Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.190 December 11, 1995 1) Classic Yiddish fiction (Marion Aptroot) 2) Judeo-Alsatian (Dan Leeson) 3) Judeo-Alsatian (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 18:09:12 -0500 (EST) From: aptroot@husc.harvard.edu Subject: Classic Yiddish fiction I would like to draw attention to _Classic Yiddish Fiction. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz_ by Ken Frieden (State University of New York Press, Albany 1995, 364pp.) As the title indicates, this is a book about the three *Fathers of Modern Yiddish Literature*, the classical writers of Yiddish fiction: Abramovitsh (better known under his pen name Mendele Moykher Sforim), Sholem Aleichem, and I.L. Peretz. The three sections of the body of the text are each devoted to one of these authors. Every section starts with a portrait of the author under discussion, a map of the region where he lived, and a table with a chronology of his life. These helpful figures and tables are followed by a short biography of each author and analyses of their writings. Frieden pays much attention to the use of parody and oral-style narrative. Although his readings are sophisticated, he never uses academic jargon and therefore the text is accessible to everyone interested in the subject. Very useful is the bibliography. For each author, there are separate listings of writings in the original language(s), English translations, and secondary literature about the authors and their work. The clear division of this bibliography makes it easy to consult and it is invaluable for anyone who wants to go on and read more by and about our classical Yiddish writers. The index at the end is also very helpful if one wants to look up individual novels, stories, or poems in this book. Many Mendele subscribers will find this book of interest and that is not just because one of the sections of the book is devoted to Mendele Moykher Sforim for whom this list has been named! The ISBN number is 0-7914-2602-5 and I believe I paid seventeen dollars for it. Marion Aptroot 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 15:10:18 EST From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu Subject: Judeo-Alsatian Oy! Am I in trouble!!! Mikhl Herzog has given me a frask in punim for my comments on Judeo Alsatian. I'm in trouble and I feel guilty. But I'll try that explanation again because I probably screwed it up, somehow. Yiddish in Alsace? All the time. I had lovely conversations with newcomers to Alsace as well as some whose families had lived there since the late 1700s. Those conversations were mostly in French but from time to time we would slip into Yiddish. There is a large orthodox community in Strassbourg. Yiddish is fairly commonplace. Most of the Alsatians also speak fluent German and that goes for the Jewish community, too. But their native language is, of course, French. For some sub communities of Alsace (much more in the suburbs and small cities outside of Strassbourg than in it), there is yet a third language that is used in all daily affairs. Each day as I went into the bakery at 7 am to buy bread, the baker's wife would do all of her business in this third language and then, on waiting on me, would switch to French because she could tell that I was a foreigner. I was attending a meeting with the last Jew in the village of Scherwiller near Selestat, a man named Roger Levy, who grew up in that village, was shipped off with the entire Jewish community in 1941 and who was the only person to return alive. Out of courtesy to me, all conversations would be in French, occasionally German, but when some detailed technical point was to arise, they often fell into this third language. That evening, Roger Levy and I went to shul in Selestat to commemorate the shabbat, and I asked him what language he was speaking on the business about this or that, and he answered that it was the local dialect. And when I asked him what it was called he indicated that it was Alsatian. I perked up! Roger and my wife are related and we had sent him a copy of a betrothal agreement from 1775 that was written in Hebrew letters but which contained words that I could read and pronounce but could not understand. He said that those words that had given me no end of difficulty (whole paragraphs in some cases) were in a form of Alsatian called "Judeo Alsatian." I then mentioned that the local TV station (I had rented a house in Scherwiller that had a TV set) out of Strassbourg had a one hour program every day that I watched religiously. Was that Alsatian? To which he responded that it was. Now I have made a leap here when I presume that current day Alsatian and 18th century Alsatian were the same languages (approximately). And then I made a second leap by assuming that Judeo Alsatian, was Alsatian written in Hebrew characters and that when Jews would speak it, it differed in no significant way from when Gentiles would speak it. However, when formal documents were made up (such as t'nayim or ktuboth), some parts would be written in the Alsatian language but in Hebrew characters. And those words that I heard bore no relationship to Yiddish, French, or German. It was as if I were hearing Choctaw. I suspect that a few more weeks of watching that TV program every day, and I might start getting some of it in context, but nothing that I heard enabled me to do some sort of a translation shift from German or French. (I mention that, at the time of Louis XIV, very few Alsatians spoke French and there is an apocraphyl story that says that when Louis came to Alsace, there was not one single professor at the University of Strassbourg who spoke French. It may be an exaggerated story, but it can be found in the literature.) So I'm in trouble. I feel guilty. My mother would be proud of me and Mikhl has done a number on me that even my mother would have envied, and certainly rivals the time she told me that if I had been a better boy, it wouldn't be raining out. I know! I know!! I've made too many assumptions. But what Roger Levy spoke whenever he lapsed in that third language was not Yiddish, not one word of it. And it wasn't French and it wasn't German. I've heard Romansch and I thought that it was somehow related to that language but if I say so again, Mikhl will kill me so I'm going to shut up and say it was probably Cree Indian or else Navaho. So I thought I was contributing to the discussion and instead my behavior has made it rain. I know. I think I'll go and sit alone in the dark, by myself. Dan Leeson Los Altos, California 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Dec 95 00:17 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Judeo-Alsatian: errata There was one ambiguity and at least one error in my posting on Alsatian Yiddish: The ambiguity: My intention was not to say that Dutch, Flemish and Low German actually "sounded" very different, only that their names do. The point of my comment was, in fact, that the languages themselves actually do NOT sound so different. Am I making it worse? The error, as Howard Aronson pointed out to me, was in including Belorussian and Ukrainian, of which i am largely ignorant, in the list. Mea culpa. Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.190