Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 6.087
October 30, 1996

1) Miriam Kressyn (Dan Leeson)
2) Fun vanen shtamt "patlezhan"? (Sholem Berger)
3) Gefunen dem Vaynraykh moker (Shikl Fishman)
4) Yiddish vegetarian writers (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan)
5) Yiddish vegetarian writers (Pawel Brunon Dorman)
6) Zamenhoff and Yiddish / comic poem (Stefan Balzter)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 15:14:07 EST
From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu
Subject: An obituary for a great Yiddish actress

I regret to have to report that the actress Miriam Kressyn, 84 and
formerly a mainstay of Yiddish theater passed away.  Her obituary is
reported in the NY Times of 10/29 and I have paraphrased their gracious
comments to her below.

Ms Kressyn was a star of the Yiddish stage and, along with her husband,
Seymour Rechtzeit, an important force in the survival of Yiddish theater
in the United States.  She died on Monday at St. Vincent's Hospital in
Manhattan where she lived.

She was an actress, a singer, an adapter of plays, a radio personality
and teacher.  She was also one of the most popular artists in the
Yiddish-speaking theater, brightening musicals as well as plays over a
period of 60 years.  Although she was very talented in a variety of
arenas, she was best known for portraying stately, ladylike characters.

Born in Bialystok, in what is now Poland, she came to the United States
after the first world war in 1925.  It was while she was living in
Boston, that she began to sing on radio.  Then she switched to the
stage, singing in the chorus of a Yiddish theater. Soon she was acting,
playing both male and female roles.  She studied at the New England
Conservatory of Music and Northeastern University.

Subsequently she acted in Chicago and Philadelphia (where she met her
husband), toured Europe, South America and Africa and then settled in
New York.  She was a favorite of local audiences who were drawn to
theaters that showed stories of sentiment, nostalgia and sometimes
tragedy.

For five years, she and her husband acted in musical comedies with
Menasha Skulnick.  She was also in I.J. Singer's "Brothers Askenazi" and
"Yoshe Kalb" and in Isaac Balshevis Singer's "Family Muskat," and played
the title role in an adaptation of Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta."

She and her husband were often called the romantic idols of Yiddish
musicals.  She was frequently featured in a cast with other Yiddish
theater favorites, including Reizl Bozyk, Ben Bonus, Leo Fuchs, Mina
Bern and Jacob Jacobs.

In reviewing the musical "A Cowboy in Israel" in The New York Times,
Richard F. Shepard said that the actress, "rising to the occasion as
usual, plays the tsoriss-ridden heroine - no laughs, all trouble - who
stands to inherit a fortune if only she marries."

Eventually Ms Kressyn began adapting plays, including "The Flowering
Peach" by Clifford Odets, Leon Kobrin's "Riverside Drive" and Nahum
Stutchkoff's "Land of Dreams."  She taught Yiddish theater at Queens
College, and for 40 years she and her husband broadcast in Yiddish on
WEVD radio.   In 1937 she appeared in Joseph Green's Yiddish film "Der
Purimshpiler."

Her work was exclusively in the Yiddish theater for her entire life and
never appeared in English plays, though it was rumored that she was
considered for the mother in "The Diary of Anne Frank."  To the repeated
charge that Yiddish theater was defunct, she would say, with
characteristic enthusiasm, "We are not dead, we are very much alive."
Summing up her career, she said, with pride, "Yiddish is my world."

She is survived by her husband, who is president of the Hebrew Actors
Union.

Dan Leeson
Los Altos, California

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 19:54:43 -0600
From: bergez01@mchip00.med.nyu.edu
Subject: Fun vanen shtamt "patlezhan"?

s'iz a groyse shvartse kaylekhdike geviks.  se shtimt mekhayedik mit
parmezhan-kez un pomidorn-sos.  s'heyst:

          "patlezhan"    (af yidish)
          "baklazhan"    (rusish)

un oykh epes azoyns (kh'veys nisht genoy) af palestiner arabish un
terkish. ober af ivrit s'iz take "khatsil" (oyb kh'hob nisht keyn toes).
kh'hob a kurtse shayekhdike frage:

fun vanen shtamt dos vort "patlezhan"? kh'volt zikh ongeshtoysn, az der
shoresh ligt ergets tsvishn di indianer shprakhn, ober gey zukh an
ibertsaygndike etimologie.

sholem berger

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 22:44:52 -0800 (PST)
From: fishman@csli.stanford.edu
Subject: gefunen dem Vaynraykh moker

Avrohom Novershtern (yerushelayem) hot far mir gefunen dem moker fun
Maks Vaynraykhs "zog" az a "shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a
flot" [6.077]. Dos gefint zikh in Vaynraykhs "Der yivo un di problemen
fun undzer tsayt", Yivo-bleter, 1945, b' 25, n' 1, z' 13. Vaynraykh
shraybt tsu ot di formulirung tsu a yungnman vos iz gekumen af zayne
lektsiyes un er hot bashlosn az ot "di dozike vunderlekhe formulirung
fun der sotsiyaler maarokhe fun yidish muz ikh brengen tsu a groysn
oylem". A yasher koyekh dem gutn khaver Novershtern un ale Mendeliyaner
vos hobn geholfn zukhn ot dem s'rov fargesenem moker fun a barimtn "zog"
vos hot a shykhes tsu yidish un ale derunterdike leshoynes.

Shikl (Joshua) Fishman

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 07:58:06 -0500
From: shirshan@aol.com
Subject: Bashevis hyperbole

Mayn tayere frayndine, Dvosye Bilik, dertzeylt as Bashevis als
vegetaryer "compared the treatment of chickens with Nazi treatment of
Jews in Treblinka."

Er hot zikh gedarft shemen (vi Zellig volt gezogt) in vaytn haldz, oyb
nisht nokh hekher un oykh nideriker,  tzu nutzn aza  farglaykhung vos
makht a kindershpil fun dem khurbn. Iz faran a metafor in a velt fun
verter far "the Nazi treatment of Jews" anywhere?

Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan
Boynton Beach, Florida

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 96 09:37:28 CET
From: dorman@plearn.edu.pl
Subject: Yiddish vegetarian writers

thank you for all emails  about vegetarian writers. What should be said
is: I know about Isaac Bashevis Singer's vegetarianism so please don't
send emails about it yet.

And to respond on Goldie Morgentaler's question (in Mendele 6.083) what
might be deduced from the conjunction of vegetarianism with authorship
in Yiddish, I have to tell that I don't know, but maybe... maybe Yiddish
and vegetarianism are close each other because of vegetarian nature of
Jewish people? As you know from Talmud: (see: "Torah" shabbat 128)
compassion on animals it's order.

Pawel Brunon Dorman

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 15:59:31 +0200
From: stefan.balzter@musik.uni-giessen.de
Subject: Zamenhoff and Yiddish / comic poem

[Regarding Sholem Yafe's comic poem (6.084)

        Hista bokhe le Zamenhofe
        Meyks mi lakhe on a sofe.
        Donerveter!  Sacremento!
        Eto sfoso Esperanto!              ]

Rick Turkel assumed in issue 6.085 that the word "Sacremento" might be
there just for the rhyme. Yet since the first word of the line obviously
is taken from the German language ("Donnerwetter"), I'd suggest to
explain the second one likewise: In German (mostly Bavarian),
"Sakrament" is not only the word for an ecclesiastical sacrament, but
also a mild curse or a yell of astonishment or surprise - just like the
Donnerwetter.

Stefan Balzter

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End of Mendele Vol. 6.087