Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.259 February 18, 1996 1) Khsidish or misnagdish (Hershl Hartman) 2) The Yiddish canon (Andrew Sunshine) 3) A.A. Roback (Zellig Bach) 4) Bokser (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 5) A recess (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:15:00 -0500 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Misnagdishe songs The song Arnie Kuzmack remembers (5.254) appears, sung by the late Herschel Bernardi, on "The Yiddish Dream: A heritage of Jewish song," issued as a double LP by Vanguard Recording Society and featuring many artists. The song is called, on the record, "Chiri Bim"--but that's a common "la-la-la" in both khsidic songs and misnagdish parodies. The verse referred to is sung by Bernardi as follows: eynmol shabes baym rebn's tish, take beynashmoshes, iz a yidn gevorn nit git, iz er gefaln in khaloshes. nemt der rebe beyde hent un leygt aroyf afn korbn: gloybt mir yo tsi gloybt mir nit -- nor der yid iz glaykh geshtorbn. (One shabes at the rebe's table, just at twilight, a Jew was stricken and fell into a faint. The rebe placed both his hands on the victim, and you may believe it or not, but the Jew promptly--died.) Typically, and egregiously in error, the liner notes to the Vanguard album ascribe the song to "the Chassidic tradition(!)" Hershl Hartman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:28:08 -0500 (EST) From: als55@columbia.edu Subject: The Yiddish canon A portion of the GDYL's electronic texts (periodical material optically-scanned in the U.K.) now resides at The Hebrew University. The bibliographic worksheets (and related materials) prepared by Dr. David Goldberg and under his supervision are in Butler Library, Columbia University (copies of "uncertified" bibliographic entries may also reside at The Hebrew University). The GDYL computer program, text, and database files are in YIVO's possession; The Hebrew University has a copy, as well. Apart from the GDYL text corpus Dr. Wolf has written about, the following are also in electronic form: The Sophia letters of 1533 The Jerusalem letters from the 1560s The Cracow letters of 1588 The Prague Letters of 1619 My description of these works may not be precise, writing as I am about them from memory. All of these letters are available in publications (if anyone would like bibliographic references, I'd be happy to provide them.) The several sets of letters constitute a relatively small, but interesting corpus.) The electronic versions of these texts, like those of the GDYL, could benefit from some verification. Anyone interested in these should feel free to contact me directly for more information and qualifications. Andrew Sunshine 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 01:07:29 -0500 From: Zellig@aol.com Subject: A.A. Roback's contributions to Yiddish Avrohom A. Roback (1890 - 1965), who received his doctorate in Psychology and Philosophy from Harvard, was a prolific writer in both Yiddish and English. He was a great admirer of Yiddish literature, and in many of his English books he introduced, discussed, and extolled its particular richness, as well as the unique character of Yiddish. Roback published in Yiddish the following books, among others: _Eyfemisms [euphemisms] in Yidish_; _Yidish Hashpoes [Influences] af English_; _The Imperye [empire] Yidish_; _Der folksgayst [the spirit of the people] in Yidish_. And In English, again among other books, many of them on psychology, he published: _Jewish Influence in Modern Thought_; _Curiosities of the Yiddish Literature_; _The Story of Yiddish Literature_; _ J. L. Perets: Psychologist of Literature_. In the literary journal _di Tsukunft_ Yudl Mark wrote: "Roback ... plumbed the psychological depths of the Yiddish literature, bacame an enthusiastic Peretsyaner, and the seeker of what was unique, special and singular in the Yiddish literature and in Yiddish proper." Roback was not only a _khoyveyv Yiddish_ [lover of Yiddish] but its guardian as well, and whenever he encountered an injustice to Yiddish, he energetically stood up in defense of its honor and respect. The following is an interesting illustration: When the telephone company introduced the _rotary_ dial system, by which a caller could directly reach one's party -- until then one had to ask the telephone operator to make the connection -- the New England telephone company published in 1931 a booklet with instructions on how to operate the new equipment. The booklet was replete with daytshnerisms [Germanisms], all in Yiddish letters, such as "immer, gebraucht, vorbereitet," and many others, as well as English words, also in Yiddish letters, such as "subscriber, number, letter, dial tone, service calls, receiver, exchange." Roback promptly wrote to the company, pointing out that this type of language is offensive to Yiddish readers and speakers, and that in no way does it satisfactorily explain the appropriate steps of the new telephone calling system. And he offered his own instructions in a clear, simple, and correct Yiddish. The New England telephone company then published a second, _revised_ issue of its instruction booklet in Yiddish, in accordance with each and all of Roback's suggestions. Here are the then innovative Yiddish terms he suggested for parts of the telephone and the operations: dial redl to dial redlen dial face redlblat, tsiferblat finger stop hatshik exchange gegnt tsentrale receiver traibl party line beshutfesdike linye dial tone redlton operator ruferke toll department vaytrufike opteylung long distance call vayter ruf service badinung I believe that almost all of these terms could still be used today in proper Yiddish. It is interesting to note that in those days, more than fifty years ago, there was a large Yiddish-speaking population in New England. It is of further interest that in one respect almost nothing has been changed since 1931: When a Yiddish translation is called for, someone totally ignorant of Yiddish but who for no good reason in the world! believes himself capable of doing the translation, offers his "good" services... A case in point is the outrageous Yiddish translation of the 1990 Census Bureau Questionnaire. (See the article "Yiddish and the Census Bureau" (Congress Monthly, January 1992.) Zellig Bach 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 03:51:06 0500 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Bokser Hershl Hartman: Thank you for trying to clarify your question [5.257]. Unfortunately the clarification does not address what seems to me to be the problematical presuppositions of the question: that there ought to be a documentable reason for abandoning one word in favor of another and that Jews must have used certain Hebrew words when they began speaking Yiddish. So why do you think that the Hebrew term for carob was ever used _in yiddish_? The association of bokser and tu b'shvat, like many of the minhogim of the day, may well be an innovation of 16th century mekubolim ("cabbalists"), in which case the Hebrew term may never have been used, much less "abandoned". A couple of etymological notes: 'Khoruv' is not found in Biblical Hebrew. According to the Even-Shoshan dictionary the word entered Aramaic from Assyrian. Both the Hebrew and Aramaic forms are known to us from the Talmud. There is no reason to jump to the conclusion that bokser came to Yiddish from New High German. You should check the word in Grimms' Woerterbuch for its history first. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 From: nmiller@shakti.trincoll.edu Subject: A recess Your shames will be away for the next two weeks in a phone-free zone, which means no Mendele for a while. Please continue to write. Zayt mir ale gezunt. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.259