Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.181 January 3, 1997 1) Introduction (Mechl Asheri) 2) Jet lag af yidish (Esther Goffstein) 3) Jet lag af yidish (David Herskovic) 4) "Blond" oyf yidish (Doodie Ringelblum) 5) "Dos eybershte fun shteysel" (Morrie Feller) 6) Yiddish in the liturgy (David Herskovic) 7) Mir/mikh un dir/dikh (David Herskovic) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 02 Jan 1997 01:07:32 +0200 From: donnom@netvision.net.il Subject: Introduction Noyekh, whose requests I do not refuse, has asked for a personal introduction. I am a genial but intolerant old man, have lived in Israel these past nineteen years and regret that I wasn't smart enough to have come here thirty years before I did. Born in Chicago, I spent over half my adult life in Latin America, the language of my home is Spanish and all my children at least bilingual. For Mendele, which is interested in Yiddish, not in me, that's enough. I have spoken, read and written Yiddish for fifty years and, put succinctly, there are sixteen apartments in my building (in Petach Tikva) and I speak Yiddish with the occupants of ten of them. Mechl Asheri 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 17:44:24 -0500 From: esterel@aol.com Subject: Jet lag af yidish Efsher felt unz nokh eyn oysdruk far "jet-lag" fun ale shaferishe verter un oysdrukn vos zaynen shoyn forgeshtelt gevorn. Dos vort vos ikh vil forleygn iz nit shver tsu gedenkn, un gring tsu zogn un tsu farshteyn. Dos vort 'dzhet' hot unz Weinreich shoyn gegebn in zayn verterbukh [bleter 171, 658]. Dos vort 'lage ' in Yidish ken meynen "condition" oder "situation". Nokh a lange rayze, ven m'fregt mir vos ikh makh,ken ikh zogn : "Ikh hob, nit far aykh gedakht, dzhet-lage..." Vi ir zolt es [nit] zogn , vet ir maskim zayn, az es iz beser tsu zogn "dzhetlage", vi es tsu hobn. Esther Goffstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 Jan 97 08:23:50 EST From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: Jet lag af yidish I have been humbly taking all the flak prompted by my suggestion for jet-lag [6.156,159,180]. But now I wish to say: a dank laybl botvinik! Vos iz? Hert a mase. A boy once came home proudly telling his father that he's saved him 50p. He explained that he chased after a bus but failed to catch it so he came home by walk instead. 'Shoyte', the father said, 'you could have chased a taxi and saved a fiver!' Laybl Botvinik zogt 'tsi men vet es nitsen? ver vayst?' Nu, az men gayt es savi nisht nitsen they might just as well *not* use 'khulshe deporkhe'. David Herskovic 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 11:41:30 +1100 From: doodie@melbpc.org.au Subject: "Blond" oyf yidish Joachim Neugroschel in 6.180 asks about the extent of blondness in the Yiddish "blond". My parents, (Varshever through and through) invariably use the adjective "geller' (yellow) rather than "blond" . This refers to fairness of both skin and hair (but not blue eyes which JN refers to as part of the English blonde). Doodie (David) Ringelblum 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 23:18:27 -1000 From: feller@indirect.com Subject: "Dos eybershte fun shteysel" I am looking for the words to the song: "Dos eybershte fun shteysel". If anyone can supply them, or point me to a source, I would be most grateful. Morrie Feller Phoenix 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 Jan 97 07:06:49 EST From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: Yiddish in the liturgy Michael Shimshoni is right when he says that the origin of 'Raboysay, mi veln benchn' is in the Aranaic 'Hav lon u'nevoreykh', but... The phrase of 'Hav lon u'nvoreykh' is used in the Talmud in relation to the laws of benedictions. While all food needs a brokhe before and after, food consumed during a meal where bread is eaten does not need a separate brokhe as it is considered part of the meal for which grace was said on the bread. There is then the question of when a meal is considered over to require brokhes to be made afresh. The Talmud says that if 'Hav lon u'nevoreykh' is said, which means give us a goblet and let's bench, it is considered 'hesekh hadas' of the meal and brokhes have to be made on food consumed after this even though it is still before benchn. (The term 'hesekh hadas' has made its way to yidish where it means oblivion or distraction.) The Mogen Avrohom (one of the largest commentaries on the Shulkhen Orekh) gives a reason for the minheg of Raboysay... by citing a Zohar which says that every mitzve needs a preparation. The Zohar says that 'Hav lon u'nevoreykh' should be said prior to benching with mezumen, which is a minimum of three people. The Zohar has clearly borrowed the Talmud's phrase but for a different meaning. The Mogen Avrohom says that this is the reason for saying, and I quote carefully, 'beloshen ashkenaz, Raboysay, mi"r vel"n benshi"n'. (The Mogen Avrohom died in 1682/83 when in his late forties and lived in Kalish in Poland.) Some have added on to it and say 'her tsi raboysay... which I suspect is a by-product of chasidic rivalry vying to outholy each other. David Herskovic 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 Jan 97 08:19:01 EST From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: Mir/mikh un dir/dikh What is the grammatical difference, if any, between mir and mikh, and dir and dikh? I know that 'mir' can sometimes function exclusively as plural as in 'mir viln' but most of the time they easily interchange. Nevertheless overuse of the dikh or mikh doesn't somehow sound right. Is it dialectic or is there a rule? David Herskovic ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.181 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. Mendele archives can also be reached as follows: via WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mewais.html via gopher: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/../.pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele via ftp: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele