______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.258 March 2, 1994 1) White Challah (Kathryn Hellerstein) 2) White Challah (Golda Werman) 3) White Challah/Lamed Shapiro (Sean Martin) 4) Feygele/feigele (Harold L. Ohrbach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Feb 28 00:04:45 1994 From: khellers@sas.upenn.edu (Kathryn Hellerstein) Subject: Re: "White Challah" Someone, a few issues ago, mentioned the story "White Chalah." Lamed Shapiro is the author. It was first published in 1919. You can find it in English translation by Norbert Guterman in Howe and Greenberg's A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES. It's a great story! Kathryn Hellerstein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Feb 28 17:40:19 1994 From: Subject: _White Challah_ _White Challah_ is by Lamed Shapiro. __Golda Werman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Feb 28 17:19:37 1994 From: Sean A Martin Subject: White Challah-Lamed Shapiro Thanks to Mark Flumerfelt and Dvosye Bilik for responding to my question about Yiddish literature and non-Jews. And to Tsipe Khana Shavelson for prompting me to respond. I believe the "White Challah" story Mark Flumerfelt referred to is by Lamed Shapiro, not I. L. Peretz. "White Challah," an excellent story, is included in the Irving Howe/Eliezer Greenberg anthology, Treasury of Yiddish Stories. I know little about Shapiro, but I really like the two stories of his that I've read. The other, entitled "Newyorkish," is available in translation in The New Country, a compilation of Yiddish literature about America edited by Henry Goodman. Unfortunately, I don't have the other bibliographical information at hand. For Shapiro in the original, look for the collection of stories entitled "Di yidishe melukhe." This collection is in translation as either "On the Jewish Government" or simply, "The Jewish Government." Sean Martin 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 10:17:49 1994 From: Subject: Feygele/feigele My memory of this word being used for an effiminate/homosexual male male extends back to my childhood in the '30's in Paterson and Passaic, N.J., [greetings Dan Leeson] where at the time c.25 % of the population was Jewish. I distinctly remember my Paterson uncle using the term to refer to a man. Less clearly, I believe he had a 78 rpm record of a vaudeville-type comic where the word was used... In the mid/late 40's it was used in the Catskills where I worked a few summers including one at the Yiddish Farband's Camp Eden (not exactly the Catskills across the Hudson below West Point). In 1944, I hung out with the band at Klein's Hillside where the term was used by one of the musicians to refer to a particular guest. I vividly remember going to a burlesque show in Newark in the early '40's (they weren't very fastidious in checking age) with my best friend [the Empire if I recall rightly]. I remember it because it was my first and only burlesque show -- Mayor LaGuardia having closed down the 42nd street burlesque row at the start of WWII for national security reasons. And I remember only one act, one thing about the show: the comic scene where a man hides various female bed partners in different rooms and places as others, finally his wife, knock at the door and eventually he gets rid of all of them, after which he goes to the closet and out comes a man... and I remember thinking 'feygeles.' Many [most?] of the burlesque comics were Jewish and they did semi-Yiddish routines, using Yiddish works and phrases. I can give no help on the origins in relation to bird, but note that various western languages, e.g., French, have a variety of words for homosexual males that all relate to traditional sterotypes of so-called "frilly, fluttering, girlish behavior" most of which are flower-derived [pansy being the most common; but Boris Vian in a 1955 song, Bourree de complexes, used coquelicot (field-poppy) which is not in either of the two French slang dictionaries I have.] It's easy to see how Yiddish could go from bird. After all, Feygel(e), and in English, Birdy, were common nick-names for women... many older women I knew were called "Birdy" ... but I haven't run into one among recent generations. I would suggest looking at Burlesque for early use of 'feygele' -- ask Milton Berle or George Burns, Uncle Miltie was famous for his cross- dressing and the Burns and Allens old TV show was loaded with double entendre sex jokes including homosexual ones -- and Yiddish "popular" records. Fred Kogos' Dictionary of Yiddish Slang and Idioms (c.1966,1967) lists: "Faigeleh" as "Little Bird. Also a pervert, fairy, homosexual, fag" as his first entry under 'F' (p.35) and gives "faigeleh" as the Yiddish for "pansy (male)" on p.142. Norman Rosten in Joys of Yiddish (p.114) also lists "faygeleh" as "Homosexual. Quite common ...in the American-Jewish vernacular. ...Jews use faygeleh as a discrete way of describing a homosexual -- especially where they might be overheard." "Fairy" and "fag" are his English definitions. {From original 1968 edition). More generally, as a sociologist I am "fascinated" by the process of how Mendele got into this topic: looking to "coin" or create a Yiddish equivalent to "gay" as if linguists' decisions govern a language community's usage. Only active Yiddish-speakers will create a word if they feel a need for one and clearly those who write and publish in the popular domain, especially homosexuals, will have a lot to say about what comes to be used. Perhaps they'll just make 'gay' Yiddish as the French have made ski, weekend, whiskey etc., French despite the French Academy, and as they seem to be making 'gay' a French word too, judging by contacts I have had since 1989. But active members of the community will have a better feel for that. Harold L. Orbach ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.258 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 Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________