Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.216 February 6, 1994 1) Khazars / shuls (Jascha Kessler) 2) Khazars (Jascha Kessler)) 3) Yiddish-related dissertations at JTS (David G. Roskies) 4) Yankee Yiddish (Eliyahu Ahilea) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Feb 6 00:48:12 1994 From: KESSLER Subject: re Khazars /re Shuls For Ellen Prince: Ashley Montague, in MAN'S MOST DANGEROUS MYTH (c.1951-52) cites a piece of research post WW II. Blood tests were taken of Jews and their su rounding "national" or native populations from the USSR to Galicia in Spain. Apparently the distribution of blood types among Jews was exactly the same, percentages of A, AA, O, etc., as that among their fellow nationals -- which, by the same token, also differed in the proportion of A, AB, O, etc, from region to region. What does this suggest? For the Shul hunter, Kirschner. In Rome do as the ancientest of Jews do; do Purim at the Central Synagogue on the Tiber, in the Via del Tempio, if you can get in. Or in Firenze, the Main Synagogue there. I dont know abou the Venetian synagogue, however. Shuls there are what we would call grand temples here, as in NYC or LA, etc. Only old, old, old. Jascha Kessler 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Feb 6 00:48:21 1994 From: KESSLER Subject: re Khazars Something more has to be known about their kingdom before you dismiss the story of their conversion to Judaism. It has to do with the crossroads of empires and the Silk Road, I believe. My son, a Chinese archaeologist who is the only Caucasian allowed on the great sites beyond the Great Wall (cf his show that opens in LA, EMPIRES BEYOND THE GREAT WALL: THE HERITAGE OF GENGHIZ KHAN, and goes to NYC Mus of Nat History, after the show here closes (5 March opening), and thence to Nashville, Vancouver, etc, the great amount of treasures ever to have left China! Most of them recently unearthed, too, post 1945, remarks that he was taken to one of 100+ new sites in Inner Mongolia a few times over the past year. One famous one, a great city, seems to have had at least 1000 temples, and was called the city of 100 churches, the Black City. He saw there a newly unearthed 4th Century cornerstone for a Nestorian temple, or church, one of many. There is lots of commerce east and west to be discovered yet, or uncovered, and it dates back and back. Jews seem to have been involved with it all always. The recent discovery of a silkthread in the hair of a mummy in Egypt, dating from about 1500 BC, that gives us much pause. Also the use of Chinese pottery, and porcelain, in such quantity as to be able to be made the bas e for the mole of an artificial harbor at Caesarea! that tells us that Jews passed through Khazaria much later, etc. The Khazars were notoriously redheaded; so are many of my ancestors, though I am blackheaded. Let us not be too quick to dismiss the vast unknowns of ancient Jewish wanderings. Jascha Kessler 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Feb 6 09:21:37 1994 From: daroskies@theo.jtsa.edu Subject: Yiddish-related dissertations at JTS As a Yankl-Come-Lately to e-mail, I was astonished to discover the speed with which these missives are received and the international scope of mame-loshn (by which I mean English, of course). One ought to recite a special brokhe before logging in... To further the exchange of information, I offer the following list of dissertations I supervised or hope to supervise someday soon under the aegis of the Department of Jewish Literature here at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. (1) Daniela Mantovan (from Heidelberg) successfully defended her thesis at Columbia Univ. on DER NISTER AND HIS SYMBOLIST SHORT STORIES (1913-1929): PATTERNS OF IMAGINATION. (JTS and Columbia have a close working relationship thanks to Prof. Rakhmiel Peltz. There is significant cross-registration between his courses and mine and a wonderful complementarity.) (2) Mark William Kiel (son of Yiddish poet Khonen Kiel) successfully defended his thesis A TWICE LOST LEGACY: IDEOLOGY, CULTURE AND THE PURSUIT OF FOLKLORE IN RUSSIA UNTIL STALINIZATION (1930-1931). (The thesis was submitted to the dept of Jewish History.) (3) Francesco Melfo ( from Milan, Italy) is about to defend his thesis THE RHETORIC OF IMAGE AND WORD:THE MAGAZINES MILGROYM AND RIMON, 1922-1924 AND THE JEWISH SEARCH FOR NEUTRAL LOCI. (4) Jillian Davidson (London, England) has begun writing her thesis A SECULAR CATASTROPHE IN EASTERN EUROPE: THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND JEWISH LITERATURE. (5) Mikhail Krutikov (from Moscow) will soon begin work on his thesis THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE YIDDISH NOVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1905-1914. (6) Carrie Friedman (Montreal-Jerusalem) will soon begin work on THE LODZ GHETTO WRITINGS OF JOSEF ZELKOWICZ. David G. Roskies 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Feb 6 12:36:51 1994 From: BRAHA@LIB.HAIFA.AC.IL Subject: Yankee Yiddish The quotations from Rechnitzer's Rejects (by David Sherman in Mendele 3.208) remind me of a small cartoon book called "Yankee Yiddish" published in the 1950s. It contains terms and phrases in Yiddish and wrong meanings for them, with matching cartoons, which might be guessed by the unknowledgeable. Some examples: "Shlim Mazl" (or "Muzzle" - "A cowboy from the Catskills"), "A Shikse" ("an electric shaver", and the cartoon shows a young woman using one), "Goyeh" ("a famous Spanish painter"), "A killeh" ("a dangerous gangster"), "A pisher" (a "strike-out artist" in baseball), "A misseh mashine" ("who stole the car?"). The original book in that vein was "Fractured French"; its best-known example was "Jeanne d'Arc" (- "no light in the john"). The correct meanings were given in the end of the books. Answering Jeremy Stern's question (Mendele 3.213): "Kol koyre bamidber" is straight Hebrew (in Ashkenazi pronounciation) and does mean "a voice calls out in the desert" or "a voice calling out in the desert". Eliyahu Ahilea ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.216 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