Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 08.045 August 25, 1998 1) Yugntrufs nayer vebadres (Sholem Berger) 2) shudnikas (itzik shteyn) 3) tarelke (Ida (Khaye Sure) Cohen Selavan-Schwarcz) 4) (h)oleveshke (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Yiddish as a foreign language (Miriam Isaacs) 6) Yiddish as a foreign language (Ellen Prince) 7) Reisen's poem (gershon winer) 8) Growing up Jewish on a kibbutz (Arre Komar) 9) skahbawveh or skarbawveh (Yankel Kurtzman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 13:40:13 -0400 (EDT) From: "Sholem Berger" Subject: Yugntrufs nayer vebadres/Yugntruf--Youth for Yiddish has a new URL undzer vebadres hot zikh gebitn. kurts un klor: http://www.yugntruf.org oder http://yugntruf.org kumt tsu gast! Sholem Berger 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 10:01:28 EDT From: shteyn@juno.com Subject: shudnikas In response to Yale Strom's question: tsum badoyern git ir afile nit kayn vink oyf deym contekst fun ayere "shudnikas". Oyb s'iz gemeynt in sin fun khoyzekmakhers, mayasenikes, opshpeters is es efsher "shkodnikes" un kumt fun slavishen "shkoda", vus meynt "shoden" (damage). zayt gesund, itzik shteyn 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 14:30:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Yosef & Ida Schwarcz Subject: tarelke Dear Mendelianers, This is my first attempt to contact lovers and knowers of Yiddish. A few years ago I translated the book Stavisht, the yisker bukh of my late mother's shtetl, from Yiddish to English. One of these days I shall publish it. However, there is a word there, used quite often by people in their reminiscences, which I have been unable to track down. The word is "tarelke". It is obviously some kind of topographic term. It is similar to the word for "dish." I tended to translate it as "basin," but in the descriptions of people going to the "tarelke" it seems as if they are going uphill rather than downhill. Mordkhe Schaechter responded to my request with the suggestion that it was a localism. Are there any Stavishter out there who might know the meaning of "tarelke"? A groysn dank. Ida Cohen Selavan-Schwarcz (Khaye Sure) 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 22:44:02 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mikhl Herzog" Subject: (h)oleveshke In response to Mel Poretz' question: The word you seek is probably _(h)oleveshke_. I can't think of an appropriate English lexical item. It's something like a (still glowing?), charred piece of wood. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 08:46:22 -0400 (EDT) From: miriam isaacs Subject: Yiddish as a foreign language I had grappled with the dual status off Yiddish, not only as a native vs. foreign language in Israel but also as modern vs classical. I prefer to think of Yiddish as a heritage language in Israel rather than foreign. First because it was brought to Israel centuries ago by pilgrims and has been used there continuously for a longer time that Hebrew was ever revived as Ivrit. But to look at Yiddish as a foreign language in Israel doesn't work at all, because a foreign language would, I believe be more valued in Israel than Yiddish. After all, a foriegn language would have with it a country and an economy that would lend it some status. The metaphor that comes to mind is that a foreign language is a chic Paris gown to Yiddish being mom's battered housecoat. Of course this is not true for everyone but seems to be a common attitude. Miriam Isaacs 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 00:13:31 -0400 (EDT) From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Yiddish as a foreign language Yosef Gilboa points out that 'academic' Yiddish opens the gates to the rich Yiddish literature in the original. Well, teaching Middle English (as English as a Foreign Language) would open the gates to the rich Middle English literature (e.g. Chaucer). The question is: at what point do we say it's the modern language we want to teach, even if that makes the old texts archaic? What would you think of a (non-English-speaking) country that taught Shakespearean English in lieu of Modern English? See my point? (Btw, as you may well know, Shakespearean English is Early Modern English -- and is probably as far from Modern English as early 20th century educated Vilna Yiddish, i.e. 'academic' Yiddish, is from turn-of-the-millenium Mea Shearim.) Fred Sherman asks what I see as an alternative to 'Victorian Yiddish'. Good question. I guess, if I were in the Yiddish-teaching business, I'd want to start by involving the contemporary Yiddish speakers in Israel, speakers who are living in a *Yiddish speech community*, who are raising their children in Yiddish in a natural and non- self-conscious way, etc. I would try to make bridges so that textbooks and dictionaries could be written that reflected the modern language. I would try to hire some as teaching assistants and native informants for Yiddish courses and Yiddish institutes. IOW, I would try to find out what the language is that I'm supposed to be teaching and I would try to make it possible to teach it. Luckily for me, I'm not in the business of teaching Yiddish. ;) Ellen Prince 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 08:19:11 +0300 (IDT) From: Nechama & Gershon Winer Subject: Reisen's poem This is in response to the request for the text of Avraham Reisen's poem "In Sooke" (the name of the poem is NOT "A sukkeleh a kleine", as listed in Mendele). It appears on page 94 in the 1951 volume of the collected poems of Reisen, entitled "Di Lieder". However, the text there is incomplete, for the full text, see "Anthology of Yiddish Folk Songs" published by Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1984, volume II, page 189. Mention of the poem evokes a sentimental memory which I will relate after recording the text since the one that appeared on Mendele was only the first verse. A sooke a klaine Foon bretlech gemaine Hob ich koim mit tzores gemacht; Gedekt dem dach, mit a bisele schach Un ch'zitz in der sooke bai nacht. Mit farzorgten gezicht Dos ershte gericht Es trogt mir mein veib bald arein; Zi shtelt zich avek Un zogt mit shrek Der vint varft dee sooke bald ein! Fun vint dem kaltn Vos blozt duch di shpaltn Mein lichtele leshn zich veel Doch mach ich mir kiddush Un -- zet nor dem chidush-- Mein lichtl brent roo-eek oon shteel. And now for the personal story behind the poem. Some years ago, my wife and I were visiting Prague. On the second day of Sukkot, we attended services at the the Jubilee Synagogue on Jerusalem Street,-- a beautiful impressive edifice in the traditional European house of worship style, with as many as perhaps a thousand seats. There was just about a minyan men and a few women for the holiday service. Among them, and I don't recall whether he was counted for the minyan, was a non-Jew who introduced himself as playwrite who was working on the Schindler List, on the way to Israel. There was a kiddush in the sukkah following the service. We were seated around the table with the leaders of the community present, when a woman, not known to the others, asked permission to sing a Yiddish song appropriate for the occasion. She was of course welcomed, and in a plaintive, somewhat broken voice, she rendered this song, which I then heard for the first time. She was a holocaust survivor. To hear the song in that setting, while remembering what took place in Prague decades ago, the words and the melody assumed so much meaning, touching us ever so deeply and continue to do so to the present day, as we sit in our Sooke in Jerusalem. Here is a partial rendition in English: The little Sooke, as I sit in it at night... While the winds threaten to break it all down And snuff out our little candle... I recite my kiddush, and lo what a miracle! My candle burns bright and secure... gershon winer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 13:42:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Arthur Komar Subject: Growing up Jewish on a kibbutz I came accross the following report which I thought would be of some interest to our khevre. I will forward it without editorial comment. Three year olds living in the childrens house on a kibbutz in Israel were asked to describe what growing-up was like on the kibbutz. One by one, each child gave his input: 1. You are born and then you go to live in the baby house. 2. When you get older, you move into the childrens' house. 3. When you get even older, you go to live and study at the regional high school. 4. After finishing high school, you go into the army. 5. After the army, you return to kibbutz. 6. You get married. 6. You have children. 7. You grow old and start speaking Yiddish. Arre Komar 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 13:42:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Gilda and Bob Kurtzman" Subject: skahbawveh or skarbawveh Whenever I would ask about something fundamental and common knowledge in Judaism, my father had a standard response: Doss iz skahbawveh--yehdeh. Ihd fun a gantze vawch veysst dawss.That is a matter of common knowledge--every every day Jew knows that. I never met anyone else who used the word skahbawveh. Many years ago I came across the word in a book in English on Jewish art objects. As I recall the author used the word skabawveh for anything that was a" traditional" art form. In the COMPLETE HEBREW-YIDDISH DICTIONARY by M. TSANIN I found on page 304 the following entry: skarbawveh-shigrati ( routine, every day,custom, habit). Can anyone give me any more information about the word skarbawveh.? My father grew up in shtetl Kuzmin in Vohlin gebernya, after his bar mitzva left home to study in the yeshiva in Slonim. At age sixteen he left the yeshiva, was a "moreh m'tukan"modern Hebrew teacher and an ardent Zionist and some how came to Bessarabya where he taught until he was inducted into the Tsar's army in 1900. I have no proof but I feel that theword skahbawveh or skarbawveh has roots in the Vohliner-Podolya "pale". Zei mir gezint uhn loss zich herren! Yankel Kurtzman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 08.045 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