Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.003 May 16, 1995 1) Introduction (Harriet Feinberg) 2) Introduction (Russell Block) 3) National Yiddish Book Center (David Sherman) 4) Farvos oykh nit dem tatn? (Zellig Bach) 5) Vos iz a "melupm kind"? (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 00:48:13 -0400 From: harfein@aol.com Subject: Introduction I've been enjoying Mendele for over a month; it's time I said hello. As a child I heard a good deal of Yiddish, but like so many others I never learned to speak. In recent years I've had the very great pleasure of studying Yiddish literature in Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold's ongoing class held at Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel. From several of my classmates I heard about 'mendele.' Thanks to the research of Andrew Cassel I learned a good deal about the birthplace of my father's family, Keidan in Lithuania. My mother's parents came from Aysin, a town in Podolia, near Odessa. My mother remembers her father going to meetings of the 'Aysinerfareyn' in Philadelphia, where we lived. I knew nothing else about the place till I came across the name in two Railroad stories by Sholom Aleichem, "The Convoy" and "The Miracle of Hoshana Rabo", which I read in translation. There it was spelled "Heissin" but I surmised that this could be a fictionalized portrayal of the same place. In those stories the town has a large fair and a prison. Does anyone know whether this is fact or fiction? Does anyone whose parents or grandparents belonged to an 'Aysinerfareyn' have more information? Thanks. Harriet Feinberg 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 08:20:29 MEZ From: block@fhmrz4.rz.fh-muenchen.de Subject: Introduction My name is Russell Block and I have been lurking around the list for some time without a formal introduction. I am a native New Yorker and professor of English at the Fachhochschule (Polytechnic) in Munich, Germany. I came to Yiddish originally through my interest in Germanic languages. As a senior in college - now a long time ago - I did a paper on my grandfather's Polish Yidish, comparing it to standard Middle High German. (Yes, I am one of those linguists, who concern themselves with phonemes and the like.) Grandpa David, was not your traditional zaide with a love of learning far beyond his station in life. Although he was once fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Russian and German, he strongly believed that you are what you do and as a tailor (a skilled tailor not an operator, mind you) he saw no need to show off his learning. He was, however, an enthusiastic native speaker informant and was absolutely delighted to help me with my study of Yiddish. He would have loved reading mendele - as I do. Russell Block 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 May 95 19:31:30 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: National Yiddish Book Center NYBC should hire whatever contractor it likes. As a supporter of the NYBC, I couldn't care less if they deal with non-unionized labour. Their object is to do their thing: collect and distribute Yiddish books, educate about Yiddish and Yiddish culture, etc. The unions that were such a part of Jewish life in the early 1900's in New York were fighting for much more basic rights than unions today. Any construction worker who is working for a non-union contractor on the NYBC's new building will still be making a far better living than the Lower East Side tenement dwellers who unionized to make the sweatshops safe and bearable. > The JLC is asking interested individuals to contact the National Yiddish > Book Center, and ask them to switch their business to one of the union > bidders for the project. I will be happy to write to the NYBC and tell them they should use whatever bidder will do the best job at the best price. That's where they should be putting the funds donated to them, and which they hold in trust for purposes of their work -- not for someone else's union's agenda. To choose a more expensive option for the sake of using overpriced union labour would be a breach of that trust. David Sherman Toronto 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:50:36 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: Farvos oykh nit dem tatn? Ruvn Millman published in Mendele 4.423,3 a heartfelt mazl-tov announcement on the occasion of the birth of a son to Naomi Cohen and Sender Botwinik (Philadelphia). It is hoped by all that the boy will grow up to be a future Yiddish speaker and a Jr. Mendelyaner. The announcement included the customary statistics of weight and length (the height measurement at this stage), and closed with the following sentence: "Bagrisn kent ir der mamen af E-mail ncohen@sjuphil.sju.edu". Why only her? According to all statistical probabilities, it was a collaborative undertaking, and the closing line of the post might therefore be emended to read: "Ir kent bagrisn beydn _ der mamen un dem tatn _" (same E-mail address). Zellig Bach 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:30:27 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: Vos iz a "melupm kind"? From my childhood in Lithuania I remember the expression "melupm kind" (child) as referring to a very young child. (For some time I even thought wrongly that it meant a neonate.) The word "melupm" is spelled in both Hebrew and Yiddish mem, lamed, melupm vov, langer nun, but in pronunciation the nun takes the sound of /m/. Recently I asked myself what is the connection, if any, between "melupm vov" and "melupm kind"? As we all know, melupm vov is a vov with a diacritic -- a dot to its side to indicate that it is pronounced /u/. Uriel Weinreich, in his Yiddish-English/English-Yiddish dictionary glosses "melupm kind" as a "babe in the woods," which, to my mind, may as well refer to an _adult_, to a lost soul who frequently finds himself "farblondzhet," even when the road, so to speak, is to all around him clear and unencumbered. I believe that Alexander Harkavy's definition is more to the point (Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, 1928): An abecedarian, a child who learns the alefbeys. As illustration of the meaning, he offers the following idiom: "er iz nit kayn melupm kind" -- he is no fool. So "melupm kind" is a reference to the smallness of the child, a _pintele_ (a small dot of a) child, like the diacritic dot alongside the "tall" vov. Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.003 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. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu