Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 18
June 24, 1992
 
1) Publication notice: The Dybbuk (Bob Werman)
2) Mise meshine (Berl Hoberman)
3) Mise meshune (Zev Hochberg)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed,  24 Jun 92 0:34 +0300
From: RWERMAN%HUJIVMS.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: ANSKI

THE DYBBUK AND OTHER WRITINGS
by S.Ansky [Solomon Rappoport]
Edited by David G. Roskies
Translated by Golda Werman
Shocken Press $25 ISBN 0-8052-4111-6

_Publishers Weekly_ [June 1, 1992]
writes:

An altogether excellent anthology, this volume offers a
superior introduction to brilliant, brooding works of a
Yiddish master... he taps a source previously neglected by
other great Yiddish writers: "folklore as the wellspring of
Jewish cultural renewal."  The title work, for example,
evokes the mystical underpinnings of shtetl life, with its
rituals of possession and exorcism.  The seven stories and
novellas collected here focus more intently on tensions
between the sacred and the secular... --- tensions that
often border on violence.  Finally, a lengthy excerpt from
_The Destruction of Galicia_, offers a grim reminder of the
long history and violence of Eastern European
anti-Semitism.

[Note: Bob Werman mailed this to Mendele at my request.
Yasher koach to our Golda and may we see more of her fine
work in the years to come.  NM]

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 Jun 1992 17:48:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert D Hoberman <RHOBERMAN@ccmail.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Mise meshine

The phrase is discussed by Werner Weinberg, of the Hebrew
Union College in Cincinnati, in his book Die Reste des
Juedischdeutschen (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1973), which
is an extremely interesting essay on and dictionary of the
hundreds of "Jewish" items in the speech of German Jews,
including remnants of Western Yiddish as well as other
slang and jargon, puns and jokes.  It is under
"miesemeschinne", a noun and interjection, defined as 'an
unnatural death'.

Weinberg comments that some speakers identify the first
word with the adjective "mies" meaning 'ugly', so that a
sentence like "du sollst die miese meschinne kriegen" is
understood as meaning something like '... an ugly
disease...' (this is the reanalysis that Ellen Prince
mentioned).  In Yiddish "mies" is two syllables, in
Juedischdeutsch one (as in the Mieskeit song in "Cabaret").

Incidentally, this same change took place also in
Juedischdeutsch "schmus" (with a long -u-), where Yiddish
has shmues, from Heb. shmu'ot=shmu'oys; American Jewish
English has taken the German-Jewish form, in shmooze.
Weinberg gives the etymologies that have been mentioned in
Mendele (mies from Hebrew mi'us, mise meshune from Heb.
miso=mita 'death', meshuna 'strange'), but doesn't comment
on the fact that it has the vowel -i- in meschinne, rather
than -u-, as the Hebrew original would lead you to expect.
Is this from Eastern Yiddish?!

Berl ("Bob") Hoberman
rhoberman@sbccmail.bitnet
rhoberman@ccmail.sunysb.edu

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 1992 02:16:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Zev Hochberg <HOCHBRGZ@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU>
Subject: mise meshune


Meylekh Viswanath writes:

> 
> This isn't particularly related to Yiddish, but... Which
> sider (siddur) do you have?  In the corresponding tfile in
> my ArtScroll, I couldn't find mise-meshune.

Misa meshuna appears in nusach sfard.

Zev Hochberg

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol 2.18

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