Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.402 May 1, 1995 1) Introduction (Hershl Hartman) 2) Introduction (Morrie Feller) 3) Introduction (Sholem Berger) 4) Introduction (Pinkhes Pascal) 5) Introduction (Irving D. Goldfein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 13:15:24 -0400 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Introduction Since I've posted a few times and have had many responses--a sheynem dank alemen--I do suppose it's time to make it official. I am Hershl Hartman, now of Los Angeles, once of New York. I am the Educational Director of the Sholem Community Organization, affiliated with the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, and a member of the faculty of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. I am a graduate of the kursn far lerer un hekherer yidisher bildung, School for Teachers and Higher Jewish Education, an alumnus of Camp Kinderland, and was, in my youth, a reporter for the Yiddish daily newspaper, "morgn frayhayt." (After my first Mendele posting, I was reminded by someone I hadn't seen or heard from in almost 50 years that we had both been members of the Yiddish Theatre Ensemble, the successor to the fabled Artef, directed by Benyomin Zemach.) I have also translated many Yiddish works into English, including the first book-length g'vee'es eydes (eyewitness account) of the Holocaust, published in Munich in 1948, and Itzik Manger's "megile leeder." Enough already. Hershl Hartman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 11:08:04 -0700 (MST) From: feller@indirect.com Subject: Introduction I have been a subscriber and occasional contributor to Mendele for about six months, but I did not introduce myself. I am a retired chemist, retired Hebrew teacher, retired Yiddish teacher, and the Phoenix area zamler for the National Yiddish Book Center. I still maintain an active interest in the promotion of Yiddish by leading a small leyenkrayz and working with my wife who formed, and conducts, a Yiddish chorus at our temple. Our shames once responded very graciously to my previous request for information about how many members there are subscribing to Mendele. In view of his recent comments as to the number of new subscribers, I think it would be nice to know when we pass a milestome such "700" members, "800" members, etc. With respect to the comments about putting Yiddish on a CD-ROM, just today I have read about the Vatican's project in collaboration with IBM to put many of their rare books and manuscripts in a data base. This would allow much greater access to these treasures. Why not do the same for great, rare Yiddish classics (NYBC please note)? Morrie Feller Phoenix 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 11:51:03 -0700 (PDT) From: zdb@cco.caltech.edu Subject: Introduction Kedey tsu bakenen zikh mit aykh. ikh bin a eyn-un-tsvantsik-yoriker student, a biolog, bay "Caltech" (a visnshaftlekhe un teknologishe institut in kalifornie). mit finf-zeks yorn tsurik (ikh ken zikh nisht pinktlekh dermonen), hob ikh ongehoybn zikh oystsulernen yidish. tsum ershtn hob ikh gelernt zikh af katoves, bikhdey tsu oystsumaydn dem langvayl fun hayskul. ober bin ikh take gevorn a shtarker yidishist: ist pruv ikh shraybn mayselekh un poemen, redn mit alemen, un leyenen a sakh af yidish. mayne eltern redn nisht keyn yidish, un mayne zeyde-bobe, leyder, oykh nisht. ikh bin take a yidisher ben-yokhid in mishpokhe. (mayn gegebener nomen iz Zackary, ober af yidish ruf ikh zikh on sholem, vos iz mayn yidisher nomen). efsher veyst ir shoyn, az ikh greyt zikh ist zikh untertsunemen a lange rayze (af a gantser yor) keyn mizrekh-eyrope, kedey tsu batrakhtn dem yidishn oyfbli dortn: vi azoy ken men dertsien di kinder af a yidish- shprakhikn oyfn? ikh halt baym graduirn Caltech (akht-un-fertsik teg, ober ver tseylt op?). nokh eyrope, vel ikh zayn a student in program "doktor-dokter" ("M.D./Ph.D.") fun n.y.u. es khoylemt zikh mir a nayer yidisher zhurnal in nyu-york, satirish un baysik, glaykh vi di zhurnaln fun kadmonim. a sheynem dank ayer khovershaft. 's iz gut a khevruse tsu hobn mit velkhn tsu redn yidish. Sholem (Zack) Berger 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Apr 95 19:36:27 EDT From: 75332.2735@compuserve.com Subject: Introduction The request from our shames to new subcribers to provide an introduction has reminded me that I did not, to my recollection, do so when I arrived here at Mendele. If I actually did so, but have forgotten, ikh bet aykh zayt mir moykhl. Born in Winnipeg in 1947 of a Vays-Russishe Mame and a Canadian-born Rumeynisher Tate, I was sent to the Yiddish day school, I. L. Peretz Folk Shule for seven years. At that time, the school, which was called the Jewish Radical School when it was founded around 1914, was losing some of its dogmatic fire, happy simply to be a Jewish school existing in an encroaching sea of assimilation. There was a "competitor", the Sholem Aleikhem Shule, which was still doggedly a bastion of Bolshevism--at least that was how we saw it from our viewpoint. The first language of both my parents was Yiddish, but they never used it with each other. Outside of school, I used Yiddish only to communicate with my grandmother. I took some Yiddish courses at university, but it stayed pretty dormant until the last eight years or so, when I went travelling the world from time to time and found it incredibly useful, especially behind the late and unlamented Iron Curtain. Since I had close relatives in the Soviet Union, and have been otherwise engaged in pursuing family roots, Yiddish has helped me forge new and strong bonds mit mayne kroyvim un mit yidn umetum. A couple of anecdotes: my sister's Israeli friend, settled in Canada, had her mother visiting, and her only common language with my mother was Yiddish. Of course, the visitor's Yiddish was 50% Yiddish / 50% Hebrew, while my mother's was 50% Yiddish / 50% English. As a bystander who knew all three languages, I think I was the only one who actually understood what they were talking about; they themselves must have had only the vaguest idea what the other was saying. Still, they chattered away happily for hours! When I myself was living for a year in Israel, I would regularly visit the woman described above. At the time, my Peretz Shule Hebrew was shvakh, so we conversed in Yiddish. At some point during the year I realized we were no longer speaking Yiddish but Hebrew. It was a strange experience because I did not make a decision to switch; I only realized after the fact that it was now easier for me to speak Hebrew than Yiddish. In the years since then, my Hebrew has had plenty of reinforcement and it is probably true that despite my formal schooling, I speak Hebrew more fluently than Yiddish. But it gives me pause that, even so, I find Yiddish is easier to read to this day. A couple of months ago I submitted to Mendele a posting about a book I acquired last summer in my mother's home town of Slutsk (Belarus), called Noifes Tsufim, printed in 1850. Mendele subscribers were very helpful in clarifying for me what exactly I possessed. I would now like to tell about two much more recent books, which are also amazing--but amazing BECAUSE they are recent. The first I found in a Minsk bookstore, also last summer. It is a hardcover book called Rusish-Yidisher Vertbukh, printed in Moscow in 1989! It is very high quality for the USSR, at least in its format. I find it incredible that such a book should be published in such a place at such a time. The other book is probably known to many Mendelyaner, since it was edited by Uriel and Beatrice Weinreich, but it was new to me and still fascinates me. It is a Yiddish phrase book for travelers, called Say It in Yiddish. I bought it but a few years ago. It tells world travelers how to say such phrases as "please change the oil", "I have nothing to declare", and "I want to open a checking account", in Yiddish. It is a testimony either to the Weinreichs' optimism or to their sense of humor, that they could imagine situations in which the traveler might find (and know that he/she found) a Yiddish-speaking auto mechanic, customs officer, and bank clerk, on their trip abroad. And it is an endorsement of such optimism or sense of humor that such a book is still being sold--and bought. Paul (Pinkhes) Pascal Toronto 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 19:06:22 -0700 From: goldfein@ix.netcom.com Subject: Introduction Ikh "lurkeve" shoyn finf khadoshim (un hob groyss fargenign!): s'iz tseit zikh tsu forshteln. Born and raised in Toronto, 1948. Since they spent most of the war years as "guests" of Stalin's resorts in Siberia, my parents did not consider themselves to be survivors. Most of the family was murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto, Treblinka, the fields of Poland and the Ukraine, etc. First raised in Yiddish and Hebrew, acquired English in school ("the Associated") and on the streets. Community Hebrew Academy, Camp Revivim (HeHalutz HaTza'ir/DROR), Camp Ramah in Canada, University of Toronto, Tufts, Hebrew U.; M.Ed. (Instructional Media), Ph.D. (History Education); until '82 was principal of Jewish schools in Toronto, Brooklyn, and Rochester, NY., Hebrew instructor at U. of Rochester, etc. Since '82 have been running my own business as a producer of informational/educational film and video, and living with my wonderful wife (a psychotherapist) and three terrific teenage children (a gezunt oyf alle zeyere keppelekh), in Southfield, Michigan (meshuge darf men zayn..) During the last couple of years have moved into software development and multimedia projects, and have a new company called Media Judaica, Inc. Currently one of three partners in a new Israeli venture which has acquired the rights to produce the cd-rom version of the _Encyclopaedia Judaica_, and deeply involved in so doing. Tsu alle Mendelyaner, a freilekhn Yom Ha'Atzma'ut! Irving D. Goldfein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.402 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