Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 1 no. 124
December 11, 1991
 
1) Hasidism in America, -ekhe (Hershel Bershady)
2) Some thoughts on an anniversary of sorts (Noyekh Miller)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 05 Dec 91 22:50:58 EST
From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" <HBERSHAD@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: der rebbe, and ekhe
 
Herzliche dank to Bob Rothstein and Noyekh Miller for words
and citation to "Sha, sha der rebe geyt."  They gave me
great pleasure.  I'm interested in Noyekh's point that
these songs mocked Hasidism.  I don't think I even heard of
Hasidism until I was in college and read some Buber (late
1940s).  But then, I remember that the favorite khazn of my
grandparents was one "Elyeh," who used to come twirling and
dancing and singing into shul looking like a bewiskered
cherub.  In recollection, his actions seemed to correspond
to some of Buber's descriptions of Hasidic practices.  _If_
he was a member of a Hasidic sect -- a big and doubtful if
-- how to understand mocking him and his kind?  In any case
this raises the issues of sectarian (efsher also political)
differences and accomodations -- grist for the
sociological mill, but not unimportant.
 
on "ekhe" endings and such like:  In following the
discussions in Mendele and searching an imperfect memory, I
wonder whether use of such endings implies social distance
between user and referrent?   My grandparents and their
friends, who are becoming the taxicab driver to the
sociologist, had actual nicknames for people they knew well
-- Yankel tsop (Jack of the goat's beard), Rukhl die royte
(Rachel of the red hair), etc.  People who were above or
below them, or at some remove, were, I think, given these
somewhat more formal names -- that is names of location or
occupation or, frequently in the case of women, their
husband's _last_ names.  Was this practice more widely
followed?

Hershel

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 10 Dec 91
From: nmiller@trincc
Subject: An anniversary

By the sheerest chance (note that I feel constrained to
say so) I've just learned that today is the 200th
anniversary of the death of Jacob Frank.  Like the Baal
Shem Tov, Frank was born in Podolia in 1726, a quarter
century later than the Besht. Both were brought up in the
wake of Shabtai Zvi. Both were charismatics.  In other
respects, two men could not have been less alike, and the
movements they spearheaded had radically different careers:
Hasidism only began to take off after the Besht died, while
the Frankist movement per se essentially disappeared with
its founder's death.

But that may in fact be overstating things a bit.  For, as
Scholem and others have pointed out, Frankists were active
in the Haskala and the Enlightenment.  A large topic, no
time for it here.  But which brings me to my reason for
writing.  We've used these two labels for so many years
that they've lost most of their explicatory power.  And
since we are all like it or not products of the 18th
Century, it would do us a world of good to look at things
afresh.  And to ask of historians that they help us by
re-examining the cultural as well as social contradictions
of the period.  What I _don't_ mean is some sort of
antiquarian tracing of weird threads, like the one about
Frank's nephew who turned down the job as successor only to
turn up as a Jacobin during the French Revolution. What I
_do_ mean is the kind of investigation that helps us
understand these things as plausible and ordinary, much as
we would want our epoch, with all of its meshugas, to be
understood by those who read about us in the year 2191.

What does this have to do with Mendele?  It doesn't. Wrong
venue.  Why then this message?  Because it's a shande un a
kharpe, that when Orthodox and Reform Jews have their
respective lists, as do specialists in the 1st Century
(IOUDAIOS: outstanding, arguably the best list on any
subject), that there shouldn't be a _single_ Internet forum
for the discussion of secular topics.  Given the wealth of
talent out there it's a genuine mystery.  Maybe one of our
members will take the hint?

Noyekh

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End of Mendele Vol 1.124