Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.119 December 14, 1997 1) Shteebl (Burton M. (Berel) Leiser) 2) Apikorus, bronfn, widrig, shteeble (Felix Baerlocher) 3) "fonye" and dictionaries (Joachim Neugroschel) 4) fonye (Arre Komar) 5) Yiddish in the news (Iosif Vaisman) 6) Der Bavebter Yid 1:3 (Sholem Berger) 7) Schildt's and Vaisman's comments (A. Manaster Ramer) 8) Y. Dobrushin and Sefardic names (Hershl (Paul) Glasser) 9) A Yiddish Radio Jingle (Norman Fruman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 05:57:06 EST From: BLeiser77 Subject: Shteebl A question is raised in Mendele 07.116 as to whether "shteebl" refers to synagogues in general and is derived from the relative simplicity of synagogues as compared to cathedrals, lehavdil. No one would ever dream of referring, for example, to New York's Temple Emanu- el or to the Park Avenue Synagogue as a shteebl. Stained glass windows, magnificent organs, high domes, and gorgeous furnishings are not the marks of a shteebl. The word, a diminutive form of the German "Stube," is generally applied quite literally to relatively small rooms which most often have been set aside in someone's dwelling as a place in which folks can daven. (You should excuse me for using that word which has been the subject of so many megawatts of electricity being zapped around the world. Khaval, we can no longer talk about gallons of ink being spilled). There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of shteeblekh in the New York area. Each shteebl usually has a small ark with a sefer Torah or two, folding chairs or wooden benches, notices tacked or taped to the walls, a shtender (lectern) for the shliakh tzibbur (the one who leads the tfilos), shelves of books, and a table or two for study and refreshments. A shteebl need not remain a shteebl forever. When the Bobover Rebbe, shlita, arrived in America after the war, he started a shteebl on West 85th Street in Manhattan. It perfectly fit the description I have given above. The Rebbe, his wife and children lived on the third floor of a brownstone building--a house. On the second floor were the kitchen and a dining room where the Rebbe had his tisch and where, following dinner on Shabbes and Yom Tov, the men danced and sang--often to the consternation of the neighbors, whose Philco TVs bounced up and down in time with the rhythmic dancing of the khsidim. On the first floor was the Rebbe's shteebl, the original living room of the house, converted into a small shul capable of holding 60 or 70 people or maybe a hundred if they all jammed together. Furnishings were spartan and simple. Today, the Bobover Yeshiva has grown into an enormous institution. Its main building (there are several) has a shul in which thousands of people daven and study every day. It has a soaring ceiling, is illuminated by arc lights and (by day) by stained glass windows. The furnishings, though, are still rather simple--wooden tables and benches. All of the walls are lined with shelves that are filled with well-organized sforim, constituting a splendid library. By no stretch of the imagination can this be called a shteebl, even though it is a thoroughly khasidik shul. Every American city that has any Jewish population has a shul or a temple. Most of these are monuments to the edifice complex which gave rise to so many complaints in the 50s and 60s among critics of American Jewish life. Few of them would qualify as shteeblekh. There's a difference, too, between a shul and a temple, but that's a subject for another day. Burton M. (Berel) Leiser 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 12:44:52 -0400 (AST) From: Felix Baerlocher Subject: Apikorus, bronfn, widrig, shteeble Many thanks to all of you who gave me the meaning of apikorus (or however it is spelled). It cleared up something that was bugging me for a long time. It encourages me to asks another question: Many, many years ago, I read a story by Salcia Landmann, in which she used the term "bronfn" (in a collection called Jiddische Anekdoten). She translated it with Branntwein (brandy). Does anybody know this word and its origin? is it in any way related to Bronfman? or is my memory playing tricks on me? maybe it is spelled brontn? I don't have any decent dictionary to look it up myself. Widrig: Joachin Neugroschel writes that "widrig" in German can mean repulsive. This is true, of course, but I would not use in this connection. Where I grew up (eastern Switzerland), it was commonly used to mean opinionated, stubborn, contrary, ornery. When my mother called me widrig, I don't think she meant that I was repulsive. It's also common to speak about 'widriger wind', 'widrige umstaende', meaning unfavourable winds or circumstances. or widrigenfalls: in the opposite case. For repulsive, I would use widerlich or widerwaertig. But Johannes Neugroschel is correct: many Germans use widrig to mean repulsive; in addition, the meaning might have changed in Yiddish. It illustrates how difficult translations can be, even if one has a perfect knowledge of two languages. Shteeble: could it be that this is related to Stube? My dictionary tells me that is derived from the OHG stuba (related to stove), which originally referred to a heated room where baths were taken (generally separated from the house). Later (MHG), it was used to describe any heatable room (generally within a house). Today, it simply means living room/dining room. It can be a room used for special occasions (e.g., special meals, to host family or company, celebrations, etc.). Shteeble could be the diminutive, like in shtuebele, shtoebele, shtuebli, etc. It does have a flavour of cozyness and warmth. But this is just a guess, I'm no linguist or etymologist. Felix Baerlocher 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 12:32:05 -0500 (EST) From: ACHIM1 Subject: "fonye" and dictionaries Various subscribers have offered imaginative definitions of "fonye"--none of which jibe even slightly with the information provided in Yiddish dictionaries or with my experiences in reading and hearing Yiddish. Both Harkavy and Vainraikh define "fonye" as a (humorous) term for "Russian". Beyond that, I've found "fonye" to mean a "Russian soldier--the possible meaning it has in a macaronic Yiddish pun-jingle created during the Russo-Japanese War: "Ya Fonye/Yaponye." I've never found the word "fonye" to refer to all Gentile males or just to the tsar, as was posited respectively by two Mendelyaners, who didn't back up their suggestion with any references. But anything is possible in Yiddishland, and perhaps the word had a general meaning very locally--the way "Goy" means "Ukrainian" in Ukrainian Yiddish. The eternal existential questions: Why are so many contributors to Mendele so obstinately unwilling to check things that could easily be checked in any number of solid dictionaries? Why do some Jews hate reference works? Is it because some English dictionaries list "jew" as a verb meaning to cheat? i.e. to jew someone out of money? Why can't a person who's heard a bizarre etymology of, say, "shtibl" look it up in the appropriate reference work? Joachim Neugroschel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 13:06:39 -0500 (EST) From: Arthur Komar Subject: fonye Re Fonye: It derives from the pejorative, contemptuous distortion of the typical Slavic peasant name Ivan. Arre komar 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 14:19:31 -0500 (EST) From: Iosif Vaisman Subject: Yiddish in the news According to unofficial information from the well placed sources The Jewish Agency (Sokhnut) is planning to sponsor Yiddish classes in all of their learning centers (ulpanim) in Ukraine starting next year. If it is true, in a few months Ukraine may have the largest Yiddish students population in the world, with thousands of children and adults studying mameloshn. If it is true, it means a dramatic change in Sokhnut's policy with regard to Yiddish, and whatever is the political motivation behind this step, it is undoubtedly a very positive development. (Sokhnut already sponsored a conference on Yiddish education in Kiev earlier this year). Hopefully the Mendelistn who know more about these projects would share the information with the rest of us. Iosif Vaisman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 15:19:22 -0500 From: "Sholem Berger" Subject: Der Bavebter Yid 1:3 Shoyn aroys... Der Bavebter Yid 1:3 Yidisher literarisher vebzhurnal Naye lider fun B. Shekhter-Gotesman, Y.-A. Taub, Kh. Beyder Dertseylungen fun M. Rinkevitsh, L. Carroll Mit a por verter fun der redaktsye http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/bavebter [Di emese etimologye fun "davenen" zaynen mir oykh megale in dem numer.--Red.] Der Bavebter Yid 1:3 is now out, with poems, stories, and the true, linguistically correct etymology of "davenen." Come visit. Sholem Berger, redaktor, Refoyl Finkel, tekhnisher redaktor, 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 19:24:43 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Schildt's and Vaisman's comments (1) Sylvia Schildt seems to be saying that the relationship of davenen to diviner is parallel to that between bentshn and benedicere. Nothing could be further from the truth: the former relationship is not accepted by anyone with competence in Yiddish linguistics (and was specifically dealt with by Birnbaum), while the latter is undoubtedly correct and is universally accepted by the specialists. (2) Dr. Schildt also refers to somebody's rule that Slavic verb stems in Yiddish take the -e suffix, and since Standard Yiddish has davn not *davne, argues that this shows that davenen cannot be Slavic. There are much better reasons for sayingt hat davenen is not Slavic (did anyone say that it is?), but this is not one of them. Khapn and goln zikh are two Slavic-orighin verbs which do not take the -e suffix either. (3) Dr. Vaisman notes that we have not explicitly discussed the recent paper by Herbert Guy Zeiden "Davenen: A Turkic Etymology". I hope some day to write a brief rebuttal, and I have alluded to it here w/o naming it. This paper argues that davenen comes from Qypchaq (that's one kind of Turkic) tapynmak 'to pray' (-mak is the infinitive ending). But this is not entirely a new idea, and Birnbaum already took care of it, pointing out that there is no reason why the t- should become d- or -p- should become -v- AND that there is no precedent for borrowing from Turkic into Yiddish. I might add, having done some work on Turkci myself, that I was a bit puzzled that a scholarly journal would publish or that a scholar would write a paper about a Turkic etymology w/o having any real knowledge of Turkic. This is shown above all by Zeiden's claim that the t- to d- problem can be solved by assuming that Qypchaq had a form with d- as well, even though there is no evidence for this. Now, the reason he says this is that some OTHER words in this, and other Turkic, languages have d- varying with t-. But anynone who knows his Turkic knows that there are two sets of words, those which vary like this and those which do not. And unfortunately for Zeiden tapymak, which occurs in many Turkic languages, always has t-. End of story. A. Manaster Ramer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 20:01:30 EST From: paullaure@juno.com (Paul D Glasser) Subject: Y. Dobrushin and Sefardic names 1)In answer to Diane Rabson's query, in a forthcoming issue of the Tsukunft there will be an article about Yekheskl Dobrushin, by Khayem Beyder. He (Beyder) now lives in Brooklyn, so you might want to get in touch with him about Dobrushin. The Tsukunft office (25 E 21 St, New York NY 10010; 212-505-8040) could probably help you with that. 2) Sylvia Schildt shraybt agev-urkhedik, az "me gefint sefardishe nemen vi basson, peretz un andere tzvishn ashkinazim [sic]". Khotsh Y.-L. Perets hot take gemeynt, az er shtamt fun sfardim (un efsher iz er geven gerekht, ver veyst?), iz nito far vos tsu meynen, az der yidisher "Perets" ker zikh on mitn shpanishn "Perez" (vos dos iz der ekvivalent fun englishn "Peters", d"h, a derivat fun "Pedro"). S'iz gikher oder fun tanakhishn "Perets" oder fun rusishn "perets", taytsh 'fefer' (karg faran yidn mit der familye "Fefer"?). Dos vos a daytsh volt efsher geleyent dem shpanishn "Perez" mit a /ts/-klang bam sof iz keyn raye nit, az funem dozikn nomen vakst der yidisher "Perets". (Agev hot mayn bobe geheysn Perets fun der heym, un a bruder irer fleg zikh barimen, az mitn Y.-L. Perets zenen mir mishpokhe, ober af zikher veys ikh dos nit.) Hershl (Paul) Glasser 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 22:03:54 -0600 (CST) From: Norman Fruman Subject: A Yiddish Radio Jingle It would certainly be nostalgic for those of us old enough to remember the old "Yiddishe Shtunde" on WEVD (for Eugene V. Debs) in New York to have brought back to mind the many jingles and theme songs we heard so often. I recall only the last lines of a ditty Molly Picon used to sing regularly when she signed off at the end of her program: Horowitz Margaraten matzos Are the reason why, I sing to you each Saturday night, So Mazel Tov, good bye. Can anybody add to this collection? Norman Fruman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.119 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html