______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.267 March 8, 1994 1) Word Play (Arre Komar) 2) Introduction (Joshua Plaut) 3) "Ekldik" and various (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet) 4) Wexler's new book (Zachary Baker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar3 20:31:00 1994 From: "Dr. Arthur Komar" Subject: Word play While not quite identical to the cross languages punning of Horowitz - Nafkowitz variety, a charming Yiddish in joke did occur on the Sid Ceasar TV show of some decades past. In a parody of a Japonese Samurai movie Sid Ceasar used as the name of the Samurai: Take Metsiya. I often wondered what fraction of his audience appreciated the humor. A small question for our shamus: In surfing through gopher space I came across something called the NY-Israel project which purports to list all all electronic list of Jewish interest, and I must say that they are really quite broad. However Mendele is not on the list. Shouldn't it be there, and if so, how is that accomplished? Arre Komar 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Mar 4 08:23:09 1994 From: rjplaut@MIT.EDU Subject: Introduction I am a fan of Yiddish, growing up in Israel hearing my late grandmother Nechama Yanich speak to my mom in Yiddish. On occasion my grandfather contributed my grandmother's folk poetry to the Forward newspaper in the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually all of my grandmother's poetry was collected into a privately published volume entitled "mayn weltl" (my world) which includes 75 poems. One poem "mayn tefilah" (my prayer) was put to music by Sidor Belarsky. I have taken the Oxford Yiddish summer course in 1990, and need to refresh my knowledge of the language. I am also interested in Judeo-Spanish and Sephardi history and culture, at the present time I am completing a 70 year history of Jewish life in the Greek provinces before and after the Holocaust. Finally, I am a free-thinking rabbi, mindful of tradition, working as Hillel chaplain at MIT and serving a congregation in Martha's Vineyard. Last but not least, I do photoethnographic exhibitions, the most recent on Jewish life in Central Asia (Bukharan Jewish culture), as well as documentations on Jews in Greece, Turkey, New Zealand and the American South. Joshua Plaut 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Mar 4 09:24:08 1994 From: "Michael J. Sweet" Subject: "Ekldik" and various Dan Kirschner asks [about "eklet"]: "Ekldik" is a standard Yiddish word meaning disgusting or stomach turning, with "ekln" as the associated verb, although Dan's Mom's form seems a dialectical varient. My Mom also said that often "s'iz ekelt mir", referring to any dirt or treyf that might be present--there was a powerful repugnant affect associated with this phrase, which I'm sure contributed to my notorious (among my friends) pickiness about food and vegetarian preferences. Thought it amusing when moved to Madison that we have an "Eckel" garbage removal company here--and the chief of waste recycling for the city is named (s'iz de emes!) Mr. Dreck. German-Americans abound out here, many of whom are not aware of the Yiddish (if not German) meanings of their names--we really have people here named "Putz", "Shwantz" etc. When we "made a shimmelekha", it was definitely a face "two eyes, one nose, and who stuck their finger in [for the mouth]?", whereupon we ran like the blazes. Any children's games folklorists out there? Meyshe-Yankl Sweet 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Mar 4 11:01:12 1994 From: Zachary Baker (bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu) Subject: Wexler's new book Those MENDELnikes who were on this list last summer will doubtless recall the lengthy discussions of Prof. Paul Wexler's theories regarding the origins of Yiddish. Now his heralded book, "The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity," has finally come out. It is being published by Slavica Publishers (P.O. Box 14388, Columbus, OH 43214), and since this is not intended to be a commercial for the book I will say no more, other than quote briefly from the blurb that arrived in today's mail: "In Wexler's view, the Ashkenazic Jews most likely descend from a minority ethnic Palestinian Jewish emigre population that inter- married with a much larger heterogeneous population of converts to Judaism from Asia Minor, the Balkans and the Germano-Sorb lands... Widespread conversions to Judaism that began in Asia Minor in the Christian era and ended with the institutionalization of Christian- ity among the Western Slavs in the beginning of the second millen- nium saved the tiny ethnic Palestinian Jewish population in the diaspora from total extinction. The major non-Jewish contributors to the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazic Jews were Slavs, though there was probably also a minor Turkic strain -- both in the Caspian- Black Sea area... and in the Balkans and Hungary. In all of these areas, the Turkic population early became submerged with the coterritorial Slavs. ".... Jewish linguistic evidence refutes the traditional claims that Yiddish is a variant of High German and that Modern Hebrew is a 'revived' form of Old Hebrew; new hypotheses are proposed: that Yiddish began as a Slavic language (specifically a Judaized form of Sorbian) that was re-lexified to Hebrew, and thus is also a form of Sorbian. These facts support the author's hypothesis of the Slavic origins of the Ashkenazic Jews, and the bulk of their religion and folk culture." Wexler's book also attempts to refute the "Khazar thesis" popular- ized by Arthur Koestler: "Wexler believes Koestler was right about the Slavo-Turkic basis for the north European Jews -- but that he erred in assuming the preponderence [sic] of Turks over other ethnic groups, and in placing the 'homeland' of the Ashkenazic Jews in the Caucasus... Ashkenazic Judaism is essentially a Judaized form of Slavic pagan and Christian culture and religion (rather than an uninterrupted evolution of Palestinian Judaism) -- and the best repository of pagan Slavic folk culture that survives to our days. Wexler also proposes that the other Jewish diasporas ... are also largely of non-Jewish origin. The book compares the notion of Jewish peoplehood with attempts at rewriting the past found in many other societies." At the risk of reigniting the earlier discussion I pass this information along to readers of MENDELE. As they say in relexified Yiddish, Zol der oylem visn. Zachary Baker ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.267 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