Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.300 April 9, 1996 1) A total list of Yiddish newspapers (Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 2) Another Singer Novel? (Charles Siegel) 3) Some translation queries (Joseph Sherman) 4) More on _shlogn kapores_ (Leonard Prager) 5) Bashevis was right! (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 18:40:59 -0400 From: reyzl@aol.com Subject: A total list of Yiddish newspapers [David Herskovic] asked [5.289] for a total list of Yiddish newspapers and publications. I would like to add to Daniel Soyer's response to this inquiry. The first issue of the "Yiddish1" newsletter I wrote and published in November, 1994 when I was the executive secretary of the Congress of Jewish Culture and which contained a list of all Yiddish newspapers and publications, has had some changes. Several newspapers have ceased publications and several new ones have either arisen or come to my attention. I will be publishing a whole new list in the next issue of "Global Yiddish/Alveltlekh Yiddish", a similar bilingual newsletter I now write at/for the Workmen's Circle. I also hope to annotate the new list more than I did in "Yiddish1". As for when this list would be available, all I can say is that third class mail is so erratic (anywhere from 5 days to 7 weeks) that I can't predict when it will arrive at any one place. But I think/hope it will still be spring. For anyone who would like to subscribe to this attractive and completely bilingual newsletter, e-mail me your snail mail address at either of my e-mail addresses. Second, I am assembling 2 international lists right now, one of Yiddish teachers and one of Yiddish festival organizers or public programmers at synagogues, Jewish Centers, organizations, etc. anywhere in the world. If you belong or know of people who belong to either group, I would appreciate hearing about it. Getting their e-mail addresses would be critically important. A dank aykh alemen, Un a koshern, freylekhn peysakh, Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 21:10:56 EDT From: 75522.1457@compuserve.com Subject: Another Singer Novel? According to Isaac Bashevis Singer's autobiographical _Love_and_Exile_, he wrote a novel that was serialized in the Forvarts when he first came to America. He used the same method that he had used to write _Satan_In_Goray_ in Warsaw: he gave the newspaper the first few installments in advance, and continued to write the novel as it was being published. He says he had trouble finishing this novel, and was not satisfied with the way it turned out, but that the Forvarts published it all, despite its problems. He never mentions the name of this novel in _Love_and_Exile_. Does anyone know if it has ever been published in book form? Or is this a "forgotten" novel of Singer's, waiting to be found in the Forvarts' archives??? It would not be hard to find. I believe he published it under the pseudonym of Warshavsky. It appeared when he first came to America -- which seems to be 1936 according to the rather vague chronology of _Love_and_Exile_, but which is 1935 according to the blurb on one of his book's covers. Charles Siegel 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 08:39:54 GMT + 2:00 From: 071JOS@muse.arts.wits.ac.za Subject: Some translation queries May I pick the brains of learned Menelyaner for information on the following problems I have encountered in a translation project I am currently engaged on? 1. One sentence refers to an explanation given in the Gemara about why Jacob, in fleeing from Esau, crossed the Jordan a second time. It was, the Yiddish text before me says, so that Jacob could rescue a few _krigelekh_ (or _krinelekh_ -- the typeface is very poor). Now what are these? Some sort of livestock? Needless to say, no dictionary lists these words. 2. In another passage, a woman tells her lover that now that they have been reunited they must get drunk because "Haynt iz Rabi Reb Tsotses yortsayt". A delightful phrase, but how is it to be rendered in English? And where does it come from? All information on this fascinating idiom will be most gratefully received. Joseph Sherman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Apr 96 23:06:38 IST From: rhle302@uvm.haifa.ac.il Subject: More on _shlogn kapores_ It is not a good idea to send notices to Mendele in the middle of the night from a notebook computer with a miniscule screen. (What a lame excuse!) I just discovered that in my notice on _Rav Peninim_ in Vol. 5.293, I sloppily copied the crucial introductory sentence to the tkhine I commented on and I left out _erev_ before _yonkiper_! and didn't even realize it. Moreover, in my subsequent reply in Vol. 5.297 I wrote _batog_ instead of _fartog_ and still had not discovered my omission of. _erev_ in the original notice (5.293). The best opinion regarding _shlogn kapores_ seems to agree that the dawn (_fartog_) is the optimum hour. This would of course be on _erev yonkiper_, which is the day before Yom Kippur (i.e., the day of the Evening of Yom Kippur). Since a pre-dawn hour is also sometimes chosen, Pyetrushke's "night" does not contradict the view that the general time is "fartogs erev-yonkiper" (as succinctly worded by one of our knowledgeable Mendelyaner). Leonard Prager 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Apr 96 From: nmiller@shakti.trincoll.edu Subject: Bashevis was right! There _are_ mazikim and sheydim in the world. The proof was on your screens a few hours ago: individual messages from various Mendelyaner which (rightly) elicited protests from busy people who prefer not to have their screens cluttered up with mail and therefore prefer the way we've done things since the beginning. What happened? I'm not sure. Mephistopheles, caught in the pentagram, complains: "Der eine Winkel, der nach aussen zu,/ Ist, wie du siehst, ein wenig offen." Might have been some incantation I tried with the listserver. Apologies to all. This being peysekh, I'm reminded that my friend the late Emanuel Geltman (a friend of Yiddish and of many other good causes) used to talk about a "sheynyeydelishl". That puzzled me for a while until I realized that I was talking to a card-carrying Litvak (among other good causes). Anyway, in his memory I declare myself to be a sheynyeydelishl in all things having to do with computers. As though you needed to be told. The slowdown has been getting worse and I conveyed this message with some difficulty to Trinity's computerniks. No answer. Finally I called Khayem Bochner who in 15 seconds diagnosed the problem and named the link in the chain that was broken. And as he spoke a message arrived from Trinity's archimandrite with exactly the same information. Volt men gekent meynen: oyb azoy iz shoyn gut! A nekhtiker tog. Vos toyg dos visn vu der hunt ligt bagrobn ven men tut gornit mitn keylev? Nu, meyle. Tayere fraynt: geduld. A breyre hot men? Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.300