Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.096 August 30, 1993 1) Boiberik and Anatevka (Zachary Baker) 2) Wolcza Dulna or Dulna Wolcza (Arn Abramson) 3) Yiddish poem (Seth L. Ness) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Aug 27 10:49:03 1993 From: Zachary Baker (bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu) Subject: Boiberik and Anatevka As a follow-up to my posting concerning Yehupets, I would like to bring to the attention of fellow MENDELnikes an article that appears in the Aug. 27th issue of the (Yiddish, for a change) "Forverts": "Keyn Boyberik un Anatevka vo s'hot gevoynt Tuvye der milkhiker..." [To Boiberik and Anatevka, where Tuvye (i.e. Tevye) der milkhiker lived] (n.b. Boyberik is the translitera- tion a la YIVO, and Boiberik is how one often sees it spelled in English). It's a travelogue written by Dr. Khariton Berman of Bilatserkiv (Belaya Tserkov = Sadeh Lavan), who recently visited the Ukrainian dacha resort of Boyarka and the nearby village of Antonovka, where the prototype for Sholem Aleichem's character Tevye is supposed to have plied his trade and resided (respectively) together with his wife Golda and their seven daughters. In Antonovka, Dr. Berman, accompanied by his son, daughter-in-law and his two grandsons, met some elderly peasants who claimed to remember Tevel (other accounts confirm the existence of a milkman in Boyarka by that name) and his family. It appears that the Bermans were not the first to undertake such a pilgrimage, because the locals in Boyarka the memory of Sholem Aleichem has been preserved, and they continue to collect memorabilia relating to him and to his literary protagonists. At one point in their travels, their guide, a Ukrainian named Andrei Ivanovich Melnichuk, declares, "You've been talking the entire time about Tevel and his daughters -- and you've even looked for his cow's stall. Why don't you ask about Golda, Tevel's wife? My mother told me that she was a 'golden woman.' The entire village used to go to her for advice. She would help everyone and she also was a healer. She was our best doctor, with her herbal remedies, which she collected in the forest..." Even as one wonders about the reliability of these secondhand reminiscences, it is fascinating, 100 years later, to read about the impact that a literary persona has had on a couple of small villages. Note, too, the correspondence between Boyarka and Boiberik (notwithstanding the existence of the Galician toponym Bobrka -- Boyberke in Yiddish) and between Antonovka and Anatevka. Zachary Baker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Aug 27 18:07:23 1993 From: "Arthur S. Abramson" Subject: Wolcza Dulna or Dulna Wolcza To Zev Kesselman: I cannot find Wolcza Dulna (or the reverse) in the book Shetl Finder by Chester G. Cohen (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1989). A better book, which I do not have, is Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust by Gary Mokatoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack (Teaneck, NJ,Avotaynu,Inc., 1991).A local Jewish genealogical society should have a copy. The 1992 edition of the Times Atlas of the World does not list the town for any country today. I am posting the information here, as well as in a private message to you, because these books may be of interest to other people on Mendele. Arn Abramson 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Aug 30 16:44:26 1993 From: "Seth L. Ness" Subject: yiddish poem while looking through my grandfathers old stuff i found a poem in yiddish. a couple of people translated some of it for me, but there is one word they don't know which is the title of the poem and used as a refrain. this is 'sluschei'. the poem was written in chust, chekoslovakia in 1932. does anyone know what this word means? thanks. Seth L. Ness ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.096