Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.023 June 14, 1994 1) A really masterful hegdish!! (Dan Leeson) 2) Shabeysenakhts; Kinship terms; Names (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Shapiro (Arre Komar) 4) Shapiro (Dovid Braun) 5) Tsenerene (Kathryn Hellerstein) 6) Re: momzer-gonoruk (Kathryn Hellerstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 13:03:17 1994 From: leeson@cedar.fhda.edu Subject: A really masterful hegdish!! It takes extraordinary talent to screw up as many things in one Mendelnick posting as I did in my note about Singer. I referred to the right brother with the wrong name, the wrong brother with no name, etc. But now I know who it was I thought I was asking about because everybody figured out what it was I should have been saying instead of what I said. And the syntax of this last sentence is glorious in its total incomprehesibility. Then Ted Steinberg correctly jumped all over me for making reference to the "happy, happy Jews of Tevye the milkman." But I mention that I am a professional musician who has played "Fiddler" about a million times so my mindset about Tevye is always conditioned by a paycheck for playing klezmer-like on the bottle dance!!! When I stop playing the musical, I will have to completely reread the Sholem Aleichem stories to get my perspective back again. So, Ted, it was in this mindset that I was referring to the happy, happy Jews of the pale, which is exactly what one gets from the musical. And without doubt, the original shows a much more profound picture of the pale Jews. The only thing that I have played more than Fiddler is the Nutcracker ballet (about 50 times a year in December) and sometimes I get the two mixed up; i.e., the mouse fight is beginning to sound like "Matchmaker." But, striking back ferociously, no one has responed to my inquiry about Sholem Asch and why he has disappeared from sight so swiftly. His books "East River," "Moses," etc. were so very popular. Why did they go away so fast? His play, "Die Gott fun nekomen" (The God of Vengeance) was so powerful, perhaps an equal in shock value with The Dybbuk, and now one cannot even find it in libraries, much less see it on the stage. Is it true that Asch converted to Christianity? What happened to so eliminate him from the public scene? Dan Leeson 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 13:06:59 1994 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: 1) shabeysenakhts 2) Kinship terms 3) Names 1) Many thanks to the many who provided me with a variety of responses regarding the adverbial use of "nachts" in German. Curme's grammar, by the way, describes the form as an "old genitive". 2) Those interested in Yiddish kinship terms should ask Zachary Baker if he can have YIVO make photocopies of an old issue of "Working Papers" which containns an analysis of Yiddish kinship terminology by Beatrice S. Weinreich. 3) Shapiro, cognate with Speyer, is derived from the Romance/ Latin name of that city, Ashpira; hence, the final vowel. As for the name "Mintz", why assume that it derives from the place name "Mainz"? Try again! Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 13:15:55 1994 From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Shapiro I was puzzled by the recent note of Yude Rozof attributing the origin of the distinctively Jewish name Shapiro to the town of Shpayer. It was always my understanding that the name came from the Hebrew word sofer, i.e. scribe (the peh and feh being interchanged). Surely Jews having the occupation of scribe were far more ubiquitous than Jews from the town of Shpayer. Can anyone shed some more light on this? Arre Komar 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 22:03:13 1994 From: dovid@MIT.EDU Subject: Etymology of Shapiro I know that the standard line about the family name Shapiro is that it comes from the place name _Speyer_ in Germany. What's the reason to assume it is not the Ashkenazically pronounced Talmudic-Aramaic _shapiro_ 'the beautiful (one)'? Dovid Braun 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 18:13:20 1994 From: khellers@sas.upenn.edu Subject: Tsenerene ArtScroll Judaica Classics has a *Tz'enah ur'enah: THe Classic Anthology of Torah Lore and Midrashic Comment*, trans. Miriam Stark Zakon, Intro. Meir Holder (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications; Jerusalem: Hillel Press), 1983 (3 vol., paperback). back of title page says: "Published and distributed by MESORAH PUBLICATIONS, Ltd./ Brooklyn, NY 11223. Distributed in Israel by Merorah Mafitzim/ J. Grossman Rechov Bayit Vegan 90/5, Jerusalem, Israel. Good luck! Kathryn Hellerstein 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 12 18:51:26 1994 From: khellers@sas.upenn.edu (Kathryn Hellerstein) Subject: Re: momzer-gonoruk Does anyone know the meaning of the phrase: mamzer-gonoruk? (I've been asking people for years, but have never posted it on Mendele). The context is a poem by Kadya Molodowsky, and here is the stanza: Bay mir in hant tsvey federn fun a fazan. khotsh s'klingt dos vort fazan tsu fremd, tsu eydl. s'iz nisht vi mamzer-gonoruk, un shoyn avade nisht vi katshke-dreydl. es klingt ober vi traktor, bire, tayge -- verter muntere, bavofnte, un oysgetonene fun alter dayge. shtark un umgerikht aroysgeregnt -- ershte yidishe oytonome gegnt. The poem is about language and territory -- America and Birobidzshan -- Yiddish and memory... I understand the poem, and I've had some good, intelligent guesswork go into that phrase (mine and many others'), but no one can swear to its meaning. Someone came up with "gonorrheal bastard," maybe punning on "goner" (gander). I think it is a curse or epithet from Molodowsky's native shtetl Bereza-Kartuskay (in White Russia), or possibly from her adopted city of Warsaw (in the 1920s-1930s). But no one has been able to verify this guess for me. a sheynem dank. Kathryn Hellerstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.023 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu