Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.269
January 9, 1995

1) Greenberg on synagogues (Ted Steinberg)
2) Alte zakhn (Shleyme Axelrod)
3) Southern California calendar (Hershel Stillman)
4) Nasalization and -nen verbs (Mikhl Herzog)
5) Sholem-Aleykem's early language bias (Louis Fridhandler)
6) The honorific "Reb" (Zellig Bach)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 2:24 pm EST (19:24:26 UT)
From: steinberg@fredonia.edu
Subject: Greenberg on synagogues

I found Bernard Greenberg's note on synagogues very interesting and
helpful. There is nothing brutal about remembering those synagogues when
six million people died.  Remembering everything about those people is
like creating a memorial.  I want to know as much as I can about their
lives.  That desire, in part, is what brought me to Yiddish.  If others
have knowledge about other areas of their lives, especially relating to
Yiddish, I would love to hear about it.

Ted Steinberg

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 1995 15:18:43 -0500 (EST)
From: ptyaxel@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Alte zakhn

In the 1930s-'40s in the East New York-Brownsville neighborhoods of
Brooklyn, "junkmen" used to buy old clothes, carrying their purchases in
large burlap sacks on their backs or loaded onto two-wheeled pushcarts.
(Some larger-scale entrepreneurs had horse-drawn wagons, across which
ropes carrying one or two large cowbells were strung; these fellows also
bought or scavenged old furniture, appliances [e.g., ice-boxes] and
hardware.)  The cries I remember offered a good deal in the Depression
era:  "Ay kesh kloz!"  ["I cash clothes!"], and my favorite illustration
of the ability in Yiddish to generate endearing forms of ordinary
adjectives, "Altinke zakhn, nayinke gelt!"

Shleyme Axelrod

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 12:28:17 -0800 (PST)
From: durian@coyote.csusm.edu
Subject: Southern California calendar

Everyone in Southern California,or even elsewhere, is invited to a
discussion of the future of the Jewish language and culture at a meeting
of the Society for the Preservation of Yiddish (SPY) at the Temple Solel
at 552 S El Camino Real, Encinitas, CA 92024 on January 10th ,12;30
P.M..(619 436-0654).Speakers will include a rabbi on internet ,a retired
IBM engineer and a Yiddishist who has taught many languages from  New
York to Israel to China.

Hershel Stillman

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 95  16:14 EST
From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu
Subject: Nasalization and -nen verbs

For Dovid Braun:

More on -nen verbs

Another aspect of the "n"/"n-dropping" phenomenon that may be relevant to
the "-nen" verbs:

I'm not certain of the extent of this in Western Yiddish but, where
"n-dropping" occurs in Central Yiddish, it is often accompanied by the
nasalization of shwa. I'll represent it as [@N]. Thus _mame_ [mam@N]
would have the same structure as, for example, _kimen- [kim@N] (much like
English _law_ and _lore_ in "r-dropping" varieties). Word final shwa [-@]
thus = [-@n].

More than that, very often any sequence of shwa+consonant may equal
shwa+N+consonant: [@C] = [@NC]. You'll recognise the "n- less" variants
WY [sha:l@t] and regional EY [tsholt] (= tsholnt < calentem) as reflexes
of this phenomenon.

Now, unfortunately for the theory, we don't find a variant *kim@n@n.
Still, from what I've described, it's possible to account for variant
infinitives of the type _harg@n_ and _harg@n@n_, no?

Add to this the following Central Yiddish forms that I have recorded;
sporadically: [pomindorn] 'tomatoes', [spodink] as in _drey nisht keyn
spod@k_, [druint] 'wire', [ri:ink] 'calmly'; frequently: [nu:int] =
Standard Yiddish _not_ 'seam'; even [aru:N] < aru(p) in [aru:Ngayn] =
_aropgeyn_.

Native Yiddish speakers from Lodz can provide live evidence of some of
these features.

Mikhl Herzog

5)---------------------------------------------------
Date: 08 Jan 95 16:42:31 EST
From: 74064.1661@compuserve.com
Subject: Sholem-Aleykem's early language bias

A bit of Yiddish cultural history:

"What is, what is not, what may become, and what may not become Yiddish?"
I suspect these questions never bothered people who depended on it to
make it through their daily lives.   Then along came the Yiddish writers
and they had some decisions to make in their multilingual environment.
Mendele Moykher Sforim was a pioneering genius in Yiddish writing, but I
have no idea whether he worried _much_ about those issues.  He probably
did.  At some point the specific questions must have occurred to him.  On
the other hand, Sholem-Aleykhem most certainly wondered about the issues,
and acted on some of his answers.  Things change, decisions evolve.  His
ultimate decisions as to language usage do not reflect his early
inclinations as evidenced in a letter of his youth.

When he was only 20, while still tutor to Olga Loyev (his future wife) at
the Loyev farming estate, he responded to a letter from a relative on his
mother's side.  He was already determined to become a writer, but then,
he embraced Hebrew and rejected Russian.

It is written in the flowery style fashionable then for letters in
Hebrew.  I translated this from the Yiddish translation provided in Dos
Sholem-Aleykhem Bukh, p. 24.

To Hirsh Weisbord, from Sofievka (Ukraine), August 13, 1879

My dear kinsman, honored and trusted by all!  Many thanks for your letter
that I hold dear.  However, I shall not deny nor hide under my tongue,
that you have made me cover my face in shame by writing to me in Russian.
I myself, I admit, have a thousand shares in this tongue.  I squandered
almost all my time on it at school.  After that, I labored hard to
finally make it my own forever; but more beloved is Hebrew, the holy
tongue, mother of all tongues, daughter of the holy God.  Many children
of Israel with sharp and clever minds, have abandoned her, to our shame
and disgrace.  She, the holy tongue, has run off from them clutching her
head, lamenting day upon day, "Woe to them, to my children who have
abandoned me in my old age...."

[Interesting psychological issues here.]

Things change.  He became a writer of Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian.
Russian became the language of his home.  His grandchildren (perhaps his
children, too) had to learn Yiddish as a second language.  There is no
mention of Yiddish in this letter.

Later, he fell in love with Zhargon.  Two or three more letters in
subsequent postings with some of Sholem-Aleykhem's thoughts.

Louis Fridhandler

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 22:12:21 -0500
From: zellig@aol.com
Subject: The honorific "Reb"

I received a warm note from new Mendelyaner Jeff Zucker (Canada).  Among
other things he wrote that he was in somewhat of a quandary about the
opening salutation.  "Should I address you by your academic title? Too
stiff!  Of course, your first name seems better, but I should prefer "Reb
" to show some koved" [homage].

He continued:  "I seem to have heard, however, that in some secular
circles the use of "Reb" is frowned upon on account of its supposed
religious connotation."

My answer:

Khaver, if you wish, is koved enough,  or just plain Zellig.

As to your concern that "Reb" carries a religious connotation, this is
only correct in a cultural-historical context, but not when applied in a
strictly secular sense and time frame.

Take the term  "si'yem," for instance.  It used to mean the end of a
cycle of learning, or reading, of a set of holy books, but now it has
been given a totally new, secularized meaning as an academic graduation
at the end of a program of Yiddish courses.

While the term leads the memory back to its origin and evokes a
historical sense, its meaning has been expanded and given a new, modern
sense, new wine in an old vessel.

Similarly, with other terms or concepts previously strictly contained
within the religious or historical spheres.

The 4th of July in the United States may be said to be *der yontef fun
amerikes umophengikayt*.

The fighters of the Warsaw ghetto are often referred to as the modern
khashmenoim, after Bar Kokhba and his five sons who lead the revolt
against the Roman authorities in the second century, B .C.

Thus verbal renewals of meanings forge a mental _linkage_ between past
generations and the now.  Isn't this in some way related to the concept
of "hemshekh" (continuity)?  To the meaning of "di goldene keyt" (the
golden chain)?

About the honorific "Reb:"  In my personal life I am proud to be able to
call two people in our secular world with this title (always with the
first name only):

1.  Reb  Mordkhe (Shaechter), a _yidish yid_ par excellence, a walking
thesaurus of Yiddish, old and new, a tireless guardian of Yiddish, Itsik
Manger laureate, writer and teacher, author of numerous books about
Yiddish, and chief editor of the literary-language quarterly _Afn Shvel_.

2.  Reb Zalmen (Sol Steinmetz), a genuine _yidisher yid_ in all respects,
a true khoyveyv yidish.  While totally immersed professionally in English
and other foreign language dictionaries, he treasures the connection to
and tradition of Yiddish.  In his conversations in Yiddish, he is given
to throw in a Hebrew or Aramaic word for the sake of expanding a concept
in a new-old light, and occasionally even uses a "maymer khazal" -- a
saying from the Talmudic or Mishnaic sages, of blessed memory).  He is,
of course, the author of the book _Yiddish and English:  A Century of
Yiddish in America.  In our secular world I think of him as a rarity.

I feel that in these two cases some specific reasons justify my calling
them, proudly, with this honorific:  my deep and total respect for their
learnedness, and, especially, the strong bond between us:  our exalted
and unconditional love for Yiddish.

I think that we should, individually and collectively, be very, very
selective before we confer in our secular world the honorific "Reb" lest
by overuse of this title its locution will wear down, its shine
tarnished, and its value, literally, reduced.

Zellig Bach

______________________________________________________
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