Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.031 June 26, 1995 1) What's the Yiddish for Bessie? (Bernard Katz) 2) Is a Mendele Convention possible? (Louis Fridhandler) 3) Tevye (Hershl Hartman) 4) Zellig Back and the 'rationality" issue (Miriam Isaacs) 5) Translating of Yiddish (Morrie Feller) 6) Pik-holts revisited (Eliyahu Juni) 7) Yiddish Forever Young (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 17:47:15 -0400 (EDT) From: bkatz@uoguelph.ca Subject: What's the Yiddish for Bessie? Howard Sage asks about the possibility that his grandmother Bessie might be known as Elsa in documents from Vienna. This doesn't seem probable to me. I rather think that the Yiddish would be Basyah/Batyah for Bessie. Bernard Katz Guelph, Ontario 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 12:43:22 -0400 From: lfridhan@aol.com Subject: Is a Mendele Convention possible? Shoyn a sheyn etlekhe monatn zint mir hobn geshmuest vegn a Mendele tsunoyfkum. Ikh hob getrakht az, do un dort iber der velt, kleyne lokale krayzn veln pruvn zikh trefn un shmuesn vegn meglekhkaytn un gelegnhaytn far a gresere tsunoyfkum. Do in Orandzh Kaunti, Kalifornie hob ikh es nisht gepruvt. Ikh un mayn vayb veln bald zikh iberklaybn keyn Alameda Kaunti (nebn Berkeley, CA). Mir veln "mufn" (vi Motl Peysi dem Khazns hot geshribn). "Mufn" iz zeyer a shvere arbet. Me ken nisht zen keyn sof biz se endikt zikh kloymersht aleyn. Nu me vert a bisl mid. Ven mir kumen nokh amol tsu di koyekhes vel ikh zikh arumkukn, zen oyb s'iz meglekh a kleyner tsunoyfkum in "The Bay Area." Fishl (redaktor fun "Der Bay") vet efsher gebn a por eytses. Louis Fridhandler Irvine, CA soon Emeryville, CA 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 18:58:28 -0400 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Tevye Surely, Bob Werman _meant_to write (Vol 5.030) tevye der _milkhiker_, not "milkhedicher." As to the pronunciation of tevye's name, Dzigan's reported comfort with toyva (toyve?) flies in the face of sholem aleykhem's own indication: der milkhiker is addressed as "Tevel" (not "Toyvel") by Russian speakers (e.g., in "lekh-lekha," p. 205 _et. seq._. sholem aleykhem folksfond oysgabe, 1925). Oh, and both tevye and sholem aleykhem would spell the former's name: tes-veyz-yud-hey, not "tet-bet-yod-heh." Hershl Hartman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 19:54:03 -0400 (EDT) From: miriamis@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Subject: Zellig Back and the 'rationality" issue I was pleased to note Zellig Bach's support [Vol 5.030] of the rationality of Harvey Spiro's feelings. He need not apologize for being offended. He was offended and I share his feelings. As a native Yiddish speaker I am weary of having people think of the language I grew up in, the language in which my world view is shaped, in which all important values were transmitted, treated as if it were a "quaint" joke or an esoteric oddity. We are not just talking about the language, but the people. This patronizing attitude to the language was also directed at its speakers, the ordinary immigrants whose lives were anything but a joke. Perhaps it might be better to be despised. Then at least someone respects you. Yes the language lends itself to humor. It can be earthy or folksy but all of us here on Mendele already know it is so much more. I recently made myself unpopular with a woman teaching Shabbes songs. The one Yiddish song she used, Chiri Bim, when she had been taught it, (by anti-Yiddishists), was made into a mockery with heavy "oys" inserted strategically. For her generation this is how the song is set now. But this rendition of it was deeply offensive to me. It speaks of juvenile embarrassment with one's immigrant parents, and embarrassment and rejection of their religious beliefs. It is time to mature out of this narrow perspective. I stopped the class then and there, spoke of my feelings and why I felt as I did. She was gracious but embarrassed. I said that if we are going to be sensitive multiculturally, they should start with my culture. How to educate people out of this mentality is a problem. But let's try and occasionally speak up for Yiddish as a language and culture. It will get through to intelligent people. Thank you Mr. Bach. Miriam Isaacs 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 17:23:44 -0700 (MST) From: feller@indirect.com Subject: Translating of Yiddish In Mendele 5.028 there was a post by Fishl about translators of Yiddish which seemed to indicate that there is a rather widespread need for such translators. Inasmuch as there are computer programs which enable one to translate from Spanish, French, German, Hebrew to English, and vice versa, why can't we also have a Yiddish to English program to help satisfy the need for translating from Yiddish to English? Surely some Mendelnik meyvn should be able to create such a program. I probably am not the first to think of this, and someone may well be working on it right now. Morrie Feller Phoenix 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 20:39:10 -0400 From: ao107@freenet.carleton.ca Subject: "Pik-holts" revisited (with a digression on "bote") A while ago I inquired in Mendele as to the meaning of the word "pik-holts" (as well as the origin of the idiom in which I came across it, "shoyte ben pikholts"). Suggestions included a type of wood or tree, a woodpecker, or a toothpick. During my just-completed trip to Israel, I asked various cousins of mine who are native Yiddish speakers about it. One of them had come across the word before in a tshuve (halakhic responsum), where "pikholts" was used to refer to a forshpil (the traditional party in the house of a bride on the shabbes before her wedding). He further said that the literal meaning of "pikholts" is a huge, round, flat, wooden utensil, sort of like an oversize cutting board, and that at one point it was customary to place a pikholts over or near the door of the house where a forshpil would be taking place, to identify the location to guests, and the party acquired the name of the object used to identify its location. In this context, I guess referring to a person as a pikholts is similar to calling someone a blockhead in English. (I think this account of the etymology was either explicit in or inferred from the responsum; I don't think my cousin had come across the use of "pikholts" in contemporary speech. Given that the responsum is a couple of hundred years old, I suspect that "pikholts" has not been used this way for a very long time, and this usage has only survived as part of the idiom.) [This sort of association giving new meaning to a word may seem a bit far-fetched, but I know of a similar case: the word "bote." Among Rumanian and Hungarian khsidim, when the rebbe is out of town, unwell, or on vacation, a senior member of his family (usually the heir apparent) conducts a mini-tish, which is called a "bote." In some courts, even if no one from the rebbe's family is around, the khsidim gather on Friday night for a bote, conducted by senior member(s) of the group. The origin of the word has been explained to me as follows: "bote" originally meant a stick or pole (I'm not sure in what language). Many a Rumanian rebistive was made up a collection of towns and villages (as opposed to being based in a single location). The rebbe would spend a part of the year travelling around these villages, occasionally staying for shabbes and conducting a tish. When the rebbe wasn't around, the khsidim would gather on Friday night after the shabbes meal to eat and sing together. Every week they would pick one balebos who was given the dubious honour of hosting everyone at his house. (If he didn't put out enough of a spread, what little he had in his pantry would often be liberated for the common good.) A stake--a "bote"--would be planted in the ground outside the door of the "lucky" balebos, so that everyone would know where the gathering was taking place. Anyone looking for the gathering would look for the bote, and eventually the event came to be called a bote as well. "Bote" is now used to refer to any gathering of khsidim on Friday night at which the rebbe is not present; it is not used to refer to sticks, although this etymology is pretty widely known.] Eliyahu Juni 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 12:05:28 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: "Yiddish Forever Young" In its recent double issue (6/26 -- 7/3/95) _The New Yorker_magazine published an article by Ian Frazier called "In the Stacks" (p. 188) about the great Butler Library of Columbia University -- twelve floors of library stacks, most aboveground, some partly below. (While doing research for my doctorate, I spent many hours in the cavernous rooms of that library.) Mr. Frazier describes the atmosphere in the library, as well as the "inscriptions" he uncovered, miniature graffiti made with hard ballpoint pens in the wooden individual study tables. Notwithstanding energetic efforts of the library maintenance people to erase and cover up with cleaning fluids and furniture polish the scribblings from the tables, Mr. Frazier managed to capture some of the messages from the groove marks left in the wood. Some of these scribblings are personal and "thematically" clear ("Tomorrow is a physics exam. Help!"). Other messages are of a general, non-specific nature -- about existential problems, sex, the philosophy of life. One of the messages in this last group reads: "YIDDISH FOREVER YOUNG" -- all in capitals, no initials of the "engraver," no date (unlike a love message carved in the bark of a tree for the whole world to see). On the same table, nearby, another message, in German: "Das ist nicht Richtig" [this is not correct]. A direct rebuttal of the message about Yiddish? By an ignorant hatelerite (no, not a misspelling) who does not even know his German (the word "richtig" is not capitalized). Who knows? The idea "Yiddish forever young" appeals to me. Regardless of her age (a thousand years?) our mame-loshn retains the creative capacity to adapt itself to new circumstances and purposes, to new tasks and innovative expressive demands, and, especially, its wondrous phoenix-like capacity to rejuvenate and renew itself, and--identifying itself with its people-- rise from its ashes young again. Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.031 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 ****Getting back issues**** 1. 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