Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.129 November 4, 1993 1) The shvitz (Walter Zimmerman) 2) Introduction (Jack Jacobs) 3) Shlogn zikh kop in vant (again) (Bob Rothstein) 4) Ashkenazic Hebrew (Arn Abramson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 3 16:25:27 1993 From: Walter Zimmerman Subject: The Shvitz Dear Mendeleniks - For those of you who can get TVO (TV Ontario), you may be interested to know that The Human Edge program entitled "The Shvitz," which aired last night (Tuesday) will be repeated on Sunday, Nov. 7th at 9:00 p.m. on la Chaine francaise (French TVO) in English. The description of the program is as follows: A tradition of Jewish immigrants, the shvitz (Yiddish for "sweat") was once celebrated as the key to the good life. Jonathan Berman's humorous ode to the original steam baths portrays the unlikely community that still enjoys the last traditional steam baths in the U.S. Watch for the Klezmatics' Yiddish "rap" song at the end of this one hour program!!! Walter Zimmerman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 3 16:43:42 1993 From: Jack Jacobs Subject: Introduction A few words by way of intro: I am an associate prof. of political science in CUNY with a long-term interest in Yiddish culture. My own writing has dealt primarily with the interaction between socialists and Jews, and has included work on the reception of socialist ideas by Yiddish-spe aking writers and activists. I am presently working on critical theory and the image of the Jew. Jack Jacobs 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 3 22:32:32 1993 From: ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN Subject: Shlogn zikh kop in vant (again) Back in May of this year, in connection with this expression, Martin Davis mentioned a picture by Pieter Brueghel that shows a young man beating his head against a brick wall. That section of Brueghel's "Netherlandic Proverbs" (1559) is reproduced in a book just published by Oxford University Press, Wolfgang Mieder's _Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age_ (p. 60). Mieder, of the University of Vermont, is one of the world's leading paremiologists. In his book he mentions that there have been some 40 studies of the Brueghel picture, but not all of the proverbial expressions in it have been identified. He recommends the reproduction in Christopher Brown, _Brueghel_, NY: Crescent Books, 1975, p. 11. Mieder's book, his most recent of more than fifty, also includes an interesting essay entitled "Proverbs in Nazi Germany," in which he discusses "the promulgation of anti-semitism and stereotypes through folklore." Bob Rothstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 4 00:05:32 1993 From: "Arthur S. Abramson" Subject: Ashkenazic Hebrew I was much taken with the discussion of Ashkenazic Hebrew vowels started by Steven Jacobson and carried on by Jeremy Stern, Dovid Braun, Bob Hoberman, Michael Shimshoni, and perhaps a few others. This should interest us because, as a number of you made clear, many Jews know "Ashkenazic" pronunciation only as it has been influenced through phonic interference by the local vernacular languages of the Jews of Europe, including the various varieties of Yiddish. In fact, the underlying phonological system of Ashkenazic Hebrew antedates all these influences of co-territorial languages.The vowels learned by Steven in his American Sunday school were apparently meant to simulate those of the Ashkenazic accent as it has been transmitted by scholars; however, what must have happened in his school, and in other congregational schools across the length and breadth of the land, is that instead of learning the steady-state ("pure") vowels of Hebrew, like Italian "no," American Jewish students,prhaps along with their teachers, used the American English diphthongized [ou] as in English "no," and so on with the rest of the vowels. Similar remarks could be made about a number of the consonants. (By the way, many American immigrants speaking a rather fluent Israeli Hebrew do the same thing with that dialect and thus have a heavy American accent.) Ashkenazic Hebrew in its origins is not an invention of our European Jews.The only source I can find in a hurry is Hebrew: The Eternal Language, by William Chomsky (Philadelphia: Jewish Pub. Soc. of America, 1957). He says (p.112), "The available evidence points to the assumption that the so-called Ashkenazic pronunciation really stems from Palestine. ...This pronunciation may have been carried to Germany and Eastern Europe,during the Middle Ages,by the Tiberian or Palestinian teachers, whose expertness in the 'proper' pronunciation of Hebrew was at that time generally recognized among the Jews. The Sephardic pronunciation ... may have been imported into Spain from Babylon during the eighth to eleventh centuries. Indeed, the Jewish population of Spain during that period was mainly of Babylonian origin." Arn Abramson ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.129