Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.045 June 10, 1995 1) Di yunginke Memloket (Shleyme Axelrod) 2) Yoytsres once again (Eliyahu Juni) 3) The Ashkenaz event (Paul Pascal) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 12:33:23 -0400 (EDT) From: ptyaxel@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Subject: Di yunginke Memloket A recent Washington Post story called to mind a Yiddish song that I learned in New York during the late 1930's at _banketn_ and _kontsertn_ that my Communist parents took me to. The story revealed that the seven-year-old girl happily being held in the arms of a beaming Stalin in 1936 in a much-reproduced propaganda photograph and sculpture was the daughter of an agriculture official in Siberia. In 1938, the father was executed (presumably on trumped-up charges, as the custom was then) as a Japanese spy, Trotskyite, etc. The daughter, Engelsina Markizova, was now obviously an embarrassment, so the _identity_ of the kid in the photo and statue was changed; she was now said to be Mamlakat Nakhangova, a highly productive 13-year-old cotton-picker from the south of the Soviet Union. The song, about the meeting of Stalin and the girl, was obviously written after the transformation; I can remember only a snatch of the melody and words, but it referred to _khaver Stalin_, of course, and to _di yu'nginke Memloke't_. Does some other Mendelyaner know the music and/or words? (Incidentally, Engelsina Markizova, 66, now lives in Moscow, according to the Post.) Shleyme Axelrod Buffalo, New York 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 04:57:15 -0400 From: ao107@freenet.carleton.ca Subject: Yoytsres once again Reb Mikhl Herzog wrote that "yoytsres" and "yoytsrim" (the two variant plurals of "yoytser") are phonologically anomalous, because they don't exhibit variation in the quality of the stressed vowel. (The pattern would predict yoytser/yotsres/yotsrim.) Something in my gut tells me that this word sticks more closely to its loshnkoydesh version than other borrowings because it is mostly used in a religious setting. (Then again, it's probably used most as part of the idiom--but idioms are funny.) Might there be an alternate pattern for exclusively religious words? Regarding the geographical spread of "yoytser/yoytsres", Reb Mikhl mentioned that only the singular form is recorded in the Carpathians, and only the plural in the Ukraine (usually as part of the idiom). My grandmother, a native Minkatcher (Minkatch is in the Carpathian mountains), used the plural "yoytsres", and then used the singular "yoytser" in explaining to me what it meant. As for the phrasing of the idiom: I always heard 'fardreyen di yoytsres', never 'farbayten'. I looked up 'baytn' in the dictionary, and found that it means to switch; I had never seen or heard the word before. Am I right in suspecting that fardreyen has a more mocking, pejorative tone? Is the idiom most common with 'fardreyen' or 'farbaytn'? Eliyahu Juni 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 Jul 95 10:07:39 EDT From: 75332.2735@compuserve.com Subject: The Ashkenaz event I am still flying from "Ashkenaz", the spectacular Yiddish cultural festival in Toronto which culminated yesterday (Sunday). I have never experienced such an outpouring of joy in the Yiddish language and its sister arts of music, dance, theater and art/craft, as I did here these past few days. For me, at least, the only frustration came from being torn between two, sometimes three, wonderful events scheduled opposite each other. Mendele is a forum for Yiddish language and literature, so I won't linger on the *mayles* of the music and so on (I couldn't do it all justice anyway), but I have at least to comment on the *zise, geshmake Yidish* which so many of the performers used in speech or in song. It was a deep, deep nourishment for the ear and the heart. The swelling and enthusiastic throngs in the audiences, day after day, were of all ages, but the performers seemed mainly in their 20's, 30's and 40's, all meticulous in their accent, grammar, vocabulary and respect for the Yiddish tongue and its possibilities. For performers such as Adrienne Cooper, Irena Klepfisz, Michael Alpert (of Brave Old World), Shura Lipovsky (of Lipovsky/Mlotek/Warshauer Trio), and many, many, many others, the obvious appreciation for the beauty in the sound of Yiddish words, backed by a deep knowledge, understanding, and love of the soul within those words, resonated to all who had the privilege of hearing them, there at the edge of Lake Ontario. As Alpert quotes in his program notes, "Oyb di velt vet vern oysgeleyzt, iz nor in skhus fun kinder" ("If the world is to be saved, it will only be on the merits of children.") I feel privileged to have experienced "Ashkenaz". Paul Pascal ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.045 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. 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