Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no.57 July 31, 1991 1) Introduction (Sherri Chasin Calvo) 2) Mendele fort avek af a khoydesh (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 8:35:04 EDT From: CALVO@NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV Subject: Introduction Sholom aleichem, Here's the bio you asked for. I was born in Brook- lyn, studied physics at Rutgers ('80) and comp. sci. at NYU ('84). I work for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center and am also going for an MS in Applied Physics at Johns Hopkins. I'm married and have a six-year-old son. In my spare time (HA!) I'm trying to learn some Yiddish. Right now I know about as much as your average Brooklyn-born Jew whose grandparents generally speak in Yiddish only when trying to conceal a "shonda". (This alone is good motivation for learning.) I'm working with the materials I have been able to find, which include the Yiddish/30 tapes, a miniature Berlitz phrasebook and an old primer for Yiddish-speaking children, both of which I dug out of a dusty corner in a used bookstore. Anybody have a used copy of "College Yiddish" they could sell me, or can tell me how to order one new? Thanks, Sherri (Sherri Chasin Calvo, calvo@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov) 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 From: nmiller@trincc.bitnet Subject: Mendele fort avek With this number Mendele is going off the air for a month. Maybe by next year we'll have grown enough to merit a Listserv account which can then be moderated by someone else when necessary. For now, I apologize for the inconvenience. So that a Yiddish word should not be entirely lacking from your lives, I have two suggestions. The first, for those of you who aren't already members, is to join Dave Sherman's mail.yiddish list. It's the original and it deserves everyone's support. Write to: dave@lsuc.on.ca The second suggestion is to set yourselves an August project, the results of which can be posted when Mendele reopens on September 5. Four possibilities out of many: translate something; do a bit of litcrit (e.g.Singer's debt to Gogol) or sociology of art (e.g. what happened to Sholem Asch's reputation?); make up a list of particularly salty Yiddish phrases. In khoydesh Nisan hof ikh az mir veln zikh ale nokhamol trefn. Zayt mir gezunt. Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.57