Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.105 September 13, 1994 1) Introduction (Bob and Molly Freedman) 2) Introduction (Celia Jones) 3) Introduction and klal Yiddish (Lisa Duhl) 4) Oyneg Yiddish Workshop Not This Year (Bess Shockett) 5) Romanized Yiddish (Charles Jones) 6) Business (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 21:39:38 EST From: rfreedman@shrsys.hslc.org Subject: Introduction We are Bob and Molly Freedman. Bob is a senior partner in a Philadelphia law firm and Molly is the office manager and salesperson in a center city real estate brokerage firm owned by their son. In our spare time we have assembled, currently maintain and constantly add to a Judaic audio library which is now approximately 1700 LP's, cassettes and CDs. Approximately 60% of the collection are recordings of "Yiddish Music" or recitations and most of the remainder is Hebrew. We are interested primarily in Yiddish recordings. The collection has been catalogued and information dealing with each album "cut" can be retrieved by title, author, composer, performer, first line or subject matter. The database also will identify publications in which original text, translation, transliteration and melody line of the recorded song or poem can be located. The database is multilingual. Infor Information is entered in English, Yiddish, Hebrew and transliteration. Bob is also interested in incorporating Yiddish into the computer and is able toenter, display and print hard copy of Yiddish, Hebrew and English in almost any DOS program. We use WordPerfect 60.a and Dbase 4.15. We also have several thousand 78RPM recordings but these have not been archived.They will have to wait for our retirement or a young ambitious musicologist. Mir vuntshn undzer mendele khavarim a zis un gezunt yor in a velt fun sholem. Bob and Molly Freedman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 20:33:26 +1000 (EST) From: celiaj@melbourne.DIALix.oz.au Subject: Introduction It took about five tries to join this list as I'm fairly new to internet and get confused with all the different addresses and commands. I'm a 47 year old teacher librarian who has been living in Australia for the past 22 years. Originally, I was born in Brooklyn, NY and lived in California before I immigrated to Australia. I am married to a wonderful man of Welsh descent and have a 20 year old daughter Erica, two grown stepchildren and two step grandsons. You can't tell by my Anglo-Saxon surname, but I am Jewish, though I am not a practicing Jew. My parents spoke Yiddush at home, and I can understand spoken Yiddush even though I can't really speak it myself. I have read all of Isaac B. Singer's books, stories by Sholom Alechem and enjoyed other books by Yiddush writers, and I joined this group because I want to get in touch again with my Yiddushkeit. Hope to get to know some of you soon. Celia Jones 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 20:25:40 -0700 (PDT) From: len-duhl@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: Introduction and klal Yiddish I have been lurking in the Mendele shadows for awhile, reading my morning Mendele news, feeling the joys of knowing there is a community of folks who love Yiddish and are keeping it alive and lively. I am working on a dissertation in clinical psychology on the Yiddish lullabies which were written during the Holocaust. (A labor of love. Fortunately there are enlightened advisors who see that this is a worthy task even for a psychology student.) I have found much in Mendele to help me in this. Regarding Zellig Bach's invitation to comment on his 9/8 posting on making efforts to use standard Romanization: What I know of Yiddish is mostly self taught and for a beginning Yiddishist, it is very helpful when the Romanization corresponds to the actual Yiddish spelling of words. This enables beginners like me to look up words and have an inking about how to pronounce them more or less understandably. The YIVO rules for transliteration are remarkably straightforward and consistent (especially compared to English spelling). I can see though, that for people who come by their Yiddish from having heard it spoken, naturally in other words, and never had the opportunity to learn to write it or read it, Romanization could present a challenge. Having some reasonable rules to follow like YIVO's might be quite useful. It would also enable Mendelniks with a dialectological bent to discover where y'all are coming from (s'cuse pun) since it would be clear what sounds were being represented by your ey's, ay's, oy's, etc. (as opposed to various ejs, eis, ie's, ea's, ai's, aj's, oi's, oj's, etc.) A gut yor, a zis yor, un a sheynem dank an alemen. Lisa Duhl 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 94 21:45:52 EDT From: Zellig@aol.com Subject: Oyneg Yiddish Workshop Not This Year I am posting here_with permission_ a letter I rec'd from the coordinator of the Toronto Yiddish conference. Zelig B"k Dear Dr. Bach: With reference to your "Oyneg Yiddish Proposal" (4.092) regarding a _unified_name for all Yiddish Clubs and your suggestion of a workshop about it during this year's Second International Conference of Yiddish Clubs, I regret to say that our workshops have already been organized and there is no room for one more workshop on this year's agenda. My suggestion: It be raised at the next Conference which, I hope, will take place in 1996. Mit frayntshaft, Bess Shockett, Conference Coordinator 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 10:22:23 -0400 (EDT) From: jones@widener1.mhs.harvard.edu Subject: Romanized Yiddish As a librarian, I'm used to thinking of the romanization tables of the Library of Congress as the standard. At Harvard, because we now use the Library of Congress system of cataloguing, our Judaica Dept. romanizes all Yiddish names and titles for our on-line catalogue according to the LC table for Hebrew and Yiddish. As far as I know, most major American university libraries do likewise. This means that, for example, we spell "mekhaber" (Weinreich) as "mehaber" with a subdot under the "h". Although I don't want to get into an argument about the relative merits of Weinreich vs. LC, it does seem to me that the usage of major American libraries must at least count as a standard. Would someone therefore please tell me where this other standard comes from? Is there an official YIVO pronouncement on the question or is it just a matter of custom? Does Weinreich follow it exactly or does he depart from it at some points? Charles Jones 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 15:58 From: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu Subject: A piece of business Someone wrote yesterday for help in changing his address. Unfortunately my reply went astray and the original is lost. So is my memory. This will have to do. It may be useful to others as well. It will certainly help your shames whose mailbox fills up with bounced mail to dead addresses. If you know that an address change is imminent, _please_ unsubscribe _before_ the change. The incantation is simply: unsub mendele and is sent to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu After the change, please send to the same address: sub mendele first_name last_name A sheynem dank aykh. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.105 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu