Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.222 February 9, 1994 1) Schindler's List and Greek Jews (Kalmen Weiser) 2) Eurpean Jewry (Ellen Prince) 3) Language and maids (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 13:52:42 1994 From: "Keith Weiser (TD 1994)" Subject: Schindler's List and Greek Jews In response to recent letters concerning "Schindler's List," I must say that I, too, was suprised by Spielberg's choice of "Yerushalayim shel zahav" rather than a Yiddish song. However, considering the DPs tremendous committment to a Jewish state in Palestine, especially since no country wanted them after the Holocaust, it seems to be fitting. In the process of completing a senior essay on the DPs in Bavaria, I found the final scenes of the film very powerful, that is, when the Russian soldier liberates the Jews and warns them to go neither west nor east. The question of "where do we go from here?" was on the minds of all the DPs and the response of "Palestine" was so strong that in one incident, cited I believe in Mark Wyman's book "DP", Jews polled by UNRRA as to where they wanted to go chose Palestine as both their first and second choices. When told that they must list a different second choice, the Jews in a certain DP camp, listed "crematoria." Please forgive this morbid example, but I believe it serves as a good illustration of the commitment of the vast majority of the Sheyres hapleyto (at least during the first year following liberation) to building a homeland in the land of their forefathers. Concerning Romaniot (Greek non-Ashkenasi, non-Sephardic) Jews, I thank everyone for their responses. I just read an interesting article in the 1987 issue of "Jewish Languages Journal" about Yavanic (Thank you, Prof. Herzog. Btw, my name Kalmen is purely ashkenasi, although I was named after the living in the tradition of the Romaniot). In comparing the words listed by the language informant interviewed by the author with those provided by mother, who speaks the Janinna dialect, I found a number of discrepencies but also some concordance. However, like the informant in the article, my mother's speech is influenced by other languages, including Ladino (her mother was born to Romaniot parents who had settled among the Sephardim of Istanbul) and Turkish. Interestingly, for example, the holiday which the informant in the article refered to as "Pesakh," my mother calls "Paskelya." I don't know whether this is straight from Ladino or comes from Greek, since I speak neither language. My mother has no special name for this language except "Janinna Greek." I read Ray Dalven's book a few years ago (she was a friend of the family) and found it to be a heroic contribution to a field about which so little is written. However, not to detract from the importance of the work, it was written by someone who was not a trained historian and this is reflected in the text. It is a good starting point, though, to learn about Janinna history and culture. I plan to visit Kehile Kadosha Janinna in the spring and to interview some relatives about Romaniot culture, with the hope of finding a professor interested in this material to whom I could submit information. I am currently trying to contact Joshua Fishman, for example. Personally, I hope to learn Greek and Ladino in the next few years so that I, myself, can help in documenting this culture. But I fear it will be too late. Finally, I have found the discussion about the origins of Ashkenasi Jewry fascinating and hope no one will be discouraged from continuing this discussion for whatever reason. Blaybt gezund, Kalmen Weiser 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 14:29:46 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: european jewry having read bob king's and mark louden's very interesting posts, i can see a slightly different scenario to get the same effect i was aiming for with my earlier musings: as before, the migrations from german-speaking lands to slavic-speaking lands would have been predominantly by men, but the wives they took when they got there might have been the SLAVIC-speaking JEWISH women of the earlier migrations. actually, this would also explain why, in modern times, there is but one eastern european jewish speech community--clearly the later germanic-speaking groups merged completely with the earlier jewish communities, all winding up germanic-speaking. there, does everyone feel better? :) ellen Prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 14:29:46 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: language and maids benjamin alpers: i'd like to see some references on the moscow story. as you no doubt know, linguistics in the ussr was for many years strongly 'colored' by political concerns and this story (that rural wet-nurses influenced the language of the upper classes) would fit right into the party line. the reason i'm so skeptical is that it has been found, over and over and over again, that language change goes from the higher prestige group to the lower prestige group. of course 'prestige' is locally defined and may be domain-specific (e.g. english rock stars singing with an approximation of the phonology of black americans--but of course even they don't SPEAK that way), but it's hard to imagine any domain in which rural wet-nurses would have constituted the high-prestige group for the upper-class children they suckled. anyway, i'd love to see a reference, if you have one. thanks. ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.222 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. 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