Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.089 October 31, 1996 1) Fun vanen shtamt "patlezhan"? (Rick Turkel) 2) Yiddish vegetarian writers (Ellen Prince) 3) Let's not lose perspective (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 14:44:30 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org Subject: Fun vanen shtamt "patlezhan"? Sholem Berger hot gefregt (6.087) vegn dem opshtamung fun yidishn vort "patlezhan." in an etimologishn verterbukh fun rusishn shprakh sheyts geshribn, az "baklazhan" shtamt fun perzish "badlijan." vi azoy hobn zikh di "b" un "k" varandert biz "p" un "t" veys ikh nit - meglikh iber turkish. dos zelbe vort vi in yidish gefint zikh oykh in serbishn/kroatishn shprakh. Rick Turkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 15:04:07 EST From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: yiddish vegetarian writers as an addendum to marjorie hirshan's protest at singer's comparison of slaughtering chickens with the treatment of jews in treblinka, i must add that adolf hitler was a vegetarian. (also a rabid anti-smoker, the smoker in me must add.) ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 16:36:47 -0500 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: Let's not lose perspective I wholeheartedly associate myself with Marjorie Shonhaut Hirshan's lament (6.074,1) about the uncalled-for haughty attitude of the English-language _Forward_ vis-a-vis its much older Yiddish sister _Forverts_, soon to celebrate its 100th birthday. But my joining Marjorie in her pain and compassion is not unreservedly. While the style of her post was strongly worded, as is her wont, in hefty, muscular language, and her heartfelt call to bear witness to the gloriously vibrant past is rightfully perceived, my reservations concern her occasional exaggerations bordering on the hyperbole. As is well known, a hyhperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken seriously, for example, "a stack of paperwork as high as Mount McKinley." Her reference to Yosl Mlotek as a "tank" is infelicitous. First of all, the image that the term "tank" evokes is that of destruction, while what Marjorie certainly meant was his positive strength and influence in the fields of the Yiddish language and Yiddish culture. The biweekly section in the _Forverts_ called _Perl fun der Yidisher Poezye_ [Pearls from Yiddish Poetry], conducted by Yosl Mlotek and his wife, the musicologist Khane Mlotek, is most excellent, two refreshing center pages, like sweet and health-giving drinking waters miraculously discovered in the desert. Similarly, Yosl's biweekly two-page Section in the _Forverts_ called _In der Velt fun Yidish_ [In the World of Yiddish] is an excellent record of all kinds of activities in Yiddish clubs and communities, with essays by specialists of the history of Yiddish. Both Mloteks are hard-working people, steadfast lovers of and believers in Yiddish. They deserve all manner of plaudits and a large, beautifully embroidered "E" for Endurance. They are devoted keepers of the flame of Yiddish. May God bless them! But I am sure that they themselves would consider the ascription to them as "glorious" as a bit too _shmaltsik_, that is, dripping with overstatement. The inclusion of Ab Cahan's name among the perpetuators of Yiddish is totally misplaced. He certainly earned great merit as one of the founders of the _Forverts_, a great editor and journalist, but his attitude towards the Yiddish language was definitely a negative one. In his zeal to hasten the Americanization of the masses of Jewish immigrants, he was ready to print in his paper their uncultivated street language, that is Yiddish with an admixture of on-the-quick adopted English words ("payde" for gehalt, for example), a style that came to be known by critics as "potato Yiddish." True, Cahan published in his paper the rich, colorful scenes and reports about Jewish life in Poland by Yud-Yud Zinger (Isaac Bashevis' older brother), original works by Sholem Ash (until he started to write books about the man from Nazareth), and the earthy sensual _Pandre_ novel by the great Hebrew poet Zalmen Shneyer, a great opus in Yiddish of the life of the Jewish underworld in Poland. All this was not out of a sense of respect and love for the creative powers of the Yiddish word, but rather to maintain a hold on the subscribers _mit di mazolyedike [calloused] hent_, in Marjorie's well-chosen expression, who continued to want their newspaper waft with a_heymishn_ Yiddish from the old country. Yosl Mlotek informed me (personal communication) that Ab Cahan was _against_ the Yiddish language shuln [schools] of the Workmen's Circle and of the other secular organizations. The tendency towards jumping to conclusions of exaggerated dimensions is also evident in another instance. When a well-composed light-hearted post was published in _Mendele_ several months ago, its author was soon hailed by one, in these very pages, as another Sholem-Aleykhem. What a leap of misjudgment! We had a number of humorist writers in Yiddish (their names were actually enumerated here in response to an query), but no one was-- or indeed could have been --justifiably compared with the genius of Sholem Aleykhem. Sholem Aleykhem left us a legacy of about 22 volumes, chronicling Jewish life in its multiphasic dimensions, an authentic treasure of the cadences of our spoken Yiddish, in monologues, short stories, and novels, a multitude of memorable characters (remember Tevye the nilkman and Motl Peysi dem khazns), with singular observations of and insights into Jewish life. The tendency towards hyperbole exaggeration is sometimes a result of poverty. By this I naturally do not mean, God forbid, mental poverty. It is rather the poverty of Yiddish life around us, the _bidne maro'khe_ [wretched lot] of the Yiddsh reality with which we are faced. This reminds me of a sad story I read many years ago. A married man left his family and hometown in Poland for Amedrica. Upon receiving his first week's paycheck, he sent his wife a five-dollar bill as an _aderoyf_ [a down payment] for the hoped-for passage of his whole family to America. The wife put away the five-dollar bill in the attic for the day of her and the children's dream. For some reasons, however, the plan of the great and joyous trip never came to fruition. Many, many years later, the wife and mother, still in Poland but now frail and advanced in years, died. Her son, looking in the attic for some documents, found to his amazement in an old dust-covered shoebox the hidden five-dollar bill. And the rumor soon spread in the shtetl that Yoy'ne Gimpel won _dos groyse gevins_ [the big lottery]... A greater loss than the putative silencing of the several Yiddish hours on the WEVD _Forverts_ station is the closing of the unique journal in Yiddish _Di Goldene Keyt_, a true _hemshekh_ [continuity] of the golden period of creativity in Yiddish in the last century. _Di goldene keyt_ was founded in Tel Aviv in1941 by Avrom Sutskever, the wonderfully great Yiddish poet, a true and precious ring in the keyt [chain]. The last issue, No. 141, was published in 1995. While almost by definition the paid circulation of a high caliber literary journal is a meager one, _Di goldene Keyt_was a beacon of light in the world of Yiddish, and reached many devoted readers in large and remote towns on all continents. These subscribers were like the tsadikim [pious, saintly men] whom God counted to justify the world's existence. This is a bitter loss to Yiddish, indeed a grave injustice. Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.089