Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.223 February 9, 1994 1) European Jewry (Ellen Prince) 2) Khazars in Galicia in writings of Joseph Roth (Martin Davis) 3) Books on games; Wexler revisited (Zachary Baker) 4) Blood typing (Jascha Kessler) 5) Tseyre-tsvey-yudn? (Marnen Laibow-Koser) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 14:39:49 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: european jewry jules levin: thanks for a very interesting post. two points: yes, mendele has spent lots of time on wexler's theory. the problem it has is that it predicts yiddish to be a slavic language; however, structurally, it is undeniably germanic. all the 'slavic substratum' effects he claims are typical effects of borrowing from a contact language, not at all the effects of genetic (language-genetic, i mean) descent. ok, so we're semitic... so how come we don't look it? in my musings on the early settlements of eastern europe by germanic- speaking jews, i tried at first to account for both the physical traits and the facts of yiddish. the second scenario would account only for the latter. of course, it's very possible that neither is right. but SOMEDAY one would like to account for both, right? ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 15:14:41 1994 From: davism@turing.cs.nyu.edu (Martin Davis) Subject: Khazars in Galicia in writings of Joseph Roth I've been reading his novel "The Radetsky March" and noticed the following: Many of these traders were Jews. A *lusus naturae*, perhaps a mysterious law obeyed by some secret branch of the legendary tribe of Khazars, determined that many among these frontier Jews were red-headed. The locale is a village on the border between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russia before WWI. (This is the region where Joseph Roth was born of Jewish parents.) Martin Davis 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 15:16:20 1994 From: Zachary Baker (bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu) Subjects: Books on games; Wexler revisited Since you asked (Neach Zide, in MENDELE 3.220), the YIVO Library has a fair number of books and pamphlets on various types of children's games -- too many to list here. These include publications on rebuses, games involving physical motion (bavegungs- shpiln), word games, even a Hasidic board game (Brooklyn, 1975), plus musical games as well. We also have a section on chess. Among secondary citations brought out in the YIVO catalog is an offprint by Leybush Lehrer, "Di psikhologye fun shpil" (Vilna: YIVO, Psikhologish-Pedagogishe Sektsye, 1933). Another YIVO publication, on games of chance, is by Yitskhok (Isaac) Rivkind, "Der kamf kegn azartshpiln bay yidn" [English title: "The fight against gambling among Jews"] (NY: YIVO, 1946). Jules F. Levin, in his fascinating treatment of the origins of Eastern European Jewry (MENDELE 3.221), asks, "But has anyone brought up Wechsler's [i.e., Wexler's] theory of a West Slavic substratum as the basis of Yiddish?" Hoo, boy... all I can say is take a look at back issues of MENDELE, for weeks running, last summer. There is where you will find all you wanted to know, and then some, about Wexler's theories as viewed by subscribers to this list. In light of recent discussions on genotypes, phenotypes, etc., maybe we should change the name of this rag to MENDEL (after Gregor). Zachary Baker, YIVO Library 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 15:49:48 1994 From: KESSLER Subject: re bloodtyping I would imagine that the Jews of Rome are a very special particular community; whereas the study I was citing from Ashley Montague, as I recall, was a UN, Pos t WW II study that went all over Europe, as I remarked, from Poland West to Galicia. Perhaps Sephardic Jews, and Romans, were not part of the survey. But... one exception doesnt discount the other 60,000 samples; hardly. A universal rule,it wasnt. But as germane to the discussion of why Jews are so various, yet still Jews, well, it is helpful. Causes are another matter. I was hoping to get beyond Great Grandma's abduction and/or rape. What communities were like once is very hard to imagine. An illuminating example: Marco Polo (what or who were they in that family?) says he stayed about 6 months in a city in what is now Anatolia, where I have been, only two years ago, to visit the tomb of the gre at poet Rumi (blocked by memory lapse, though I see it in thge mind's eye, the Mosque, and have the Sufi tapes, and all that, and have translated Rumi!), and Polo says, What a dirty dusty empty place! And yet that is the place where at the same time Rumi held court, lived, founding the Dervish order! and wrote 1000s of lines of the greatest poetry in the tradition of Persian. Polo had not the faintest! And he was there. I would assume, as a Venetian traveller waiting for his caravan, he was kept in restricted quarters; but, not a whiff of local conversation and news and gossip? Amazing! Kessler 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 15:59:05 1994 From: laibow@brick.purchase.edu (Marnen Laibow-Koser) Subject: Tseyre-tsvey-yudn? I have a several-decades-old Yiddish schoolbook (obviously intended for English-speaking, probably bilingual, children -- I don't know the title, author, or date because the cover and title page are missing), and came across the following anomaly: "ay" is written with pasakh-tsvey-yudn as usual, but "ey" is written not with the usual two unmarked yuds, but rather with a tseyre beneath, so it looks like !!. Has anybody seen this anywhere else? (This same schoolbook also contains a short story with every sentence in verb-first order, which I'll post here if people are interested). Shalom, Marnen Laibow-Koser ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.223 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. 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