Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.411
May 8, 1995

1) Introduction (Mark Melnick)
2) Russian-Yiddish Dictionaries (Leybl Goldberg)
3) Etl betl (Mikhl Herzog)
4) Another talmid in need of housing (Scott Mendel)
5) Yiddish tutor needed (Marvin Friedman)
6) A new who-is-who on file (Noyekh Miller)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 05 May 95 16:20:00 PDT
From: melnick@gwscstam.groupw.wec.com
Subject: Introduction

I am a newcomer to Mendele.  I am a single, 37-year old male, currently
living in Stamford, Connecticut, USA.  I am an attorney working in
Stamford for Group W Satellite Communications, a subsidiary of
Westinghouse Electric Corp. involved in the field of cable and satellite
television and radio programming distribution and other media-related
technical services.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, lived in Manhattan since graduating
from law school and moved to Connecticut only recently.  I am "2G"
(Second Generation).  My mother, from outside of Prague, Czechoslovakia,
was in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.  My father, from Pietrikov and then
Tomasczov (forgive any spelling errors), Poland, was on the run in Russia
during the war.  Of course, both lost most of their families.  My parents
spoke Yiddish to each other in my childhood household. (Until I was
around ten, they called me "Mendele.")  I was a "good Jewish boy" for
much of my youth, then a rebel, and now I have returned to Judaism, not
as a religion but as an ethnic and cultural identity.  I am an avid fan
of klezmer and other Jewish music.  My Yiddish language skills are
sketchy; I can understand the gist of spoken Yiddish at best.  I have
become computer-literate only in the last few months.  I stumbled upon
the Mendele mailing list (and a few others related to Judaism) pretty
much by accident.

Mark Melnick

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 04 May 95 13:33:00 -0400
From: lee.goldberg@neteast.com
Subject: Russian-Yiddish Dictionaries

Howard Gershen inquired about Russian-Yiddish and Yiddish dictionaries.
As far as I know, the only one generally available is the 1984 hardcover
Russko-evreiskii (idish) slovar/Rusish-yidisher verterbukh by Shapiro,
Spivak, and Shulman.  I got my copy earlier this year from Victor
Kamkin's in Rockville, Maryland for $22.50.  The softcover dictionary
Howard referred to must be the Hebrew-Russian one which someone tried to
sell me at the same store (a result of the ambiguity of "yevreiskii"
[Jewish] in Russian).

According to the editors of the 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary, the last
Yiddish-Russian one was published in Minsk in 1941 under the editorial
direction of Rokhkind and Shklyar and prior to that only one edited by
Yitskhok Mendel Lifshits (friend of the "other" Mendele) in 1876.  There
are several other Russian-Yiddish dictionaries, published in 1868-69,
1909, and 1941, but no "two-way" Russian-Yiddish, Yiddish-Russian ones
listed.

Incidentally, the 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary is a good one, too. It
includes a comprehensive survey of Yiddish grammar by Falkovitsh in an
appendix.  It's also much more reliable than Weinreich in giving you
terms Yiddish speakers actually use (rather than terms that scholars
_wish_ they would use): for instance, if you look up "plastinka"
([phonograph] record) in the Russian-Yiddish dictionary, you get "plat,
plate, plastinke," whereas if you looked it up in Uriel Weinreich you'd
find Weinreich's invention, "disk".  Other _mayles_ are the dictionary's
copious examples illustrating Russian and Yiddish usage and the fact that
it consistently indicates Yiddish stress.

Leybl Goldberg

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 May 95  18:37 EDT
From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu
Subject: Etl betl

I will try, sometime next week, to dig up more information on the Yiddish
names for the figures of the "Cat's cradle". The only two I recall are
"betl" and "shpigl".

Mikhl Herzog

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 May 95 23:08:56 CDT
From: sm21@midway.uchicago.edu
Subject: Another talmid in need of housing

With all due apologies to Brian, who got here first and should get all
the first choices:

I will also be attending the YIVO/Columbia Univ. Yiddish Summer Program
and am looking for housing in Manhattan.  I'll be in NYC for about 8
weeks, from June 11 to August 6.  Housing at Columbia is nice enough (and
air-conditioned...I stayed their last summer) but it cost about $900 for
the two months.  If anyone has an extra room they would sublet (and Brian
has already turned it down) please drop me an email.

A shaynem dank,

Scott Mendel

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 22:32:39 -0400
From: marvinf629@aol.com
Subject: Yiddish tutor needed

A group of Yiddish students in San Francisco, ranging from onhaber to
intermediate, have been attending conversation groups, and on our own
have formed a small study group  to practice some of the grammar
exercises from Weinreich's College Yiddish and Sheva Zucker's new book.
However, we feel a need for more formal, and structured instruction.
None of us are affiliated with any educational institution.  We wonder if
there might be a Mendelnik in the Bay Area (perhaps a graduate student of
Eli Katz in Berkeley, or at Stanford) who'd be interested in teaching an
evening class for us and others who might be interested.  We would of
course be willing to pay a reasonable fee.

Replies can be sent directly to me.  A dank.

Marvin Friedman

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995
From: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu
Subject: A new who-is-who on file

Anno Siegel, a lebn af im, has compiled a new version of introductions by
our members.  The file is available via anonymous ftp (see below for
details).

Noyekh Miller

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