Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 13.027 March 24, 2004 1) Binem Heller's poem (Asya Vaisman) 2) Binem Heller (Melinda Stein) 3) Judendeutsch (Enrique Gildemeister) 4) Judendeutsch (Jascha Kessler) 5) Judendeutsch (Sholem Beinfeld) 6) Judendeutsch (Martin Green) 7) matim (Martin Green) 8) peysekh-lid (Michael Meckler) 9) Yiddish speakers (Asya Vaisman) Visit Mendele on the Web: http://www.mendele.net 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 24, 2004 From: vaisman@fas.harvard.edu Subject: Re: binem heller Sema Chaimovitz Menora asked about Binem Heller's poem. I posted a transcription of this poem in Mendele four years ago (09.082:1). Here it is again: Binem Heller In Varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn In Varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn Oyf koyses fun broyt un matses fun klayen Dertseylt men oyf snay di amolike nisim Vi s'yidishe folk iz aroys fun mitsrayim. Vi alt iz di mayse, vi alt iz der nign, Nor itst, bay farhangene fentster, der seyder Geyt on un tsemisht vert der emes un lign, As shver iz zey beydn farandertsusheydn. Kol dikhfin - bay fentster farshtelte un tirn; Kol dikhfin - un s'shrayen fun hunger di kinder; Kol dikhfin - bay leydike peysekh makhshirim; Kol dikhfin - un s'khlipen di zeynim di blinde. In Varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn, Mayn mame tut on oyf ir ponim dem shmeykhl, Di lipn, vos zaynen fun hunger farbisn - Fun yontev zey vern itst milder un veykher. Di oygn bay ir heybn vider on shaynen, Azoy vi amol, in fargangene yorn, Un s'shoymen in zey oyf di rozhinke vaynen Fun yene fargangene vayte sedorim. Nor plutsim vakst on in zey groyliker khidish. Mit shtoynung tseshtrekt zi di hent ire frume - Anshtot ontsuheybn dem seyder mit kidish - Di zin heybn on shfoykh hamoskho tsu brumen. In Varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn, Un ful shteyt der kos eliyohu hanovis. Nor ver hot dem seyder do ibergerisn? Gekumen iz trinken der malakh hamoves. Vi shtendik - di daytshishe shprakh fun mundirn. Vi shtendik - di shprakh fun bafeler genite. Vi shtendik - zey zaynen gekumen do firn A teyl fun dem yidishn folk tsu der shkhite. Nor - neyn - s'vet di geto nit hern mer s'zidlen Fun natsis, vos firn op yidn gehetste. Mit blut vet men vider bashmirn di shtidlen - Mit blut fun di fraye-mit blut fun di letste. In Varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn. Fun shokhn tsu shokhn vert ibergegebn; Dos daytshishe blut zol not oyfhern gisn, Kol zman svet a yid in dem geto nokh lebn. Far zey - zol in oygn nit zayn kayn hakhnoe. Far zey - zol in oygn nit zayn mer kayn trern. Nor sine un shoym fun der vilder hakhnoe Fun shteyn zey antkegn, fun kenen zikh vern; Ot her, vi es hilkhn in khatsos op di shosn; Ot her, vi der toyt geyt oyf blutike shpurn; Ot her - di geshikhte vert itster farloshn Mit heldishn umkum in leyl-hashimurim. Asya Vaisman [Posts on this thread have also been received from Faygel Lynn, Sylvia Schildt, Norman Buder, Joyce Rappaport and Mirl Hirshan.] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 23, 2004 From: Tam50@aol.com Subject: Re: Binem Heller I am familiar with this poet as Bunim Heller. I do indeed know another poem by him, "Europa Uhne Yiden" and in fact, I am credited as the first translator of this work into English, as "Europe Without Jews". Write to tam50@aol.com for the translation. Melinda Stein Savannah, GA 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 23, 2004 From: RGildem550@aol.com Subject: Re: Judendeutsch I'm glad that Hershl Glasser said so tersely and eloquently in his piece on "Judendeutsch" what I neglected completely to mention in mine, that names like Judendeutsch carry negative, stereotypical overtones. These attitudes are very anti-Yiddish and anti-Jewish by nature and seem to have originated in Germany and then spread into the mainstream, where Amos Elon must have picked them up. I grew up in the bosom of a well-to-do German-Peruvian family. When I was 14 years old I began teaching myself Yiddish, and all around me there were a lot of negative reactions, not only from the Christian Germans, but also from the Jewish Germans (as they regarded themselves) whom we knew. What I heard over and over again was "Yiddish is not a language". This really baffled me because it defied common sense. Years later I read some of Florence Guggenheim-Gruenberg's work on Southwestern Yiddish, which might explain some of this belief. Guggenheim-Gruenberg explains in _Jiddisch auf alemannischem Sprachgebiet_ that the "Jiddische Vollmundart" i.e. "full dialect" of Yiddish survived only in areas outside the political borders of Germany proper, like Alsace and Switzerland. Within Germany, she says, Jews voluntarily gave up the Germanic component of their Yiddish and substituted local and standard German; the resulting language she refers to as "Jiddische Mischmundart" i.e. "mixed dialect" of Yiddish. What seems to have happened is that most Jews in Southwestern Germany spoke German in general contexts, and in the purely Jewish context added in words of Semitic and Romance Yiddish component origin. When I read this, it suddenly dawned on me that my family's friends considered "Yiddish" to be these deracinated fragments, a sort of Jewish slang. I remembered how one woman had rattled off all sorts of strange words containing umlauted vowels and diminutive endings with "-chen" and called them Yiddish. I had been really confused because these words were unlike any Yiddish I had ever heard. At any rate, it became clear to me how this slang did not constitute a language. And it is the resultant mixed language which some scholars have called "Juedischdeutsch". In the end I wonder whether the native Yiddish dialects really "died out" in Germany. It seems plausible that gradations of language use could have survived. At any rate, I've occasionally seen references outside of Guggenheim-Gruenberg's work to dialects in East Germany, for example. It certainly smacks of disagreement, and that could have to do with differences in perspective, rooted in a controversy over what Yiddish is and is not. Enrique Gildemeister Brooklyn, NY 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 23, 2004 From: jkessler@ucla.edu Subject: Re: Judendeutsch I recently read Glikl fun Hameln's fine memoirs, in translation. she refers to her language as "Taitsch." She wouldnt have called it Juden"taitsch", which is our later term perhaps. To argue what it was, when it was a language commonly spoken is to argue about names, not the language, whether it be termed Yiddish or High German. It was a dialect spoken by her people in the 18th Century in NW Germany, which was not Germany then at all, as we all know. I couldnt figure out how to play the Alsatian recording on the Mac, though I have Quicktime's latest. I need instruction, which isnt given on the German website.. That is by the bye. Jascha Kessler 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 24, 2004 From: sbeinfeld@comcast.net Subject: Re: Judendeutsch Amos Elon's ignorance of Yiddish is not limited to the Western variety. In a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, reviewing a book on the Israeli nuclear program, Elon quotes Levi Eshkol as saying in (Eastern)Yiddish that Israel did not have an atomic bomb "aber wir sann abisl schwanger". No matter what Eshkol's native dialect was, that is an utterly impossible phrase. But Elon is not alone. The garbled Yiddish one sees in print (with Israeli "transliterations" among the worst offenders) is an ongoing scandal. Sholem Beinfeld 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 24, 2004 From: marty@aptitude-testing.com Subject: Re: Judendeutsch/Juedischdeutsch Se dakht zikh mir az menshen redn vegn "Judendeutsch" pinkt vi es vollt geven a bezonder loshn gor andersh fun yidish. Dos iz haponim derfar vos mir hobben a sakh alte ktovim vi lemoshel di zikhroynes fun Gleckl fun Hamelin vos klingen azoy Daytchlekh in undzere oyern, az mir veln nisht tsugeben az pinkt azoy hobn yidn demolt geredt. Es vayzt oys az mir veysn gor vintsik vegn di geshikhte fun yidishn loshn. Mir hobn a verterbukh fun Weinreich mit a sakh Hebraeish-shtamike verter, un an elterer verterbukh fun Harkavy vos neygt mehr tsum daytsh. Un yeder verterbukh hot zayne farteydikers: di vos haltn az Vaynraykh hot poshet farreynikt dem loshn fun di tsufil daytshmerizmen vos zenen nor in frierdikn yorhundert arayn-gekrokhen in shprakh: un di kygners vos halten az Harkavy's "daytshmerish" iz take geven der ekhter shprakh fun'm hamoyn-am. It seems to me that some people are speaking of "Judendeutsch" as though it were a completely different language from Yiddish. This is (perhaps?) because we have a number of older writings which sound so German to our modern ears that we don't want to admit that this is how Jews spoke Yiddish. It seems that we know very little about the history of Yiddish. We have a dictionary from Weinreich with a lot of Hebrew-related words and an older one from Harkavey which leans more to the German. And each dictionary has its partisans: those who credit Weinreich with purging Yiddish of the excessive Germanisms which entered the language only in the previous century; and his opponents, who see Harkavey's "Datychmerism" as simply the genuine language of the common people. Un vu liegt der gantzer emmis? I honestly don't know. When I started learning Yiddish six years ago, I was amazed by the amount of Hebrew...which I assumed was obviously a remnant of the next-to-last language spoken by the Jews before they adopted the language of their German neighbors. It seemed utterly farfetched to me that a people who previously spoke French or Italian would suddenly start speaking a German laced so heavily with Hebrew, rather than the French or Italian which they had supposedly been speaking up until that time. To me, the relative percentages of Hebrew vs. the Romance languages within Yiddish was clear evidence that the original Yiddish speakers came from a Hebrew-speaking background. At some point it dawned on me that even in Roman Palestine, the Jews had long since dropped the use of Hebrew in favor of Aramaic; and although I am not qualified to distinguish the forms of one from the other, it seems clear that at least when it comes to spelling, the Semitic component of Yiddish is much more Hebrew than Aramaic. But I don't know if this proves anything: as far as I know, words like yikhus and mishpokhe could have come from Aramaic-speakers living in Europe, and possibly later taken on the Hebrew spelling when the language began to be written. True, the Semitic plural forms in Yiddish are definitely more Hebrew than Aramaic, but who knows what explanation might account for that? So what's my point? Well, we have evidence in the recent past of a Yiddish that was much more German that today's klal-Yidish: how are we to know that the Semitic component of Yiddish is not largely a modern invention? If Yiddish did not originate with Aramaic speakers living on the banks of the Rhine, then what is the origin of the Semitic component if not the cumulative influence over the century on the part of the intellectual/religious leadership of the communities? Has there ever been a time when Yiddish was more Hebraicized than it is in today's YIVO Standard Yiddish? Which is the real Yiddish and which is an artificial ideal...the Yiddish of Harkavey or the Yiddish of Weinreich? I really don't know. But I am skeptical that there existed historically two separate languages: a "Judendeutsch" closely resembling German, and at the same time an authentic Yiddish which Weinreich would have approved of. In my opinion, if the writings of Gluckel of Hamelin look like German, that's probably a pretty fair reflection of the way Yiddish was spoken in those days. (Not that I think the writings of Peretz are necessarily a fair reflection of the way Yiddish was spoken in his day!) Martin Green 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 23, 2004 From: marty@aptitude-testing.com Subject: Re: matim farshidene menshen hobn gut geentfert mayn frage vegn "matim" mit der taytsh vos es meynt "batonen, aksentieren". Ober Israel Zamir, mit zayn tsugabe fun Mendele 13.026, geyt a trit vayter mit zayn forshlag az me ken es nokh taytshen "tsu nutzn pinktlekh di zelbe melodie". Dos take klingt der noentste mit Peretz's lid, vu der bokher zingt der gemore mitn nigun vos er hot gehert baym goyishn meydl: "zingt dernokh er di gemore Un iz matim yeder svore." Several people gave good answers to my question about "matim" in the sense of "emhpasizing, accentuating". But Israel Zamir, in his contribution of Mendele 13.026, goes a step farther with his suggestion that one can further translate the expression as "to use exactly the same melody". This resonates the most closely with Peretz's peom, where the boy (blasphemously) sings the gemorah with the melody he heard sung by the Christian girl. It certainly seems like a very particular and idomatic use of the word, which is rare enough in its plain or dictionary meaning. I wonder how such an expression comes to exist? Are there situations where Jews would have needed such a concept? I don't think there is a parallel expression in English. By the way, as pleased as I am with the many responses to the second question in my post, I was still hoping someone might try to answer my first question: why did Peretz purge his original poem of its many Poylish-Galitsianer rhyming couplets, and republish it in Standard Yiddish? Martin Green 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 23, 2004 From: Subject: Peysekh lid Although I am not familiar with the song performed at the seder by Marc LeClere's mother-in-law's father (Mendele 13.026), it is clearly a Yiddish translation/adaptation of Psalm 115, which is part of the resumption of the Hallel service that is recited immediately after bentshing after the meal. The Hebrew text is in any Haggadah. Michael Meckler [Posts on this thread have also been received from Yael Chaver, Norman Buder, Jack Berger, and Melinda Stein.] 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 24, 2004 From: vaisman@fas.harvard.edu Subject: Re: Yiddish speakers Ruth Goodman asked how many Yiddish speakers there are in America. Statistics on the number of Yiddish speakers in the US according to the last census can be found in my article that was published in the Yiddish Forverts in September 2002. The article can be found here: http://yiddish.forward.com/092702/yiddishworld.html There is also a Russian translation here: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~vaisman/evr-kamerton.html Asya Vaisman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 13.027 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu