Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.029 July 8, 1996 1) Yiddish in the hospital (Dan Leeson) 2) Shyster (Walter Golman) 3) Al tiro avdi yakov (Bob Rothstein) 4) Al tiro avdi yakov (David Baron) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Jul 1996 14:15:35 EDT From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu Subject: Yiddish in the hospital My stay in the hospital is, thank G-d, over. I am coming along well and I thank all the Mendelayners for their kind wishes. The following experience in Kaiser Permanente Hospital, Santa Clara, CA may be of some interest; i.e., Yiddish to help heal. After a few days and I was permitted to walk the corridors, I saw a young and very beautiful woman standing by one of the patient rooms and she was crying. So I went to her and asked what was causing her such grief. She told me that her mother, a 76 year old lady named Mrs. Cohen, had just been admitted to the hospital with great difficulty in breathing and she was afraid for her. We spoke for perhaps half an hour and I got some background on Mrs. Cohen including the fact that she spoke excellent Yiddish but rarely had occasion to do so what with living in Milpetas, CA. The daughter went home and waited until around 9:30 pm before going to see Mrs. Cohen. She was in awful shape, barely breathing, using a steam machine, and having a tough time of it. I pulled up a seat and began to speak to her in Yiddish. I asked her where she was born and what her mother's name was and what it was like growing up, etc., etc., Very calm. Nothing too personal. Within 5 minutes of speaking to her and her responding, her breathing began to become much more normal. We continued. She told me of her husband from whom she was now divorced, how she had lost track of her many brothers and sisters because her mother had deserted the entire family when she was a child because the father beat her constantly. It was getting a little too personal now but she seemed willing to speak of her life and it was definitely calming her. Within 10 minutes, she was speaking and breathing normally. She enjoyed talking to me and she spoke a rich and fluid Yiddish. 30 minutes later the specialist in respiration came in and found us in deep conversation. He wanted to know how come Mrs. Cohen had suddenly become very normal in her breathing. It was a wonderful event. After a while I stopped talking and just listened. She told me how to make cholent. I knew already but if the topic interested her that was OK with me. I shall go to see her over the next few days to assure her Yiddish RX. Yiddish hath charms to soothe the savage respiratory tract!! Dan Leeson Los Altos, California 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 13:41:34 -0400 (EDT) From: velvele@wam.umd.edu Subject: Shyster According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary [1976], shyster probably stems from an American attorney named Scheuster who was "frequently rebuked in a New York court for pettifoggery." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [1970] says the term is "[P]ossibly after Scheuster, an unscrupulous 19th-century New York lawyer." The Concise Oxford Dictionary [1952] modestly forbears to cite any derivation of the word. Thanks to Geralyn Flood for sending some of us to our dictionaries. I had thought the term came from an impolite German word for coprous material. Walter Golman Silver Spring, Maryland 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Jul 1996 20:18:51 -0400 (EDT) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Al tiro avdi yakov Bernard S. Greenberg asked about the macaronic song "Al tiro avdi Yaakov," in particular about the mysterious line "Otsokh niere tsugi zogt" (6.017, 6.028). His text seems to be a slightly corrupted version of one published by Menakhem Kipnis (_80 folkslider..._, p. 158). The Kipnis version (Hebrew/Yiddish/Russian-- no Ukrainian), which is the beginning of an alphabetic acrostic, is as follows: Omar adonoy leyakov. Yo, tate, yo! Host dokh mir tsugezogt: Al tiro avdi yakov. Nye boyus nikovo! [I fear no-one!] Nye vyeru nikomu [I believe no-one tolko bohu odnomu. but God alone] Bokhar adonoy beyakov. Yo, tate, yo! etc. Goal adonoy es yakov. Yo, tate, yo! etc. Another variant, contributed by the grandfather of our Mendele colleague Andrew Cassel, and published in the Ginzburg- Marek collection (#19), is more clearly a dialogue between Jacob and God. Two other variants were published by Prilutski in his _Yidishe folkslider_ (1:48-50). In a footnote he points out that "al tiro avdi yakov" is "a very popular motif in Yiddish folk poetry." He mentions a version consisting of ten eight-line stanzas published in Warsaw in 1900 by a badkhen, Yisroel- Yitskhok Tsifershteyn, but unfortunately doesn't include it since he is not sure whether it is a folk song or was composed by the badkhen. Bob Rothstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 10:19:46 +0300 From: davidb@accentsoft.com Subject: Al Tire Avdi Yaakov I might guess that the first few words are Ukrainian/Russian and the last two Yiddish. The tsugi might be sugie, a topic of discussion which would fit in a context like: Yes, my little father [young man] What do you have to say about this-- "Al tiro avdi Yaakov"? I fear not ... Look for more clues in the (White?-) Russian song "Nyet Nyet Nyikavo". This is a Lubavitcher nigun, but a man in the Worcester Mass Jewish Home for the Aged told me he remembers the melody from his Red Army days! David Baron ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.029