Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 3.220
February 8, 1994

1) Yiddish literature (Steve Silbert)
2) Genetic markers (Ellen Prince)
3) Card-playing, pishe-peyshe (Neach Zide)
4) Synagogues in Italy (Zev Bar-Lev)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Feb  7 18:51:56 1994
From: Steve Silbert <ssilbrt@automata.com>
Subject: Yiddish Literature

My Zeyde's 84th birthday was yesterday and during a telephone
conversation with him, I determined that he would love four things
at this point in his life.

1.  He misses his wife (Bubbe) who died over Thanksgiving.  It's
    sort of odd talking to him and having the question "When are you
    going to come and visit US?" pop up in conversation.

2.  He wants a sports car (he just bought a '93 Grand Am).

3.  He misses reading books in Yiddish.  I read in Mendele not too
    long ago about a book store in NYC that sells Yiddish language
    books.  Could some one please forward the name and telephone
    number of this place to me?

4.  He would really like to converse with some one in Yiddish. Zeyde
    lives in Augusta, GA, which is not a haven for the Yiddish
    maven.  The last person from which he regularly received letters
    from in Yiddish has been gone for ten years now.  It takes me
    about one week of spare time to translate enough English into
    Yiddish to make up a paragraph.  If there are any kind souls who
    would like to send a letter in Yiddish to my Zeyde, please drop
    me an email (Oh, I forgot that this is the Yiddish listing and
    not the Jewish guilt listing).

Steve Silbert

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Feb  7 19:55:46 1994
From: "Ellen F. Prince" <ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: genetic markers

jascha kessler:

the case of the jews of kaifeng is fascinating, but of course it's
not really a parallel to the european jewry situation: the jews of
kaifeng simply intermarried in ever increasing numbers and gradually
gave up their jewish identity altogether; from what we (at least i)
know of european jewry, the ancestors of those who still identify as
jews did not intermarry as the norm or even in very large numbers,
at least not in RECENT TIMES. yet a good number of them look as
indistinguishable from their slavic/... neighbors as the descendants
of the kaifeng jews look from their chinese ones. there's the
mystery.

btw, i believe several thousand ethnic chinese from vietnam have by
now settled in israel, not just the 200 original boat people israel
took in. (a brokhe oyf zeyere kepelekh--they've done wonders for
chinese restaurants in israel!) perhaps one of the israeli
mendelniks (or anyone else) can give us a more precise figure.

ellen prince

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Feb  7 21:53:21 1994
From: n-zide@uchicago.edu
Subject: card-playing, pishe-peyshe

  About pishe-peyshe, pretty much like Kessler and others: it was
the first card game learned - at c age four or five - from my mother
(I had no older brothers or sisters) - probably to occupy me when I
was sick. It wasn't - cf Kessler - a game a man (e.g. my father)
would play. Then on to cassino, also largely a woman's and child's
game. Then rummy, then pinochle.

  Given the importance of card-playing (East European shetl style,
and the immigrant continuations) there must be depictions (in
Yiddish, English, in paintings) of this. Can anyone steer me to
some. Nobody - or did I miss this -has given the rules for playing
pishe-peyshe, although the last contribution I read was from
somebody who seemed to know them. How do you play ? Holdings on card
games at YIVO, Zachary Baker ?

Neach/ Norman Zide

4)-----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Feb  7 17:33:08 1994
From: zbarlev@zeus.sdsu.edu
Subject: Synagogues in italy

the big one in florence merits special visit.

(of course i don't need to mention the ghetto in venice for
interesting visiting.)

Zev bar-Lev

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End of Mendele Vol. 3.220

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