Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 11.021 November 23, 2001 1) A bakoshe: naye verter (Sholem Berger) 2) pen pals for Yiddish students (Vera Szabo) 3) intermediate Yiddish textbook (Anna Shternshis) 4) Yiddish and German mutual intelligibility (Kevin Roddy) 5) Documentary by Emmanuel Finkiel (Estelle Souche) 6) schoolgirls from Krakow (Gershon Winer) 7) Howe-Greenberg and the Proletpen poets (Paul (Hershl) Glasser) 8) Eliezer Greenberg's poem (Joshua Abelman) 9) shtetl wedding (Bernard Dov Cooperman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 15:10:17 -0500 (EST) From: Sholem Berger Subject: A bakoshe: naye verter a bakoshe tsu kool der vos shraybt di shures greyt an english-yidish verterbikhl, vos se zol fartseykhenen etlekhe toyznt naye englishe verter (an erekh fun di yorn 1966-2001) un zeyere yidishe ekvivalentn. se veln im derbay aroyshelfn etlekhe mitarbeters. vos zhe viln mir fun kool? oyb ir hert oder leyent ergets a nay yidish vort, shraybt undz vegn dem. nisht keyn poetishe nayshafungen zukhn mir, nor naye terminen far bekhol-yoymike zakhn, vi oykh politish-administrative, visnshaftlekhe, tekhnologishe khidushim, vos zey kumen dokh tsu vokh-tsu-vokh. se zenen, a shteyger, tsugekumen: kompyuteray, internets (mit a tsadik vort-oys), blitspost, blitsbrivl, vortirn (word processing), mikrokhvalnik (microwave oven), kompaktl (compact disk), kontaktlekh (contact lenses), gvaldglok (burglar alarm), entferke (answering machine) un nokh un nokh. a klal, leygt tsu a hant. nisht gelt betn mir, nor naye verter. shikt zey tsu afn adres Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter League for Yiddish, Inc. 200 W 72 St, Suite 40 New York NY 10023-2805 YidLeague@aol.com [For an English-Yiddish glossary of modern Yiddish words created during the past few decades, Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter seeks information about such words, either heard or read. New words can describe technological or scientific advances, political or administrative matters, etc. Poetic coinages are not desired. Please write to the above address with the words that you have seen or read.] Sholem Berger 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 20:43:22 -0500 (EST) From: "Vera Szabo" Subject: pen pals for Yiddish students Sholem-aleykhem, colleagues! I am looking for a fellow Yiddish teacher to be a partner in the following project: I would like to establish regular correspondance in Yiddish between my two groups of Yiddish students here at the University of Michigan and two other similar groups anywhere in the world. Here is how I imagine the project: Initially the letter exchange would happen NOT between pairs of students but we would be writing communal letters from class to class. Reading and writing letters would be a classroom activity, maybe once a month, or as the letters arrive. The teacher would distribute copies of the received letter in class and read and translate it together. Homework assignment for the next class is to write a reply. The individual replies will then be collected by the teacher, grammar corrected, and during the next class students would copy the corrected versions onto the communal letter. This can be done while some other activity is going on in the class for those who are not currently writing. Alternatively, the reply can be written not as homework but in class, together Nevertheless it is very important to incorporate the correspondance into classroom activity one way or another, because otherwise students tend not to have time for corresponding just for fun. The main advantage of using correspondance as a classroom activity is the fact that here we are using the language in a real life situation, for which our students do not have an opportunity every day. This can create greater motivation for learning. It also enables students (and us) to expand vocabualry and even grammar in directions where otherwise we might not go. I would like to launch the project as soon as possible, but by early January the latest. We work in semesters: early-September to mid-December and early January to mid-April. I currently have two groups, 11 Beginning and 5 Intermediate students, mostly undergraduates. Ideally we'd like to have classes with approximately the same number of students, similar age group, but of course this is not an absolute condition. My students know about the project already and they are eager to start, and so am I! In case someone is interested in the theoretical background, this method of language teaching is based on the pedagogy of Celestine Freinet. There are several BOOKS published about him and his method and you can also get a good introduction to his principles on the following web sites: http://www.freinet.org/ http://www.freinet.org/icem/history.htm I wrote an MA thesis about the application of this pedagogy in language teaching. I wrote it in German, but since it was published only in Hungarian translation, this might not be of great interest to the wide public.... grusn, Vera Szabo Ann Arbor, MI 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 19:58:09 -0500 (EST) From: "Anna Shternshis" Subject: intermediate Yiddish textbook - help! Dear Mendele readers, Next semester I am going to teach a class of intermediate Yiddish students, those, who finished College Yiddish. I used to use David Golderg's YIdish af Yidish for such students, but I found it quite hard to use a bit mixed up, and hard for students to digest. Does anyone have any suggestion of an alternative/supplemental textbook for the advanced Yiddish students? Thanks for all your help, Anna Shternshis 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 23:34:18 -0500 (EST) From: "Kevin M. Roddy" Subject: Yiddish and German mutual intelligibility Shaloha from the island of O'ahu... I'm trying to locate any published research that has examined the extent of mutual intelligibility of Standard Yiddish with Standard German or any equivalent dialects of the two. I'm trying to make the case that Yiddish isn't "just a dialect of German." I do have Several pieces of research that make this disassociation, but I'm unable to find any research that gives solid numbers on intelligibility e.g., "60% mutual intelligibility" or even "mutually unintelligble." Thanks! Kevin Roddy 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 05:54:49 -0500 (EST) From: Estelle Souche Subject: Documentary by Emmanuel Finkiel On October 22, the public French-German channel ARTE showed a 90 minute documentary called "Casting", by Emmanuel Finkiel, which might be interesting for the members of this list. Finkiel had made two films previously, "Madame Jacques sur la Croisette" (1995) and "Voyages" (1999), both including many dialogues in yiddish ("Voyages", a fiction about the intertwined lives of three elderly female holocaust survivors in France, Poland and Israel, which was awarded the prestigious prix Louis Delluc in 1999, was in my opinion a very moving film). For the preparation of those films, Finkiel had sought for nonprofessionnal actors in the French askhenazic community, with ads like "looking for Yiddish speaking men and women between 65 and 90 for a fiction film". The documentary "Casting" is made with some excerpts of the videos filmed with the potential actors. It is a very interesting and moving documentary, with many unforgettable characters. Zayt gezunt, Estelle Souche 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 07:32:52 -0500 (EST) From: "Winer" Subject: schoolgirls from Krakow In response to a recent Thalia Klein's inquiry on Mendele [11.018], about a Holocaust episode involving 93 girls who took their own lives to avoid falling into the hands of the Nazi soldiers: The Hebrew poet Prof Hillel Bavli has a poem on the subject which was included in the High Holy Day Mahzor of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Holocaust researchers have not found any factual evidence for this story. There have been a number of articles in Yiddish periodicals throughout the years describing this as strictly legendary. Gershon Winer 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 11:26:30 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Glasser Subject: Howe-Greenberg and the Proletpen poets a) I liked the clarification on the subject of the Howe-Greenberg anthology and Proletpen. It wouldn't have been in keeping with Irving Howe's approach to such matters for him to have blacklisted left-wing writers. One point I disagree with: Prof. Prager writes "Signal_, like several other literary journals of the period (e.g. _Inzikh_) adopted the Soviet spelling codex." I don't think that the "naturalized" spelling of Hebrew-origin words should be known as the "Soviet spelling codex." As you note, several journals of the period adopted this spelling and most of them had no sympathy for the Soviet Union. Eliezer Shteynbarg in Rumania, for example, insisted on this orthography and he was far from a left-winger. I would recommend using a neutral term, such as "naturalized" (Yiddish "naturalizirt"), in order not to imply that the Soviet Union was the inspiration for this spelling change. On the contrary, it seems to me that it was mere coincidence that several different movements, as it were, advocated the same form. b) Thanks for the compliments about Yugntruf (TMR 5.014). Al dos guts, ayer Paul (Hershl) Glasser 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 12:11:05 -0500 (EST) From: Josh Abelman Subject: Eliezer Greenberg's poem My name is Joshua Abelman. Eliezer Greenberg was my great uncle. His sister, Esther, married educator Joseph Cheskis (Middlesex Univ. & Brandeis)and they had my mother, Josephine Cheskis. Unfortunately, my mother passed when I was quite young(9 months). At this time, Uncle Lazer wrote a poem, which translated from the yiddish, is titled To Orphaned Parents.( I believe) He wrote this for Esther and Joseph who were both alive at the time. I have tried fruitlessly to find this poem. I was hoping you could be of some help. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Joshua Abelman 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:34:57 -0500 (EST) From: Bernard Cooperman Subject: shtetl wedding In answer to Lori Cahan-Simon's request for information about the shtetl wedding [11.020], may I recommend (at the expense of being immodes) the book by Pauline Wengeroff, "Rememberings. The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century" translated by Henny Wenkart and edited by me (University Press of Maryland, 2000)? The book has a detailed account of two weddings, her own and her sister's. Wengeroff grew up in Brisk, a large town, but she was married in a small shtetl, Konotop. She gives full details about her trousseau, her courtship, the actual wedding, the food and the clothes. I know of no more complete or more reliable description. The book is a treasure trove of information also about her early years, her later life, and the great bitterness she felt over the way her family modernized. By the way, it may interest readers of Mendele to know something about how we handled the Yiddish transcriptions in this volume. It seemed likely to me that Wengeroff spoke some dialect of Lithuanian Yiddish but was actually most comfortable in what she calls "Russian German". She and her family find it easier to speak to her future in-laws in Russian rather than Yiddish. Wengeroff herself was quite impressed with the ethnographic attempts to preserve Jewish folk songs and culture and she made an effort to preserve Yiddish songs and words in her book, but in the original German publications of her memoirs she almost always transcribes Yiddish in the western, German fashion rather than in either Lithuanian or Polish Yiddish (e.g., mauchel for "moychel" -- forgive) and also uses German terms like barches for the "challah" breads. When publishing the book, we had no way to decide whether these westernized forms had been introduced by the publisher, were done by her for her German reading audience, or actually reflected the dialect she spoke as a child, and so we left the orthography essentially as she had written it. Bernard Dov Cooperman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 11.021 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www.mendele.net http://ibiblio.org/yiddish/mendele.html