Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.045 July 30, 1996 1) Dos Talisl (Chana and Yosl Mlotek) 2) Dos Talisl (Heynekh Sapoznik) 3) Non-standard Yiddish (Eliyahu Juni) 4) Yiddish names needed (Hershl Hartman) 5) The defeminization of Yiddish (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan) 6) Yiddish women writers (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 22:02:44 -0400 From: chaniyos@aol.com Subject: Dos talesl With respect to Bernard Katz' inquiry about the line "ober bloyz dem talis nemt er nit" - the line comes from the refrain of the famous song by Solomon Smulewitz-Small "Dos Talesl", as Bob Rothstein has indicated. Although Smulewitz or Shmulevitch wrote words and music to many songs, including the popular "A brivele der mamen," music to this song was written by the composer team Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl. Rothstein cited a copy of the sheet music dated l9l2. At YIVO we have songsheets dated l906, l921, l960. We also have the Smulewitz manuscript Collection in the YIVO Archives, consisting of some 200 songs. "Dos talesl" was sung in the play "Der yid in Sobyeskis tsaytn". I am quoting the refrain from Smulewitz" book "Lider", NY l9l3: Dos talesl iz nor dos eyntsike kleyd, / Far dem yidn in zayn freyd un leyd. / Fun zayn geburtstog biz in keyver / Geyt es mit im mit. / Vert iberal geyogt, / Zayn lebn iz geplogt, / Ales vos er farmogt, / Nemt men tsu fun yid, / Ales, ales, nor dem tales, / Dos nemt men nit./ Neyn, neyn, neyn, neyn!. Chana and Yosl Mlotek 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 00:06:32 -0400 From: sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Dos Talisl The song "Dos Talisl" was composed by Solomon Smulewitz (w) with music by the team of Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl for the 1906 show "Der Yid in Sabiesky's Tsaytn". The song was one of the first major hits of the American Yiddish stage and was recorded by several stars of the Yiddish theater including Kalman Juvelier, William Schwartz and even Smulewitz himself (although his 1906 recording of it was never released.) Heynekh Sapoznik 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 00:16:19 -0400 From: e.juni@utoronto.ca Subject: Instructional materials for non-standard Yiddish I have been approached by someone looking for materials to learn Yiddish, but who wants to learn non-standard Yiddish. I learned my non-standard Yiddish in a non-formal setting, and don't know what, if anything, is available. My impression (from afar) is that most of the learning materials used in the haymishe community are geared to very young children; does anyone know of anything geared to adults? A shaynem dank. Eliyahu Juni 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 14:25:01 -0400 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Yiddish names needed Here's the deal (di mayse fun der geshikhte iz aza): The L.A. Sholem Community Organization is preparing to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Yiddish theatre with the 10th in its own series of original plays, in English, almost all of which have been based on outstanding works of Yiddish literature and whose cumulative audience has reached about 10,000. The SCO plays are unique in that they are written to provide roles for all the members of the Community--from ages 4 to 88--who wish to participate. That has meant as many as 90 speaking roles. So--we need as many as 90 _names_, given and family, to designate all these roles. This year's play will be set in Eastern European cities and shtetlekh, so we need authentic Yiddish names. Not unique names, just ordinary, everyday names, starting, perhaps, with khave (Eve) and ending with sheyndl. Or sheyne-sheyndl. I've assured our playwriting collective that the Mendelistn will either suggest a printed source or come up with lists of their own from which we can draw. In turn, we will combine all such lists and make them available to Mendele and tsu gor der velt (all the world). A hartsikn dank in foroys. Hershl Hartman 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 16:23:13 -0400 From: shirshan@aol.com Subject: Undzere Klasiker and the defeminization of Yiddish Irena Klepfisz, an important contemporary Yiddish poet, thinker, essayist, editor, anthologist, and lecturer, has created an introduction to "Found Treasures - Stories by Yiddish Women Writers" brimming over with facts regarding the place denied Yiddish women writers, and with feminist interpretations of literature, as absorbing as any of the works that surface in this treasured, prose collection, the first to bring the voices of Yiddish women to readers of English. She virtually sings of Yiddish, its birth in Ashkenaz, Loter, its maturation, its broadening, its many uses, over the last thousand years. Of the time when Yiddish was regarded the language of women, she delves into the process that devalued it; this feminization of Yiddish limited its use to things secular, or to communicate feelings, while Hebrew was equated with the male, with intellectual discourse, with holiness, with tanakh. Yet, she postulates, Yiddish contains much loshn-koydesh; many men were poor and illiterate and did not know Hebrew, nor did they study; some learned men valued Yiddish (i.e. the Vilner Gaon insisted his daughters and sons learn Yiddish); rabbis spoke Yiddish and used it in their dealings and pronounced judgments; and there were women - the zogerin, the rebetsin, etc. who were literate in Hebrew. She reviews the broadening of mame-loshn through tkhines, through religious Yiddish literature in vaybertaytsh, and the Bove bukh for "vayber and proste mentshn", also its use by Khosidim to rebel against the rabbinic authority, and its legitimatizing by the yiddishists of the haskole bavegung and its many fervent isms. Now we're in the 19th century where Mendele, Peretz and Sholom Aleykhem, though ambivalent about it, turned to writing in Yiddish as an "identification with the masses through their spoken language." Mendele, she says, likened it to having an affair with a stranger, and Peretz and Sholom Aleykhem wondered if they would be understood by the masses. Yet, Yiddish now belonged to the male, to the patrilineal dynasty of the grandfather (Mendele), the father (Peretz), and the eynikl, Sholom Aleykhem, by whom these familial designations were proclaimed. She theorizes that this defeminizing was an attempt at universality, but now Yiddish writing dealt with the primacy of men's feelings, often in first person narratives with men's perceptions and feelings. Frequent negative depictions of shtetl women as "shrewish, conniving and gossipy - helped male writers to bond with male readers and to establish a male audience." Mendele's popular "Travels of Benjamin the Third (1878)" sets the tone of man-to-man address. With his friend, Sender (demeaned by the nickname "Housewife"), the two still paint women as fools and shrews who torture their husbands. Sholom Aleykhem's portrayals of women are gentler as are his narrators (Tevye sometimes even cries like a woman, but he puts down his wife and talks of his daughters as burdens.) Tevye's daughters, each depicting an aspect of life of the times, could be considered a major breakthrough, yet we know them only through Tevye and never hear their views. The women characters, she claims, are used to explore men's feelings about modernization. Peretz, of the three, openly championed women and their cause, yet "Monish" (1888) which was hailed as expressing the feelings of a whole Jewish generation, is a man's poem about "men's conflicts, sexual needs, attachment to Judaism, and artistic aspirations." His interest in Hasidic tales and in di goldene keyt focused on a male dynasty where even Bontshe Shvayg suffered the burden of a cruel, deceitful wife who abandoned him and the son he is unaware he did not father. Klepfisz' thinking, sharply and narrowly focused, gives intensity to her penetrating ideas. Has she sullied our classical triumvirate, or is she an artistic taskmaster who, in her intensity, demands more of these literary giants than the times that bound them would allow? Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan North Conway, New Hampshire 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 16:23:24 -0400 From: shirshan@aol.com Subject: Yiddish women writers _Found Treasures - Stories by Yiddish Women Writers_ is edited by Frieda Forman, Ethel Raicus, Sarah Silberstein Swartz and Margie Wolfe, with an Introduction by Irena Klepfisz Published in 1994 by Second Story Press 720 Bathurst St Toronto, Ontario M5S 2R4 Yiddish women writers have been allowed their confined place in poetry, but "Found Treasures" forges a breakthrough for their voices to be heard through their prose writings. The stories invoked a sense of awe and admiration in me that these Ashkenaz women - suffering not only economic hardships and pogroms, but the restrictive policies of the state and of their husbands and fathers - found the intellectual and creative energy to record their thoughts and feelings. Some of the stories re-echo the pain of alienation and subordination so powerfully transmitted in their poems, the same agony of enforced silence, of a muteness so soulful and deep it renders Bontshe Shveig a diffuse, wordy, garrulous character. In the highly imaginative "The New World", Esther Singer Kreitman presents the thoughts of an embryo yearning to be born, but she learns her powerlessness as a female begins early, while still floating in amniotic fluid. Fradel Schtok's "The Veil" poignantly depicts a young girl's alienation and longing to exist beyond the prison of the stifling shtetl. Rokhl Brokhes' "The Zogerin" depicts an unjust life of dutiful praying for others, ending in depressive bitterness and pathetic madness. Yet, in full grasp of their legacy since Biblical days, some writers (i.e. Miriam Raskin, Yente Serdatzky) come shining through as forceful women of valor, competent, independent, confident though conflicted between traditional values and the call of freedom and progress. If literature, as we believe, helps shape self-image, or creates ego-strength through identification, within these pages we meet role models for our daughters to honor and emulate. A beautiful excerpt from Malka Lee's "Durkh Kindershe Oygn" paints unfaltering dedication to her secular writing when it was frowned upon by her father, a Khosid, and the entire religious community. Kadya Molodowsky's heroine in "A House with Seven Windows" makes Moll Flanders appear passive and dysfunctional. Other heroines courageously leave for America, join the Bund, become activists, and take charge of their own lives. Complete with photographs, biographies, a glossary, and a bibliography of each author's works (which alone is worth the price of the book), it is a valuable addition to any library. Writers included are: Lili Berger, Rokhl Brokhes, Celia Dropkin, Shira Gorshman, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, Rachel Korn, Esther Singer Kreitman, Malka Lee, Blume Lempel, Ida Maze, Kadya Molodowsky, Rikudah Potash, Miriam Raskin, Chava Rosenfarb, Fradel Schtok, Yente Serdatzky, Dora Schulner, and Chava Slucka-Kestin. Translators are: Roma Erlich, Frieda Forman, Shari Cooper Friedman, Barbara Harshav, Ronnee Jaeger, Irena Klepfisz, Shirley Kumove, Goldie Morgenthaler, Norma Fain Pratt, Ethel Raicus, Henia Reinhartz, Brina Menachovsky Rose, Sarah Silberstein Swartz, Miriam Waddington, and Margie Wolf. We, on Mendele, should buy the book to support the organizers of this project in their work for future translations and publications, women who have alone broken down the wall that excludes Yiddish women writers from anthologies that present our unique literature to a growing group of English readers. Two thumbs up, and a blessing on all their Canadian kepelekh, as we look forward to volume 11 and 111, un azoy vayter.... Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan North Conway, New Hampshire ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.045