Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.075 August 6, 1995 1) Yiddishisms in Mad magazine (Ethan Minovitz) 2) Yiddish in Israel (Ted Steinberg) 3) Transcription of Yiddish (Arn Abramson) 4) Yiddish on compact disk (Michael Kleiner) 5) Yiddish values in English (Hershl Hartman) 6) Golem (Hershl Bershady) 7) Golem (Michael Shimshoni) 8) Copyright ownership (Leybl Yelgin) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 04 Aug 1995 12:20:58 EDT From: clvm21a@prodigy.com Subject: Yiddishisms in Mad magazine A few days ago, I was heartened to see the return of "furshlugginer" - - in slightly altered form -- to Mad Magazine, a publication which (among other things) has brought Yiddish words to the English language over the years. In the July issue, a satire of Batman Forever was entitled "Batman Fershlugginer." Furshlugginer, a word that's appeared in Mad over the years, means "knocked around," like a piece of old furniture; my mom says it can also apply to someone who's been pushed around by everyone else (and who probably walks with a permanent stoop, as if to expect more blows). I've seen several other Yiddish expressions in Mad from time to time. A few which have recurred: 1) farshimelt (gone moldy). Used by Mad to describe just about anything odious; 2) shmendrik (something like a shlemiel). Used in introductions to articles to describe the readers of said articels; 3) kaput (ruined, finished, "through"). Seldom seen on its own in Mad, but used as part of the name of Roger Kaputnik, a character in Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side Of...". Kaputnik appears in just about every issue as a hypochondriac patient in the doctor's office; his image is actually a Dave Berg self- portrait! All of these don't include Yiddish-derived-from-Hebrew expressions, such as "Charlie McGilla" (another Dave Berg character), and my personal favorite, found in a spoof "magazine" for camp counselors: "Camp Yiska-Doll." Do any other Mendeleniks have favorite recollections of Yiddish words in Mad? Ethan Minovitz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 2:23 pm EDT (18:23:40 UT) From: steinberg@fredonia.edu Subject: Yiddish in Israel I've just returned from two wonderful weeks in Israel, where I had two interesting experiences with Yiddish. In my hotel in Tel Aviv, I was approached by someone who wanted me to translate something from Yiddish to English. Why he assumed I knew Yiddish is beyond me. But then we visited the Dead Sea, where t-shirts were being sold that said something like "I've just visited the lowest place in the world" in sixteen languages. The last language represented was Yiddish, and the word "velt" was spelled with two lameds. Oyy. Ted Steinberg 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 04 Aug 95 17:20:03 EDT From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: Transcription of Yiddish I am a little bothered by David Sherman's remarks on the "translitera- tion" of Yiddish. One of the virtues of the YIVO system, as presented in the Mendele archives, is that one has the facility, perhaps with some limitations, to represent, i.e., to _transcribe_, most, if not all, of the salient features of the range of Yiddish dialects. That is, this is different from a pure transliteration, which simply gives a letter-by-letter equivalent in roman writing of the string of letters in Yiddish script. All of this was thoroughly thrashed out in Mendele a year or so ago. [cf. articles on romanization in Vol.4] Transliteration has its uses, as in writing biblical Hebrew in roman letters in scholarly works in such a way as to make recovery of the original Hebrew (unpointed) spelling rather automatic. Of course, David seems to be arguing for a normative roman spelling of Yiddish, much as we have a standard spelling of English with all its notorious difficulties as far as a good match with English speech is concerned. This does have its virtues for reading, I concur, and David may be thinking only of convenience in reading texts in roman script that are all written by the same orthographic rules. On the other hand, our transcription system does enable any one of us who wishes to do so, to express himself or herself according to the phonological patterns of his or her preferred dialect. When writers of English novels and plays try to do this in dialogues, they run into a great deal of trouble because of the shortcomings of English orthography, and, of course, they rightly do not feel free to use IPA trasncriptio or the like in material for public consumption. Our transcription system--_not_ transliteration--lets us have it both ways! Arn Abramson 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 23:09:46 -0400 (EDT) From: mkleiner@astro.ocis.temple.edu Subject: Yiddish on compact disk There has been much talk on this list about creating a Yiddish CD-ROM. Last week there was a post on the Secular Humanistic Judaism list requesting information on Hebrew tutorials on CD-ROM. There was an extensive reply. The "Hebrew Tutor" is a multimedia, interactive program that uses sight and sound. It comes with TrueType (r) Hebrew and transliterated fonts that can be used in the word processor. The program provides pronunciation and the ability for the learner to work at their own pace. The CD costs $49. If this can be done for Hebrew, it certainly can be done for Yiddish. Michael Kleiner Philadelphia 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 5 Aug 1995 13:15:13 -0400 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Yiddish values in English Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan suggested (Vol. 5.073) a source for "secular Yiddishkayt in English." I would add another significant source: the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, 28611 W. 12 Mile Rd., Farmington Hills, MI 48334. The IISHJ has access to the curricular materials developed by affiliates of the CSJO (Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations) and SHJ (Society for Humanistic Judaism) and can refer inquiries to those bodies. In addition, the Institute is currently preparing a series of curriculum guides for elementary schools. As to the basic issues being discussed, I can appreciate and empathize with passionate resistance to transmitting the values of Yiddishkayt in English for fear that, thereby, the need for Yiddish itself would disappear. However, the experience of the past 50-60 years has demonstrated that the fear is misplaced--that the more the ideas and values of Yiddishkayt become available in English, the more knowledge of the riches of Yiddish literature and folklore become widespread, the greater becomes interest in learning the Yiddish language itself. It has been noted that insistence that "Yiddish cannot and must not be translated" was self-defeating (or worse) in the 20s, 30s and 40s; I hope the error is not repeated anew out of great love for Yiddish. In this context, we would do well to ponder the meaning of Itzik Manger's poem, "afn veg shteyt a boym" ("There is a tree that stands," in Leonard Wolf's partially felicitous rendering in _The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse._) Hershl Hartman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 5 Aug 1995 14:11:14 -0400 (EDT) From: hbershad@sas.upenn.edu Subject: Golem In Gershom Scholem's _The Messianic Idea In Judaism_ there is a charming essay, "The Golem of Prague and the Golem of Rehovot," that gives some of the history of the idea of the golem and an interpretation of the meaning of the golem in Judaic thought. Hershl Bershady 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 06 Aug 95 15:30:25 +0300 From: mash@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il Subject: Golem Adam Whiteman asked incidentally about the history of the term "Golem" in both Hebrew and Yiddish. As one of the Hebrew correspondents of Mendele I shall try and reply (consulting a couple of dictionaries). Golem is not found in the Bible but is of Mishnaic origin, where it means a boor or a clod. In the Pirqe Avot (Wisdom of Fathers) 5,7 it says There are seven marks of the clod (boor) and seven of the wise man (shiv'a dvarim b'golem v'shiv'a b'hakham). A golem is also the pupa, this immobile state of, say, a butterfly in development. The most famous Golem was the legendary man of clay produced by the Maharal of Prague (The High Rabbi Loeb), who served him and eventually had to be destroyed. On a more personal level, we at the Weizmann Institute were the first who in Israel built computers in the 1950's. When we built in the early 1960's another generation and looked for a name, Gershom Scholem, the famous scholar of Jewish mysticism, suggested to us the name Golem. Unlike the Prague version, our Golem proved "fertile" and eventually we even built the Golem B, much faster than our first Golem. I assume that into Yiddish the term entered together with the story of the Prague Golem, but perhaps it was taken from the Mishna. Michael Shimshoni Rehovot, Israel 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Aug 1995 09:19:01 -0400 From: yelgin@aol.com Subject: Finding copyright ownership I'm translating some articles written by Daniel Charney in Der Tog 40 years ago and was wondering how I go about discovering who owns the rights to these articles now. I would like to have them published someday. Thank you for any advice and pointers. Leybl Yelgin Merrimack, New Hampshire ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.075