Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 195
May 9, 1993

1) Glaykhe vent/pantoufl (Martin Davis)
2) Idioms (Berl Hoberman)
3) Pantoufl/slippers (Raymond Eisenstark)
4) Stoch (Pierre Lewis)
5) Irving Howe (Noyekh Miller)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri May  7 13:01:47 1993
From: davism@turing.cs.nyu.edu (Martin Davis)
Subject: "glayke vent"/pantoufl

1. > Er krikht oyf di glaykhe vent. He is beside
himself.

When I was about to undertake an activity my mother
regarded as dangerous and unnecessary (such as travel
to Europe by air), she would say

"Du krikhst shoyn vider oyf di glayke vent."

A somewhat different meaning.

2. My father's slippers were always "pantofl."

He grew up in Lodz, lived for a while in Leipzig (taken
by the Germans during WWI to work in Germany),
emigrated to the US in the mid 1920s.

He had never studied French and (so far as I know)
never visited France.

Martin Davis

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri May  7 11:04:00 1993
From: Robert D Hoberman <RHOBERMAN@ccmail.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Idioms

One of Eli Katz's idioms rang a bell with" me:

  7.  "Klap zikh kop on vant un shray `Bravo!'"  In
  response to "What's to be done?" in situations where
  no course of action is satisfactory.  Also in
  response

My father, a native Yiddish speaker born in Brooklyn,
used to say, in the same situations, "Stand on your
head and holler for a hammer." Was this a translation
from Yiddish of a variant of "Klap ... Bravo"?  The
alliteration suggests it underwent distinct
anglicization.  Was it current in Brooklyn?  Anybody
else ever hear it?

Bob/Berl
rhoberman@ccmail.sunysb.edu

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri May  7 16:20:53 1993
From: rge@linden.nyc.legent.com (R. G. Eisenstark)
Subject: pantoufl/slippers

A friend of mine reported that a Belgian
Yiddish-speaking friend of hers called slippers
"shlofky"s where upon I asked a Dutch Yiddish-speaker
what he said at home.  He said "pantofl".  Go figure.

Raymond Eisenstark

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri May  7 17:29:38 1993
From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
Subject:  Re: stoch

(two more cents...)

Rick writes:

> seems to go along with a germanic source meaning
> "stick" ...

Why "stick"?  Typo for "stitch"?

In modern German, "stechen" can also mean "to stab"
when it's done with a knife.  Hence, "a shtokh in
hartz" is a literally a stab in the heart, from which
it is easy to understand the abstract meaning Rick
mentioned.  In "stechen" there is usually the idea of a
pointed object going thru/into something.  E.g. "sting"
(bee), and, strangely, "burn" (from the sun -- I guess
the sun's rays stitch your skin).

Pierre[le] Lewis

P.S. a nice poem Mark, I'll try to find the book!

5)---------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat May  8 22:29:20 1993
From: norman miller <nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu>
Subject: Irving Howe

Irving Howe died last week.  He was one of the last of
his breed --the 30's-educated New York intellectual--
and in my opinion the best of an unusual generation.
He was a literary and cultural critic of the first
rank; he played a key role in fighting Stalinism on the
one hand; he worked his whole life for a humane and
democratic socialism; he defended Israel against its
enemies on the right as well as on the left; finally,
his services to Yiddish and the recognition of its
literature by the English-speaking world were
absolutely central.

Achievements aside, there was the man himself.  Calm,
usually deliberate in his speech, not given to show or
pretense. An honest man.  Though he changed his mind
about a great deal over the course of a poltical career
spanning almost 60 years, he never lost sight of who he
was, whom and where he came from, and whose core values
counted. He was one of the few among his contemporaries
who refused to settle for Reaganism and its shabby rewards.

What I admired most was his refusal to give in to
despair.  And he was the most _sensible_ man I've ever
known.  He explained the title of one of his books with
a story from Chelm about one of the sages who's hired
for a very small salary to sit at the town gates to
await the coming of the Messiah.  When the man's wife
berates him for agreeing to such miserable wages, he
answers: "Yes, but it's steady work".

Indeed it is.  He's going to be missed.

Norman Miller

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End of Mendele Vol 2.195