Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.141 January 27, 1998 1) Petcha (Gitl Dubrovsky) 2) Petcha/Fisnoge (Herb Megel) 3) Vider fisnoge (Ronald Robboy) 4) Avraham Lebensart (David Pur) 5) Kokhlefl (Louis Fridhandler) 6) Kokhlefl (Joachim Neugroschel) 7) Kokhlefl and tuleyne (Ben Fogel) 8) Kokhlefl (Maynard Wishner) 9) On the origin of the bagel (Dan Leeson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 20:44:56 EST From: GDubrovsky Subject: Petcha Mir hobn nit gevust fun fisnoge, ober mir hobn yo gegesen petcha. Ikh dermon zikh vegn mayn bobe's petcha, iz es a makhayye. S'iz geven azoy geshmak, un aza maykhl. Itst bet ikh -- take di petcha mavens -- efsher ken emitser mir unshraybn vi men makht es. Mayn bube iz lang toyt. Ikh bet aykh: hob rakhmones: shik mir dem 'recipe' eyder ikh ver mishuge. A gris ale 'petchaniks.' Oyb es interesirt aykh, mayn bube hot geshtamt fun Toste, in Galitsia. Gitl Dubrovsky 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 00:35:42 -0500 (EST) From: Herbert Megel Subject: Petcha/Fisnoge Every time I see the above mentioned words in Mendele, it brings to memory the many time my grandmother prepared this dish. First of all, my grandfather would purchase several calves feet and I still remember the smell of the depilatory process in which he would singe the hair and scrape the feet clean. Then my grandmother would cook the calves feet with onions and enough garlic to smell up the house. She would serve it hot although in many areas it would be served as a cold gel. You would eat the dish by sucking on the bones and absorbing the melted heated gelatinous mass on challah. Almost one challah to a dish of petcha. It tasted so good. Herb Megel 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 11:34:51 -0800 From: rrobboy@cts.com (Ronald Robboy) Subject: Vider fisnoge In the wake of Russell Harris's article on fisnoge, reprinted in 7.137, I've written him a note, taking the liberty of thanking him on behalf of all Mendelistn for the acknowledgments he carefully extended, and suggesting that there remains room in his text for more linguistic accuracy. The letter follows. Dear Mr. Harris: Your charming article from Petits Propos Culinaires on fisnoge was reproduced recently on Mendele. I was pleased to see credit extended to the Mendele list and to its many contributors who offered you information, and am most flattered to have ended up fronting as a spokesperson. As I wrote you last fall, I am hardly an expert on the topic (or any of its sub-topics), so I took your choice to reprint my words strictly as a compliment to my abilities as collator of what the many others had expressed. Compliment accepted. Now, hold the presses! Before the Oxford Companion to Food becomes a fait accompli, please note that fisnoge does not mean "literally 'foot-foot,'" as you wrote in your article, but "feet-feet" -- PLURAL. That may seem like a small point, but since you say "literally," you might as well be literal. (Readers of Mendele may note that /fis/ can mean foot, singular, in other dialects of Yiddish, but in those cases the final sibilant need not be disambiguated as it is in the Litvish, and thus there is no need to pleonastically borrow from the Slavic -- and here I must add an emphatic "as I understand it.") More importantly, since I sent information to you, more material appeared on Mendele, including some critical corrections. >From the acknowledgments in your notes, it appears that you read Mikhl Herzog's post in Volume 7.070, but did you also see Hugh Denman's essential correction to my less than punctilious linguistics? And following the appearance of your article this month, more posts have appeared on the Turkish connection of petcha. Dan Slobin's, in particular, should be of interest to you, as it directly reintroduces the culinary element into the etymological discussion. The posts of Denman and the others follow below. Again, all thanks and best regards, Ron Robboy [Here I appended posts by Mikhl Herzog and Hugh Denman (7.070); Dan Slobin and Bill Phillips (7.138); and Louis Fridhandler ( 7.139). --r.r.] 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 21:42:42 +0200 From: pgem Subject: Avraham Lebensart I'm doing a research on Avraham Lebensart (1880-1909), born in Stanislav (Galicia). I am looking for his writings (poems, novels, essays, ect.) in Yiddish. Most of his works were published in the Yiddish newspapers: Yidisher veker, Yidishes vokhenblat, etc. If you know about Lebensart's biography or his works, or about locations of newspapers with his works please send me any available information. I would appreciate very much your response and assistance. David Pur 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 14:56:46 EST From: Lfridhan Subject: Kokhlefl I have to trust my memory on this, but, years ago, when I heard Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards refer to Rhoda Morgenstern's mother as a kokhlefl it must have been burned into my memory. I don't know which of that show's writers knew some Yiddish, but one of them must have realized that the English word _busybody_ doesn't quite fulfill the intended idea (and has no comic possibilities). I heard it as respect for the power of Yiddish. Sometimes, though, an oblique connection to Yiddish seems awkwardly offensive. For example, I agree with our editor about the implied transgression committed against Yiddish by the ungainly use of the suffix -o in schmucko. (I realize he meant to be wryly satirical.) It triggered a memory of President Bush's use of Bozo. Seems as though, in English, the -o suffix can emphasize derogation in more than one arena. As far as I can tell, kokhlefl has not caught on in English as has _maven_, _shlep_, or a Yiddishism such as _go figure_. Louis Fridhandler 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 11:47:53 -0500 (EST) From: ACHIM1 Subject: Kokhlefl While "kochlefl" literally means "ladle, dipper," its figurative meaning -- in my experience -- is generally pejorative: "busybody, meddler, meddlesome person...." Joachim Neugroschel 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:37:48 EST From: bfogel@juno.com Subject: Kokhlefl and tuleyne I believe I can add some more light on these matters. The literal translation of kockhlefl is "cooking (or cook) spoon. It was a large, usually wooden spoon use for mixing in a large pot. The idiomatic meaning is that of a busybody or one who mixes into others business. It could have pejorative meaning depending upon how it is used. In my families usage it was "italeyner or italeyna" depending on gender. Since a non Yiddish speaking Italian could perceive that he is being spoken about (since italeyner does not sound so different from Italian) and if the Yiddish speaker did not want the Italian to know he is being spoken about he was sometimes referred to a "loksh". Loksh being "noodle" in Yiddish the use thereof was understood to mean "spaghetti". The reference to spaghetti and Italian should be obvious. It was not pejorative. Another example: shvartz-tinkl was used for the same purpose. Ben Fogel 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:42:30 -0500 From: mwishner@jon.cjfny.org Subject: Kokhlefl Further to Norman Frumans's inquiry: A kokhlefl is more of a pot stirrer than one who takes charge of something, Denotes high energy in one who doesn't easily accept the status quo. Could be pejorative or not...depending on whose pot is being stirred and what's in it. Maynard Wishner [Moderator's note: answers on a kokhlefl were also submitted by Pearl Handler and Arlene Lapoff] 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 10:14:04 EST From: "Dan Leeson" Subject: On the origin of the bagel Cyril Robinson of Carbondale, IL recently visted China and noticed a similarity of certain breads he saw there with the bagel. He asks about the bagel's origins and brings up the myth of its invention based on a story of Sobieski's defeat of the Turks. First, with respect to the origin of the bagel, the New York Times had several days of speculation, history, myth, etc. on the origin of the bagel in several occasionally testy articles, and a key word search of the Times on the word "bagel" using the last 10 years as a search parameter should turn up this treasure trove for you. It was a keenly fought argument with views from every corner of bageldom. The discussions were heated!! Second, the story about the origin of the bagel vis-a-vis a Jewish Viennese baker's thanks to Sobieski for saving Vienna from the Turks has long been discredited. (That does not mean it is not true. Only that one historian has said it is a lot of baloney and no one has been able to beat him back, so, for the moment, it's discredited.) However, I can find no variation of this story in which the honor of the invention is given to a Jewish baker. On the contrary, the story is given as a demonstration that the bagel is not a Jewish invention despite its apparent genealogy based more on memory than on fact. The story mentions that the "Croissant" or crescent roll was shaped in this form to copy the basic geometry of the Turkish sword, which was crescent shaped. When Pilsudski defeated the Turks and returned victorious to Vienna, the citizenry hung on to the stirrup of his horse (in German: Steigbugel) in gratitude and a baker took the crescent roll shape, adjusted its geometry to look like the stirrup of a horse, and gave it the name Steigbugel which shortly became bugel, and then bagel. The rules are these: don't yell at me. I didn't make up the story, I'm simply repeating it and stating that, currently, it is a discredited one. Personally I find it a bit of a stretch, but who knows? Crazier things have happened. But no where in the story is there any Jewish involvement with the great invention. And in any case, simply taking croissant dough and changing the shape doth not a bagel make. The dough is all wrong and the technique of cooking radically different. Maybe someone on Mendele will remember the New York Times hassle over the bagel's origins more precisely than I do. Here in California I am offered "jalapeno pepper bagels" which must be an invention of the American Oral Surgery Institute because eating one of them destroys all tissue in the mouth and mandates reconstructive surgery than can cost a fortune. We also have "pumpkin bagels," "chocolate chip bagels," and others too insane to mention. Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.141 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