Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.155 October 30, 1995 1) ICOR (Libe Yenta Winograd) 2) Yiddish for all (Ruvn Millman) 3) Yiddish for all (Allan Edel) 4) Yiddish for all (Morrie Feller) 5) Yiddish for all (Leybl Botvinik) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Oct 95 08:36:47 EDT From: 72674.3235@compuserve.com Subject: ICOR Yes, YIVO has information on ICOR. I've collected some of it. I also went to Birobidzhan in 1993 to find my cousins who had gone to live in ICOR in the 1930's. I have interviews with two people who lived there as adults, information from the museum in Birobidzhan and I even went to where ICOR once was. I would love to discuss ICOR with anyone interested. I had hoped to write the great ICORisher screen play by now, but alas... I came across advice from Daniel Soyer about finding ICOR info but as yet I haven't had time to find more in my stack of Mendele e-mail.The Magnes Museum in Berkeley has an exhibit on Birobidzhan about to go on the road soon. Libe Yenta (Dia) Winograd 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 19:26:50 -0400 From: ruvn@aol.com Subject: Yidish far alemen! Ellen Price lozt visn az Yidn redn (un hobn geredt) mer shprakhn vi nor Yidish. Men muz oykh gedenkn az faran andere mentshn vos redn Yidish vi nor Yidn. Ruvn Millman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 95 00:21:17 GMT From: allen_edel@macnexus.org> Subject: Yiddish classes Morrie Feller writes that "synagogues and Jewish community centers have to be convinced that Yiddish should be part of their curriculums". In my experience, the appropriate target market is not the administative officers, but parents and children. I approached the principal of the omly Jewish Day School in town about teaching Yiddish as an elective subject to children 9-13 yrs of age (I also opened it to their parents). The school has 400 students and only goes through 10th grade, and they don't learn alephbeth till age 9. Because the school's orientation is heavily secular and the principal is Israeli, I was suprised at how supportive she was. Unfortunately, no one signed up! The Principal attributed this to the soccer season, and encouraged me to try again in January. Below is the verbiage I included in the flyer. The major selling points are: personal connection, heritage, easy to learn, entertaining and multi-media learning. These did not work. Any suggestions? Yiddish Language/ Ashkenazi Culture and History If you are like most Jews in America, your parents, grandparents, or ancestors came from Europe. In this course, students will learn about the world of those ancestors. We will study the language they spoke, Yiddish, the Ashkenazi culture they created, and their history. Language Students will learn to read, write, and speak Yiddish. They will build on their ability to read the Hebrew aleph-beth, and their knowledge of English to discover that they already know a lot of Yiddish. We will use readers, flash cards, conversion tricks, stories, and songs in a multi-media approach to Yiddish. They will learn lots of proverbs, and colorful expressions. Culture Music will be used to give the student a sense of Yiddish culture. We will learn lots of Yiddish songs that their great-great-grandparents might have sung, as well as some new renditions that have made the rock-charts in parts of the country. Because the songs so accurately reflected the cultural institutions, and the concerns of everyday life, they will be useful in giving the student a sense of how it felt to live there. We will also watch segments of some Yiddish film classics to provide visual reinforcement for discussions of the major influences on Ashkenazi culture. History Ashkenazi history unfolded over a thousand years and as many miles. Students will learn how it all got started, and the major events that shaped us. We will use maps to locate cities that their ancestors lived in, and we will discuss how they probably came to settle there. Allen Edel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 21:26:15 -0700 (MST) From: feller@indirect.com Subject: Yiddish for all Jews? Ellen Prince has suggested (Mendele 5.152) that if all Jewish children should be taught Yiddish, they should also be taught Ladino and Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Persian and ...others. I would hope that the smile at the end of that sentence means that she is being a little facetious. There is no way that any of the other Judeo languages can compare with Yiddish in terms of geographical distribution, wealth of literature, and importance in Jewish history. I would not say that other Judeo languages are not of interest. In 1981 I was an original subscriber to the premier issue of the "Jewish Language Review". This was edited by David L. Gold and Leonard Prager, and it came out of the University of Haifa. On the cover, in Hebrew font, were listed the following languages: Yiddish, Modern Karaitic, Modern Ebri, Modern Morrocan Yahudic, New Aramic, Talmudic Aramic, Modern Bukharic, Hebrew, Biblical Aramic and Modern Judezmo. I continued to subscribe to this journal until it apparently ceased p[ublication in 1987. Subsequently, in 1989, "Jewish Linguistic Studies" by David L. Gold was published by the Association for the Study of Jewish Languages which I again supported. I think it is definitely worth while for all Jews to be aware of the various Judeo languages and their place in Jewish history. An important, and extensive, paper relative to this subject is by Paul Wexler (Tel Aviv University) in Language, Vol.57, Number1 (1981), pp.99-149. It is entitled: "Jewish Interlinguistics: Facts and Conceptual Framework". I would like to quote from the summary at the head of the paper: "Since the 6th century B.C., Jews have created unique variants of many coterritorial non-Jewish languages with which they came in contact; Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, and German are just a few examples. Widespread shifts to non-Jewish languages throughout the world and to revived Hebrew in Israel are now resulting in the obsolescence of contemporary Jewish languages and putting an end to 2600 years of Jewish language creation." Let's hope that we can reverse this trend with respect to Yiddish! Morrie Feller Phoenix 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 06:50:00 +0200 (IST) From: leybl@telecomm.tadiran.co.il Subject: yidishe kinder darf men ye ibergebn zeyer yerushe efsher darf men formulirn dem inyen andersh, un shteln di folgndike frages, un zol yeder zikh oysdrikn vi er zi zet dem inyen: 1) tsi darf men ibergebn yidish di vayterdike doyres? 2) ver darf dos ton: a farantvortlekhkeyt fun yekhidim tsi fun der kehile? 3) vi azoy darf dos geton vern? mit velkhe fondn, mit velkhe keylim? leybl botvinik netanya ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.155