Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.069 July 22, 1994 1) Buenos Aires Update (Zachary Baker) 2) Introduction (Nathan Kravetz) 3) Ven shraybt men ; taykh; Hebrew ascii (Peter Kluehs) 4) Skverer Chassidim (David Sherman) 5) What is YIVO's new address? (Kathryn Hellerstein) 6) French, Yiddish and Rashi (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 16:43:47 PDT From: BM.YIB@RLG.Stanford.EDU Subject: Buenos Aires Update I continue to receive information directly from Argentina, relating to the explosion that demolished the AMIA building, which housed the Argentine YIVO. (I have not, however, had direct contact with YIVO representatives in Buenos Aires.) Readers of the NY Times have noted that in today's (7/21/94) issue there is an article by James Brooke, in which the following statement is made: "Also spared was the largest library of Jewish rare books in Argentina, maintained by the Yivo Institute on the fifth floor of the building... But the mutual aid society's archive of community records, dating to 1894, was destroyed." Brooke also notes that war crimes documents were NOT located at 633 Pasteur, and hence were also untouched by the explosion. (Speculation runs rampant, regarding those responsible for the massacre. It runs the gamut from Hizbollah cells operating out of Brazil and Paraguay, to diehards opposed to the Arab-Israeli peace negotations, to Nazis in Argentina. Crews of Israeli rescuers are on site, along with investigators from intelligence agencies.) Not having visited 633 Pasteur, I do not know exactly where the 100,000 volumes of the YIVO library were shelved. The YIVO offices, classrooms, reading rooms and gallery were on the 3rd floor -- the equivalent, in North American terms, to our 4th floor -- and it is possible that stack areas were indeed located one flight up. The Buenos Aires YIVO maintained both a non-circulating research collection and a lending library (a 1968 description reports that there were 50,000 volumes in the former section, and 20,000 in the latter). It was -- and one hopes still is -- the largest collection of printed Judaica in Latin America. Not all, or even a majority of this library was (is?) in Yiddish. Still, it was (is?) certainly one of the world's great repositories in that language. Time will tell, exactly what has survived of that major library. In Friday's English and Yiddish "Forward," there are articles on the bombing, as well as quotes from the nonagenarian former director of the Buenos Aires YIVO, Shmuel Rozhanski (Samuel Rollansky). In the English "Forward," he is quoted as saying, "Tsu vos hob ikh gedarft dos iberlebn?" (Do I need to survive all this?) In the "Forverts," he plaintively comments, "Nishto keyn verter farn groysn farlust. Kh'hob 'zoykhe' geven baytsuzayn mayn eygene levaye." (No words can describe this great loss. I have 'privileged' to witness my own funderal.) Several lists of wounded, dead and missing persons have come my way. As if it made the slightest bit of difference, I have heard insensitive comments to the effect that "at least" most of the names on the lists of wounded and dead were not Jewish. Well, by way of "compensation," most of those identified as missing ARE Jewish. There were 76 names of missing persons in a list released yesterday by the DAIA. Many, perhaps most of those still unaccounted for are likely buried under the rubble of 633 Pasteur. For those who are interested, a "Disaster Relief Fund for Argentina" has been established by B'nai B'rith International. Contributions may be sent to the attention of Mr. Kent E. Schiner, International President, B'nai B'rith International Headquarters, 1640 Rhode Island Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036. Please note on checks that contributions are to be earmarked for that Fund. Once a clearer picture emerges, I have no doubt that there will be a coordinated effort to reconstitute (to the extent possible) the library of the Buenos Aires YIVO. The Archives are gone forever, and the human cost of course dwarfs the damage to the books and files that have been destroyed. Zachary Baker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 13:18:20 -0700 From: ac655@lafn.org Subject: Introduction Nathan Kravetz, retired professor, Lehman College, CUNY, now in the SF Valley of LA. I'm a Yiddish reader, Krumer speaker of the Galitzianer variety, once writer! What is the MENDELE group about? I'm also editor (Borgo Press) of the series on Judaica and the Holocaust. Nathan Kravetz 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 21 Jul 1994 21:15:00 +0200 From: pete@pko.rhein-main.de Subject: ven shraybt men / viasoy taykh / hebrew ascii? Sholem aleykhem! Agew, hobt ir aykh gedakht, vos far a meshugene frage fregt der daitsh, kon er nisht lernen yidish on regln? Mistome es iz mamesh nisht faran keyn regl far di ortografye fun asa verter. (mayn brivl fun 15tn July). Itst vel ikh aykh fregn a laykhtere frage: kent ir mir zogn, viazoy badayt dos yidishe vort TAYKH un nisht a kleyne osere? Taykh shtamt on sofek fun dem daytshishn vort Teich=little lake or pond. Efsher hot men getrakht, ven men shvimt in a taykh vet zayn veyniker sakonedik? Ikh volt gevolt kenen a kompyuter baln vos farnemt zikh mit Hebrew Kermit un veys, tsi un wu es zenen faran yidishe textn in hebreishe oysyes. In a mail-box in Tel-Aviv ikh hob gefinen a min ASCII code far iwrit vos zet oys azoy: +-----------------------------+ -----+ July 14. \oFD| Vbg yfkb +-----------------------------------( 7)-- +-----------------------------+ .800 MB \Fo Gkd BBS -d nV \knnod \n`|kyd .\oFD| Vbg yfkb Ey\`d \oFDd nV dkdD \`k d|d d|`i\n \`v{n lkn`ok lkVD\VDd ,Eo `Do .VESA Local Bus y| lF (8 ms) kdD G`d Vbgd yfkbdV db|`Fd nni| ...\oFDn lonV Uploads -n dv{D kIG ,l`yD ykvfD VkVo `kVoF eG Ikh dakht zikh, mit a transliteratye program zol men kenen baytn di ascii oysyes tsu hebreishe. Veys emetzer epes fun dosiken inyen? Blaybt gezunt alemen! Peter Kluehs 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 23:31 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: Skverer Chassidim To Peyrets Mett: I stand corrected. I didn't realize that the Skverer were a distinct sect of Chassidim, but of course that makes sense. Of course, the Yiddish tapes they produce are widely sold in the seforim stores in Boro Park, and so are accessible to the gamut of Chassidim and other "black-hat" Yiddish speakers. David Sherman 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 00:59:38 -0400 (EDT) From: khellers@sas.upenn.edu Subject: Re: what is YIVO's new address? This is addressed to Zachary Baker: Are you allowed to divulge to the world at large what YIVO's new address is/ will be? When will the actual move take place? Zol zayn mit mazl! Kathryn Hellerstein 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 22 Jul 94 13:10 +0300 From:RWERMAN@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: French, Yiddish and Rashi Harold L. Orbach writes about the institutionalization of French in the Sixteenth Century with late confirmation lasting into the Nineteenth Century. I am reminded that some Mendele readers may not know that medieval French is a poorly documented language; little written material remains in that language. Latin was used by most clergy who represented a majority of the alphabetic population in the middle ages. What material remains is frequently balladic, often based on translations from the Latin, as the poem, the _Aenaus_. The _le'azim_ [glosses, lamed - eyin - zayin; an abbreviation of lashon am zar[a] or language of the goyim] used by Rashi [more than 700!] in his commentary on the Tanach and even more in his commentary on the Talmud and to a lesser extent in Rashbam, his grandson's commentary on the Tanach, are a major source of medieval French, not infrequently appearing two to four centuries before other manuscript evidence of the words in question. This custom of using local languages to explain difficult language in Hebrew and Aramaic is not confined to that time or to French. I am currently amusing myself with Venetian comments in a sixteenth century Hebrew manuscript. I highly recommend: *Foreign Words in the Bible Commentary of Rashi*, 360 pp. by the late Joseph Greenberg, privately published and available from the widow at 41 Ussishkin Street, Jerusalem I-92463, Israel. Closer to Yiddish, perhaps, Rashi, as Greenberg pointed out, used several dozen non-French le'azim, including Middle High German le'azim [e.g., brimmen, bruederschaft, durchbrechen, entwerfen, funke, gebrueder, greber, houf, merkatzen, negel, puken, schafreite, segel, sigel, spangen, steinboc, stoeszel, vlos, wendelstein]. And Judaio-Provencal? That too: alhendra, budecas. And a handful of other languages too, including Ladino and Arabic. __Bob Werman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.069 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. 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