Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.162 November 3, 1995 1) Khushim ben Dan (Eliyahu Juni) 2) Khushim ben Dan (Mendy Fliegler) 3) Calendar (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 05:20:43 -0500 From: ao107@freenet.carleton.ca> Subject: Khushim ben Dan Reb Noyekh wrote recently on the obscurity of Khushim ben Dan and his deafness. He found a reference to Khushim in Breishis, but says "Rashi has nothing to say". Rashi says nothing on the spot. But elsewhere, Rashi _does_ make two terse references to that g'more in Soyte--once near the end of Toyldos (27.45), and once in the middle of Vay'khi (49.21). In neither place does he mention Khushim by name--but he doesn't say much else either. Standard practice, when learning or teaching either Rashi, is to go over the mayse from the g'more; if you don't know the rest of the mayse, the Rashi is meaningless. So Khushim's deafness is widely known among those who learn khumesh with Rashi. My own immediate reaction to just the *title* of Reb Noyekh's post was "it's about Khushim, it probably has something to do with deafness"--and I've never learned m'sekhte Soyte. (I did a small informal survey, just to make sure--asked three people "What do you know about Khushim ben Don?"; two immediately responded "he was deaf." The third said she felt very sheepish, she had learned the story, and that Khushim was deaf, but she didn't remember it when I mentioned his name.) I agree with Reb Noyekh that a theatre-going audience would not be expected to know details of an agad'te in Soyte. But would it be unreasonable to expect them to know something which came up regularly in the course of the usual khumesh instruction, in droshes, and in shul small-talk? Granted that not everyone in the shtetl was "steeped in learning", how many of them didn't know khumeshrashe, even if only through the Bays Yide? Nokh mer, Khushim isn't a character in the Talmud itself; he's a character in an agad'te, a story quoted in the Talmud. Agad'te was later collected separately in the Eyn Yankev, and widely learned and read by poshete yidn who weren't on the level to learn the legalistic stuff. The agad'te became known widely, and many of them remained a part of Jewish folklore, even by people who no longer had any connection to learning. Maybe the story of Khushim ben Don losing his temper and socking one to Eisov was one of the ones that "made it"? The g'more in Soyte says about Khushim that "his ears were heavy to him;" Reb Noyekh took this to mean that he was hard of hearing, and I think he's right. But I've always known Khushim as "deaf"; I didn't notice otherwise until I checked the g'more for myself last night. I have a hunch that most people who know the story know Khushim as deaf, not as hard-of-hearing; if so, this may be a difference between the poppular version and the g'more's. Which meaning is being referred to in the play? I can't tell. If it's clearly deafness, then maybe that indicates that the allusion is to the popular version, and not the g'more's. Regarding khushim's status as a word, it doesn't surprise me that it didn't quite make it into all the dictionaries--my intuition is that "khushim" in Yiddish is not an independent word, but a comparison to an historical figure with a particular attribute. Sort of like the way in American English, to call someone a Benedict Arnold is to call them a traitor, but "Benedict Arnold" doesn't mean "traitor"--he's an historical character, whose most notable trait is his being traitor, and the comparison is being made to highlight that trait. (The missing vov is not a misspelling, nor is it a mystery; most words spelled khoser in T'nakh are moley in Shas and subsequently--khoser/moley is arbitrary, and moley makes life easier; Yankev sometimes gets a vov too. And given the vagaries of copyists, even if it were wrong, it couldn't be blamed on 'the sages'.) To follow Reb Noyekh's tangent a bit, the entire story in the g'more has no concrete basis in the psukim. The association between Khushim's name and deafness via "senses" is possible, but in the context of a story which must be either a received tradition (m'soyre) or speculation, I'd prefer to say that the source for Khushim's deafness is the same as the source for the story. As for an association between Khushim and foolishness, bear in mind that in Shas, a deaf-mute (kheresh) is assumed to be incapable, a non-adult, along with a shoyte and a koton. [Maybe the only type of deafness they knew was connected to some sort of mental deficiency (I believe there are some types of deafness which are like that), or maybe the social structure did not provide a way for deaf-mutes to develop normally; if anyone wants to look into it, I know R. J.D. Bleich has written extensively on this issue.] And the story portrays Khushim as a simpleton: Eisov was arguing with Yankev's sons, and he didn't understand what was going on, so he asked his uncles, and only then got upset that his grandfather's funeral was being held up. So the foolishness may be an association with the deafness, or the deafness an association with the foolishness; we do not need to resort to the confusion with "khusham". Eliyahu Juni 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 21:57:32 -0500 (EST) From: efliegle@capaccess.org Subject: Khushim, also toyber lokhman! Although I have never heard the expression:'khushim ben dan'(assuming the Hebrew), I _have_ heard my parents, o.h.s., say: " Er iz a toyber lokhman", vos meynt take az er iz nisht nor toyb, ober er hert amul ven er vil! (in a derogatory sense) Mendy Fliegler 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Nov 95 From: nmiller@shakti.trincoll.edu Subject: Calendar Mendele will be mostly silent for the next ten days or so. Here are four items for New Englanders ***** Sunday, Nov. 5 at 10:30 am The Arbeter Ring, 1762 Beacon St., Brookline, MA "Yiddish and Jewish Nationalism in the Early 20th Century: the Case of Ber Borokhov", a talk in Yiddish by Rachmiel Peltz, Columbia University ***** Sunday, Nov. 5 at 1:30 pm Temple Ohabei Shalom, 1187 Beacon St., Brookline, MA Yiddish concert featuring Klezamir $10/$15 ***** Monday, Nov. 13 at 12:00 noon (bring lunch) Jewish Community Center, Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford, CT "A Bridge of Longing: the Lost Art of Yiddish Story Telling", a talk by David Roskies, Jewish Theological Seminary ***** Sunday, Dec. 3 at 1:00 and 3:15 pm University of Hartford Harry Jack Grey Center _Yidl mitn Fidl_ (Yiddish with English subtitles) ***** Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.162