Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 174 February 16, 1992 1) Various (Ellen Prince) 2) Jewish/Jew (Margaret E. Winters) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 15:18:10 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.173 >From: David Braun >Subject: He's Jewish vs. He's a Jew > >...in English we are more apt to say "(s)he's >Jewish" than "(s)he's a Jew", for example. I've noticed >people (Jews) bristle when someone talks about so and so as >being "a Jew", as opposed to "being Jewish". In general we >(at least nowadays) say "he's Chinese (not: he's a >Chinaman), she's black (vs. she's a black/Negro), they're >Hispanic" -- i.e., the adjective and not the noun form. > Why does _Jew_ make some people uncomfortable? I'd >like to hear people's feelings about this. yeah, i've noticed the same thing. i think there are (at least) two things going on. one is a general sense of pejoration of the noun forms, as opposed to the adjectives, as you note. my favorite are stupidities like 'female person'. i think the official rhetoric is that the noun 'defines' the individual whereas the adjective doesn't. as a linguist, i find the whole thing rather silly, since one defines words, not objects, and i don't feel any more 'defined' by being called a woman or a jew than by being called a female/jewish person. on the contrary, the latter make me think that there's something offensive about the former, which i find very troubling. and that takes me to the second point: second, there may be, at least among some gentiles (and maybe some jews), an association of 'jew' (noun) with epithets like 'dirty jew'. ('dirty jewish person' just doesn't cut it.) this has always made me even *more* inclined to call myself a jew, rather than jewish or (gag!) a jewish person. the same sort of thing happened in france--after the war (or maybe even before), 'juif' was felt to be too reminiscent of 'sale juif' (dirty jew) and benevolent gentiles (and maybe some assimilated jews) used 'israelite'. in the past 30 years, 'juif' has made a comeback, the point being to show that it is *not* in fact a dirty word. on the home front, there was a similar taboo on 'jew' in america in the early part of this century, with 'hebrew' being the euphemism chosen. cf. hias ('hebrew immigrant aid society') and the ym/ywha (young men's/women's hebrew assn). obviously, everyone has to do what they're comfortable with, but i believe jews who are proud of being jews should show it by calling themselves jews, not jewish and definitely not jewish persons. (this last one always reminds me of the thank god now-defunct 'person of the jewish persuasion'. i was persuaded to be a jew the way i was persuaded to be a woman...) --------------------------------------------------------------------- >From: Sigrid Peterson >Subject: turmoil words > .. I know that the Hebrew word _megillah_ has a >secondary Yiddish meaning of fuss, turmoil, brouhaha, >hassle, parental diatribe, etc. I wanted to find a parallel >word, also in Yiddish, for a post on IUODAIOS. I came up >with _meshugas_. megillah and meshugas are different, to my mind. there's nothing necessarily crazy about a megillah. it's just a long (and maybe long-winded) ultimately linguistic object--a set of rules, a description, a story, what have you. meshugas is not necessarily either long or linguistic, e.g. the meshugas of college girls wearing men's underpants as outer garments... tsimes, for me, involves an exaggeration of sorts, an exaggerated display or reaction, as in 'it's just a little cold--don't make such a big tsimes out of it.' for fuss/turmoil/..., i would use yiddish 'tuml'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ >From: RHLE302@HAIFAUVM.BITNET >Subject: Salad > ENJOY >In April 1988, at the entrance to the Israel Museum in >Jerusalem there was a large sign in Hebrew and English >which read as follows: "Hapaam -- mevaker, hapaam habaa -- >chaver. Lehitraot beagudat hayedidim / This time visit >and enjoy -- next time visit and join the Organization of >Friends." This (Ashkenazic) Jewish English use of _enjoy_ >has penetrated General English in places like New York City >and perhaps other American urban centers as well. Since >visitors to the Israel Museum come from all over the world, >it would have been more appropriate to use General English: >"A visitor today, tomorrow a member -- we invite you to >join the Organization of Friends." The play on "enjoy / >join" is not too good to delete. There is no reason why >one can't enjoy being a member as well as being a visitor. i'm not sure if this is your writing or a quote from someone else, but the author hasn't been around the u.s. in a while... enjoy, as an intransitive, is not limited to ny and 'other urban centers'. on the contrary, it's all over the country. you can fly delta airlines from atlanta to new orleans and the flight attendant will tell you 'enjoy!' as s/he serves you your chicken a la king... it's almost always used for food, tho i have also seen it extended to other things, as in the museum sign described above. interestingly, unlike 'bagel' and 'shmaltz', which have also made it all over the country but which are still felt (by many) to be somewhat 'foreign', there is NO consciousness that 'enjoy!' has any yiddish or even any foreign origin, so far as i can tell: it is, believe it or not, what you (?) call 'general english'. finally, i would think the relation noted above to 'join' is purely coincidental, i.e. there is no relation or pun intended. the sign means simply 'visit the museum and enjoy it'. at least, that's what it would mean today anywhere in the u.s. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 14:42:54 CST From: GA3704@SIUCVMB.BITNET Subject: Jewish vs. Jew Dovid Braun's comment/query about the preference shown today for saying that someone is Jewish rather than that someone is a Jew may be part of what is acceptable for an insider (a Jew) to say as opposed to an outsider (a non-Jew). The term Jew seems to me to evoke Shylock, the "Jew of Malta" (another Renaissance play) and even Scott's Rebecca, the `Jewess' in Ivanhoe. My husband adds the modern use of Jew in phrases like `dirty Jew' as also being part of our negative reaction to the noun. Margaret ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.174