Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.038 June 20, 1993 1) E-index to Jewish Studies Periodicals (AJHyman) 2) Korten (Hershel Bershady) 3) Korten (Jack Feldman) 4) Di Yiddishe gas (Stanley Werbow) 5) Various (Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 18 14:18:13 1993 From: AJHYMAN@UTOROISE.BITNET Subject: An e-index (with abstracts) to Jewish Studies Periodicals I recently sent this note out on the JewStudies List, but I would like the opinions of those on the Mail-Jewish and Mendele list as well -------------------------------- A note to get some opinions, please: Several times I have heard of e-mail projects being undertaken where reviews of printed journal contents/articles in a field are compiled and sent out over Internet, a cross between a Reader's Digest idea and a periodical index with article abstracts. While most of these are done in pure science fields, I think that the same could be done in Jewish Studies. I would like some comments on whether 'you' would be interested in receiving such a journal to keep you up-to-date for the discipline. Further, I would be interested in knowing what printed journals 'you' think would be worth reviewing for such a project, and if 'you' would be willing to 'pay' for such a service? Thank you for your time. AJHYMAN.moderator.JewStudies send replies to my personal address AJHYMAN@oise.on.ca or AJHYMAN@UTorOISE.bitnet ----------------------------- N.B. Many of the people who responded to this post, directed their comments to the fee-for-service element, HOWEVER, I would like some suggested titles of journals that should be reviewed by such a service thanx, AJH 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 18 15:27:09 1993 From: hbershad@sas.upenn.edu (Harold Bershady) Subject: Korten Mine uncle used to say, when he wanted another card, "Shlug mir aince" (or, "nokh a muhl," and this would sometimes end as "und takeh nokh a muhl"); in poker he would say, "Shlug di tepple." There was a card he called a "kvetcher," but I don't know which one it was. (A deuce, maybe?) Now these sound like translations of American idioms, but way back I thought these were rekhtiger shprakh. Hershel Bershady 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 18 16:21:55 1993 From: feldman@math.berkeley.edu (Jacob Feldman) Subject: Korten Another playing card term for Seymour Axelrod: "Moishe Pippick" (for the Ace of Spades). Jack Feldman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 18 16:10:00 1993 From: glaa273@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu (Stanley Werbow) Subject: di yidishe gas Just want to call attention to the recent publication in Moscow of a collection of Yiddish and Russian stories and poems edited by Aaron Vergelis and using the usual Heymat phonetic spelling of Hebrew words. The first story by Tevye Gen is called" naye mitsves" and relates the trials of a Jewish family emigrating to Israel. Lots of other good stuff too. Available very inexpensively ($7.00) from the Workmen's Circle Jewish Book Center, 45 East 33rd Street, NY, NY 10016. Tel.: 1-800-922-2558, Ext. 285. Stanley Werbow 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jun 19 23:20:42 1993 From: Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky <0005943838@mcimail.com> Subject: various 1) I have been holding back from posting on Mendele until I had time to read everything in the archive, but since I now have a question to ask, I might as well jump in the fire. First, my question: Would anyone here know of any women's Yiddish literature reading groups? Someone from Lilith magazine called me to ask if I knew of any besides the one that meets in Toronto. I hoped that someone here might know of others. 2) I enjoyed hearing about the Jerusalem gathering in honor of Sutzkever. Perhaps someone can tell us about the conference of Yiddish Clubs that just met in the Washington, D.C. area. A second thought would be to have Fishl publish Der Bay on-line here so that those who would like to attend the activities listed there, wouldn't get it nokh alemen in snail-mail, as I do. 3) Does anyone know who Philologos in the English Forwards really is? I always had the impression that it is really Paul Wexler writing since Philologos once mentioned in his column that he made aliya in the late 60's which is what I heard Paul Wexler did. As we know from the Pavel Slobodjanskyj scandal two years ago, Wexler likes to hide behind masks when reviewing (promoting) his own work. 4) On Zak's request for feedback on Paul Wexler's thesis in Philologos: I remember Mikhl Herzog telling us students in our History of the Yiddish Language course in Columbia some years ago that "it is believed" (or something to that effect) that Jews entered Slavic areas in the first millennium A.D. through the Baltic areas or perhaps through the Caucasus and that the language these communities spoke has been named Judeo-Slavonic. Once larger and larger migration of Germanic Jewry came eastward after the Bubonic Plague, the Yiddish of this population began dominating and Judeo-Slavonic yielded to the Yiddish of these great migrations. I have never seen or heard the evidence for this assertion/theory nor do I remember if its author was ever mentioned, but it seems quite plausible from what we know of Jewish involvement in slave trading of Slavs in the first millennium. There was substantial contact between Turkic/barbarian art and culture and the Eastern European and Balkan populations as well as great influence by the various Turkic tribes who migrated into Eastern Europe from the Russian steppes. I have done a lot of research into the folk art of Eastern Europe and these Turkic tribes, and I see clear and tremendous influence of Turkic (perhaps also Khazar) and Turkish folk art on Jewish folk art. But, to come out and say that Yiddish is a Slavic language and that the bulk of its first speakers were Slavic converts is nisht geshtoygn nisht gefloygn. I imagine that Wexler will probably cite in his book the intriguing presence of Slavic `bobe', `zeyde', & `tate' in Yiddish kinship terminology as part of the evidence for his theory, but so what? What if they are remnants from Judeo-Slavonic? The evidence presented for Wexler's theory in Philologos is unconvincing, but I'll just pick at one point (cited in Philologos 3) which I know more than something about. If Jews in Eastern Europe borrowed the term `treibern' ('traybern') to describe koshering meat, they were definitely learning it from the world's experts. One of the highlights of Turkic tribal culture is the thorough removal of blood from an animal or human victim and drinking it as a symbolic means of conquering its soul. If Jews wanted to be medakdek about thoroughly removing blood from an animal, these were definitely the guys who knew how to do it better than the Jews. These various Turkic people (often called barbarians), especially the Scythians, Magyars, etc., invaded the Ukraine, Hungary, Turkey and the Balkans. After several generations of mixing with the conquered populations, hobn zey zikh a bisl oysgementshlt. It's no accident that the word pogrom arose in the Ukraine where most of the Scythian descendants now live. When one reads in Jewish memoirs of the retsikhe in di oygn of those in the running onslaught of a pogrom, they are exactly the same descriptions found in ancient non-Jewish memoirs of attacks by the fierce marauding Scythians. Red hair among Jews is attributed to mixing with the Turkic Khazars or other descendants of these pagans. But that these marauders are the genesis of Eastern European Jewry, klept zikh nisht. Their descendants are the Ukrainians and not the Jews. I don't know Mr. Wexler, but this thesis seems like another attention-getting device. It just makes me sad, especially after reading of the enraging Slobodjanskyj scandal in Lingua Franca. Punkt vi es volt Yidish gefelt tsores, veln mir ale bald nokh a mol vern eydes tsu a nayem ego-kamf af der yidisher gas. Tsu ersht bin ikh gegangen zogn nor a por verter, un ikh ze do az ikh hob zikh tseredt. I'll get off my soapbox now. Please don't forget about my question and respond to my new & easy e-mail address: Reyzl@mcimail.com Ikh dank aykh in foroys. Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.038