Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.052 July 10, 1994 1) Introduction; echad me yodea in yiddish (Chana Luntz) 2) Childhood Misconceptions About Yiddish (Leah Zazulyer) 3) Sinozishe Nayes (Bob Werman) 4) Der Midos Velt (David Sherman) 5) Meldung un berikht: the Yale-New Haven Leyn Kreiz (Victor Bers) 6) A new address (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 00:33:51 -0400 (EDT) From: luntz@panix.com Subject: Introduction; echad me yodea in yiddish Hi, I am new to this list, and joined because Noyekh Miller suggested that here i would find an answer to my question about why it is that my parents say things like solent for cholent (and is this a Litvishe dialect). I am originally an Australian, although i have been in the States for the last two years. However my parents were born in South Africa, as were both my grandmothers, both my grandfathers having been born in Lithuania (where certainly my mother's mother's family was from - there are rumours that maybe my father's mother came from Bialystok, but such a deep dark secret is not something the family is willing to own up to without caste iron evidence). My other question is does anybody know the full words to a version of echad me yodea in yiddish (reproduced in garbled form below). I have also heard a more standard version, but it doesn't put in all the info, such as the names of the matriachs and patriachs etc. As you can see, my yiddish is very rudimentary, even my parents don't really speak it,although they understand it, so forgive all the errors. I would like to know if anybody on the list knows the words to my version of echad m'yode'a in yiddish, I only know a garbled version that goes: Aintz, Aintz, Aintz, Aintz, Vos is aintz b'dait Ich vais, ich vais, ich vais, Vos is aintz b'dait, Aine, is Ha Kodesh Baruch Hu ..... in himmel un ainer is a du Zvei etc Zvei luchos .... shein ....... de Eibishter alein. Drei etc Drei is de tates .... Avrohm, Yitzchak, Yaakov, zichronim l'vracha Fir etc Fir di mames .... Sarah, Rivka, Rochel, un Leah. Finif etc Finif chumashim in di Toyra, Bereshis, Shmos, Bemidbar, D'varim un V'yikra. Zex etc Zex mishnayos in de(?) shas zaraim, moed, nashim, nezikin, kodshim un tehoras Zibin etc Zibin teg in di vocht zuntik, montik, dinstik .... shabbas un mid-vocht And this is where we grind to a complete halt (the dots indicate words I can't even guess at) and you will probably have a good laugh at my poor attempt at making sense of it (and I have forgotten the days of the week for the last line). Regards Chana Luntz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 08 Jul 1994 19:14:05 -0500 (EST) From: WATSON@UNO.CC.GENESEO.EDU Subject: Childhood Misconceptions About Yiddish Recently learned of a friend's childhood misconception about Yiddish: She thought one was born speaking English, and as one became the age of one's parents one became bilingual. When one had reached the hallowed age of one's grandparents one had advanced to the purest state--and spoke only Yiddish. This story has made me curious about other possible childhood misconceptions about Yiddish, or Jewishness. Any out there? Leah Zazulyer 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 9 Jul 94 23:39 +0300 From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS Subject: Sinozishe Nayes Shalom Rosenfeld, former editor of *Ma'ariv*, the daily newspaper with the second largest circulation in Israel, relates an anecdote of interest and humor in his weekly column (July 8, 1994). "The arrival of the first Chinese freighter to the shores of Israel this week lit a yellow light in my memory. "There is a story in the Jewish journalistic folklore about an eye opening headline in one of the Yiddish newspapers of New York, according to which, `The Empress of China arrived in America to seek a husband.' How did this happen? The energetic news editor of the Yiddish paper saw a headline in the English newspaper: The "Empress of China" arrives in America on its _maiden voyage_. Why else would a Chinese maiden come to America? -- he asked himself. He put two and two together and attained the scoop of his life!" Bob Werman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 94 4:15:07 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: Der Midos Velt Baruch Leib Gale writes: > I was also given copy of a Yiddish > primer use in Lubavitch circles called Der Midos Velt (very interesting > for insights into Chassidic education). Der Midos Velt and similar books and tapes (this one is both) are not Lubavitch, but other Chassidic (possibly Satmar, but I can't be sure). I have the book here, and it's copyright by the author, Z. Schmelczer, of New Square / Spring Valley NY. (New Square, incidentally, is actually a corruption of "New Skvir". I'm not sure where Skvir was in Europe, though. Anyone know?) As further evidence, the Midos Velt tape, along with all the others by Zisha Schmelczer, features the southern Yiddish used by Satmar and others, not the Litvish Yiddish used by Lubavitchers. Lubavitchers don't use Yiddish nearly as much as they used to. Children in Lubavitch communities don't speak Yiddish with each other from what I have seen, whereas Bobov and Satmar children do. (Our son attends a Lubavitch cheder in Toronto, where most of the other kids are Lubavitchers; of 17 kids in his kindergarten class this past year, only one other speaks Yiddish fluently.) We spent last week in Boro Park, where Yiddish on the street is the norm for all ages; in Crown Heights it's much rarer among the young. David Sherman 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 94 17:23 EDT From: VBERS@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Meldung un berikht: the Yale-New Haven Leyn Kreiz In the hope of attracting some Yiddishists, of whatever degree of proficiency, among Mendelniks who live at all close to New Haven, a short report on our activities. We have been meeting continuously for over ten years, evolving from a group for shmues af mame-loshn to a leyn kreiz. Peripatetic at first, we seem now to be settled in the Library of Dwight Hall on the Yale campus. Our *de facto* vorsitzer and factotum (or at least facpaenetotum) is Sid Resnick. He is attempting, against considerable resistance from our docile mitglieder, to introduce some degree of democracy in our group: many are so pleased with his firershaft that they would gladly make him *dictator perpetuus*. Unzer sekretar un finanz minister is Ethel Himberg, herself organizer of an earlier incarnation of the Yiddish group at Yale. Our main reading for the 1993/94 academic year was *Oifn zedens felder*, the 1953 novel by Isaac Metzker, whose widow, an enthusiastic and erudite Yiddishist, regularly attended our meetings until her death last fall. We also had several lectures, including one by Rokhel Wizner, mitglied and staff member at YIVO, who described her project on pre-war Jewish youth in Poland. She has been working from autobiographies, mostly in Yiddish, submitted by teenagers for an essay contest organized for YIVO by Max Weinreich himself. We ended our season with a lecture by Dr. Moisheh Wolf, formerly of Moscow, where he was a professor of psychiatry and, more relevant, a contributor to *Sovietish Heymland*. This lecture drew an oylem of record size: thirty-five, of whom about half were immigrants from Russia. Dr. Wolf's lecture centered on the actor Shloimeh Mikhoels and the poet Shmuel Halkin. We have been meeting Tuesdays at noon, and will resume early in September. If you would like to join us, please contact me by e-mail, snail-mail (90 Heloise St., Hamden, CT 06517), or phone [home: (203)624-1235/office:(203)432-0988]. Victor Bers P.S. Is there anything nit azay aye-aye-aye about our leyn kreiz? Yes: a habitual disrespect shown to my (imperfect) Riga dialect, though it is surely the Tuscan, the Parisian, the Attic of Yiddish. 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 94 09:21 EDT From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: A new address The gods of the machine at Trinity have changed addresses a bit. Please make a note of this: the shames can _no longer_ be reached at nmiller@dot.trincoll.edu The new and simpler address is nmiller@trincoll.edu As for mail to Mendele, all is as before. There was however some confusion on Thursday or Friday and I fear that some posts bounced and were returned to sender. Please repost. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.052 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu