Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.226
December 9, 1994

1) Buenos Aires, Part 2 (Zachary Baker)
2) Nit un nisht (Dvosye Bilik)
3) Tshepn zikh (Rick Turkel)
4) Yiddish editors (Kayle Goodman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 94 14:50:18 PST
From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu
Subject: Buenos Aires, Part 2

Here are some additional impressions of Jewish Buenos Aires, both
relating to the situation at YIVO-BA and in general.

For many years -- decades, really -- YIVO (or as it is spelled there,
IWO) was associated with the name Samuel Rollansky/Shmuel Rozhanski. Neil
Zagorin and I visited with Rollansky, who at age 92+ is house-bound and
physically ailing, but in full command of his mental faculties.
Rollansky, who built YIVO-BA as a cultural institution and as a research
resource, retired at age 90 and has not been back to Pasteur 633 since
before the bombing.  His successors are Argentine-born and educated.  The
head of the Board is Moyshe (Mauricio) Korin, who is also the director
(principal) of the Sholem Aleichem school.  The day-to-day affairs of
YIVO-BA are directed by Abraham Lichtenbaum, who until recently taught at
the Sholem Aleichem school.  Esther Szwarc, who directs the library and
archives, is also a former teacher at the Sholem Aleichem school (and at
other Jewish schools).  All three are young or youngish (by Yiddish-
speaking standards) and speak Yiddish fluently, with (in the case of
Lichtenbaum and Szwarc) a slight portenio lilt. Korin is a fine public
speaker, in both Yiddish and Spanish, and he and Lichtenbaum run a
Yiddish/Spanish radio program on Sunday evenings as well, at which Neil
and I put in a brief appearance.  (It's broadcast on a private radio
station whose reach extends to Greater Barrio Once, i.e., only within
portions of metropolitan Buenos Aires.)

The guest of honor at the radio station that evening was Lillian Lux, who
had been brought in to perform at a benefit concert on behalf of YIVO-BA,
which took place at the Teatro Astral on Tuesday November 22nd.  The
theater was filled to overflowing (over 1,000 seats), and more tickets
could have been sold had space been available to accommodate them.  The
literary evening consisted of poems, songs, monologues, and sketches from
plays, and was conducted entirely in Yiddish, and on a generally very
high level.  Three performers stick out in my memory:  Norman Erlich, who
did a marvelous rendition of a Dzigan monologue; Max Berliner, an
Argentine Jewish theatrical director who performed a touching monologue;
and Rosita Londner, an Argentine Yiddish cabaret performer, part of whose
one-person show we witnessed later on in the week.

Barrio Once, for those North Americans who have grown accustomed to life
in the suburbs, must be seen to be believed.  It is an urban district in
the very best sense of the term -- thickly populated, filled with small
shops, lots of pedestrian traffic, three cafes on every block.  While
fewer Jews live there than in previous decades, it still has the feel of
a Jewish district. Many of the stores are owned by Jews, and a fair
number of the most important Jewish institutions are located there,
including the Sociedad Hebraica Argentina (a kind of JCC or Jewish Y) and
of course the AMIA.  It is not hard to imagine, walking down those
streets, how easy it was for a bomb to claim close to a hundred victims.

The bombing has scarred Jewish Buenos Aires physically -- quite aside
from the crater that one sees on Calle Pasteur, now all of the Jewish
institutions have imposed strict security measures (concrete flower-pots
and other barriers block off vehicular access to the buildings, police
and other security forces guard each site, visitors must present I.D.
upon entering, unless they are recognized by security personnel stationed
at the entrances) -- and personally.  At a private family gathering to
which Neil and I had been invited, the victims of the bombing were
remembered in a candle-lighting ceremony.  I had the feeling that many of
those present had friends and acquaintances who were wounded or killed at
the AMIA.

That particular party was otherwise festive in mood; it was organized to
celebrate the 80th birthday of a woman whose family was active in Yiddish
Buenos Aires.  Her daughters took care of all of the arrangements:  Four
generations of the family were on hand, and when the band began to play,
the tunes ran the gamut from klezmer to Spanish pop.  For a North
American, it's quite an experience to participate in a Latin American
Jewish simkhe.  The synthesis of Yiddish and Spanish cultures is quite
spectacular in such settings.  Everyone knows how to dance the hora and
the bossa nova, and with kavone, or should we say gusto.  Quite a large
number of the 30- and 40-somethings whom we met at that party spoke to us
in an eminently passable Yiddish.

Still, in the view of the older generation, the position of Yiddish has
declined precipitously, to the point where there are no longer regular
theatrical presentations in the language, no more Yiddish newspapers are
published, and the "Yiddish" schools have virtually dropped the language
from the curriculum.  True, but for a visitor from afar, the glass looked
half full, at least in comparison with the situation back home.

One last tidbit which serves to illustrate how special a place Buenos
Aires is:  Early on in my visit I encountered a gentleman who told me
about a Yiddishist group to which he belongs, "vu mir shafn ale undzere
initsyativn."  Khavershaft (as the group is called) doesn't have a fixed
address; it has no officers; but every day a bunch of elderly men get
together at a cafe to speak Yiddish and (indeed) engage in meaningful
"kultur-arbet," by pooling funds to various ends -- including support for
YIVO-BA and the publication of books.  I am too young to remember the
Cafe Royale, but Yiddish cafe society (which has ceased to exist in these
parts) lives on in Buenos Aires.

All in all, it was a most memorable trip, both in terms of the formal
mission and in terms of the friendships forged during my brief time
there.  All the same, as I departed Buenos Aires I could only wish that
my next visit there -- whenever that might happen -- occur under happier
circumstances.  As they say, Nor af simkhes.

Zachary Baker

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 94 12:34 EST
From: dorothy_bilik@umail.umd.edu
Subject: Nit un nisht

Arise, you Litvaks,Litvakes!

What does Dovid Braun mean those pseudo litvaks who use 'nit' un 'nisht'
interchangeably?! As a double digit Litvatshke--Mame fun Lahoysk Tate fun
Zembrove where the older siblings spoke NE before WW1 and the younger
ones and SW after-I think I remember hearing such interchangeable use
throughout.

Dvosye Bilik

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 94 18:06:15 EST
From: rturkel@cas.org
Subject: tshepn zikh

Paul Pascal wrote in mendele 4.211 of finding "cacko" (< Heb.
"tsa`atsu`a) in a Polish-English dictionary.  That's not the only
instance of Hebrew words making it into Polish.  I can't recall any
specific examples, but from time to time I, too, have found similar
borrowings in my Stanislawski's _Great Polish-English Dictionary_.  It
just shows to what degree Jewish culture had been integrated into Polish
culture before WWII.

Rick Turkel

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 15:34:09 -0800
From: ac939@lafn.org
Subject: Yiddish editors

Tayere Mendelyaner.  I must write this in English since my Yiddish simply
won't translate into computereze.  I'm having a difficult time finding a
Yiddish program to fit my needs. They are the following:  The program to
work in Windows with scalable fonts (Trutype generally is scalable); must
have both BLOCK and CURSIVE; must be able to work both in English and
Yiddish on one screen; and can be imported into my work processor
(amipro).  Gamma has such a program but does not include the CURSIVE.  Is
it possible to work with a Hebrew program such as Davka sells and add the
few macros that Yiddish needs such as the double 'vav', the double 'yud'
for the ay sound the beys and veys and the pey and fey. How would someone
be able to get those macros integrated into a Hebrew program?  I look
forward to hearing from anyone and everyone who can have some kind of an
answer for me. Ikh vel dos zeyer opshatsn.  A sheynem daynk.

Kayle Goodman

______________________________________________________
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