Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.253 March 3, 1997 1) Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_ (Abe Blumberg) 2) Cruel parents (Siegfried Risse) 3) A bukh vegn idyomen (Leybl Botvinik) 4) Homentashn (Berel Leiser) 5) Yidish un yidishkayt (Morrie Feller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 02 Mar 97 12:36:27 EST From: 102142.2545@compuserve.com Subject: Shund I fully share Al Grand's strictures about Rosten's _Joy of Yiddish_. It is little more than a Borsht Belt travesty, in line wih the cheap Second Avenue Yiddish Theatre productions (of course excepting Maurice Schwartz's), which used to send me into paroxysms of anger whenever I was exposed to them and which I to this day recollect with something close to revulsion . I once interiewed Rosten, I think for Yugntruf, and I recall the venerable writer struck me as an impostor. _The Education of etc._ had some good lines, of the Bob Hope variety--all not to be taken seriously, that is, not to be taken as genuine humor. As for the _Joy_, it can bring joy only to those too lazy to read a good book on the subject, such as Maurice Samuel's, an above all that of Benjamin Harshav, with a somewhat similar title I cannot remember [_The Meaning of Yiddish_, U. of Cal., 1990]. Leyent es, mayne tayere fraynd, un hot hanoe. abe brumberg 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Mar 1997 21:14:26 +0100 From: srisse@cww.de Subject: Cruel parents Parents who are cruel to their children or do not care for them as they should, are called in German "Rabenvater" or "Rabenmutter" respectively. Is there a saying like that in Yiddish? What is given as an explanation? Siegfried Risse 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:18:20 +0200 (IST) From: leybl@telecomm.tadiran.co.il Subject: a bukh vegn idyomen a frage: tsi iz faran a bukh mit idyomen, glaykhverter, shprikhverter, un azoy vayter, vos men ken zey gefinen loytn alefbeys. ikh meyn nit dos ershte vort, nor shlisl verter. lemoshl "kuf" - "kop": er hakt di kop in vant; es krikht im arayn in kop modne gedanken; tsu kleyn a kop far aza breytn hitl.... oder "hey" - "harts": a breyt harts; a shtokh in hartsn... a dank in foroys, leybl botvinik netanya 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Mar 97 18:37:44 EST From: leiser@pacevm.dac.pace.edu Subject: Homentashn Borukh hashem svet bald zayn roysh khoydesh adar habo oleynu letoyv, un m'darf gedenken undzer heilige rabonim fun alle doyros, zal, un iber al di vus men hot kimat fargessen, loy oleyni. Thank God, Rosh Khodesh Adar will soon be upon us, and it is fitting that we remember our holy rabbis from generations past, may their memory be a blessing, and most especially those who--it should not happen to us--have been almost completely forgotten. In this connection, I think especially of the great R. Pythagoras, who studied homentashn at the renowned yeshiva of Alexandria, the center of Torah and mitzvos in his day, at least in khutz lo-oretz--and there devised the famous theorem concerning right-angled homentashn which every schoolchild knows without realizing its connection with Purim and Torah. He fell into obscurity because of a dispute that broke out between beys Pythagoras and beys Hillel on a major point of kashrus. Beys Hillel insisted on putting a U-O sign of kashrus on baked beans, while Beys Pythagoras claimed--erroneously, as it turns out, that beans of any kind are not kosher. The other major controversy, which led beys Pythagoras into complete obscurity (for a kherem was put on anyone who followed their Shulkhen Orekh) was its claim that anyone who revealed the secret that the square root of two is not a rational number should be drowned. Drowning, of course, was not an official form of execution in the Torah, at least since the days of Noyekh. R. Socrates, who had studied under R. Pythagoras, carried the wisdom of the master a step further by concluding that the only true homentashn are purely spiritual forms or ideas, while physical homentashn are mere representations of the divine homentash, though they taste better. Coming to more recent periods, we should, of course, remember Hayyim Wasserstein, who became known to history as George Washington after his father landed at Ellis Island, and being able to write only in Yiddish, was misunderstood by the illiterate immigration officer. Borukh hashem, it was Hayyim who saved our nation and won the war against Mad George III, a descendant of Haman Harosho on his father's side, as we know from the great battle that became known as the War of the Roshes. Finally, Tom Jefferson, a brokh of zein kop, was named after his mother Khane's zeyde, Reb Mordechai ben Yosef Hakohen, who was known in English as Josephson. Khane reported in her diary that Mordechai's nurse (Mordechai was of course called "Moti" for short) was dyslexic. She could never get "Moti" straight, and constantly called him "Tommy," which stuck. As a result of Tom's devotion to the principles of the ADL, the AJC, and the other Jewish organizations he helped to found, he was instrumental in incorporating into the Constitution such important Jewish principles as free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion--especially after he and the other fathers of our country had defeated George III, y'mach shmoy v'zikhroy. Nu, zol zein a freylichen Purim un alle yidn zoln zein gebentsht durkh di dozige zikhroynous fun unzer heilige gedoylim, omeyn. Berel Leiser 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 13:14:23 -1000 From: feller@indirect.com Subject: A Japanese who teaches Yiddish in Israel In response to Mehl Asheri's request in 6.248, I can name one Japanese who has taught Yiddish to Israelis. His name is Tsuguya Sasaki, and he has been the associate editor of "Der Yapanisher Yid" which is published in Tokyo by Yankl Halpern. Tsuguya is working on his Ph.D in Hebrew at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and I am reasonably sure that he did teach Yiddish to Israelis while in Jerusalem. Whether it was Polish Yiddish (which I doubt), or how many students he had, I do not know. Morrie Feller Phoenix ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.253