Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.153 December 20, 1996 1) Der B'rit Chadash (Roger Harris) 2) Nito (Paul Pascal) 3) Varieties of herring (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 01:30:58 +0000 (GMT) From: rwsh@dircon.co.uk Subject: Der B'rit Chadash - The New Testament in Yiddish The New Testament is not an obvious choice of devotional or even literary reading material for Jewish people. A New Testament printed in English is easy to obtain and one should not be too surprised to find a copy printed in Hebrew. Imagine my curiosity when, in a London second-hand bookshop, I came upon a copy of the New Testament printed in Yiddish. Not transliterated Romanised Yiddish but Yiddish in Hebrew block characters. Der Brit Chadash - The New Testament was printed in 1959 and published by The Lewis and Harriet Lederer Foundation of 1503 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore 31, Maryland, U.S.A. It contains 574 pages. Immediately, my imagination took over. Why should such a book be commissioned? How many people in the Yiddish-speaking community would choose to read the New Testament? Was the name of the translator (Henry Einspruch, D.D.) a nom-de-plume? His name, printed in Hebrew script, is Chaim Einspruch. The forename may be translated as 'life' and the surname as 'one language.' Might the book's title and its translator's name be decoded as 'The New Testament - the one/only language of Life?' Perhaps the book was part of a proselytising effort by Christians anxious to recruit Jews to their faith or to prise Jews away from Judaism. My speculations were further complicated by the book's illustrations. Nowhere is there anything which resembles an obvious Christian image; no Cross, no Infant, no Last Supper, no loaves and fishes, no manger, no Virgin Mary. The book's deep maroon hard cover bears an embossed Star of David. Inside there is a picture of an old man reading in tallis and yarmulke, several decorative page borders containing palm branches, lemons or etrogim, six-branched menorahs, a shamash (scroll pointer), the arms of the twelve tribes, Stars of David, several lions rampant and Tablets of the Commandments. Oddly, the chapter heading of the first Letter of John is printed in Hebrew block script while the headings of the Second and Third Letters of John are printed in Ashuris script (Hebrew Torah script with crowns). Does anyone know how this Yiddish book came to be published? Roger Harris 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 01:05:22 -0500 (EST) From: path@interlog.com Subject: Nito The recent thread on _nito/nishto_ has rendered a number of ideas on the idiom's composition and origin. While I've never doubted its being a contraction of _nit do_, I have wondered whether it didn't gain some shoring-up from the Russian word _nyetu_, which I believe has the sense of "not present". Examples: you visit a friend's house, but his wife meets you at the door and says, "_nyetu_"--"he's not in". You then stop off at the market to buy a loaf of bread, but the vendor tells you, "_nyetu_"--"there is none". The Yiddish word _nito_ could easily be used in any situation where the Russian _nyetu_ is used, and the sound of the two is very similar. Paul Pascal Toronto 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: Varieties of herring I want to be among the first to thank and congratulate Dan Leeson for his telling of the herring joke [6.150] in which he cleverly deconstructs the prevailing hegemonic patriarchal and imperialist ideology that peddles an upbeat rationalist view of life in the interest of a plutocracy bent on getting the rest of us to show up for work on time. Dan does this by offering only the version that's come down to us from a certain 12th Century medical quack, court toady and popularizer of Aristotle (whose works he knew only in Arabic translation) and which is built around assumptions of rationality and order. By the very act of omission Dan shrewdly draws our attention to the missing version, the true Yiddish version, i.e. the Marxist herring joke. This absurdist routine has been around I dare say since Yankev Ovinu was hanging out with the boys during cigarette breaks at Shem and Eber's yeshiva, and for those few readers who are unhappily unfamiliar with Groucho Marx (who once by the way played Dr. Quackenbush), here are the two versions side by side. Maimonides Marx What hangs on the wall, is What's green, hangs on the wall purple, and flies? and whistles? Answer: a herring. A herring. You say it doesn't hang on A herring is green? the wall? OK. it's not green. I could hang it if I wished. Since when does a herring hang on You say that it is not purple? the wall? I could dip it in purple paint. All right, it doesn't hang. You say that it does not fly? And what kind of herring whistles? True, but I put that one in to Nu, so it doesn't whistle! fool you. A gut shabes aykh ale. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.153