Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.196 November 23, 1994 1) Tsvi Schooler (Gaston L. Schmir) 2) Tsvi Schooler ('eynakh Sapoznik) 3) Poem by Y.Y. Shvarts (Charles Jones) 4) Der mayrevdiker knyak (Yude Rozof) 5) Farvos s'iz nito keyn royfe af a khof un af a sof (Alan Astro) 6) "Logic" in language; LSA (Arn Abramson) 7) Yiddish folk music II (Arre Komar) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 13:18:13 -0500 (EST) From: glschm@minerva.cis.yale.edu Subject: Tsvi Schooler Another film in which Tsvi Schooler appeared was "Hester Street". He played the part of the rabbi who presided at the divorce proceedings. I met Schooler once (at a wedding reception about two years before his death). He informed me that the call letters WEVD were an acronym for: Where Every Vun Davens! Gaston L. Schmir 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 22:35:53 -0500 From: sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Zvee Scooler As part of a forthcoming documentary on Yiddish radio called "The Stations That Spoke Your Language: Yiddish-American Radio 1925-1955", many of Zvee Scooler's "Grammeister" broadcasts from 1945-1960 are among the over 1,500 broadcasts being preserved and cataloged. It is planned that after the airing of this documentary on National Public Radio in December of 1995, many of these rare and wonderful shows will be reissued. Those interested in following the progress of the research in this fascinating subject can send their names and address to: "The Station That Spoke Your Language Project" Living Traditions 430 W. 14th Street NYC 10014 'eynakh Sapoznik Leybl: "A hartsiger gut morgn aykh" was the sign-on of the still very active 96 year old veteran newscaster and journalist Benjamin Gabiner. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 17:02:30 -0400 (EDT) From: jones@widener1.mhs.harvard.edu Subject: Poem by Y.Y. Shvarts s'vern nit keyn shabes likhtlekh oyf dayn tish getsundn; s'vert di groye vokh fun hoyz dir keynmol nit farshvundn. s'iz dayn tir on a mezuze-- kumen keyn malokhim; tsu dayn vayb, dayn eyshes-khayel zingstu nit keyn shvokhim. dayne kinder vaksn fremde, on a funk fun gloybn; zogst mit zey nit "moyde-ani", hentlekh oyfgehoybn. un dayn seyder-nakht tut lang shoyn nit dayn hoyz betsirn; un dos veynen fun kol-nidre tut dayn harts nit rirn. un derfar, ven du vest shtarbn vet keyn malekh klogn; un dayn kind vet oyf dayn keyver nit keyn kadesh zogn. From: Geklibene lider / Y.Y. Shvarts. Nyu-York : Yidish-Natsyonaler Arbeter Farband, 1961. P. 33. Also found in: Perl fun der Yidisher Poezie / Yoysef un Khane Mlotek. Tel-Aviv : I.L. Peretz, c1974. P. 339. The version chosen by the Mloteks lacks the second stanza of the version above. I have no idea whether there are yet other versions. Both books give it as an untitled poem. It's not hard to see why it made a deep impression. Charles Jones 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 17:40:45 -0500 (EST) From: jrosof@sas.upenn.edu Subject: Der mayrevdiker knyak Fraynd Gildemeister: Gut gefregt! Heyoys vi ikh bin aleyn an opshtamiker fun di mayrev yidn in Dorem Daytshland un mayrev Ungern hob ikh oykhet a shtarker interes tsu der tema-- mayrev yidisher muzik. Di mayrev yidn hobn andersh geredt un andersh gedavnt (geornt) fun zeyere Ostjuedische brider oykh far der haskole. Fundestvegn ken ikh zeyer veynik fun dem daytsh yidishn amol--ikh bin aleyn gegangn in a shul vos folgt dem mizrekhdikn nusekh. "Echt deutsche" shuln zenen itst koym benimtse--me darf be'emes zukhn khotsh me ken mistome gefinen tsum veynikstns in Nyu York, on groyse shverikeytn. Oyb daytshe shuln zenen shver tsu gefinen--al akhes kame ve kame iz shver tsu gefinen dos alte folkmuzik azoy vi di daytshe yidn hobn shoyn lengst ufgehert ophitn a bazundere kultur, opgesheydet fun der algemeyner kultur in daytshland. Di hayntike daytshe yidn zenen oft mizrekh-eyropeyishe imigrantn in land. Ikh veys fun tsvey mekoyres vegn mayrev muzik. Ershtns: di yidishe entsiklopedyes farmogn farsheydene dugmes fun yidishn gezang fun arum der velt. Tsveytns efsher der grester tsenter af der velt far daytsh-yidishe limudim: der Leo Baeck Institut in Manhetn. S'iz keday a freg tsu ton ba zey! Rick Gildemeister: zorgt zikh nisht! Ir shraybt a laytish geshmak yidish! Al dos guts, Yude Rozof 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 94 16:48:13 CST From: aastro@vm1.tucc.trinity.edu Subject: Farvos s'iz nito keyn royfe af a khof un af a sof [cf. Vol. 4.195/1] The question is more: why are there rofes on a veys and a fey. Obviously, if you get rid of the dagesh in a beys, you need the rofe for the veys. Despite the convention in Harkavy's trilingual dictionary (existent elsewhere?), you keep both the dagesh in the pey and add the rofe on the fey to disambiguate the two as much as possible (in Yiddish; obviously in Hebrew, there's no problem, since they're allophones of the same phoneme). For the rare words with a khof or a sof, it's obviously more elegant to respect previous convention and not add the rofe, since the absence of a dagesh makes it clear they're not a kof or a tov. If there were another letter in Hebrew which could be a p or an f, you wouldn't want the shtrikhele over the fey... I'm actually making this more complicated by explaining how I understand it further. There's no rofe on a langer fey because you don't need to disambiguate it from an inexistent langer fey, which would have a dagesh that could get lost. (Excuse these confused lucubrations of a non-linguist.) Alan Astro 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 94 21:27:59 EST From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: "Logic" in language; LSA Yude Rozof: I found what you had to say [Vol. 4.195/1] about Yiddish, logic, and all that very interesting, although you are a bit hard on us plumbers who find wonder and importance in language systems. Although the field of linguistics takes it for granted that every language is based on a system, i.e., a grammar, that is not the same as saying that there are no irregularities, slop around the edges, if you will. In any event, our recent discussion did not take the Yiddish _language_ to task for any structural irregularities; rather it considered questions of the development of ways of _writing_ that language. Indeed, more narrowly, it started with the matter of a suitable way of writing Yiddish in roman script. Perhaps our question can be put this way: No matter what has happened in the evolution of native Yiddish script, including efforts at standardization thereof, should a roman form of writing Yiddish, which is needed for certain purposes, be a slavish rendering, insofar as it is feasible, of Yiddish orthography, or should it have some other principles that make it clearer and more useful? I think that is how we got into the topic, which turned out to have certain complexities that evoked a fair amount of discussion that at least some of us found interesting. I don't think anyone waxed emotional about it. Ellen Prince: I hope to be at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Orleans, so you can tentatively count on me for a Mendele gathering. Arn Abramson 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 01:05:38 -0500 (EST) From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Yiddish folk music II An interesting question was raised concerning western Yiddish folk music. In fact there doesn't seem to be any. The earliest secular Jewish music extant seems to be Ladino Romanzas which survived the expulsion from Spain primerily thanks to the women. The songs were mostly concerned with love and courtship, the style of music conspicuosly Spanish. In northern Europe there were a few Jewish minnesingers and minstrels of note in the 13th century, such as Sueskind von Trimberg in Germany and Mathieu le Juif in Provence. Their music and texts were rather similar to those of their goyish contemporaries. Until the 18th century, to the extent that there was a Yiddish secular folk music, it seemed to be based on and modeled after the German bardic tales such as the Niebelungenlied and tales of King Arthur. Particularly popular was a long ode called the Shmuel Bukh. However true secular folk songs dealing with romantic and personal topics seems to arisen suddenly in Poland in the 18th century, and as with the Ladino music, it seems to have been the spontaneous creation of the women who spoke true mama loshn, rather than the more sophisticated hebraized Yiddish of the kheder educated men (which seems to be getting more popular among academicians in recent years). This is the Yiddish folk music that we mostly know today. There are a few rare exceptions. One that comes to mind is the German Jewish folk song "Mein Kind, musst beten" which can be found in Bikel's book "Folksongs and Footnotes". It probably dates from the turn of the century. But even with its highly western and Christian influenced music and text, one portion of the melody employs (rather briefly) the Yiddish altered phrygian mode. My guess is that that mode was assimilated through cantorial chant where, by the turn of the century, it became conspicuously prevalent in central and east European Jewish communities. For those interested in a more detailed history of Jewish folk music, I can refer them to a very excellent account in Ruth Rubin's "Voices of a People." Arre Komar ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.196 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. 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