Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.285 January 18, 1995 1) Honor to early Yiddishists (Louis Fridhandler) 2) Jews and Poles in Cracow (Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska) 3) Business (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 Jan 95 00:47:57 EST From: 74064.1661@compuserve.com Subject: Honor to early Yiddishists A dank Aren Portnoy far tsushikn epes vegn "Der Ershter Yidishist." He testifies persuasively that Lifshits deserves to be honored as an early writer and defender of Yiddish. Mendl Lefin is another name to remember. According to Dina Abramowicz's article (Yidisher Kultur, 8:37-43, Nov.-Dec., 1982), Mendl Lefin translated "Proverbs" into Yiddish (Tarnopol, 1814). He did not use the "canonized" archaic language in vogue at that time (ivre-taytsh) but the spoken language of his time. He used Slavisms and ordinary, every-day words. This was a revolutionary advance. Many scholarly Jews considered his work blasphemous, but Mendl Lefin's aim was to bring holy writ closer to the ordinary, toiling masses, and to let them hear the wisdom of the sages directly in their own everyday, lively language. Like so many geniuses, Lefin was well ahead of his time. Still is, I think, when I encounter Jewish people who should know better, but deny that Yiddish is a language in its own right. One factor generating this misperception among many Jews is something called by Max Weinreich, "Komponentn visikayt" (awareness of Yiddish etymological elements). It is a concept I learned from Janet Hadda at a talk I attended. Thank you, Janet Hadda, and glad to find your recent note to Mendele about Yankev Glatshteyn. A curiosity: Glatshteyn's powerful poem, "On Yidn," (in English translation, Without Jews) is published in the Reform High Holiday Prayer Book. I looked hard, but could find no acknowledgement that Glatshteyn is the poet, nor is it acknowledged there that it was created in Yiddish. Unfortunate carelessness. Louis Fridhandler 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 09:10:56 +0100 From: marcin@klio.umcs.lublin.pl Subject: Jews and Poles in Cracow Regarding to Sean Martin's query (4.277): The best person to contact as far as the Jews of Cracow in the interwar period are concerned would be Rafael Scharf who was brought up in Cracow and has written about his experience there. Mr. Scharf is a frequent contributor to The Jewish Quarterly published in London. The address of the editors is: PO Box 1148, London NW5 2AZ. Cracow was also depicted by Isaac Bashevis Singer, especially in his novel The Family Moskat (in my 1974 edition on pages 586-588, a wonderful description of the old Jewish quarter in Cracow: Kazimierz). From Cracow there came a Yiddish bard, Mordecai Gebirtig (this fact was commemorated with a plaque on the house where he lived). I quote his poem (in Polish translation), "Farewell to Cracow" (as well as Singer's descriptions) in my book on I.B. Singer's Poland. Sean Martin should also get in touch with Miriam Akavia, an Isaeli writer. A number of her books were published in Poland and they all deal with Cracow (the titles in rough translation into English are e.g. The Autumn of Youth, My Vineyard). I am not sure whether her books were translated into English but they are availbale in Hebrew, French and Polish. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: Business Dear friends of Mendele: The unexpected success of Mendele and its rapid growth in the past year has been one of the better experiences of my life. I thank you all. Ober vi me zogt: kleyne kinder, kleyninke tsures; groyse kinder, gresere tsures. Azoy mit Mendelen. By which I mean that the incoming daily traffic is becoming heavy enough that I have to ask you to be more careful with your posts. Here are some things that would make life a lot easier. Two housekeeping items first: 1. Please limit your posts to matters of _general_ interest. "Do you know my tante Rokhl?" and other such items are not, strange as it may seem, of general interest. Personal questions and answers should be sent directly to the persons involved. Please do not send them to Mendele for forwarding. I could just ignore those that are sent to me but I don't. The result is a lot of needless correspondence. 2. Provide a short but _meaningful_ Subject: line. These are stored in a Contents file (begun by Mendele's friend Bob Rothstein) for use by future readers. It doesn't help those readers much to find "various" or "vol.4 221". Now a couple of more important matters: 1. For some time now, when editing English-language posts I've been trying to correct obvious mistakes in spelling and occasionally grammar. Part of an editor's responsibility is to make a post as readable as possible. More recently I have begun doing so with Yiddish as well, especially in cases of ungrammatical constructions (at least the ones I spot). It's true that most of us have less facility with Yiddish than with some other language and I don't mean to discourage subscribers from using Yiddish. Farkert! More of us should write in Yiddish, myself included. At any rate, I shall proceed on the assumption that each one of us is a Yiddish master. Given an intelligent keyboard, every post would be without error. But since most of us don't own such a keyboard your shames will make those few rare corrections. 2. Last but most important: Mendele deals with _Yiddish_, not with all aspects of Judaism or of Jewish culture. Naturally it isn't easy to draw a clear line here and there will always be gray areas. Nevertheless I think we've included a number of topics (the most recent being the lamed-vovnik) that might just as easily have been omitted. I hope no one mistakes this for an anti-religious bias on my part. Khos v'kholile. It's just that such matters have no immediate connection with Yiddish. And where there's greater restraint in posts about Talmudic figures for example, there should be as much restraint in posts about secular Jewish culture: unless there's a robust connection with Yiddish it probably doesn't belong on Mendele. The etymology of prakes is in, recipes are not. I hasten to add: recipes as such. The ban does not apply to a discussion of recipes as sub-cultural indicators, etc., as in the case of Mikhl Herzog's famous distinction between gefeferte and nisht-gefeferte fish. That, you should excuse the expression, is another kettle entirely. ********************** By the way, there _is_ a forum for things that don't belong in Mendele. I refer to soc.culture.jewish on Usenet; one can also subscribe by sending this message to: listserver@nysernet.org sub scj yourname ********************** Thank you all in advance for bearing with me. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.285 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 Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu