Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 16.014 November 12, 2006 1) Di mame dertseylt(Bob Rothstein) 2) Same name for mother-in-law and daughter-in-law(Ruth Rischall) 3) Ben Gurion and Ben Tzvi's book in Yiddish (Meylekh Viswanath) 4) shvarkes(Elie Pflichtentrajn) 5) Nasal spray (Jack Berger) 6) Yiddish food terms sought (Bob Rothstein) 7) teytl (Larry Rosenwald) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 30, 2006 Subject: Di mame dertseylt The ballad sought by Josh Backon is "Di mame dertseylt" by Jacob Adler (pen-name, B. Kovner), which is included in Chane and Yosl Mlotek's collection "Pearls of Yiddish Song," pp. 96-97. It begins Es hot mir mayn mame dertseylt, az a mol Geshtanen a shtibl iz tif in a tol, A gortn baym shtibl geven iz tseblit, Gevoynt hot in shtibl an erlekher yid. The last stanza is Oyf morgn geven iz der himl fartsogt, Dos vintl baym taykhl hot kadish gezogt. Dos vintl tsum ershtn - ir tate tsu letst, Es hot zikh der tate bald shive gezetst. Bob Rothstein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 30, 2006 Subject: Same name for mother-in-law and daughter-in-law I remember hearing the song a long time ago and I asked my mother why a girl could not marry a man if his mother had the same name as she did. In the Ashkenazi tradition one does not name a child after a living person. Thus, if mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had the same name, it would not be possible to name a grand-daughter after the mother-in-law. My mother told me that her sister had this problem. But the young couple were in love and they got married anyway. Ruth Rischall 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 31, 2006 Subject: Ben Gurion and Ben Tzvi's book in Yiddish Very interesting. How far back does it go? Is it restricted to modern Times or does it go back to antiquity? Where might one get a copy? Meylekh Viswanath 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 31, 2006 Subject: shvarkes An eastern Polish friend of mine recalls his father mentioning, perhaps humorously, "gebrotene tayblekh mit shvarkes" as a delicious course of a meal. Roasted squab I know, but what are shvarkes? My informant is sure it wasn't shvomen/shvemlekh, etc. Can someone please enlighten us as to the meaning? And does anyone have a recipe for it? Elie Pflichtentrajn 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 7, 2006 Subject: Nasal spray [Moderator: the following postings were submitted over two consecutive days.] Today, I went to have a physical examination, and my doctor, held up a vial of Afrin Nasal Spray and asked me what this meant in Yiddish. It appears that his father is soon to have an 80th birthday party and, as a person who worked in pharmaceutical distribution, he knew the inventor of the Afrin formula. That inventor was a Yiddish-speaking Jew, and had told the doctor's father that he derived this name from Yiddish. For a while this was a puzzlement, but in tossing the sounds over in my mind, it finally came clear: the inventor took the name for this nasal decongestant from the phrase "auf rinnen," which appears to be a straight lift from the German. A simple translation would be "to facilitate flow." This seems to be a very appropriate mitl for an ongeshtoptn noz. Regards Jack Berger Folks, It amazes me how sometimes obvious things just elude the mind when the focus is misdirected. I woke up this morning bolt upright, struck by a flash of recognition that made me say to myself, "Why the hell didn't I think of this in the first place?" My physician was groping along with me for something that had to do with "the nose." I took his information about the Yiddish-speaking inventor a bit too literally, and was also led away by his own probing of the "rin" suffix as a possible variant on the prefix "rhin," which is from the Latin, meaning nose. What hit me was simply this: As a Yiddish-speaker, the inventor most surely had a basic facility with Hebrew, especially if he was born in the Old World (I do not know this for sure). Accordingly, an equally valid view of his construct would be Af - rinne, in which "Af" is the Hebrew word for nose. In this case, an interpretation my be "Nose - channel," or "Nose-flow," the latter being a very close alignment with "Nasal Spray." I cannot vouch for either of the two interpretations here, since I lack certain facts. However, if my physician's reference to the word "Nose" is indicative, it is this latter construct that seems the more likely. Regards Jack Berger 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: November 9, 2006 Subject: Yiddish food terms sought My friend and colleague Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska of Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, who is spending this year doing research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has translated two Bilgoraj yizker-bikher. Three apparent references to food have stumped her and the various knowledgeable people whom she has consulted. They are (with her indications of context) 1. valakhes (berries - perhaps blueberries or wild cranberries) 2. nant (an item in the basket next to chickpeas and pumpkin seeds) 3. poplinkes (children taking freshly baked ones to kheyder). I've checked various Yiddish and Slavic dictionaries and other sources, but the only thing I could come up with was the use of "valakhi" in some East Slavic dialect(s) to refer to marigolds (the flower). Can anyone help? Bob Rothstein 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: November 11, 2006 Subject: teytl One of Itzik Manger's "Khumesh-lider," the one about the three angels who come to visit Avrom avinu, begins as follows: "Avrom avinu zitst af der shvel, / un shnitst zikh a teytl fun beyn." My dictionaries (Weinreich, Niborski) identify "teytl" as a pointer, and Niborski goes as far as specifying, "baguette servant guider la lecture." What I'm wondering is, is Avrom avinu getting ready to leyn Torah (certainly possible in the world of Manger's poems)? Or were there secular uses for such pointers as well? Did eastern European Jews read Gorky, say, or Sholem Aleichem with a teytl? Best, and thanks, Larry Rosenwald ---------------------------------------------------- End of Mendele Vol. 16.014