Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.020 June 10, 1994 1) Introduction (Frank Boches) 2) Eynikl, Enkel, unoka (Dovid Braun) 3) Political culture and frumkayt of NY Jews (Odem Vaytman) 4) Yiddish Comics: Corrections and additions (Henry Sapoznik) 5) Yiddish Comix, nokh a mol (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet) 6) Kinship terms (Rick Gildemeister) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 9 13:12:50 1994 From: Frank_M_BOCHES@umail.umd.edu Subject: Introduction I'm new--my name is Frank Boches. I hail originally from Boston (Dorchester area) and now live in Baltimore. I'm at the Univ. of MD three days a week. I'm interested in finding out if anyone knows where I can get hold of an old 78 record by Al Jolson entitled "Ich fuhr aheim." The beginning goes something like this: Ich fuhr aheim, ich fuhr aheim. zu Palestine, zu Palestine, ungepluchten yahren dadadadada, a Yid bin ich geboren voren dadada, Ich fuhr aheim, ich fuhr aheaim. And the rest escapes me. Also, anyone from the old Dorchester area--Franklin Field, Nightingale Street Shul, Beth El Hebrew? Shanen dank. Frank Boches 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 9 17:18:06 1994 From: dovid@MIT.EDU Subject: eynikl (Yiddish), Enkel (German), unoka (Hungarian) Does anyone know if there's any connection between the Germanic root and the Hungarian? Dovid Braun 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 9 19:08:09 1994 From: 74031.775@CompuServe.COM Subject: Political culture and frumkayt of NY Jews In thinking about Paul Ritterband's question regarding the relative frumkayt of Brooklyn Jews versus Bronx Jews I would agree with your assumptions. While I do not know how to tap into the circulations of the various Yiddish newspapers, it occured to me that the Bronx had a number of Jewish worker housing projects/coops - the Amalgamated Houses and the Sholem Aleichem Houses near Sedgwick Ave. and the Coops on Allerton Ave. All three home to many Yiddish speakers. This housing stock is in the midst of Jewish neighborhoods that remain more or less intact to this day. I am not sure if Brooklyn fostered similar worker coops though from personal experience Brighton Beach in Brooklyn - Russian emigres aside - appeared to have more secular Jews than religious. Odem Vaytman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 9 23:37:50 1994 From: Sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Yiddish Comics: Corrections and additions Mendelniks: I humbly stand corrected on a variety of details re: Jewish comics: 1) I did indeed inadvertantly omit Art Spiegelman's monumental work "Maus". My mistake. 2) The Marvel series was in fact, the "Invaders" and not the "Avengers" and it was published in 1976 not1986. 3) I also left out the wonderful work of Ben Katchor whose Yiddish named character "Julius Knipl" features numerous insightful Yiddishisms and Yiddish cultural allusions. "Knipl" is a weekly feature in the New York's Village Voice and has been anthologized under the title "Cheap Novelties The Pleasures of Urban Decay" (Penguin 1991) . He also created a sequential art series in the English Forward called "Jews of New York" after Spiegelman completed his "Maus" series. This will teach me to write responses at 3:00 a.m. Henry Sapoznik 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 9 22:05:06 1994 From: msweet@facstaff.wisc.edu Subject: Yiddish Comix, nokh a mol I was very interested in Pavel Miladinovic-Cernoch's posting on the Will Eisner "Opmakh mit got" comic. Think I may have missed a further posting on this subject, but would appreciate address of German bookstore where this can be obtained, Yiddish and comics being among my favorite recreations. Was this recently published? If so, it could probably be obtained from the publisher: Lambiek, Kerkstraat 78, 1017 GN Amsterdam--the best comics shop in Europe, if not the world. Also, on comics in Yiddish, good article "Abie the Agent, Gimpl The Matchmaker, Berl Schliemazel, et al., by John Appel, in *NEMO--The Classic Comics Library*, no. 28, Dec., 1987. Does anyone know of any plans to reprint *Gimpl Beynish Der Shadkhan* or other of the fascinating sounding Yiddish comic strips of Samuel Zagat? Meyshe-Yankl Sweet 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 10 08:24:39 1994 From: EEGLC%CUNYVM.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu> Subject: Kinship terms To: Shleyme Axelrod You ask if there is any information on etymology of German Enkel. I thought I would raise the question in general of kinship terminology. There are a lot of cognates which have different meanings in Yiddish and German. One thing is for sure, that Enkel and Onkel are definitely not related. Vetter means cousin in German, whereas the corresponding Yiddish word means uncle. In older German the word for uncle was Oheim, hence also Dutch oom, (and Afrikaans "Oom Paul Kruger"). Muomme was a medieval formula for aunt in German, Onkel and Tante, from French, ousted the older terms. At one point the Germans seriously thought that "Deutsch", which actually means "vernacular" was not a suitable language for cultured speech, and there was a francophile movement which brought the words into German. As we all know in the last century among many Jews there was a corresponding germanophile movement, hence all those daytshmerizms (but that's a complex issue beyond the scope of this message, what with 19th century notions of "pure" languages) Anyway, in Yiddish we now have the word Tante for aunt alongside mume/mime. I read a beautiful book, which I really *loved* called Stefanesti, about a Romanian shteytl with that name. It's an ethnography done after the town Jews had been dispersed during and after WWII. The terms they used for cousin were plemenek and plemenitse. Conservative aunts were addressed by nephews and nieces as mime, whereas more assimilated ones were addressed as tante. To come to the final point of what has become, I see, a collection of anecdotes is: where else in the Yiddish language do plemenek and plemenitse occur? By the way, I believe the town used "tote-mome" loshn, and were moving towards bilingual full dominance of Romanian. I can't resist one more shtikele: their word for Romanian gentiles (the way we discussed fonye a little while back) was: Vulekh! Rick Gildemeister ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.020 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu