Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 15.053
April 3, 2006

1) Fagin (Goldie Morgentaler)
2) Yiddish Syntax (Jacob Rabinowitz)
3) Call It Sleep (Bernard Dov Cooperman)
4) nemen fun yidishe kinderlekh (Hilde Pach)
5) nemen fun yidishe kinderlekh (Moyshe Woldman)
6) kashevarnishkes (Dan Goodridge)
7) kashevarnishkes (Leizer Gillig)
8) kashevarnishkes (A. Krishtalka)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 27
Subject: Fagin

This is in response to Sol Steinmetz's post about Fagin's name in Oliver
Twist. As far as I know, Fagin is an Anglo-Saxon name; it is not Jewish.
Dickens took the name from Bob Fagin, a young orphan who worked with and
befriended Dickens when Dickens was sent to work at Warren's boot blacking
factory at the age of twelve. (Dickens's father had been jailed for
bankruptcy and the young Dickens became the family breadwinner.) Dickens
considered the few months that he spent as a child laborer as one of the
most traumatic and shameful episodes of his life, an episode that seems to
have colored his perceptions of all the people he met in connection with
it. Bob Fagin was not Jewish and he was not unkind to Dickens--quite the
contrary. Dickens remembered him as being particularly kind and gentle. So
why the young author felt compelled to borrow Bob Fagin's name for his
Jewish villain in Oliver Twist is a psychological mystery that I have never
found a satisfactory answer to. But Dickens scholars generally agree that
Dickens took the name from Bob Fagin.

Goldie Morgentaler

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 22
Subject: Yiddish Syntax

Does anyone know of a study of Yiddish grammar which goes into greater
depth than the Weinreich's "College Yiddish" textbook? I am particularly
interested in the use of zol (ought to), volt (should/would), vet (will)
and so on in conditional sentences and in subordinate clauses of various
kinds.

I am looking for a detailed study of Yiddish syntax. If such a thing
exists, I will thank anyone who can point me towards it. If not, I mean to
write one.


thanks in advance,

Jacob Rabinowitz

[To just mention the obvious and get the discussion started:  Isaac
Zaretski's "Praktishe yidishe gramatik far lerers," Mordkhe Schaechter's
"Yidish II," Solomon Birnbaum's "Yiddish: a Survey and Grammar," Hanan
Bordin's "Vort ba vort," and Neil Jacob's "Yiddish:  a Linguistic
Introduction" - the moderator]

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 26
Subject: Call It Sleep

I have long wondered about the title of Henry Roth's classic "Call It
Sleep." Does anyone know of a Yiddish or Yinglish phrase that this may be
echoing?

Thank you in advance,

Bernard Dov Cooperman

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 27
Subject: Nemen fun yidishe kinderlekh

Arn Tsaytlin wrote the poem "Kinder fun Majdanek," which contains the line
"Nemen fun yidishe kinderlekh." You can find it, for instance, in Sheva
Zucker's textbook "Yiddish. An Introduction to the Language, Literature and
Culture," Volume I, p. 82-83.

Hilde Pach


5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 27
Subject: nemen fun yidishe kinderlekh

An enfer far Mikhoyel Basherives:  Der mekhaber fun der troyeriker poeme iz
(vi es veln oykh entfern a sakh mentshn)--The author of this heartbreaking
poem (as, no doubt many will be also responding) is Aaron Zeitlin and the
Yiddish title is Kinder fun Maydanek oder A kholem fun nokh Maydanek [A
Post-Maidanek Dream].

Moyshe/Murray Woldman

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 27
Subject: kashevarnishkes

I hope that "kashevar" is not the origin of kashe varnishkes since
regimental cooks in the Russian army were not noted for their culinary
ability. As for kashe mit varnishkes, perhaps "kashe varnishkes" simply
describes the contents on the varnishkes, as distinct from, say, "karsh
varnishkes."

Dan Goodridge


7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: March 27
Subject: kashevarnishes

Based on this, the "vareniki" etymology sounds valid.

SOURCE: "Jewish Cooking in America" by Joan Nathan

"In 1925 Wolff Brothers of Paterson, New Jersey, published a Yiddish
English cook book with recipes culled from a kasha cooking contest run
in all the Jewish newspapers throughout the country. "Recipes of thousands of Jewish
dishes were sent us," they wrote modestly, "but we selected only the very best among them
and these are listed here." The recipes included buckwheat blintzes, vegetarian buckwheat
cutlets, and "a tasteful grits soup" made from their Health Food (merely unroasted
buckwheat groats), green peas, and potatoes. The varnishke recipe was basically a
kreplach-type noodle stuffed with kasha, buckwheat groats, and gribenes. Packaged bow-tie
noodles, large and small, quickly replaced the flat
homemade egg noodles in the American version of kasha varnishkes."

Leizer Gillig


8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 March
Subject: kashevarnishkes

At least once a week our childhood suppers featured "varnitshkes," short
for kashe mit varnitshkes, a favorite dish with all. That's what we call it
to this day. The varnitshkes themselves were bow-ties exclusively. It was
only in other combinations with the bow-ties that we said, "varnitshkes mit
... " [The origin of our spoken Yiddish, our first language, was a marriage
of southeast Lublin and western Volin (Volhynia) strongly modified by Vilna
in parental enunciation and by our shule education in Standard Yiddish.]

The LP "A khazendl oyf shabbos & Other Yiddish Folksongs" by the excellent
tenor Mikhail Alexandrovitch (Collectors Guild CGY 648 1966) has the song
"Varnitshkes" (sic). The jacket note explains the dish: "...made from
noodles, KASHE and spices."

To cloud the (boiling) water: Italian calls bow-ties "farfalle." This seems
close to the Yiddish "farfl" (or farfel). Is it misleading to ask: what
linguistic force transmuted the shape of the pasta as it crossed the Alps
or Carpathians? Was it the long reach of the malign hand of the culprit in
Sholem Aleichem's "farkishefter shnayderl"?

A. Krishtalka


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End of Mendele Vol. 15.0


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