Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.399 April 28, 1995 1) Khutspe (Yude Rozof) 2) Argentine YIVO update (Moyshe-Zekharye Beker) 3) Moyshe Oysher (Shimen Kass) 4) Hotzmakh (Shoshana Balaban-Wolkowicz) 5) Ongepatchket, umgepatcht (Keyle Goodman) 6) To new subscribers (Noyekh Miller) 7) Yiddish on cd-rom (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 13:34:24 -0400 (EDT) From: jrosof@sas.upenn.edu Subject: Khutspe Regarding Gaston Schmir's story about Rosovsky and khutspe, I, also a Rosof (Rozovski in der alter heym), was reminded of another fine expression which has not entered Yinglish, but which never the less has some real yidisher tam, and livens up our yidish shebeyidish: _Yandes_! Vi azoy hot er gehat dos _Yandes_ (di gal) dos tsu ton? Yandes, spelled yud-alef-nun-dalet-ayin-samekh, is derived originally as far as I know from ya'ades: yud-hey-dalet-vov-sov. It is doubly interesting: linguistically and sociopsychologically. Linguistically, we are presented with another example of the reduction to n phenomenon as in yankev, and maynse. In the past on this group, we hypothesized that this n might be related to an old pronunciation of ayin, noting that in Italy the ayin has been pronounced gn (/ny/). Here however, there is no ayin. It would seem that the operative element is therefore the double-a, seperated by a glottal stop (in this case, the hey reduces to an alef). On the sociopsychological level, we have a bit of folk wisdom: Se'shve:er tsi za:n a yi:d: it takes real khutspe to be a Jew: it is an act of defiance almost: a refusal to back down. In this age of asimilatsye, it's too easy to forget our special yandes, and allow ourselves to be subsumed in the broader less firy category of khutspe. But yandes, and zayn a yid, is more than mere khutspe, because there is another translation of this perl fun der yidisher shprakh: conscience. Iz, raboysay, nat aykh a bisl yandes! Yude Rozof 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Apr 95 14:30:27 PDT From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Argentine YIVO update In hayntikn post hob ikh bakumen a briv (aroysgeshikt dem 11tn april) fun Avrom Likhtenbaum (Abraham Lichtenbaum), dem direktor fun argentiner YIVO (IWO). Er shraybt, tsvishn andern: "Undzer arbet baym tsurik organizirn di biblyotek iz in fuln gang. Dervayl hot di biblyotek ongehoybn tsu funktsyonirn in [tsaytvaylikn] binyen fun der kehile.... Undzer arbet normalizirt zikh. Mir hobn shoyn tsugegreyt a plan far farsheydene kultur-unternemungen (lektsyes, kontsertn, referatn un video-filmen oyf yidishe temes tsu prozhektirn) farn yor 1995. Es funktsyonirn shoyn 3 yidish- kursn un es kumen for trefungen fun undzere yidish-krayzn. Yedn zuntik in ovnt gibn mir durkh radyo 'Di naye yidishe sho', tsu velkher es hern zikh tsu hunderter mentshn." Moyshe-Zekharye Beker New York 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 19:42:16 EDT From: kass@umbsky.cc.umb.edu Subject: Moyshe Oysher More on Moyshe Oysher. My father, who hailed from Britchon, Bessarabia, claimed Moyshe Oysher as a landsman, partially authenticted by the fact that Moyshe owed him five dollars, borrowed in his early days in America. Shimen Kass 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 21:16:19 -0700 From: shoti@eworld.com Subject: Hotzmakh Itzik Manger hot farfast a teater=pyese velkhe trogt dem nomen: Hotzmakh-Shpil. Oyb ikh makh nit kayn toes is in 3 actn. es hot oikh in ir lider mit prekhtike musik es iz basirt in Goldfadens Kishufmakherin -- ober ingantzn an andern shpil. khbin zoikher geven tzu leienen a vidmung alein geshribn fun Mangern oif a bukh farn actior Max Bozyk : Fan mayn ershter Hotzmakh. Shoshana Balaban-Wolkowicz 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 03:41:58 -0700 From: ac939@lafn.org Subject: Ongepatchket, umgepatcht A friend asked for the derivation of umgepatcht. I'm not sure whether he meant ongepatcht, ongepatchket. When I asked what he meant, he was not sure and asked whether there was a connection between the two. Can anyone help? A hartsikn grus ale mendelyaners. Keyle Goodman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: To new subscribers (though veterans may read as well) There have been so many new subscribers recently that the shames has fallen behind in sending out a personal welcome. Please forgive the oversight. Part of that welcome message asks that newcomers post an introduction. The introductions have in fact become a Mendele tradition, so much so that Anno Siegel has kindly taken on the job of keeping a who-is-who file current. Di untershte shure: please send us a note and tell us who you are. We are a family and we ought to know one another. Noyekh Miller 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: Yiddish on cd-rom We had a request not long ago (4.393) about Yiddish cd-roms for teaching purposes. A good question. Which gives rise to another: how hard would it be to transfer to cd-rom a large number if not all of our Yiddish literary treasures? If for fifty dollars one can buy a cd-rom containing Tanakh and the Babylonian Talmud together with Rashi, why should one not be able to get all of Mendele, Sholem Aleikhem, Peretz, Reisen, Bergelson, the Singers, and the rest? Not to mention the much harder-to- find essayists, journalists, critics, pamphleteers whose work is largely ignored today and without whom we will never begin to understand the vanished world. I assume that the technical problems are not insuperable. I'm sure that the resulting archive, available in every library and to every lover of Yiddish, would be priceless. Whoever were to take on such a project would be in simple truth acting l'shem shomayim. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.399 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. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu