Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.168 March 11, 1998 1) openers (Nathan Kravetz) 2) openers (Mordkhe Schaechter) 3) openers (Dovid Braun) 4) openers (Rick Turkel) 5) Sobieski's yorn (Dan Slobin) 6) Tsibetsky's Yurren (Sarah Faerman) 7) German word "oder" (Joachim Neugroschel) (Irv Young) 8) Lakhn iz gezunt (Moishe Kijak) 9) Homentaschen (Burton (Berel) Leiser) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 08 Mar 1998 15:52:16 -0800 From: Nathan Kravetz Subject: openers Here's another one for the list of greetings. My father used to say, when asked: Vos makht a yid? "Nu, mir lebn un gott mitshet zikh." Mit khaverishe griesn (?) Nathan Kravetz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 18:56:52 EST From: MSchaecht Subject: openers Der retsitator Tsunye Rimer/I. Rymer, a gebirtiker fun Krosne (Tsentral- Ukraine), fleg entfern af "Vus hert zekh?" mit "Loy sertsekh" (=sirtsekh), taytsh: 'Thou shall not kill'. Af mayn shayle tsi s'iz zayns a khokhmele, hot er farzikhert, az azoy fleg men zogn in Krosne (=Krasnoye). Agev fleg er zayn shtetl a mol rufn Krosne un a mol Kros. Er fleg zikh tomed greysn mit zayn landsman, dem sovetsih-yidishn poet Shike Driz, oykh a Krosner. Ayer Mordkhe Schaechter 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 08 Mar 1998 21:49:54 EST From: David S Braun Subject: answers to "vos hert zikh?", "vos makhstu?" A: vos hert zikh? B: me razirt zikh un me shert zikh un der moyekh kert zikh [thanks to my grandmother Libe Manuel nee Shvarts, o"h] A: vos makhstu? B: kh'makh a gutn ayndruk. Dovid Braun Cambridge, MA 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:04:31 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: openers/vos makhstu? A couple of friends of mine, both born in Latvia, had several of these not yet mentioned by others: In response to "vos hert zikh?" - Vos m'ret. Az m'shtinkt on, hert zikh. In response to "vos makht a yid?" or "vos makhstu?" - Keyn bris nit. "vos makhstu?" reminds me of a story involving a non-Yiddish speaking friend whose Yiddish-speaking father-in-law had a friend named Max. Whenever the father-in-law would greet someone (in Yiddish), my friend could never understand why he kept asking people what Max did when he had known Max for who-knows-how-many-dozens-of years and knew full well what he did for a living. :-) zayt mir ale gezunt un shtark, un hot a freylikhn purim. Rick Turkel 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 14:51:47 -0800 (PST) From: "Dan I. SLOBIN" Subject: Sobieski's yorn These expressions depend on who used to own your part of territory. My grandmother grew up in Uman (Kievskaya guberniya, Ukraine), which used to belong to the Polish counts of the Potocki family (currently re-established in their palace in Krakow, after living in Oakland, California). So her expression for things "way back when" was, "Dos is geveyn in Pototsky's tsaytn." -Dan Slobin 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 15:38:52 -0800 From: Sarah Faerman Subject: Tsibetsky's Yurren Tsibetsky's Yurren reminds me of my mother saying "Noch fun Chmelnitzki's tzeiten". Sarah Faerman 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 19:56:06 -0500 (EST) From: ACHIM1 Subject: German word "oder" In regard to Irv Young's question about the German word "oder": as any German-English dictionary will reveal to him, "oder" doesn't mean "other"--it means "or" just like the Yiddish cognate "oder". The German word for "other" (adjective) is "andere(r)"--just like the Yiddish cognate; however, the Yiddish word can also mean "second"--a connotation that has disappeared in German except in a few leftover expressions such as "am anderen Tag" = "the next day." By the same token, the Yiddish adjective "tsveyt" can mean both "second" and "other": e.g. "im tsveytn tsimer" = in the other (next) room. This meaning, "next, other," is absent from the German adjective "zweit" except in a few expressions like "das zweite Mal" = the second (or next) time. Joachim Neugroschel [Erratum: Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 20:14:32 EST From: YOU 2 IG I hasten to retract an erroneous submission hopefully before the excoriation begins. I refer to the identification of "oder" as the German word for other. Clearly I meant "ander" and sincerely regret the error and any indigestion it may have caused. --Ganz verschaimt ! Irv Young Isles of Capri, FL] 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:44:22 ARG From: "Gustavo Kijak" Subject: Lakhn iz gezunt tayere fraynt, nisht umzist haltn undzere khakhomim az purim vet keinmol nisht opgeshafn vern. okh un vey volt geven tsum lebn ven men volt zikh nisht derloyb, fun tsayt tsu tsayt tsu lakhn a bisl. zol Aridoso-Parshandoso undz vayter araynshikn zayne tifzinike briv vos baraykhern undz azoy fil. azoy vi mir zenen in khoydesh Oder, vil ikh aikh iberdertseyln a maynse vos mayn fraynt Avrum Moshel, fun Haifa, hot mir dertseylt. Tsvey batlonim zitzn hintern hoivn un viln tserekht makhn dem luakh. Es iz nishto kayn ander breyre - azoy zogn zey - vi optsushafn a khoydish. Nu gut - nor vos far a monat zol es zayn? Zey klern un klern un kenen tzu a tolk nisht dergeyn. Nor in eyn zakh zenen zey maskim: Nisn tor men nisht opshafn, vayl es volt geven a groyse sakone: der Oder volt glaykh arayn in Yir !!! Hot mir ale a freylekhn Purim. Ayer argentiner fraynt Moishe Kijak 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 05:57:05 EST From: BLeiser77 Subject: Homentaschen Tayre Mendelyanchicks: S'iz shoyn tzaht zikh tzu dermonen vi vikhtik iz der homentasch, vus far a kraft es hot, un iberal tzu loyben der eybeshter, vahl er hot uns gebentscht mit a zah heilige zakh baz'man hazeh, omeyn. It's high time we recall how important and how powerful the homentasch is, and to praise the Lord and pass the ammunition for the blessing he has given us at this season. It is easy, of course, to forget the "lowly" homentasch, because our good neighbors, and some who are, loy oleynu, not so good, nebekh, have khapt onto it as if it were their own. We gave it to the world gladly, knowing how much good it could do--and do we get any credit for it? A nekhtige tug! Take the Egyptians, for example. Take them, takeh. Yosef hatzaddik (Joseph) explained the importance of the homentasch to Pharaoh. He pointed out that the step pyramids, such as those at Sakkara, were utterly useless, and were doomed eventually to fall into ruin, which has happened, as anyone can see. Make a pyramid with four sides of perfectly symmetrical homentaschen, he said, and you've really got something. Nu, Pharaoh, y'makh shmoy v'zikhroy, decided to experiment with the grand homentasch design and what did he do? No sooner did he have the secret of the homentasch firmly under his belt--it should only have stuck in his craw--than he promptly forgot Joseph and turned on his people, enslaving them and forcing them to build his great four-sided homentaschen, which stand proudly to this day. Every schoolchild learns the Pythagorean theorem. I wouldn't, kholileh, want to take away from Pythagoras or the Greeks any of the glory they used to have. But we have always believed that the ethical thing to do is to give credit where credit is due. The fact is--I'm not making this up--that Pythagoras studied at the yeshiva of Beys Hillel. Moreover, I have it on good authority that when he was a boy, his father, realizing that he was not getting such a good education from the wandering sophists, who even then were serving as private tutors, since very few of the Greek cities had public schools, decided that a good day school education was what he wanted for his son. There was no better school in those days than the local Hillel Day School. Since Mr. Pythagoras was a widower, nebekh, he sent the boy to live at the yeshiva. Pythagoras Jr. was a pretty good student, according to fragments of records that were destroyed in the great fire at the Alexandrian library, though he was often guilty of bittul toyreh, since he liked to strum on his harp and dream up theories about musical instruments. But I digress from my story. He used to take his meals at the homes of Mrs. Shapiro, Mrs. Goldberg, Mrs. Melnick, and other kindly Jewish ladies in the neighborhood. Essen teg they called it in those days. Nu, came Purim, and naturally Mrs. Shapiro gave her young guest a few homentaschen. He inquired of his rebbe the next day about this remarkable delicacy, and the rebbe took him aside (for the arcane secrets of kabboleh are not revealed in public), opened the holy sforim that deal with the homentasch and its great powers, and started the lad on his way to greatness. What is called the Pythagorean theorem is in fact nothing more than a simple formula for squeezing the greatest number of homentaschen onto a single baking pan, which every Jewish housewife had been taught by her bobbeh. But listen! The kid made a fortune selling pamphlets about the right-angled homentasch and became one of the yeshiva's biggest supporters, serving on the board for many years. You have to have to give him credit, he really knew how to market an idea, and no one had a copyright on it anyway. Incidentally, it was Mrs. Melnick's cholent that Pythagoras ate every Shabbos that convinced him that beans have such serious side effects that he declared them non-kosher when he founded his own yeshiva years later. If you want to know why the dollar is still the strongest currency in the world, just check it out carefully. On the back side of the greenback you will find the homentasch. When Jefferson designed the great seal of the United States, believe me, he knew what he was doing. There's the four-sided homentasch that the Egyptians learned was the most powerful door to eternity; and above it, winking its eye, is the divine homentasch itself. As long as that homentasch is on the dollar, we're in good shape. By the way, the early geniuses of finance knew precisely what they were doing when they settled on Wall Street as the site of their business, locating it in Tribeca, a homentasch-shaped section of Manhattan, and therefore naturally the most powerful financial district in the world. When our government needed a powerful, fast, invisible fighter plane, to whom did it turn? To none other than the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zikhrono livrokho, who was not only a great talmid khokhom, but also an engineer who graduated from the Sorbonne. "No problem," said the Rebbe. "You should have asked sooner." And he prepared blueprints of a fighter jet built in the shape of a homentasch. A few little adjustments here and there, and we had the Phantom Jet, which they call "delta wing" because for them, homentasch is a mouthful. Nu, kinderlakh, may we all have a joyous Purim as we spin our dreydlekh, shake our lulavs, hear the shofar, enjoy a latke or two, have a little schnapps . . . (hic!) Burton (Berel) Leiser ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.168 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html