (Ronald Robboy) Subject: Yuri Suhl Diana Wilner (7.146) mentions a book of poems by Yuri Suhl. Is it _Yisroel partizan: poeme (New York: Farlag "Signal," 1942)? Suhl was indeed associated with the Left. The Yiddish _Signal_ was a Communist organ, but as a writer he left a wider legacy. Over a dozen of his works are cataloged in the University of California library system that I just checked. Besides several novels and children's books, he wrote a biography of 19th-century feminist Ernestine Rose. His name is chiefly associated, however, with his research into Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, notably for _They Fought Back_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 1967; reissued by Schocken, 1975), and the children's book _Uncle Misha's Partisans (New York: Four Winds Press, 1973). Suhl's _Cowboy On a Wooden Horse: A Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1953), is about growing up in Brooklyn as an immigrant generation was being Americanized. Pulling my copy off the shelf just now, I found Eric Brother's informative tribute, "Remembering Resistance Scholar Yuri Suhl (1908-1986)," _Jewish Currents_ (November 1990), which I'd clipped and stuck under the cover several years ago. Ron Robboy 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:50:42 -0500 From: "Rhonda B. Friedman" Subject: gutahr My mother sent me the following message. She spoke Yiddish as a child, over 60 years ago, and occasionally things just pop into her head.... Can anyone help identify this? Thanks. "YESTERDAY morning we attended a class at the JCC callled "yiddish Vinkle". Everyone speaks Yiddish. The leader read a story and the word "gutahr" came up. Suddenly I remembered: "Ich hub a gutahr in mein nuz. Shtaarbn vehl Ich zeechah balt, veil in mein nuz hub Ich a kalt" Does anyone on your "web" know anything like this?" Rhonda B. Friedman 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:29:47 GMT From: gutmann peter <97111001@brookes.ac.uk> Subject: Leo Rosten In his response (Vol 07.170) to my posting on Leo Rosten (Vol 07.167), Al Grand complains: ""s'iz okh un vey" to the academics who visited "Joys" for anything other than to lament. But why don't we hear from the Yiddish scholars themselves?", followed by an impressive list of 17 Yiddishists. Al Grand seems to have terribly misunderstood my argument perhaps because I did not formulate it well enough), therefore, I send this second posting. I am perfectly aware of Rosten's own definition of the book: "What This Book Is Not: This is not a book about Yiddish. It is not a dictionary of Yiddish. It is not a guide to Yiddish. It is not written for experts in, or students of, Yiddish. What This Book Is: This is a book about language - more particularly, the English language. It shows how our marvellously resilient tongue has been influenced by another parlance: Yiddish. It illustrates how beautifully a language reflects the variety and vitality of life itself; and how the special culture of the Jews, their distinctive style of thought, their subleties of feeling, are reflected in Yiddish; and how this in turn has enhanced and enriched the English we use today..." (1st British edition, W.H. Allen & Co, 1970, p. IX) When I read the "Joys" some years ago, I had no idea that I would be working on Yiddish later in my life, but I loved the book and I learnt some things about Yiddish and Yiddishkeyt from it. Now, when I - not within a community of Yiddishists, but of Anglists and Germanists - write papers on, e.g., "Yiddishkeyt in E.L. Doctorow's novel "The Book Of Daniel"", then I go back to my Rosten and use him as a (of course not the only) source of information and quotes: information my audience can easily understand, and quotes they can enjoy (maybe I manage to trigger interest in Yiddish matters in one or two of them?). I hope my point is a bit clearer now. I do not say that Rosten's book is comparable to Weinreich's or Harkavy's works, but I still think that it is not "the most stupid book" ever written on the subject. Peter Gutmann ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.173 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