Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.127 November 2, 1993 1) Yiddish Culture Club Meldung (Meyer David) 2) Shloflidele (Arthur Komar) 3) Klezmer group (Melinda Krushen) 4) A khoylem (Dovid Braun) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 22:59:54 -0400 From: mhd@world.std.com (Mark H David) Subject: Yiddish Culture Club Meldung [for Vos Makht A Yid] Branch member Mark David spoke recently with Zalman Srebro, Chairman of the Yiddish Culture Club of Boston, who asked him to pass along this invitation: The Yiddish Culture Club of Boston invites members of Branch 2001 to a lecture in Yiddish by Mitchell Lokiec, writer for the Forverts, on the subject: The Peace Process in Israel. The lecture will take place in Workmen Circle Center, 1762 Beacon Street, Brookine, at 2:00 p.m., on Sunday, November 14, 1993. The lecture is cosponsored by the Workmen's Circle. Mr. Srebro added, "if you would like to become a member, by all means! Simply send in your name, address, and a check for $15.00 payable to Boston Yiddish Culture Club. You will then be notified directly of all future events, and will help us to continue our work keeping Yiddish culture alive in Boston. Unfortunately, many of our members have died in the past two years, and we need new members now more than ever. Thank You. Here is the address: Boston Yiddish Culture Club, c/o Zalman Srebro, 16 Wade Street, Brighton, MA 02135." Meyer David 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 2 13:51:10 1993 From: "Dr. Arthur Komar" Subject: shlofliedele A. Cassel fregt ibber die musik fun dos kinder shloflied Shlof,Shlof,Shlof. Loz men die folgene bashtimungen machen: upper case = quarter note lower case = eighth note lower case+^ (e.g. a^) = 16th note abc group = triplet eighth notes pipe | = measure bar & = flat (e.g. b& = b flat) (# would of course be sharp but it's not needed here) underline _ = tied notes (e.g. c_c = C) Dos lied gayt azoy: 4/4 | E A C_c c | eee aaa C_C | ca c a^a^ dd c_c^ c^ | | g g^g^ cb& aa A || The initial E is the lowest note and the d is the highest note. Ikh hof az alts iz itste gants klor. Men zol es dafke zayer layze un langsam zingen. Zol zayn mit mazl, Arre. Arthur Komar 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 2 15:10:10 1993 From: msavelev@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Melinda Saveleva) Subject: klezmer group I inadvertently deleted a message from a member of a klezmer group in Boston who was looking for a vocalist. Although I am not a vocalist, I am a memeber of a klezmer group in Lafayette, Indiana and was interested to see that their group included a mandolin player. I am currently trying to learn the mandolin for our klezmer group (I play keyboard), and would appreciate corresponding with the individual whom I accidently deleted. If you would be so kind as to contact me directly at msavelev@mentor.cc.purdue.edu I would very much appreciate it. Melinda Krushen 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 2 15:29:15 1993 From: David Braun Subject: a khoylem, a khoylem hot zikh mir gekhoylemt Wrt the khoylem issue, I might have something to add. I have noticed the same things about its realization in the same communities as Berl Hoberman has. I think it might be useful to look at "Revivalist Hebrew", i.e. the language that was being taught in the Hebrew schools in Europe before WWII, e.g. the Tarbut schools and the other school systems. As far as I know, the Modern Israeli (before it was Israeli) "Sephardic" pronunciation was used in the 1930's in bigger schools such as the Real-Gimnazye in Kovne, while a decade earlier, schools at least in the shtetlekh were teaching Ivris Ashkenazis, although with some new twists. For example, one informant of mine who went to a shtetl Hebrew school (I mean a Zionist school, not a kheyder) tells of learning Ivri's beIvri's, so note two things: the Ashkenazic [s] but the Modern Israeli/Sephardic stress pattern. Bialik's stress pattern is Ashkenazic mamesh. The kids in this school had the a/o distinction for komets and pasekh and the tov/sov distinction, but word-final stressgenerally. What was going on in the schools of the bigger cities I in the 1920s I don't know -- have no informants for that decade in, say, Kovne or Vilne. Now as for the khoylem, in the small town scenario (which, I'm sure, extended to some big cities as well), the khoylem was [oy] for davenen (because that's what the kids learned in the traditional kheyder, if they went, but in the Zionist school, it was [ow], just as it is/was taught in Orthodox English-speaking institutions in America. In those American Orthodox institutions where most of life is conducted in English but in which the Ashkenazic pronunciation is still prevalent and largely uninfluenced by Modern Israeli Hebrew, the komets is approximately the vowel sound in English _but_ and the khoylem-vov is the vowel sound in English _home_. Bekitser, the people who became the melamdim in the American Talmud-Torahs and American yeshivas probably came from that middle stage in which the [oy] was reserved for European davening, [o] was Palestine Hebrew to which few people had access, and [ow] was what was assumed to be what Ashkenazic (or Ashkenazic-like) Hebrew should sound like, if it were to have developed into the regularly spoken language. This dialect was spoken for a generation or two, I figure, but probably only outside Palestine, by the Zionist educate Eastern Europeans who then taught American children in Talmud Torahs and yeshivas. I hope this is somewhat clear, although as I read it over, it might be difficult to understand. I can't go back and correct mistakes easily on this machine... Oh well. Dovid Braun ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.127