Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.020 June 23, 1996 1) Obituary notice for Joseph Green (Dan Leeson) 2) Verbs without -t (Arnold Kuzmack) 3) Verbs without -t (Khayem Bochner) 4) Komparativ mit far, fun, vi, eyder (Khayem Bochner) 5) Which part of Yiddish is dying? (Gilad J. Gevaryahu) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 11:52:38 EDT From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu Subject: Obituary notice for Joseph Green My Fellow Mendelayners, I regret to announce the death of Joseph Green, aged 96, who is suggested to have been the creator of Yiddish film's heyday in a lengthy and detailed obituary in the New York Times of Saturday, June 22 (west coast edition, page 10). It reads, in part, Joseph Green, who turned a walkon on role in the first talking movie, 'The Jazz Singer,' into a film making career that ushered in the golden age of Yiddish cinema, died on Thursday at the Grace Plaza nursing home in Great Neck, L.I. He was 96 and had emphysema. Working at a feverish pace under the shadow of Nazism, Mr. Green in three years in Poland was the producer and co- director of four features ['Yidl Mitn Fidl' (1935), 'Der Purimspiler' (1937), 'Mamele' (1938) and 'A Brievele Der Mamen' (also 1938)] that carried Yiddish film to popular and artistic heights on both sides of the Atlantic. They survive as a celluloid testament to life in the shtetl on the eve of the Holocaust." This is a substantial obituary and I am hesitant at quoting anything larger than the above from a copyrighted publication. But I will paraphrase some more of the obit. Mr. Green's contributions to the Yiddish film industry are cited with special reference to the "purity of the Yiddish and the quality of the acting." Apparently he was also involved in the selection (and maybe even the composition) of the music that accompanied his films since it is said to have evolved into folk music. His film, "Yidl" was said to have been shown in Berlin in 1938 to Jewish audiences and is currently available on video cassette. In 1927, he travelled to Hollywood with both Joseph and Rudolph Schildkraut and got a small part in "The Jazz Singer," the Al Jolson film of talkies fame. The experience left him wanting to do more and in 1932 he was hired to dub the Yiddish dialogue into a silent Italian movie, "Joseph in the Land of Egypt." It was a big hit in Poland and he made enough money to finance his own film career. The story of how he took the script, "The Wandering Musicians" and converted it to a piece with Molly Picon is given in Mr. Green's words. The film was said to have been so successful that it recouped all of its production costs on its run in Warsaw alone. It was booked into movie houses in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan. The Loew's chain picked it up as its first Yiddish talkie. Interestingly, he is said to have passed up a chance to make a film about Sholem Aleichem's Tevye, fearing that it was too anti- clerical for Roman Catholic Poland. He was proven wrong when Maurice Schwartz made the film in 1939 and it became a hit. Dan Leeson Los Altos, California 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 21:51:10 -0400 (EDT) From: kuzmack@cpcug.org Subject: Verbs without -t Peter Kluehs asks [6.019] about verbs, such as 'toyg' which lack the -t ending in the third person singular of the present tense. There are a number of such verbs: er ken er iz er meg er muz er darf er fleg and probably a few others I haven't thought of. However, all of these are auxiliary verbs. 'Toyg' and 'geher' are not auxiliaries, and I was not able to think of any other non-auxiliary verbs which do not take -t. A gut vokh, Arnie Kuzmack 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jun 96 23:31:50 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Verbn on -t Peter Kluehs fregt in 6.019 far vos me zogt "er toyg" anshtot "er toygt", un "es geher" anshtot "es gehert". Nu, me veyst dokh az es zenen do verbn vos nitsn nisht dem tes in dritn perzon, eyntsol: er/zi vil, muz, ken, darf, un azoy vayter. Geveyntlekh zogt men az di zenen "modale" verbn, ober keyn feste zakh iz dos nisht: teyl dialektn zogn "er fleg", teyl zogn "er flegt". Un geshikhte hot do oykh a role: merste dialektn zogn itst "er veyst", ober loyt der geshikhte funem vort volt es gedarft zayn "er veys", un dos gefint zikh take nokh alts in teyl dialektn. Ikh hob a kuk geton in "Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik" (Hermann Paul), un mir zet oys az yidish "toygn" hot tsu ton mit MHD "tugen", vos iz geven a "praeteritio-praesentia", dos heyst aza min verb vos nitst nisht dem -t. In hayntikn daytsh kumt "er taugt" dafke mitn -t, ober dos iz nisht der eyntsiker fal vu yidish hit oyf epes vos hot zikh gebitn oyf daytsh. Far vos "geher" nitst nisht dem -t veys ikh nisht; azoy iz es, un shoyn! (Khotsh ikh muz tsugebn az loyt Weinreich meg men oykh zogn "es gehert".) Khayem Bochner 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jun 96 22:24:24 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Komparativ mit far, fun, vi, eyder Peter Kluehs fregt in 6.019 vegn dem banits fun "far", "fun", "vi" un "eyder" mitn komparativ fun adyektivn. "Fun" un "far" zenen glaykh; teyl dialektn hobn beser lib "fun", andere hobn beser lib "far". Beyde zenen prepozitsyes, un derfar kumt nokh zey a substantiv oyf dativ: "Er iz kliger fun/far mir." "Vi" ken hobn dem zelbikn taytsh; s'iz ober a konyuktsye, un derfar ken kumen nokh "vi" nisht nor a substantiv, nor a gantser bayzats: "Er iz kliger vi ikh bin geven oyf zayn elter." Dos ken men nisht zogn mit "fun", un nisht mit "far". Nokh "vi" ken oykh kumen a substantiv. In dem fal, ober, iz der substantiv oyf nominativ, vayl me halt es far a farkirtsung fun a bayzats: "Er iz kliger vi ikh", azoy vi "Er iz kliger vi ikh bin." "Eyder" ken men nitsn azoy vi "vi", nor s'dakht zikh mir az s'iz zeltener. Khayem Bochner 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 15:33:48 -0400 From: gevaryahu@aol.com Subject: Which part of Yiddish is dying? Bob Hirshan (6.018) suggests that the real question should be: "Which part of Yiddish is dying?" He divides "Yiddish" into three aspects. A. The Yiddish of academia. B. The spoken hasidic Yiddish. C. The feeling of nostalgia for the Yiddish word and the connection to the culture of the shtetl. And he concludes that: "Only the Yiddish of nostalgia will disappear in future generations." The suggestion above has several problems. First the majority of the Yiddish speaking Jews of the last two generations are excluded, namely all the non-hasidic, Yiddish speaking Jews. This group includes the Zionists and non Zionists, the mitnagdim, the communists and more who spoke Yiddish as the vernacular, and whose grandchildren today do not know the language. The conclusion is therefore a wishful thinking. The reality is, IMHO, that most of the parents or grandparents of the current ashkenazic Jews used Yiddish as the primary or secondary vernacular, whereas 2-3 generations later Yiddish is not used as a vernacular. This does not negate the statement that some aspects of Yiddish are used, like cute expressions, funny words etc. - but not as a vernacular, or that the hasidic Jews are using the language and probably will continue to do so. We can divide the uses of Yiddish into categories, classify it into sections or group it into segments. It is nonetheless undeniable that less ashkenazic people, as a percentage of the total Jewish population, use the Yiddish as a vernacular. This is of course regrettable and shameful - but it is. The question to ask is therefore different. I have ignored the academic Yiddish; it is irrelevant to the discussion in the same sense that the ancient Greek scholarship did not revive ancient Greek. Will the hasidic Yiddish be able to sustain the language, once all the rest disappears? Or, is there a chance of revival among other groups? Gilad J. Gevaryahu ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.020