Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 16.007 August 13, 2007 1) Hershl Goodman on Chaim Pevner and "A gesheft"(Keyle Goodman) 2) "A gesheft" (Freydl Cielak) 3) gilgul (Leyzer Gillig) 4) Eli Katz's obituary (Marc Kaplan) 5) A martyr's tears (Lyuba Dukker) 6) Chaim Pevner's "Yiddish, A Dying Language" (Hirsh Perloff) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: July 25, 2007 Subject: Hershl Goodman's treatise on Chaim Pevner and "A gesheft" A gezunt af Hershls kop. Ikh bin a lerer fun yidish un shpanish un ikh hob avade hanoe gehat fun zayn peyresh vegn di shpanishe froyen. Itst a frage: vu ken men bakumen dem "DVD" ("A gesheft") vos di khsidim hobn bashafn? Besholem, keyle goodman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: July 27, 2007 Subject: "A gesheft" - 90 minute Hasidic DVD My question to Hershl Goodman: Hershl, kenst undz gebn dem nomen un mer informatsye? Can you give us more information to get one for our students in Mexico City? A dank foroys, Freydl Cielak 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: July 25, 2007 Subject: gilgul Re: Josh Kleiman's statement that the word "gilgul" was used to refer to the Diaspora. This is certainly news to me. I suspect that perhaps he is mistaking "gilgul" for "goles," which indeed does refer to the Diaspora. A "gilgul" does mean the transmigrated soul, per the kabalistic doctrine of reincarnation. A popular notion, in fact, is that tzaddikim become "nisgalgal" in fish. Certain groups of Hungarian khsidim do not eat fish during Passover (don't ask me why) so they make a gefilte-fish like dish out of chicken, which is called "falshe fish" (fake fish). I once heard a badkhn at a khasene remark, "Me zogt az tsadikim vern nisgalgel in fish. Azoy iz farshtendlekh farvos ungarishe yidn darfn "falshe fish"- vayl in ungarn zenen geven a sakh falshe tsadikim." (It is said that the righteous are reincarnated as fish. Thus, it is understandable why Hungarian Jews need to have "fake fish" since in Hungary there were many fake tzadikim.) Obviously, the badkhen was a galitsiyaner. Leyzer Gillig 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: August 2, 2007 Subject: San Francisco Chronicle Obituary of Eli Katz Dear Mendele: The following is a letter I submitted via e-mail to the San Francisco Chronicle in response to their mostly lovely obituary of Professor Eli Katz; I thought the contents would be of interest to our list, as well: As a scholar of Yiddish literature, I was moved to read on-line Rick DelVecchio's obituary of the great translator and educator Eli Katz (Saturday, July 29). I was nonetheless extremely distressed to read that in the article Mr. DelVecchio incorrectly refers to Yiddish as "a German dialect." Yiddish is a language that has pursued an independent line of development from German since the beginning of its 1000-year existence; the first Yiddish document, dating from 1272, already indicates several social and linguistic differences from contemporaneous German, the most superficial of them the fact that Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet. In linguistic terms, Yiddish is a fusion language incorporating vocabulary and morphological elements from medieval Romance languages, Slavic languages, pre-modern Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as Middle High German. To refer to it as a dialect of German is no more accurate than to call English or Dutch German dialects, or to call Ukrainian a dialect of Russian. Obviously, the issue is a sensitive one because Yiddish speakers have struggled for more than 200 years against the slander that their language isn't really a language--with its own grammar, rules of usage, and cultural values-but rather a "deformed" variant of German. I'm certain that it wasn't Mr. DelVecchio's intention, or the intention of the Chronicle, to perpetuate this insult. I am therefore asking now that you correct this error--an error to which I'm certain Eli Katz would have protested vociferously! Thank you for your attention to this request, as well as your kind attention to the career of Dr. Katz. Sincerely, Marc Caplan 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: August 3, 2007 Subject: Martyr's Tears The question in Mendele Vol. 16.004 was about possible folk belief, which teaches that "one is forbidden from wiping away a martyr's tears." That I don't know; however, I remember some kind of a discussion in, by the way, not a Jewish circle, which referred to prophet Isaiah saying something to that effect. I checked the Tanakh (in the JPS Translation 1988 edition), and it says in Nevi'im Isaiah 25:8, He will destroy death forever My Lord God will wipe the tears away >From all faces And will put an end to the reproach of His people Over all the earth... Maybe it has something to do with the question, in the sense, that it is Lord God's prerogative? Regards, Lyuba Dukker 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: August 10, 2007 Subject: Chaim Pevner's "Yiddish, A Dying Language" Chaim Pevner's "Yiddish, A Dying Language" elicited a remarkable response on the discussion of what is authentic Yiddish, with most correspondents opposed to his premise and endorsing diversity. However, actual numbers of people still speaking Yiddish was not touched on. Before the khurbm there were estimates of between 8 and 11 million; in the latter part of the 20th century even 1 million; but now, at the beginning of the 21st century, can there really be more than circa 350,000? In the former Soviet Union and also in Israel, Yiddish was stifled: while in English speaking countries, Latin America and Western Europe, the pressures of integration also hindered the passing-on of the language to the next generation. In fact, the only social group that = actively teaches the language to its children is the Khasidim. If there are about 300,000 Khasidim then, who speak Yiddish, can there be more than a few thousands of either the original secular generation still with us or ardent Yiddishists who have taken up Yiddish as a second language? Hirsh Perloff ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 16.007