Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 171 February 14, 1992 1) Farshidens (Yude-Leyb Proger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:44:36 IST From: RHLE302@HAIFAUVM.BITNET Subject: A small salad ARE _GRIVEN_ 'CRACKLINGS'? Alexander Harkavy glosses _grivn_ (which is an alternative form for _gribenes_) accurately but broadly as 'scraps', whereas Uriel Weinreich (=_MEYYED_) defines this common food item more narrowly as 'cracklings; well-browned bits of goose skin'. Is there a problem regarding the first part of this gloss? Cracklings are often understood to be 'the crisp part remaining after the lard has been removed from hog fat by frying' (_Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language_, 1956). On the other hand, they are often synonymous with _greaves_, defined by the _Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language_ (1956) as 'the sediment of skin, etc. formed when animal fat is melted down for tallow; cracklings'. Nokhem Stutshkov {Nahum Stutschkoff}, in his _Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language_ cites (and marks as sub-standard) _skvarkes_ and _shkvarkes_ (from Polish _skwarki_ 'cracklings, greaves'). Given the widespread consumption of pork in Poland, it is almost certain that the reference is to pork cracklings -- are there also poultry, etc. cracklings? Polish Jews knew the term for pork cracklings, since they may have produced them as a by-product of tallow manufacture or other industrial processes. Was _skvarkes_ marked as substandard because it is a redundant borrowing for _grivn_, because it is a lower-class slavicism or because of its associative reference to pork? Is _shkvarkes_ a Northeastern Yiddish hypercorrectism or a comic distortion? One way to protect oneself from eating forbidden delicacies is to give them a bad name. This matter leads one to the larger subject of how Jewish languages {= JLs} name Jewishly-forbidden or proscribed non-Jewish (not just Christian, religious) concepts and realia. This leads to a dual vocabulary (e.g. shtarbn vs. peygern, bes-oylem vs. tsinter, yontef vs. khoge). This is in addition to a separate pejorative register for much of the non-Jewish world (e.g. _Shvarts-tume_ 'pollution') for use among Jews, alongside a neutral register (e.g. _Byela-tserkov_ {Bila-Tserkva}) when a Gentile is present or on a formal occasion. In certain instances the neutral referent and the pejorative are the same word, e.g. _khazir_ 'pig'). ***** YIDISHKEYT WITHOUT YIDDISH? A. J. Sherman, in the _Times Literary Supplement_ of 14 September 1984 (p. 1032), reviewing Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, _The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics_ (London: Quartet, 1984), remarked that "Feuerlicht's argument is unfortunately weakened by her impressionistic rendering of Jewish history; occasional garbled phrases in Yiddish do not inspire confidence as to her grasp of the tradition she purports to defend." Here we see a reviewer's language sensitivity put to analytic use. Anti-Zionist writers sometimes make invidious comparisons between Yiddish and Hebrew or between Diaspora Ashkenazic culture and Israeli culture. The least one can expect from a defender of "Yidishkeyt" is some knowledge of Yiddish. **** MORE JEWISH DEFENSE THAN THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE Words of Jewish-language origin are constantly knocking at the doors of general English, but not all of them enter. It is sometimes possible, as in the instance before us, to follow the fortunes of a neologism which may not enter but will remain a fascinating curiosity at the least. Not too long ago I read an article headed "Scientific Sleuth, and a Frog, Solve a Medical Mystery" (_International Herald Tribune_, London, 31 July 1987, pp. 1, 6), which told of Dr. Michael Zasloff (whose Slavic name suggests Eastern Ashkenazic origin if he is Jewish) who "... found it: a previously unknown family of powerful natural antibiotics, dubbed "magainins" from the Hebrew word for 'shield', whose discovery holds the hope of both new treatments for many human infections and a deeper understanding of animals' defenses against disease" (p. 1). The immediate etymon of English _magainin_ (pl. _magainins_) is Hebrew _magen_ (pl. _maginim_). It is almost as though the Hebrew noun _magen_ 'shield' has become a verb _to magen_, with _magaining_ representing colloqial *magening. This pseudo-gerund then is pluralized by adding -_s_. The _ai_ can be explained as an attempt to express modern Israeli Hebrew /ey/, the morpheme _gain_ being a kind of internal pun (more gain = ma gain). An Ashkenazic Jew might very well have heard the "Jewish star" referred to by its Yiddish name _mogn-dovid_ 'star of David'. But here we have the Israeli Hebrew form of the word for 'shield'. This could be evidence of the spread of Hebrew among educated Jews in the Diaspora, a small minority of whom are fluent in Hebrew (as is evident from radio and television interviews in Israel, as well as from meetings and conventions.) These people constitute an intellectual elite and one would expect to find scientists among them. Medicine is a profession which has always attracted Jews and for centuries Jewish physicians have written in Hebrew and have identified diseases with Hebrew (often biblical) names. **** GILDING THE LILY Among nineteenth-century central-European Jews certain name endings, especially -_feld_, and -_heim_ were especially popular and were added for purely ornamental purposes. This can be seen with particular clarity where these endings ornament a name which one would have thought required no embellishment, namely _Cohen_ (in its various spellings). Thus we find _Cohnheim_ (cf. _Julius Cohnheim_ in _Encyclopaedia Judaica_ {= EJ} 5:693 and _Cohnfeld_ (cf. the German-Jewish writer _A. Cohnfeld_, whose pseudonym was August Buddelmeyer). ***** SUPERSUBTLE? In the _Rheinischer Merkur / Christ un Welt_ No. 45 (6 November 1987), p. 12, we read this about Douglas H. Ginsburg: "In der Diskussion ueber Ginsbergs Nominierung wurde von Kritikern seine mangelnde richterliche Praxis bemaengelt. Auch spielt seine juedische Herkunft eine Rolle." I believe that Ginsberg's use of marihuana in his twenties rather than his being Jewish finished him as a candidate, but assuming that the reporter has his facts right, let us look at the last sentence of his report. He might also have written: "Auch spielt es eine Rolle dass er ein Jude ist" or "dass er juedisch ist," or even "dass er juedisher Herkunft ist." The reporter chose a less direct wording, one which splits off Ginsberg's background or origins from Ginsberg himself. The syntax of the reporter's sentence is not objectionable, but one wonders whether it reflects a certain reluctance to speak of its subject as being a Jew or as being Jewish. ****** Yude-Leyb Proger (Leonard Prager) ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.170