Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.064 July 23, 1995 1) Vider a mol Hotsmakh (Bob Rothstein) 2) Ashkenaz; Yiddish nowadays (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan) 3) I.L.Peretz's yortsayt (Sheine Mankovsky) 4) Sharing among Jewish day schools teaching Yiddish (Sheine Mankovsky) 5) Vinkl (Bob Rothstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 10:35:59 -0400 (EDT) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Vider a mol Hotsmakh A further sidelight to the much earlier discussion of Goldfaden's Hotsmakh: I've just come across the Romanian word _hot,_, pronounced [hots], which means 'thief; swindler; sly person' and the word _hot,oman_ 'thief; scoundrel, rascal'. Considering Hotsmakh's behavior in Goldfaden's "Di kishefmakherin" and the fact that Goldfaden was from Romania, could there be a connection? Bob Rothstein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 10:19:09 -0400 From: shirshan@aol.com Subject: Ashkenaz; Yiddish nowadays After returning from Toronto and being part of Ashkenaz, still flying (like Paul Pascal), I was describing the hartzik intensity of Adrienne Cooper and Irena Klepfish who created a program that presented the Yiddish women poets (Fradel Schtok, Kadya Maladowsky, Rokhl Korn, Rachelle Vaprinski, and more) that was truly extraordinary. Adrienne singing Bella Schaechter Gottesman's "Mayn Khaverte Mintsye" and "Harbstlid" could move the proverbial stone to sobbing. At this point, my computer hard drive crashed, blew, collapsed, and I was reminded of an early Kurt Vonnegut short story, "Epicac" where the computer fell in love with the young lady who was recipient of the poems being written upon it by the young man who loved her. Was Ashkenaz reporting too much emotion for my computer to handle? S'ken zayn. Ver veys? I had to be patient until it was mended, and then had the pleasure of almost two weeks of Mendele printouts in one sitting. It was like an overview of what Mendele is - a potpourri of brilliant academicians, of lovers of Yiddish literature, of friends of Yiddish, of pedestrian posters, of knowledgeable professionals working for perpetuation of Yiddish, of new enthusiastic subscribers, of lurkers (wouldn't viewers be a better name?) But through all the pages, I have been haunted by David Herskovic's posting in Mendele Vol. 5.055 about the khsidim and khsidishe kinderlekh. "All the scholarly discussions of the language do not make up for a few weeks of buying, selling, loving, hating, laughing, crying, phoning, faxing, blessing, cursing, all in mameloshn." (Even if less than perfect, is implied.) I believe Yiddish wore a tattered coat in the shtetl too, when it was alive with all the aforementioned activity (minus the phone and fax). Although I have learned so much on Mendele from Bob Rothstein, Mikhl Herzog, Zellig Bach, Harvey Spiro, and so many more scholars, I feel Herskovic's plea for allowance of change, additions, and growth in the language is something we must heed, or our perfect, every-hair-in-place Mame Yidish may end up a static hand-maiden to Latin which is jailed within its grammar and sentence structure in specific tomes today. Herskovic is, perhaps, predicting the future, when he says that another Sholom Alkeikhem or Peretz may more likely arise from these kheder yugnt. Maybe even a Mendele. Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan North Conway, New Hampshire 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 95 17:14:48 EST From: sheine_mankovsky@cclink.metrodesk.metrotor.on.ca Subject: Regarding the 80th anniversary of the death of I.L. Peretz Sylvia Lustgarten, undaunted "tuer" for Yiddish in Toronto was throwing some ideas my way the other day as she is wont to do. Specifically, she suggested that it might be an idea to stage community events in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of I.L. Peretz' death. Apparently, the anniversary occurs either in 1995, or 1996. Sylvia thought that there might be agreement among Jewish communities to host events in schools, synogogues, organizations, etc. to commemorate the anniversary. Or, otherwise stated, to celebrate the life of Peretz. We did something like that in Toronto re Sholom Aleichem. The Committee for Yiddish sent out a request that some event, or whatever, be staged on the theme of Sholom Aleichem. It worked out not badly. I agreed to throw the idea out on Mendele because it presented the opportunity to stage international, perhaps complementary events which would enrich the whole because of electronic information permits such rapid sharing of information. I leave that with you. Sheine Mankovsky 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 95 17:30:04 EST From: sheine_mankovsky@cclink.metrodesk.metrotor.on.ca Subject: Sharing among Jewish day schools teaching Yiddish First of all kumt es mir a mazel tov. I am a member of the first public secondary school class to complete the OAC level in Yiddish, which means that were I proceeding to the first year of University, I would be able to use Yiddish as one of the credits, in the category of international (not folk) languages, to be considered for admission. In my particular case, I studied Yiddish at university before I studied it in high school... Thanks to Elie Moidel, die leriren, and Gloria Howard, the principal of the Continuing Education Department at Earl Haig Secondary School in North York (Toronto). We are moving along with registration for the 1995-96 academic year, and we expect to have some more OAC graduates most (a relative term) of whom studied Yiddish at the Bialik Hebrew Day School here in Toronto. Zey vet take kumen a hartsikn mazel tov. Secondly, Sylvia Lustgarten--she is very creative, you see--suggested the idea that it would be fun for children learning Yiddish to correspond with other children who are also learning Yiddish. Mendele makes such a pen-pal project much more feasible than previously because e-mail facilitates the organization of such a project--or perhaps just makes it seem like more fun. At any rate, reading the messages from Jewish day schools in Montreal and Melbourne made me think about Sylvia's idea once again. If there is any interest in this, I would be pleased to facilitate the process here in Toronto, as in my own home there are four students. Sheine Mankovsky 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 13:07:09 -0400 (EDT) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Vinkl Since Daniella HarPaz has renewed her query about the use of _vinkl_ to mean 'club' etc. (5.062), I'll try my hand at it. My first association was with the late Wolf Younin's column in the _Forverts_, which he called "Shprakhvinkl," i.e., "Language Corner." There are Slavic parallels using the diminutive of the word for "angle" or "corner" to refer to a regular newspaper or radio feature, e.g., Polish _ka,cik filatelistyczny_ 'philatelic corner', Russian _ugolok kollektsionera_ 'collector's corner', Czech _jazykovy' koutek_ 'language corner' [a radio program devoted to usage questions]. Perhaps the meanings that Daniella asked about represent an extension of this usage. Bob Rothstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.064