Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.224 February 9, 1994 1) Marija Gimbutas (Jules F. Levin) 2) European Jewry (Dan Slobin) 3) Chava Turniansky's Leyenbukh (Dvoshe Bilik) 4) Jewish diseases? (David Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 16:45:35 1994 From: Subject: Marija Gimbutas I wanted to share with mendeleans some thoughts on the passing of Marija Gimbutas, a close personal friend, who passed away last Wed night in Los Angeles. By this time some of you may have read her obituary in the New York Times or elsewhere. The LA Times ran an editorial-obit as well as a regular obit. But I'd like to put on the record some small things that won't be in the public record otherwise. Marija Gimbutas, one of the two or three most eminent Lithuanian emigre scholars, was my first Lithuanian teacher, when she came to UCLA in 1963. I was the only non-ethnic Lithuanian in the class, and quickly established myself as the best student, which of course, endeared me to her. My continuing to study Lithuanian and Baltic linguistics on my own as part of my grad studies served to cement a close friendship. She always asked about my work in Baltic, and clearly got naches from my acceptance as a Balticist in Lithuania. I also got lots of koved in Lithuania from her being my teacher and friend. Marija was born in Vilna, into one of the rare Lithuanian intelligentsia families. Her father was a doctor. Lithuanians then were a tiny minority in Vilna, which was politically Polish and ethnographically Yiddish. Many of her father's patients were Jews, who brought food as payment. Like many Lithuanians, she was nostalgic about Jewish cooking (yes I know, its hard to believe: when people ask me about Lithuanian cuisine I remark that one can judge it from the fact that the Lithuanians seem to be the only East Europeans who have borrowed dishes from the Jews. "Kugelis" was a mainstay of the University cafeteria back in 1981...) When I would visit her I would always bring shmaltz herring and Jewish rye. She always kept a box of matzos; when I was in Vilna in '81, half the 5000 pesach matzoh orders sold by the synagogue were sold to Lithuanians, many of them from villages where during that season the Jewish crackers were the only bread available. We were a strange friendship perhaps, especially after she became prominent as the creator of the "Goddess" cult/movement. Cf her books "Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe", "The Goddess", etc. She actually was an Indo-European archeologist who developed her theory as a scientific hypothesis, not intending to feed a cult movement. But in the last few years she came to be so hailed and adored in these circles that some of it perhaps got to her. But she herself was definitely a Lithuanian culture and tradition person, and that is certainly Indo-European in character. Anyway, I, a more or less observant Jew, found myself sometimes in what was an exclusively woman's circle of her closest friends, but she always greeted and hugged me like a son when I came over. In 1981 the local Soviet Lithuanian authorities turned down my oft-repeated request to visit my grandparents' home village, since Lithuanian American visiters were being given escorted tours of THEIR ancestral villages. The loud but futile protests I made must have gotten around in that small country. Around 1990 I met a visitor from Lithuania at Marija's house in LA. She knew who I was, and told me "the problem you had is gone; come back and you can go where you want..." And so it was. --Jules F. Levin, UC Riverside 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 14:01:46 1994 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: European Jewry I wish my Turkic-looking grandmother had lived to learn of the possibile Khazarian traces in her part of Ukraine: It may have relieved her embarrassment about a Tatar rapist in the family tree! Dan Slobin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Feb 8 14:57:55 1994 From: Dorothy_BILIK@umail.umd.edu (db28) Subject: Chava Turniansky's Leyenbukh To Seymour Axelrod and others: Fun undzer yidisher literatur: leyenbukh farn limud fun yidish is published by the veltrat fun yidish un yidisher kultur, Tel Aviv:1980. it,s all in Yiddish with some Hebrew glosses and a wonderful collection for internediate and advanc ed students. Zaytshe mir ale gezunt, Dvoshe Bilik 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Feb 9 14:46:37 1994 From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca (David Sherman) Subject: Jewish diseases? Ellen Prince writes: > obviously many are in terms of visible features, plus we know of > 'jewish' diseases like diabetes and, even more marked, tay-sachs > disease. I hadn't heard of disabetes being particularly a "Jewish" disease. Is this statistically true? David Sherman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.224 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files