Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.184 November 14, 1994 1) Patshe-patshe kikhelekh (Shikl Fishman) 2) Shprintse < Esperanza (Zellig Bach) 3) Bunke vs. lyak (Dovid Braun) 4) Bunke, lyak, Grajevo (Abe Bloom) 5) Prokofiev Overture on ???? themes (Dan Leeson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 15:14:31 -0500 (EST) From: jfishman@aecom.yu.edu Subject: patshe-patshe kikhelekh: yidishe vertershpiln far kleynvarg In shaykhes mit miki safadis (un Marion Herbst's) onfreg vegn patshe-patshe kikhelekh un andere yidishe vertershpiln far kleynvarg, hobn Gele Fishman un Beyle Gotesman mikh gebetn ibergebn az zey haltn in tsugreytn tsum druk a zamlung fun etlekhe tuts azelke vertershpiln (mit transliteratsiyes un iberzetsungen). Zey betn alemen zey tsutsu- shikn vertershpiln vos zenen zey bakant (shikn af mayn "ayen-post"- adres) un zey zogn tsu ontsugebn di nemen fun ale tsushikers vemens vertershpiln zey veln araynnemen in zeyer zamlung. Shikl (Joshua) Fishman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 19:23:38 -0500 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: Shprintse < Esperanza Meyshe-Yankl Sweet (4.180,6) asks for additional references on the etymology of Shprintse: Maurice Samuel, in his _In Praise of Yiddish_ (p. 27), also suggests that it derives fron Esperanza (hope). He characterizes her as "a lively good-natured daughter of an orthodox unpretentious household..." Zellig Bach 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 00:32:39 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: bunke vs. lyak A datum for Mikhl Herzog, from Harkavy's Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary (1928): bunke - a kind of jug with a narrow neck; (H.) min kad im tsavar tsar lyak - narrow-mouthed earthen vessel; (H.) kli kheres im tsavar tsar Dovid Braun 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 10:46:32 -0500 From: abebloom@aol.com Subject: bunke, lyak, grajevo In 4.175 Dovid Braun wrote about pronunciation of bunke and about lyak as spoken by yidn from the Grajevo area, near Byalistok. I was shocked and surprised that the shtetl that my parents migrated from in 1905 would turn up in Mendele. As a side-light, we always believed that the town was wiped out during WWII. Surprisingly not, because my sister (who I hope will read this in Mendele from her house in Long Island) had employed a woman, part of a group of Grajewo women, who came here to work in houses so that they could send money and goods back home in Poland. She was informed that the town was thriving and consisted of about 15,000 people (a far cry from the dirt road shtetl with its 'mark' in the central part of the town). To get back to the words, "bunki" or "lyak", I have no recollection of either word being used. Good to hear from a second generation landsman. I doubt that anyone would know or recall, but my father's name then was Byalishevski and my mother's Buzinsky. Abe Bloom 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 21:27:46 EST From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu Subject: Prokofiev Overture on ???? themes I wish to thank all of those who spent time and trouble getting my head shaped correctly with respect to what title of the Prokofiev "Overture On Hebrew/Yiddish/Jewish Themes" is the most appropriate. Of particular delight to me was a sentence in Dvorah Biasca's detailed response which read "'Yiddish' is the English equivalent of 'Hebrew' in Russian." That one left my head spinning for it is rare for a single sentence of only 9 words to contain the names for 4 different languages. I had to think about that for quite a while before all parts of it sat correctly. Soreh Benor indicated that Prokofiev denied the music's Jewishness while Arre Komar stated that he used a very well known Yiddish folk song "Zayzhe dir gezunt mayne tayer eltern" which he is said to have been taught by his room-mate in NY, Boris Tomashevsky (more on him in a moment). And I was advised that the music was no known Jewish song or songs but was, instead, created for the composition by the clarinetist Simeon Bellison, formerly 1st clarinet in the NY Philharmonic. Finally Howie Aronson glued it all together with a very cogent description of how one speaks about Jews in Russian. It was all very helpful and I am most appreciative, but I am left with two problems, or I should say two questions: whatever the translation, what is a 'Hebrew' theme, or what is a 'Yiddish' theme? Jewish music I can speak about with some intelligence, but Yiddish music and/or Hebrew music are terms that have no definition. I am not referring to music which happens to have words in either Yiddish or Hebrew, but music that may be identified because it has the characteristic of being Yiddish or Hebrew, and I don't know what that is. If I were to sing "All the things you are" in Yiddish, that would not make it Jewish music. And the tune "Bay mir bist du sheyn" only made it to the top of the charts when it became an American song sung by the Andrew sisters, though it still retained enough of its Jewish character that everyone speaks of it in this sense, not as a WW2 pop song. If I play the 'Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto' of Arnold Schoenberg, that is clearly music by a Jew about Jews, but is it Jewish music? Certainly the nazis thought so. They referred to his music in this pejorative fashion. If I play 'Hebrew Rhapsody' for cello and orchestra, I play a work that has a recognizable Jewish character because the tune is part of liturgy, is sung by a cantor at the time of Yom Kippur, but is it Hebrew music? If I play "Di grine kuzine" am I playing Yiddish music (because it happens to have Yiddish lyrics) or is it Jewish music? And if it is Jewish music, what makes it more Jewish than say, the Mozart Requiem? In fact, the Mozart Requiem was considered sufficiently Jewish with respect to one fugue (Quam olim Abrahae promisisti = From the seed of Abraham-we were promised) that the nazis changed the text during performances of the work during WW2. Precisely what is the characteristic of music that allows it to be called 'Jewish', much less Yiddish or Hebrew? I suspect that this is a question more for an ethnological/musicological bulletin board, but you gotta' start someplace. Let me end with my Boris Tomachefsky story, please. The new conductor of the San Francisco symphony is Michael Tilson Thomas, grandson of the famous Yiddish actor, and at a concert I did with him in NY a long time ago, I told him the following joke about his grandfather: Tomachefsky was doing Hamlet in NY. In the middle of the soliloquy, "Tsu zayn -- nisht tsu zayn" he turned red in the face and fell to the floor! The curtains came down in mid scene and a half hour went by before the theater manager came out and said to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, it grieves me to tell you that our star, the world-famous Boris Tomachefsky, has died." GASP!!! And from the balcony a voice shouts out, "Give him an enema!" The theater manager says, "Sir. Perhaps you did not hear me. Mr. Tomachefsky is not ill. He is dead." Same voice shouts, "Give him an enema." "Sir," says the theater manager, "it will not help." The voice shouts down, "It wouldn't hurt." Michael enjoyed the joke about his grandfather. Dan Leeson ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.184 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. 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