Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.215 February 6, 1994 1) Schindler's List (Hershl Berman) 2) Ladino--& Kol Israel schedules (Hope Ehn) 3) European Jewry (Dan Slobin) 4) European Jewry (Ron Rabin) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 5 16:35:39 1994 From: Hal Berman Subject: Schindler's List I've been waiting, but no one on this list has decided to address the movie and how it relates to Yiddish. So I think I'll start the ball rolling. First off, I thought that the movie was very good on the whole, with a few items that I might change were it my movie. The things I'd like to discuss here are the Yiddish ones. First of all, why did the polish Jews speak Sephardic Hebrew? In fact, why were they speaking hebrew at all. As far as I know, Yiddish was the language of choice among religious and traditional Jews, and Polish was spoken by many who were assimilated. Second, of all the Yiddish songs that could have been used why did Spielberg use Oifn Pripetchik? He could have used a number of Yiddish songs that were more appropriate, and dealt with the holocaust. I suppose that we are expected to be gratefull that any Yiddish was used at all. Third, why "Jerusalem of gold?" The Partisan Hymn, in Yiddish, which is a true song of hope with no political over/or under - tones, would have fit a lot better. With apologies to all those of you who are ardent Zionists, I really think that Israel has nothing to do with the movie except that Schindler was declared a righteous person by people living there. As I said before, there are other comments about the movie that I could make, and as a whole I wanted to confine myself to the topic at hand -- Yiddish. But I would be happy to discuss the whole movie (which I very much approve of) with anyone over the private E-waves. Hershl Berman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 5 19:25:28 1994 From: Hope Ehn Subject: Ladino--& Kol Israel schedules About a week ago, Marnen Laibow-Koser said, "I've never heard Ladino called Judeo-Espagnol..." I have--every day on Israel Radio. Their Ladino program on shortwave is on from 17:45-18:00 UTC (=GMT); that's 12:45-1:00 EST. Frequencies are 11587 for western Europe & the east coast of North America, 11675 for eastern Europe & the west coast of North America. The Ladino broadcast follows an "Easy Hebrew" broadcast from 12:25-12:45 p.m EST on the same frequencies. Yiddish broadcasts are all aimed at Eastern Europe, but can be heard in the U.S. There are two each day: 17:00-17:25 UTC (12:00-12:25 p.m. EST) on 11675, 11603, 11587, 9435, 7465. 18:00-18:30 UTC (1:00-1:30 p.m. EST) on 11603 and 9435. For the east coast of North America, 11675 is probably not useful, and 7465 may be too low to be heard at that time of day over that distance. The other frequencies--11603, 11587, and 9435, are sometimes pretty good. This schedule is good for about another month--until March 6. I have the rest of the schedule, and will be glad to post times and frequencies for English, French, and the Hebrew home service if anyone is interested. Hope Ehn 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 5 21:35:10 1994 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: European Jewry I think Ellen Prince has successfully filled in many parts of the picture of the racial composition of European Jewry, but she certainly underestimates the role of rape. The ongoing horrors in Bosnia should have made it clear that a woman doesn't have to be a slave or concubine in order to be raped. And, in Yiddish territory, West and East, pogroms were certainly not a rarity through the centuries of Jewish settlement. In my own family, from southern Ukraine, there are quite evident Tatar features. My grandmother, who was admired for her rather Oriental beauty, always seemed to be slightly embarrassed by it, because she assumed it had entered the family gene pool through rape. There is no reason to minimize this historical means of introducing European genes into the Yiddish gene pool as well. Dan Slobin (slobin@cogsci.berkeley.edu) 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 5 22:15:18 1994 From: RABINRL@SNYBUFVA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU Subject: European Jewry Ellen Prince, in responding to a question about the composition of European Jewry, ends "...perhaps someday genetic studies will give us some answers..." Turns out they have. In the November issue of Natural History magazine, the article "Who Are The Jews" (which I cannot locate to cite properly) deals with the basic questions and issues: why do European Jews look like the gentiles they live(d) with; are European Jews thoroughtly intermarried/gene-mixed; did the Khazars make their Turkish presence felt in the gene pool; etc. The answer is, in brief, the Jews of Europe are distinct from the gentiles with whom they lived. Some genetic based traits are subject to environmental pressure/selection and these manifest as changes in hair color, skin color and characteristics, etc. But there are genetic "markers," if you will, that are not subject to selection pressures and they are secure: for these markers European Jews genetically resemble Semites generally and do not resemble the gentile populations with whom they lived. BTW, in the midst of her response, Ellen Prince is obviously incredulous that maids should have an impact on their masters' language. But given the right mix of circumstances, that's just the situation that happened in the southern slave-owning United States: slave children and slave owners' children were raised together by slaves; slave owners, vastly outnumbered by slaves, spent lots of time in their company and communicating with them. Some linguists are busy now tracing features of slave English (a presumed pidginization product) to some unique characteristics of southern US English. So, nu? Ron Rabin ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.215 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files