Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 14.022
December 7, 2004

1) shelkes (Elye Palevsky)
2) feshantkove sorte (Moshe Taube)
3) Yiddish Scrabble (Sabina Brukner)
4) Riaba (Robert Shapiro)
5) Riaba (Abraham Melezin)
6) shmontses (Moyshe-Shaye Steinlauf)
7) 1908 Czernowitz Conference (Mikhl Herzog)

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1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: EPalevsky@rivergarden.org
Subject: Re: shelkes

shelkes / shleykes zenen "suspenders"

elye palevsky

[Similar posts also received from Ury Vainsencher, Abraham Velezin, Perets
Mett, Mikhl Herzog, Moshe Taube and Feygl Infeld Glaser.]

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: mstaube@mscc.huji.ac.il
Subject: Re: feshantkove sorte

feshantkove sorte is tricky. In any case it cannot stand as is. The first word
could be Polish poczatkowy (with cedille under the a), and mean 'initial'
(stage of some illness?), or perhaps derived from Polish pieczen (with acute
on n) and mean 'of liver', so perhaps some kind of hepatitis. The other word,
sorte, unless it is the banal word sort 'kind', remains a mystery to me.

Moshe Taube

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: SBruk@aol.com
Subject: Re: Yiddish Scrabble

A .pdf teke mit etiketn af Yiddish Scrabble kent men gefinen afn farbindungen
teyl fun www.yugntruf.org/yiddish.html.

A .pdf file with labels for Yiddish Scrabble may be downloaded from the links
page at www.yugntruf.org/yiddish.html.  The direct link is
www.yugntruf.org/yidscrablabels.pdf.

Sabina Brukner

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: Rms4231@cs.com
Subject: Re: Riaba

Is Ruth Gay's query [Mendele 14.021] a corrupted reference to the crown
rabbinical school in Vilna (like those in Zhitomir and Warsaw) whose graduates
were not recognized as having real ordination?

Robert Shapiro

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: Amelezin@aol.com
Subject: Re: Riaba

I never heard of a Riaba school in Vilna in the pre-WW-II times, but before
WW-I there was in Vilna a rabbinical school founded by the middle of the 19th
century.  Possibly, Riaba refers to this establishment.  YIVO should have more
materials about it.

Abraham Melezin

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: msteinlauf@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: shmontses

The Polish word szmonces (pronounced shmontses) designates a genre of "Jewish"
humor: jokes, skits, routines, monologues performed by "Jews". The genre was
particularly popular in the 1920's-30s when its creations ranged the gamut
from brilliant shtiks written by such celebrated Polish poets (of Jewish
origin) as Julian Tuwim and Antoni Slonimski and staged in literary cabarets,
all the way to crudely antisemitic jokes. What remains of szmonces in Poland
today is part of a pop cultural nostalgia for the pre-World War II world.
Although now it's rarely heavily antisemitic, it's the kind of stuff that can
make Jewish tourists cringe.

Moyshe-Shaye Steinlauf
Philadelphia

[Similar posts were also received from Davis Weaver, Hershl Hartman, Meyer
Zaremba, Barry Goldstein and R. Shapiro.]

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 6, 2004
From: mherzog@bestweb.net
Subject: Re: 1908 Czernowitz Conference

For the full proceedings of the Czernowitz Conference, try the National
Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, Mass.

Mikhl Herzog

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End of Mendele Vol. 14.022

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