Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.259 March 3, 1994 1) Yiddish/'Jewish' (Ellen Prince) 2) H.L. Mencken, Jews, & diabetes (Harold Orbach) 3) Mooz? (Michael Shimshoni) 4) Manseh and shmoolyaris (Paul Bakan) 5) Der Bay (Fishl Kutner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Feb 27 22:04:47 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: yiddish/'jewish' to: mikhl thanks for an interesting history! nothing is ever simple in or about yiddish... :) ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 10:17:49 1994 From: Harold L. Orbach Subject: H.L. Mencken, Jews, & diabetes Would someone please give the exact statement and citation for the remark on Jews and diabetes? Despite Mencken's anti-semitic remarks [found in his personal diaries, not published by him] and his later political strangeness, he was a persistent critic of cultural hypocrisy in the US (especially anti-intellectual fundamentalism]. As printed in Mendele, his remark on Jews and diabetes is not clearly anti-semitic. If derived from the dialogue in Caesar and Cleopatra, where Shaw has Caesar twit his English servant, named Brittanicus, about his society's barbarism compared to the Egyptians about whom Britannicus has made nasty remarks, then Mencken may in fact be saying that Jews were civilized long before whomever the remark is addressed to. After all, it has long been known that diabetes is not "purely" hereditary, if that word has any meaning in the world of microbiology's paradigm of gene expression. Many Native American Indian peoples have become very severely afflicted with diabetes (and obesity) and this has been traced to the introduction of European-style diets that replaced their normal foods to which they were biologically adapted. Thus, diabetes is very much a disease that comes with civilization and dietary changes. So let's not condemn Mencken without a clear reference and context for his remark. Mencken devoted a few pages to Yiddish in his The American Language in 1919, with credit to Abraham Cahan as the source of his information, even if this was to illustrate the flexibility of American Yiddish in borrowing from its new environment. Harold L. Orbach 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 10:17:44 1994 From: Michael Shimshoni Subject: Mooz? As one who was brought up in a Yekkish, thus not Yiddish speaking, family, I had to learn the little I know of Yiddish indirectly. I had thought that unlike in German one says in Yiddish "darf" for "must", which took some time to get used to as there are the German words "muss" for must and "darf" for may. When I thought that I got it I found now in a recent article by Ruth Minden the line: >concluded by saying "A yid mooz vissn zayn shprakh", I found myself ==== This "mooz" looks suspiciously close to the German muss. Please can some Mendelniks clarify what the proper Yiddish usage is. Michael Shimshoni 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 11:25:02 1994 From: Subject: manseh and shmoolyaris The yiddish I heard in Brooklyn included 'manseh ' but not 'mayseh'. I was discouraged from believing in 'bobbeh manses' (or 'maynses'). I also hear 'shmoolyaris' for dollars, especially in discourse of a less than serious nature. All this in a 'galitsyaner' context. Re: 'feygele' as gay or homosexual, I find an entry in Fred Kogos' 1966 A Dictionary of Yiddish Slang and Idioms, Citadel Press (or Castle Books) on p. 35 "faigeleh..little bird, also a pervert, fairy, homosexual, fag. Paul Bakan 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 12:16:50 1994 From: Philip Kutner Subject: DER BAY If you wish a sample copy of DER BAY, kindly send a SASE to: Philip "Fishl" Kutner 1128 Tanglewood Way San Mateo, CA 94403 Ph. 415-349-6946 If you travel or relocate, The Yiddish Network contact will tell you what's going on in town. Just send him/her a SASE with your request. WE are now in 132 cities around the world and in every state in the U.S. Sorry, most of the contacts use snail mail :-). The April issue of DER BAY will have the early schedule and contacts for The Second International Yiddish Club Conference in Toronto, Oct. 7-10, 1994. The First was at the University of Maryland last May. Fishl ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.259 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