Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.232 February 13, 1994 1) Various (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 12 18:12:14 1994 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: Various Subjects: 1. Yiddish and Genetics!! 2. Judezmo and Genetics; gene flow. 3. Yiddish and Thieves' Cant. 4. Shmontses 5. Judeo-Greek 6. History of Yiddish 7. Etc. Reb Noyekh, I'd like to appeal your recent ban on the fascinating discussion of Jewish history, genetics, etc. My reference to "Yiddish and genetics" is not simply a case of "elephants and the Jewish problem" (Is that still an easily understood expression?). It's REAL!! [What can a shames answer? The kherem is lifted. nm] Let me report on matters of some interest (if only of limited significance). 1. YIDDISH AND GENETICS. In the mid 1960's, Time Magazine ran a piece on the presumed cause of the Tay-Sachs disease mutation some time in the middle ages. It was my first encounter with the matter, but it coincidentally (?) it was followed almost immediately (or, perhaps, preceded) by another: a telephone call from one, Dr. Stanley Aronson, of downstate Medical College in NYC who had encountered a telephone listing for the "Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry". made to order, right? ATLAS and ASHKENAZIC JEWRY. Uriel Weinreich and I subsequently met with Drs. Aronson and others whom some of will recognize as prominent geneticists: Ntinos Myrianthopolous of NIH, Victor McCusick, Peter Brunt, engagedin a study of T-S and other "Ashkenazic Jewish" hereditary diseases of the central nervous system. Atlas, they said. Could we a) identify the places of origin of the generally immigrant grandparents of T-S children? b) Could we help determine whether the geographic distribution of the birthplaces of T-S ancestors reflected the geographic distribution of origins of the American Jewish community in general, or was it rather skewed with respect to it? I should say, in general, that it was my distinct impression that the very act of posing the questions this way (and the effort engendered thereby) had previously been considered taboo, and were something of a breakthrough, breached the constraints of political correctness that they believed had impeded earlier research on this and other hereditary diseases by precluding questions of race and ethnicity. In any event we encountered considerable difficulty in interpreting the available data. Suffice it to say that an answer to question b) was beyond our ken; on the other hand, a) yielded interesting results. We plotted the geographic origins of the European ancestors of a number of related syndromes (all heavily Ashkenazic: Tay-Sachs, Niemann-Pick, Reilly-Day). For the naive, like me, it was a miracle that any of us had escaped unscathed; more interesting: when the birthplaces of the relevant ancestors was plotted on the map of Central and Eastern Europe, lo and behold, the the diseases themselves were largely in geographically complementary distribution; furthermore, the concentration of occurrences were such that the lines that appeared to mark the significant geographic limits of each of the diseases with respect to the others seemed uncannily, but NOT surprisingly, to resemble the borders that delimit the traditionally defined language and culture boundaries as determined from our study of Yiddish dialect data alone. I'm NOT qualified to talk about statistical significance of correlations, but my "khush" tells me that the correlations that did emerge were not due to chance. Somewhere, I may still have access to the slides that accompanied our presentation to the American Neurological Association ("Proceedings", 1967: 117-121). An attempt to suggest some of the significance of these correlations is incorporated in my aricle in "Genetic Diseases Among Ashkenazi Jews" (ed by Richard M. goodman and Arno Motulsky), 1979: 47-57. As an aside, I should add that I expect Dr. Reuben Matalon of the Research Institute at Miami's Children's Hospital to provide me with demographic data for Canavan Disease so that we may continue this effort. 2. JUDEZMO AND GENETICS. During the summer of 1967, I was a member of an anthropological research team in Aruba (The joke was no joke then. "Aruba? Where's that? I don't know, I flew.") I spent six weeks "exploring the possibilities for research in the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Bonnaire, Curacao)," something I was not able to follow up, thereafter. Among other things, I wondered if it might be possible to retrieve Sefardic or Converso influences in Papiamentu, the Spanish based Creole of the ABC islands. Encounters with people from Surinam suggested that similar questions might be asked about Taki-Taki, the English based Creole of that country. Nothing came of these issues but, I returned to NYC much wiser about a number of other things. The "herem d'rabeynu gershom" that banned polygamy among Ashkenazim, did not apply in that society. Monogamy, perhaps, yes but explicitly accompanied by widespread concubinage practised both by the Jews and by the Dutch. The difference between them was apparently the fact that the Jews gave their names (more or less) to the (often considerable number of) non-Jewish children of their concubines and, often, took responsibility for their education. The Dutch were said not to have done so. Keep in mind that this was (is?) Dutch territory; order and record keeping was the rule. Every inhabitant, "white, olive- skinned, and black) had a carefully kept ID car which recorded a long geneological record. A number of us visited a family in the "Cunuco" (the backwoods). Mother (Indian squaw-looking), father, many children and grandchildren (people "of color"), seated or standing around a large living room, bedecked with every kind of Catholic icon. Family name? Maduro, one of the most frequent family names on the island. Familiar? Well, the Jewish branch of the family, the Levi-Maduros has/had? its seat on Curacao. (Amsterdam's "Madurodam" is their doing".) Through an interpreter, the parents related to us that in earlier years, when their children were growing up, neighbors would often prevent their own children from playing with "those Jewish Maduros". (Funny you don't look Jewish). In any event, this is clearly an instance of considerable gene outflow. 3. THIEVES' CANT. Martin Luther, no friend of the Jews under the best of circumstances, asserted that Jews constituted a significant component of the German underworld. True or not, Jewish social contacts in Germany were more likely to have been with the lower classes than with the knightly court, and there is considerable linguistic evidence to support this, not the least of which is the underworld. Whether introduced by Jews or simply borrowed from them, it's no surprise that the non-German component of Jewish speech could serve for cryptic purposes, particularly, but not exclusively in a German-speaking environment. Hence, the many Hebrew-origin words in thieves' cant--Rotwelsch (and in the German vernacular) to which dictionaries are devoted. Hence (probably) the interest in Yiddish of the former police chief of Luebeck, Ave-Lallement, whose 4 volume 18th century work "Das deutsche Gaunertum" devotes one and one-half friendly, significant volumes to a grammar, chrestomathy, dictionary of Yiddish. I need only add that there appears to be a universal aspect to thieves' cant and its possible relationship to Yiddish, as reported, for example, by people studying the lingo of the British underworld. Then there's Mencken, no? 4. SHMONTSES. Possibly another example of the nasalization of ayin; related to "shmues". Don't hold me to it. 5. JUDEO-GREEK. Kalmen Weisser: i) See also, Paul Wexler on pre- Ashkenazic jewish settlements in "From Shtetl to Socialism: Studies from Polin" ed. by Antony Polansky, London and Washington, 1993. ii) As Zachary Baker, YIVO librarian (on this network, too) if he can provide you with the address (in England, I believe) for Brad Sabin Hill, who is still sitting on a treasure which he himsel compiled some years ago; probably the most (only?) comprehensive bibliography of Judeo-Greek in existence. He should be urged to publish it. 6. HISTORY OF YIDDISH. a) Bob King: I would join in the plea that you take the time to elucidate some of the things you've published elsewhere. My own question to you would be to list those significant features which you find that Yiddish shares with Bavarian German that are exclusive to Bavarian German, that might not also be features of the German Southwest. b) For those engaged in the fascinating discussions of recent weeks, I must confess to some confusion. I find some of the categories we`ve been discussing somewhat elusive. These are not rhetorical questions and I address them to anyone who cares to respond: -Do "Eastern European Jews" constitute a different category from "Jews in Eastern Europe"? -How does one or the other correspond to "Ashkenazic Jews"? -Where do "German Jews" fit into the picture? -Can Ashkenazic Jewish population growth in medieval Europe be explained without invoking either a significant pre-existing Jewish population, culturally submerged by their eastward moving brethren or, significant conversion? If it`s of interest: Except for its occurrence in the Bible (referent unknown), the term Ashkenaz probably appears for the first time in Europe as a designation for Jewish merchants from the East (Armenia?) who moved westward and gave their name to the western Jews among whom they settled? As for why it was then applied to Germany, blaybt a kashe! There's no lack of "cockamamie" unconvincing theories for that one. 7. ETC. Two questions under this heading: a) Is there a native or near-native Yiddish speaker in the College Park/DC area who would be interested in tutoring an advanced graduate student? If yes, please make yourself known on Mendele or directly to me. For what it's all worth. I guess I've got to stop. Sorry to have gone on so long. Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.232 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files