Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.275 March 10, 1996 1) Roykh (Daniel Bugel) 2) Kemp Nitgedayget (Hershl Hartman) 3) Hasidic Yiddish theatre (Eliyahu Juni) 4) Itzik Manger (Ruben Frankenstein) 5) Learning non-"standard" Yiddish (Yankev Lewis) 6) Jewish choruses (Bonnie Burt) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 17:48:36 +0100 From: bugel@innet.be Subject: Roykh I am almost sure the Yiddish word is of Germanic origin, related among other words to the English verb to reek, meaning 'to smell'. These words are very old and date back to pre-Yiddisch time, and so does Hebrew 'ruahh' (with a hheth, not with a khaf, (hh = an 'h' with a dot underneath), which appears already in the second verse of the bible. If there is any relation between the words, it must go back to pre-proto-indo-european and pre-proto-semitic times, which is quite doubtful, especially as I don't see much similarity between the meanings of the concepts of smoke and spirit/wind. Hope this helps, Daniel Bugel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 13:14:12 -0500 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Kemp Nitgedayget The indication here (V. 5.268) that "the camp was connected to the Jewish People's Fraternal Order of the IWO" is in error. kemp nitgedayget was founded long before the March 30, 1930 establishment of the IWO and its Jewish-American Section, which became the JPFO at around the same time (mid 1940s) as nitgedayget metamorphosed into Camp Beacon. Hershl Hartman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 19:38:37 +0100 (MEZ) From: frankens@mail.uni-freiburg.de Subject: Itzik Manger I hope someone can help me find the full text of Itzik Manger`s poem "Ikh bin der veg keyn mayrev". I have just the first 4 strophes in the handwriting of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, the cousin of Paul Celan, who was murdered by the Nazis at the age of 18 years. She left just one manuscript with poems and some translations from and into yiddish, including this poem by Manger. She translated 9 strophes but added just the first 4 in the original yiddish. I could not decipherher handwriting in the 4th strophe beginning with the words: "Mayn benkshaft - a tsigeyner..." Is one of you in possession of the whole poem? Please help! Ruben Frankenstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 02:17:41 -0500 From: e.juni@utoronto.ca Subject: Hasidic Yiddish theatre A gitn shishan pirem. I spent the wee hours of last night running around Boro Park, taking in tishn and shpieln. I noticed a bunch of things which I thought would be of interest to Mendelyaner, and particularly relevant to the recent discussion on khsidishe yiidish. a) A while back, someone suggested the title "Rosh khavruse" for Reb Noyekh, and I commented that "khavruse" applies to a pair, or very small group, who learn together, usually on a regular basis and in a formal setting, and the word would be misapplied to a group such as ours. In the dedication before the shpiel at the Minkatsher rebbe's tish last night, the narrator/MC referred to the "gantse kh'vrise" in a context in which he was clearly referring to everyone involved in the shpiel, if not all the khsidim. To me, it sounded as strange there as it did when suggested as a name for Mendele, but obviously the speaker thought it was fine. It may have been an improvisation because the speaker didn't know of a word for "cast" (neither do I, for that matter), or I may be influenced by a relatively narrow yeshivishe usage. b) At the Bobover shpiel, I noticed the following contrast: In a conversation between a khusid and his rebbe about a court case, the khusid referred to the judge as "der rikhter", but when the rebbe replied, he referred to the same judge as "der shoyfet". It may be that the Hebraism is considered more suitable for a rebbe. (The rebbe being portrayed was the Bobover rebbe before the last one, who is treated with extreme reverence in Bobov.) The difference may have been put in to make the dialogue more colourful, or it may have been merely accidental, with both words being equally common. But it is equally likely that the script isn't as rigid as it would be in conventional theatre (to which this community has no exposure), and the difference reflects the two actors' idiolects; if so, it may reflect a generational difference, since the actor playing the rebbe was younger than the one playing the khusid. c) Also at the Bobover shpiel, one of the characters was a rich goy. His lines were all in Yiddish, but it seemed to me that they were practically devoid of Yiddish words which are transparently derived or borrowed from loshnkoydesh. They also had none of the loshnkoydesh borrowings which permeated the lines of the other characters, but since most of those were in lines of a religious bent, and his role had nothing to do with the religious angle of the play, that probably reflects their content, and not a deliberate ommission. d) Nokh vaater at the Bobover shpiel, I noticed a few times that certain words were pronounced the way a Litvak would pronounce them (and not in the Galitsyaner accent used for the rest of the play, which is presumably the native dialect of the participants). The only example I remember now is that a straw hat was called a "zun-shtraaml", and not a "zin-shtraaml". It occurred to me that in that particular instance, the purpose was to disambiguate 'sun' and 'son' (zun/zin in Litvishese is zin/zin in Galitsyaner), since the compound was coined for the occasion, for comic effect, and may not have been readily recognizable. Moreover, the second half of the compound was pronounced "shtraaml"--and not "shtrayml", as it would be in Litvish. But the context was clear enough to disambiguate: the character was talking about how he had come up with a new invention, a solution for the summer shabosim, when the shtraaml is making the sweat run down your face, produced a straw hat, and called it a "zun-shtraaml". If this wasn't an aberration, it may be evidence (however minimal,) that there is some sort of underlying standard in the minds of dialect-speakers who don't know from YIVO, and that that standard is Litvish. Eliyahu Juni 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:25:39 -0500 From: justin_lewis@stubbs.woodsworth.utoronto.ca Subject: Learning non-"standard" Yiddish Arre Komar (Mendele 5.269) expresses frustration at the disparagement of the Yiddish of native speakers by those Yiddishists who consider only"standardized" Yiddish to be correct. I have similar feelings of frustration from a different perspective. I did not grow up with Yiddish, love the language, and am doing my best to learn it. What frustrates me is that the only courses, textbooks, and dictionaries of Yiddish grammar and pronounciation which I know of all teach YIVO Yiddish, while everyone seems to acknowledge that this is _not_ the Yiddish of those communities where the language is most thriving. This is somewhat parallel to the situation in Canadian schools, where English-speaking students (at least in my childhood) were taught "Parisian" French and the Canadian French of their neighbours was ignored. So I have a request of all Mendelyaners: does anyone have suggestions, or know of resources, for a student in my position who would like to learn to speak non-YIVO Yiddish? Specifically, I would be interested in "poylishe" Yiddish (we have the strongest family-history connections with the town of Stashuv, halfway between Cracow and Lublin) _or_ in the Yiddish of the Bobov Chasidim, who have a strong presence in Toronto and connections with some of my friends. A sheynem (oder shaynem) dank, Yankev Lewis 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 06, 1996 1:15 am EST From: marbon@aol.com Subject: Jewish choruses I need to find out about the Jewish Music Alliance and assorted information about the history, past and present, of choruses singing in Yiddish. Can you suggest a good source for this information? I would really appreciate it. A shaynem dank! Bonnie Burt ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.275