Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.097
August 29, 1994

1) A mishshprakhik lid (Bob Rothstein)
2) Der Forverts (Shleyme Axelrod)
3) No rationale for a "no" vote (Zellig Bach)
4) Translating the Pincas Shkud (John Baskind)
5) Self-deprecation (Jay Lee)
6) Translation meditations (Bob Hoberman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 16:39:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: rar@slavic.umass.edu
Subject: A mishshprakhik lid

The macaronic (Russian/Yiddish/Hebrew) text that Andrew Cassel quoted in
4.096 from his grandfather's memoirs

   "...Reb Leyzer Mendels, a kleyninker, velkher vert shiker fun
   a halbe glezel, iz oykh rusish geshtimt, un zingt: 'Akh ti
   reboyne-shel-oylem!  Zatshem ti ne smotrish, zatshem ti ne
   vidish, mar goleseynu!' Un der oylem khapt unter: 'Mar
   goleseynu perebudem, laretzeynu fort poidiom!'"

includes the beginning of a _mishshprakhik lid_ that S. M. Ginzburg and
P. S. Marek published as #17 in their 1901 collection of Yiddish
folksongs in Russia (_Evreiskie narodnye pesni v Rossii_, reprinted by
Bar-Ilan University in 1991 under Dov Noy's editorship).  Song #17 was
recorded in the Kovno guberniia from B. M. Kassel' [!] and A. D. Pik.

The first stanza is printed by Ginzburg and Marek (in their German-based
transcription, in which "s" = [z], "ss" = [s], "z" = [ts] etc.) as
follows (with my numbering of the lines for comments afterwords):

 1) Ach Ty Rybeinei schel Eilom,
 2) Satschem Ty nje smotrisch,
 3) Satschem Ty nje widisch
 4) Mar Golusseinu, Mar Golusseinu!
 5) --Mar Golusseinu--perebudjem,
 6)   L'arzeinu fort poidjom!
 7) Poidjom l'arzeinu,
 8) W'schom naidjom Adeineinu,
 9) W'schom naidjom Beir'einu,
10) W'schom naidjom Geialeinu!
11) --Ssynku, Ssynku, nje bjedui,
12)   Sswoje Sserdze nje sapssui!
13)  Bendsje Matka wykupliana,
14)  Bendsje Chatka wybudowana,
15)  Bondsj mondry, patschai Konza [acute accent on the "n"]!

The Ginzburg-Marek text has seven stanzas; in each lines 1-7 and 11-15
are repeated, but in lines 8-10 the last word varies with the list of
words forming an alphabetical acrostic (Dejdejnu, Hadrosseinu, Wiudeinu,
Swuleinu, Chachomeinu, Tohoreinu, etc.).

Lines 1-10 mix Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew; Lines 11-15 are (more or
less) in Polish ("Son, son, don't lament,/Don't ruin your heart!/Mother
will be redeemed (ransomed),/The house will be built,/Be wise, wait for
the end!).

Andrew's translation of the part he quoted ("Oh, Lord of the Universe!
Why don't you look at, why don't you see, our bitter exile!"  And the
crowd sings along: "Our bitter exile let us throw off, to our own land
let us go off!") seems fine except for the end, which should probably be:
"We will survive our bitter exile, we will yet go to our land."   The
Russian word _naidjom_ in lines 8-10 means 'we will find'.

Bob Rothstein

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 18:53:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: PTYAXEL@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Der Forverts

Here's an echo to Bob Rothstein's praise of Yosl and Khane Mlotek's
department "Perl fun der yidisher poezye" in the Forverts; it's a gold
mine of verse and song.  Also in the Forverts, alternating with "Perl
..." is "In der velt fun yidish" by  Y. Hamer (a pseudonym?), and other
pieces about Yiddish; Hirsh-Dovid Katz (of the Oxford Programme) recently
had separate articles on Max and Uriel Weinreich, for example.

What the Forverts _doesn't_ have any longer is the two boxes in the upper
corners of the front page, one saying "Arbeter fun ale lender fareynigt
zikh" and the other "Di bafrayung fun di arbeter vendt zikh on di arbeter
aleyn". Times change.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the event, the Forverts reprinted part of
the front page of their D-Day issue ("dzhun 6, 1944 ... price three
cents").  The eight-column headline (the paper, then a daily, was
standard size; it's a tabloid-size weekly now) was "INVEYZHON!", which
must have made the YIVO folks cringe; elsewhere on the page, the word
used was "invazye".  The Forverts has apparently never suffered from
style-book rigidity.

Finally, Alex Weinberger (4.080) wondered about the Yiddish for
"survivor", presumably of the Nazi program of extermination.
"Sheyres-hapleyte", a singular noun, can been used to refer collectively
to the all the survivors of a catastrophe; but how to refer to a
particular person?  The Forverts connection: a couple of issues ago, the
paper ran an advertisement from a firm in Brooklyn and Tel Aviv that
specializes in assisting survivors from Germany to obtain reparations.
The ad was headed "AKHTUNG/SHEYRES HAPLEYTE IDN"; this appears to suggest
"sheyres-hapleyte (y)id" for an individual.

--Shleyme Axelrod

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 94 23:32:27 EDT
From: Zellig@aol.com
Subject: No rationale for a "no" vote

Dvorah Halperin Biasca wrote (4.095,2):

>  I guess you would have to count my vote as a "no"...  many of  our
>  mitglider have no connection to a Shul/Temple... a name is such a
>  personal thing, after all!

In my _Oyneg Yiddish:  A Proposal_ (4.092,8) I anticipated a marked level
of resistance to my idea, but I do not see the ratIonale for DHB's prompt
"no."

I mentioned oyneg shabes-the pleasure of Sabbath- merely as as analogy to
my construction Oyneg Yiddish, totally unrelated to a shul or synagogue.

Oyneg, a Hebrew-derived Yiddish word, means pleasure or enjoyment
(occasionally it may even replace the treasured _nakhes_, as, for
instance, in oyneg kinder or oyneg eyniklekh).

I fully agree that a name is such a personal thing.  But what is so
personal about _vinkl_ (corner)?  Putting aside the school-disciplinary
notion of punishment for inappropriate behavior, it connotes isolation, a
separation from the activity in the center.

I would understand if a group of, let's say, ten or more years would wish
to retain its old name.  But the Boulder vinkl just started its second
year.  Having met once a month for the first year, did not im(h)o
sufficiently establish a strong enough tradition to hold on to its Vinkl
name.

What is overlooked in this resistance to a change of the name of the
club, and I am sure in other such negative reactions still to be heard
of, are the distinct advantages of belonging to a centralized
organization with a collective name, as in my proposal.  A chain of Oyneg
Yiddish clubs would lend individual clubs a sense of connectedness.  And
they would be the recipients of guidelines, projects, and activity
suggestions, enabling them to carry on enriched and enriching  programs.

Zellig Bach

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 08:51:01 -0500
From: jbaskind@panix.com
Subject: Translating the Pincas Shkud (a nice project, but how to do it?)

Some years ago, browsing at YIVO, I had the opportunity to look at, hold,
puzzle over and take away a microfiche of the Pincas Shkud--the record of
my family's ancestral shtetl in Lithuania. According to the archivist at
YIVO, it is one of only two left in existence post-Holocaust. It
apparently goes back to the early 1500s CE, and ends just before the
Nazis came into Shkud. It was apparently discovered in the ruins of the
Vilna Ghetto. Because it is written in cursive and often ancient Yiddish,
it's way beyond my capacities, except for an occasional small passage.

(The awful end of Jewish Shkud is also recorded, in a yizkor-buch written
by a survivor --also in the YIVO archives-- and, horror of horrors, the
Nazi film record of their murders  is now apparently being shown
permanently in the Holocaust museum; for which reason I have been unable
to force myself to visit that building.).

I would love to see a translation, or even a printed version of the
cursive Yiddish annotated for the less scholarly. My interest is mostly
personal, but it strikes me that because the pincas is a continuing
record of a very old Jewish settlement, which could be footnoted and
amplified to some extent by the yizkor-buch, not to mention that bloody
film, there should be considerable interest in it as a resource and
record from a large number of academic standpoints, and also general
interest from the Jewish community.

I can't afford to have it privately translated, but I would be happy
(driven, really) to put together a proposal for funding, with some help
and guidance from the mavens here. I have two non-profit channels through
which the funding could be made, but if there's interest here, you-all
obviously have more.

Any suggestions?

A dank.

John Baskind

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 94 08:29:27 EST
From: JMLEE@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Deprecation of One's Own and One's Culture's Self Worth anent
         Jews in Weimar Germany

Firstly, I don't use quotation marks in the manner proscribed by the
gentleman who protested my Asch post.  I find this "use" to be cliquish,
as if to suggest "this isn't a real word, but I'm using it anyway.  You
know how it is".  And I use the term Jewish self hatred as I would to
describe the White Man's Burden, otr any other psychological
manifestation whereby the prejudices of a larger group cause individuals
of a smaller group to question their own value in the face of
institutionalized animosity.

This agreement with the bigotted opinions of the dominant group is
portrayed almost to the extreme of charicature in Dr. Bodenheimer.  The
fact that the Bodenheimer family had the son Hans, last bearer of the
family name, baptized a Christian even though the held to the traditions
of Sabbath, is much more subtle.  It is also more believable, because I
see this deprecation function among gays today.  Attacked by homophobes
for so long, they either accept that there's something deficient in them,
or they become militant.   Of course I mean more pre-Stonewall, when,
like Weimar Germany at the time of Asch's novel, hate was a standard
issue and accepted coin.

Finally, I am not a scholar in the sense that I know when to use proper
quotation mark to keep me from appearing Stalinist, or whatnot.  By
sending out a general query, I had no intention of offending with a
detail.

Jay Lee

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 12:16:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: RHOBERMAN@ccmail.sunysb.edu
Subject: Translation meditations

Andrew Cassel's question about how to translate multilingual passages in
Yiddish literature into English, or whether to, is very interesting from
the point of view of the theory of translation.  My student Ken Wishnia
has tackled a one-act play by Sholem Aleykhem in which a multilingual
mess (Yiddish, Russian, English) is at the heart of the depiction of
character.  It was written by Sholem Aleykhem in America, and in the
author's trademark way looks like humor at first but turns into a painful
reflection on the wrenching experience of migration to America.  Ken has
translated the play and written a paper on the problems involved.  His
paper has been accepted for publication, but meanwhile I'll put Ken in
touch with Andrew directly, and if anyone else is interested they can let
me know and I'll pass it on to Ken.

Bob Hoberman

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 4.097

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