Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 155 January 31, 1992 1) Ludic Yiddish, part 3 (Yude-Leyb Proger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Ludic Yiddish (Note Three) by Yude-Leyb Proger (Leonard Prager), Haifa My thesis in "Ludic Yiddish (Note One)" was that as Yiddish as an everyday language declines among non-ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim, its LUDIC uses are stressed at the expense of others. My point in "Ludic Yiddish (Note Two)" was that Yiddish functions in a wide range of registers and one should not overemphasize its playful and ironic elements at the expense of others. In Note Three I would like to illustrate some of the forms of vulgarization to which Yiddish is commonly subjected. But before I begin to do so I want to acknowledge that much ludicization of Yiddish has come and continues to come from within as distinct from those whose aim is ridicule. The Yiddish theater began in wine gardens and outdoor cafes in Romania and to this day is tied to light music and comedy (the typical Yiddish evening in Israel is devoted to "humor un gezang"). Goldfadn molded romance, pathos and popular history into delightful operettas with catchy, singable tunes that often became folksongs. Goldfadn helped to educate a generation of Jews fresh from the shtetl and in the throes of urbanization to the delights of theater. Jacob Gordin helped move the Yiddish theater from melodrama and bombast to coherent problem plays where real characters spoke a natural language. The Yiddish theater rapidly developed into a forum for serious art. The lack of original plays led to the dramatization of best-selling novels and translations from world literature. The crisis of the Yiddish theater was internal as well as external. As the sophisticated theater goers moved to the non-Yiddish theater, the simpler audience was fed a continuous diet of light entertainment, always a surer investment for an institution which depended on the box office rather than organizational subsidies. In this potted one-paragraph synopsis of the history of the more than century-old world Yiddish theater, I want only to stress how demography, economics and sociology conspired to make much of Yiddish public art mere light entertainment. In America the borsht belt and its esthetic standards exerted an immense influence. An entire "Jewish-American" repertoire of mangled and pseudo-Yiddish songs and jokes were produced for a generation increasingly out of touch with the sources of Yiddish creativity. To their children, inevitably, Yiddish came to mean mainly funny words with which you spice your English. By juxtaposing Yiddish and "straight" Anglo-American elements one achieves a variety of parodic and comic effects. The musicologist, Mark Slobin, has (without making esthetic or musical value judgements) used two such songs ("Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" and "My Coney Ireland Weddding") to illustrate code-switching and code-superimposition in popular American music (see his "Code Switching and Code Superimposition in Music," _Working Papers in Sociolinguistics_ (Number 63), Austin, TX, July 1979). Slobin describes the first song as follows (p. 8): "A Yiddish comedy number of the late 1940s called 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere' by the Barton Brothers, a talented and now forgotten duo begins with a perfectly standard recitation of the eponymous Longfellow poem, accompanied by a trumpet-and-drum rendition of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'. The diction and dialect of the reciter are straight American, slightly pompous. Suddenly, this American reverie is broken by a brief silence and a highly dramatic code switch to a Jewish dance band playing a Yiddish tune, who accompany a second narrator. He uses a heavy Yiddish intonation and delivers a parody of the American patriotic poem ("Paul Rabinowitz," etc.) in a Yiddish full of English lexical intrusions. A short section of this pattern is followed by a break which introduces the return of the Longfellow poem, American style. The two components of the performance are alternated in unbroken succession until the entire Longfellow poem has been recited." Of the second example, Slobin writes (pp. 10-11): "Here confrontation between the Jews and the Irish is hinted at in a song entitled 'My Coney Ireland Wedding' (sung by Leo Fuchs). Fuchs begins with an Irish melody, and describes his wedding in a straight English mentioning, however, Jewish items such as 'a small bar mitzvah hall'. This is followed by a comic listing of bizarre relatives who interrupt the post-nuptial bliss. Here there is a mixed Yiddish and English text, set to another Irish tune, yielding a fairly complex case of superimposition of codes. The musical plot is then considerably thickened by a quick code switch to the band alone, playing a standard Yiddish dance number before Fuchs returns for the second verse, which repeats the whole process." These Jewish-American artifacts are as worthy of study as any other part of musical culture. But my response to them is not that of the detached scientist. Because I hear them with Yiddish ears, I don't find them amusing. I feel embarassed that a comic talent such as Fuchs was reduced to singing such songs. To me their parodic value is minimal and they end up ludicizing Yiddish. I have friends, intelligent friends, who find such songs funny. I find most dialect humor offensive. What is funny depends on who is doing what to whom and where and when and how and why. The guy who slips on the banana peel is never amused, although almost everybody else is. The ludicization of Yiddish in America (and to a far lesser extent Britain and the Commonwealth countries) is a subtle process which works largely through the selection of a small group of Yiddish-origin words which are felt to have a special character, almost invariably comic or grotesque to some degree. Thus the 30 April 1979 issue of _The New Yorker_ contains an advertizement for _Juggling for the Complete Klutz_, a book described as "the single most hilarious instruction book ever written. Packaged with 3 handsewn, easy-to-toss calico beanbags, it makes the perfect gift for the household klutz (and everyone will know who that is)" (p. 126). The publisher? Why "Klutz Enterprises" of course. The Jewish English word _klutz_ 'clumsy person' is, of course, from Yiddish _kluts_ 'log; clumsy person'. An article in the _Jerusalem Post Magazine_ about the tourism unit of the Jerusalem Police Department (15 July 1988, p. 6) is entitled "Tourist tsouris," the Yiddish _tsores_ (besides being a good rhyme for _tourist_) being one of those common Yiddish-origin words in Jewish English which are often used jocularly. Examples of this sort of thing can be collected in the hundreds. The advertisement for Leo Rosten's _Hurray for Yiddish !_ (subtitled "A Book about English") has the title "Do You Know What Yiddish Words Really Mean?" The reader is told how important Yiddish is, but that "there's an explosion in the use of Yiddish" is surely a wild exaggeration. The reader is assured that to be _in_ rather than _out_, one must know Yiddish. Readers who don't know certain Yiddish words might not get the joke. The primary association here is with humor: "Learn words rich in humor and sarcasm" and "Above all, Yiddish is a language rich in humor and sarcasm." (Remember "What makes Yiddish Yiddish" -- L. P.). Here is a "dictionary of rich and colorful Yiddish words and phrases that have become part of the English language." In addition, "You will also find entries for 'Yinglish'. These colorful words and phrases...originated when America's Yiddish speaking immigrants first encountered the English language." Following these confident allurements (none of which is remotely true and all of which are based on a deep and cultivated ignorance) readers are given a short quiz of eleven questions, the "answers" to which will make them as savvy as the author. This little quiz, which strains to be witty and is presumably not to be taken straight, is nonetheless symptomatic of a certain shallow and meretricious strain in American Jewish life. Did you know... 1. The difference between _shlemiel_ and _shlimazel_? (cf. Yiddish _shlumiel_, which apparently coalesced with German Schlemihl and _shlimazl_ -- L.P.) 2. When you should -- or should never -- say "_Mazel tov_"? (cf. Y. _mazl-tov_ -- L.P.) 3. The distinction between _tsimmes_ and _tsures_? (cf. Y. _tsimes_ and _tsores_ -- L.P.) 4. That which word of a phrase you emphasize may offend -- or save you from offending -- someone in a conversation? 5. When to say _oy_ and when to say _gevalt_? (There is a difference.) (cf. Y. _gevald_/_gvald_ -- L.P.) 6. What makes a _bialy_ different from a _bagel_ (so you'll never mistake the two)? (cf. Y. beygl; _byali_ as a bread name seems to be a Jewish-English coinage, apparently named for the city of origin, Bialystok, rather than for being made of white flour. In Warsaw during the Nazi period, Jews living as Aryans outside the ghetto used _byali_ {Polish 'white'} as a code word to refer to those like themselves {see Yidishe shprakh XVIII, p. 27} -- L.P.) 7. The difference between a _shlump_ and a _zhlub_? (cd. Y. _shlumper_ {_Yidishe shprakh_ IV, p. 70} and _zhlob_ -- L.P.) 8. Just what they mean on talk shows when they say _bubee_ -- and the tremendous distinction between _bubee_ and _bubbe_? (cf. Y. _bobe_) 9. In what circumstances it would be scandalous to ask how someone is? 10. The difference between "the whole _megile_" and "the whole _shmeer_"? (cf. Y. _shmir_ -- L.P.) 11. What type of news should make you _plotz_ and what kind should make you _kvell_ (cf. Y. _plats_ and _kvel_ -- L.P.) Even the editors of serious journals cannot transcend certain stereotypes regarding Yiddish. Thus an article by David L. Gold on Yiddish romanization submitted to _Shma_ was published under the title "Yortsayt, Yahrzeit, Jahrzeit, Oy Yiddish!". This editorial vandalism was apparently thought to be funny. The notepaper of a prominent American Jewish leader carries a large logo consisting of a blue and white bus with a Jewish star on the door, happy faces in the windows and printed on the side the words "ALL ABOARD the UJA / BAH-LA-BUS," the latter aping Yiddish _balebos_ 'householder' and here printed so as to suggest Yiddish letters. There are minarets in the background to suggest that the bus is in the Land of Israel, whose landscape is here exclusively Arabic -- what a strange symbolization of modern Jewish Israel! The notepaper is meant to be fresh, witty and spirited and it is certainly well-intentioned. My criticism is by no means directed at the person who designed the notepaper for his private use. I wish merely to point out that the use of Yiddish in this ludic fashion adds to the stereotyping and trivialization of a language whose range is enormous. It is quite amazing how often Yiddish is misrepresented -- no longer so much in dictionaries and encyclopaedias, as was formerly the case, but in many novels, short stories, dramas, news items. This is frequently simply a matter of misinformation, not necessarily involving ludicization. Sometimes the misrepresentation arises through inappropriate or biased contextualization. Something of this sort appears to have occurred in Andrzej Wajda's recent controversial film about Janusz Korczak. Tamar Vital pointed to the problem: "It is interesting to note that in Wajda's ghetto no Yiddish is spoken. The only time it is heard is in the cafe where black marketeers and collaborators come to relax. There, an entertainer sings a Yiddish song, flinging her arms above her head and wearing her shawl about her shoulders in a manner more resembling a Gypsy than a Jewess" (Tamar Vital, "Jewish hero, Polish saint; An unusual semidocumentary new film by Polish director Andrzej Wajda turns Janusz Korczak from a Jewish victim into a national martyr," :HP1.The Jerusalem Post Magazine:EHP1. 24 January 1992, 10). Few Poles ever inquired as to what Yiddish culture was about when it was about. In a distinguished Polish film Yiddish becomes the language of black marketeers in a sleazy cafe. This is the same language in which Yitskhok Katsenelson (1885-1944) wrote "Dos lid fun oysgehargetn folk." Yude-Leyb Proger ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1. 155