Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.081
August 14, 1994

1) Atlas on-line (Dovid Braun)
2) Peretz Miransky (Dvorah Halperin Biasca)
3) Kitchen Yiddish (Zellig Bach)
4) Jewish surnames in Poland (Zachary Baker)
5) Yiddish Secular Schools (Zev Hochberg)
6) Af der luft in Philly (Andrew Cassel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 94 17:08:45 EDT
From: dovid@MIT.EDU
Subject: Atlas on-line

Wrt Ellen's comment, I don't think the dialectological aspect of the
Atlas is near only to Andrew's heart -- it is the core of the Atlas! The
Atlas contains phonetic transcriptions of elicited answers to questions
of interest to students of phonological, morphological, lexical,
syntactic and cultural variation.  Running text of longer than a phrase,
if at all, is very rarely transcribed (excepting counting-out rhymes,
versions of "got fun avrom", opshprekhenishn and other formulaic texts).
Why would one want to turn to the Atlas for a corpus of running text?  It
isn't -- it's an atlas, a plotting tool.

I agree with Ellen's sentiment, though:  "halevay!"

Dovid Braun

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 14:12:45 -0600 (MDT)
From: biasca@horton.Colorado.EDU
Subject: Peretz Miransky

I am looking for the Yiddish version of Peretz Miransky's "Children of
Mine" published in English (translated by Misha Allen) in Circle of
Yiddish Clubs' "The Wonderful World of Yiddish."

I would also like to know if any Mendelniks can provide biographical data
about Peretz Miransky.

A dank!

Dvorah Halperin Biasca

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 94 20:12:47 EDT
From: Zellig@aol.com
Subject: Re. Kitchen Yiddish: Where Did Sons Pick-up Their Yiddish?

In my posting "Kitchen Yiddish" I quoted from Martha Lear's article:  "I
speak a bit of kitchen Yiddish  myself,the hundred words recalled from a
childhood amid my grandmothers."

In the next two paragraphs I made reference to the kitchen Yiddish of
third-generation granddaughters who very likely picked it up from
communications between mothers and grandmothers.

A justifiable question arises:  Where did grandsons pick-up their
Yiddish?  Or more precisely:  Was there another room or rooms in the
house, distinct from the kitchen,  where grandsons or sons heard in their
childhood their parents' or grandparents' Yiddish, as did daughters and
granddaughters?

I have no answer to this question, but bring here a story that may be a
partial answer but not necessarily a serious one.

There are questions that one sometimes asked deliberately in order to
give then, oneself, with a "Gotcha" in one's eyes, the ready answer.
After a lecture I gave in a community center about Yiddish--the name of
the lecture was "gut-yontev, mame-loshn"--a man from the audience came
over, asked me with a knowing smile a question and then gave himself his
ready answer.  In this class of tandemly-paired questions-and-answers
belongs the following one  (some members of the Mendele khavruse may have
heard it before): "Farvos ruft men yidish mame-losn?" (Why is Yiddish
called mame-loshn, mother-tongue?) to which the ready jocular answer is:
"vail der tate hot gornisht tsu zogn" (because father has nothing to
say).

I believe (I do not have the reference at hand)  that this paired Q &A
may have its roots in the midrashic saying that God gave mankind ten
measures of talk (or speech), of which women got nine measures, while men
got only the remaining one measure.

Before you come to the conclusion that the statement about the ten
measures of speech, as well as my story above, are sexist, let's remember
that the rabbis of the Talmud accorded to women both criticism and
praise. One particular commendation about wifehood comes to mind
(Proverbs 31, paraphrased):

           "A good wife who can find?
           She is worth much more than rubies...
           Strength and dignity are her clothing...
           What she says is full of wisdom,
           And on her tongue is kindly instruction..." etc., etc.

So far I still don't have the answer to my question that originated this
communication.  It appears therefore that the term "Kitchen Yiddish"
should for the time being remain  delimited to the kind of Yiddish
picked-up by granddaughters and daughters from their grandmothers and
mothers.

Zellig Bach

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 94 13:57:32 PDT
From: BM.YIB@RLG.Stanford.EDU
Subject: Jewish surnames in Poland

Welcome back, MENDELE.  A lot of us were going through withdrawal. As one
of this list's resident bibliographers, I would like to bring to
MENDELnikes' attention the following article, by Alexander Beider, in the
Summer 1994 issue of the genealogical journal AVOTAYNU:  "Jewish Surnames
in the Kingdom of Poland" (pp. 15-19). Beider is the author of the
prodigious compilation, "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian
Empire" (Teaneck:  Avotaynu, 1993).  That work, which was restricted to
the Russian provinces constituting the Pale of Settlement -- i.e.,
excluding the provinces that were part of Congress Poland -- used as its
raw materials published lists of Jewish voters to the Russian State Duma
(1906, 1907, 1912).  In 1995, using the same sources, Beider is expected
to publish a companion volume for Congress Poland (variably known as the
Kingdom of Poland or Russian Poland).

The article at hand was adapted from a talk that Beider gave at the 4th
International Seminary on Jewish Genealogy (Jerusalem, April 29- May 5,
1994), and presumably will serve as the basis for his introduction to the
new volume on Jewish names in Congress Poland. In the article, he
describes the history of the formal adoption of surnames by Jews in the
various regions of Poland, the historical factors determining when names
were adopted there, the geographical distribution of broad types of
names, and spelling peculiarities of Polish Jewish surnames.  Beider's
work in general stands as a first-class contribution to Jewish
onomastics, and his volume on Polish Jewish surnames is eagerly awaited.

Zachary Baker

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 00:24:09 -0400 (edt)
From: hochberg@dorsai.dorsai.org
Subject: Yiddish Secular Schools

I recently posted a request for information on the Yiddish secular school
movement, on behalf of Gella Schweid Fishman. A few Mendelniks responded
to me; unfortunately I had a series of problems with my Internet account,
and the response "disappeared" before I could upload and forward them.

I'm reposting the original request. Please respond to Gella Schweid
Fishman (addresses given below), to Mendele, or to me. I will attempt to
expeditiously forward all responses. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  **  An urgent call to rescue papers, documents, photographs, and other **
  **  memorabilia pertaining to the Yiddish secular school movement.     **

Please don't throw out the documented memories that you have in your
possession of your years in the Yiddish Secular Schools of the USA and
Canada.

Maybe you were a student or a parent or a board member of one or more of
these schools. Your memories are very important to preserve so that
others may study and appreciate this "golden age" of Jewish education in
Yiddish.

TOO MUCH HAS ALREADY BEEN THROWN OUT!

An archival collection of these historical treasures is being organized
by Gella Schweid Fishman as part of her Oral History Project pertaining
to the Yiddish Secular Schools in America.

All of your materials will be included (under your name) in the Yiddish
Secular School Collection which is housed in the Department of Special
Collections at Stanford University Libraries in Stanford, California.

For further information write to Gella Schweid Fishman at:

345 Sheridan Avenue             3340 Bainbridge Avenue
Palo Alto, CA  94306            Bronx, NY  10467
(summer and winter)             (autumn and spring)

Zev Hochberg

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 94 21:51 edt
From: acassel@philly.cerf.fred.org
Subject: Af der luft in Philly

This is a public service message on behalf of the Sholem Aleichem Club of
Philadelphia. In honor of the club's 40th anniversary, it is sponsoring a
performance of Kapelye, featuring Henry Sapoznik, in the (local) premiere
of "Af der Luft" -- music & humor ofdish-American Radio; Saturday, Oct.
15, 8 p.m. at Gratz College, Old York Rd., Melrose. Free parking. Send
checks for tickets @$12 each to Bess Katz, 322 E. Wadsworth Ave., Phila.,
Pa 19119. Enclose stamped self-addressed envelope. A dank

Andrew Cassel

______________________________________________________
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