Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.322 February 13, 1995 1) Boston Arbeter Ring calendar (Shimen Kass) 2) Yidl mitn fidl (avivA Starkman) 3) Tevye (Larry Rosenwald) 4) Tevye (Dvorah Halperin Biasca) 5) Announcement of international conference (Sander L. Gilman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 14:30:56 EDT From: kass@umbsky.cc.umb.edu Subject: Boston Arbeter Ring calendar The Boston Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring has an ongoing series of lectures in Yiddish. Location: 1762 Beacon Street, Brookline. All talks are on Sundays at 2.30 and are free to everyone. Remaining talks this season: February 26. Dovid Braun, (MIT doctoral student in linguistics) "Max Weinreich and the Study of Ashkenaz : (In honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth)" March 11. Marion Aptroot, (Harvard University, Instructor in Yiddish) "A Satirical Look at Jewish Life of Two Hundred Years Ago" April 9. Hannah Kliger (Univ. of Massachusetts) "Our History, Our Heritage: The Holocaust Legacy" June 18 Rachmiel Peltz (Columbia Univ.) - title to be announced Shimen Kass 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 23:17:53 -0500 (EST) From: gt5549d@prism.gatech.edu Subject: Yidl mitn fidl "Yidl Mitn Fidl" may be my favorite Yiddish song, but I was never able to make out most of the words. So I had my bube and zeyde watch the video with me and write down all the words. But due to the poor sound quality we still weren't able to get them all. Here is what we came up with-- I hope that some of you may be able to help me clean it up. I indicated the phrases we weren't clear about with brackets []. Let me apologize for my transcription job-- I've never done this before and my Yiddish is very limited to begin with. Iber felder vegen, oyf a vugen hey, In finster un in regn, furen klezmers tsvey. A khidish oy a khidish, zogt ir zenen zey. Yidl mitn fidl, Arye mitn bass, Dos lebn iz a lidl, far vuzhe zayn in ka'as, Hey Yidl, fidl, shmidl, dos lebn iz a shpa'as. A [coz] shteyt oyf der loynke, [shreyt] "meh", [Hey di shvartse shoyte], troyrig zayn [iz "feh"]. [Shlog nisht mer dos ferdele?], take take "feh". A feygl flit "git morgn", "git morgn, a git yor", Der troyer un de zorgn, tsu alde shvartse yor. [Der bitr un de soynim], Yidl, Yidl fur. avivA Starkman Atlanta 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 07:48:39 -0500 (EST) From: lrosenwald@wellesley.edu Subject: Tevye In response to Danielle HarPaz's very interesting posting about teaching the Tevye stories - what interests me, in the story about Chava, as regards the relationship between father and daughter, is how much it's a story about how the daughter, in imitating the father's behavior, gets to a place where the father can't follow her. If, like Chava, you're raised by a father like Tevye, a curious, remarkably open-minded, speculative man; and if you develop in yourself that speculative open-mindedness, then it's easy to turn that speculative open-mindedness on the commandment that Jews shall marry Jews. And what's poignant in Tevye's response to Chava's marriage is that he has to confront in her his own curiosity, and has to come up against what turn out to be, in him, the limits of that curiosity - the place where his curiosity is bounded by dogma. In this respect, though not in many others, I think _Fiddler on the Roof_ gets it right, when Tevye says, "on the other hand - but there _is_ no other hand." Larry Rosenwald 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 12:59:53 -0700 (MST) From: iasca@horton.colorado.edu Subject: Tevye as a father I'd like to mention an anecdote which Daniella HarPaz' post about her Yiddish-literature-in-translation class discussion brings to mind. I think Tevye's conduct might have been quite typical. In my old Detroit neighborhood (12th Street), the local delicatessen owner was from 'the old country' as were many, many of my neighbors. He spoke w/ a Yiddish accent. His daughter married a goy and had a child a little sooner, I think, than perhaps she should have. He disowned her and sat shiva--at least, that's the story I was told. Since my family moved away from the neighborhood, as did theirs, I lost track of the ending of this sad story. Somehow, I recollect that he recanted, but definitely not right away. This daughter was their only child. This father was very kind to all the neighborhood children--offering us free penny candy/pretzels whenever we happened into the deli; and always with a warm smile. So, nu? Gey veys. . . Dvorah Halperin Biasca 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Feb 95 10:07:40 CST From: slgilman@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: Announcement of international conference The Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, will be hosting an international conference "Jewries at the Frontier" at the University of Cape Town from 11-13 August 1996. The conference co-ordinators, Milton Shain (University of Cape Town) and Sander L. Gilman (University of Chicago), are calling for papers which will explore the Jewish experience in frontier settings. The emphasis will be on Jews as a minority within a minority with hegemonic power in colonial and post colonial settings. Thus the conference will examine in an interdisciplinary manner South African Jewry; Anglophone Indian Jewry; Canadian Jewry with a focus on Quebec Jewry and Jewry in the Northern Territories; American Jewry of the colonial period and American Jewry with a focus on the South (French-speaking Louisiana) and the Spanish-speaking Southwest; early Australian and New Zealand Jewry; German Jewry (Haskalah and post-Haskalah) in the Baltic, Central, and Eastern Europe inclduing the non-German speaking areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Jewry at the geographic margins in Latin and South America; Ukrainian Jewry in the 18th and 19th centuries; and any other communities that fit the parameters of the conference. Abstracts of presentations are required before 31 January 1996. Presentations will be in English. There is a limited amount of subsidy for accommodation in Cape Town. For further information please contact either: Milton Shain, Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies,University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch, Cape Town,7700, South Africa. E-mail: Shain@beattie.uct.ac.za Sander L Gilman, University of Chicago E-mail: slgiman@midway.uchicago.edu phone: 312-702-8494 Sander L. Gilman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.322 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. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. 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