Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 17.020
May 6, 2008

1) stavnyes (Zulema Seligsohn)
2) stavnyes (Leonard Fox)
3) stavnyes (Yelena Shmulenson)
4) Yiddish encounters with Roma (Eli Rosenblatt)
5) shtroynislekh (Ellen Cassedy)
6) "Ikh for aheym" (Sema Chaimovitz Menora)
7) clobyosh (Z.D. Smith)
8) Yiddish Zionist songs (Goldie Sigal)
9) superstitions about names (Margie Newman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  April 4
Subject: stavnyes

A stav is a pond in Yiddish, in Polish STAW (pronounced Stav).  I would
assume stavnyes are small ponds, but I am extrapolating.

Zulema Seligsohn

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  April 4
Subject: stavnyes

The word staven' in Russian means a shutter for a window; it loses the "e"
in some cases (e.g., genitive plural "stavnyey"), hence the Yiddish form.

Leonard Fox

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  April 7
Subject: stavnyes

Stavnyes is a Russian word for shutters (wooden shutters that practically
all windows in the villages had). So, it means that the balebostes were
looking out of their windows to see what's going on outside.

Yelena Shmulenson

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  April 4
Subject: Yiddish encounters with Roma

I am looking for Yiddish texts that engage Roma (Gypsy) communities or
personalities in the 19th or 20th century. I am partly familiar with a
memoir by M. Gerz that describes a rebbe's affection for sojourning among
Roma in Poland-Lithuania, but would like to hear if anyone can conjure up
some Yiddish literature that addresses any Jewish relationship with the
Roma who lived around them.

mit frayndlekhe grusn,

Eli Rosenblatt

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: April 16
Subject: shtroynislekh

I'm seeking the English translation for shtroynislekh, which are offered to
squirrels in the zoo.  Peanuts?

Vos zenen shtroynislekh, vos in a mayse derlangt men zey khayeles in zu?

Ellen Cassedy

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: April 16
Subject: "Ikh for aheym"

Does anybody know if there is a Yiddish version of Israel's Declaration of
Independence?  I am also trying to find the lyrics, and if possible a tape,
for a song called "Ikh for aheym" about one's yearning to live in the
Jewish homeland, not wanting to be among "them" anymore, but among one's
own people.  One of the lines is, "Ikh vil nit mer zayn a ger..."

a sheynem dank faroys,

Sema Chaimovitz Menora

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: April 20
Subject: clobyosh

Does anyone have any information on Clobyosh (aka Klabberjass, Bela), a
card game of the Jass family of Jewish origin? It's related, in one way or
the other, to a whole raft of similar games with names similar to either
Klabberjass or Bela: Kalabriazs, Belote, et cetera. And some of the
specialized terminology is definitely Yiddish, or at least cognate with it:
the last trick taken is the shtokh, and if you fail to make a bid you go
beyt. Pretty much no description I read of it will fail to mention that it
is a Jewish game, but they don't have any explanation of the link.

It's a lot of fun to play, anyway, and obviously it's got a lot of forms
all over Europe. But I'd love to hear if anyone had a firmer notion of its
linguistic and cultural origins, if anyone could explain its relationship
to and origins in Yiddish and Ashkenazic culture specifically, and if
anyone could provide any attestations (or even anecdotes, really) in Jewish
literature.

The best source of information that I have seen, and an example of its very
strange multicultural nature, can be found at
http://www.pagat.com/jass/bela.html. There's also a host of terms there,
some that I haven't been able to link to Yiddish. Yuss looks like it's from
the Hungarian for 'Jack', and Manel/Manal could be Yiddish, but the
connection isn't clear for me.

Z.D. Smith

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: April 25
Subject: Yiddish Zionist songs

With regard to Chava Respitz query:  Ruth Rubin has an interesting chapter
entitled "To Zion" in her Voices of a People (Jewish Publication Society,
1979), p. 368-393, in which she includes the lyrics of quite a few Yiddish
Zionist songs.  Her list does not seem to be fully comprehensive, however.
For example, I remember singing "Nisht oyf nisim darf men vartn ... Mir
veln boyen, boyen, boyen ..." as a child in the Montreal Yidishe
folksshuln.  I could not find it mentioned in Ruth Rubin's book.

Goldie Sigal

9)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  April 28
Subject: superstitions about names

My father (z'l) once talked about how when he was growing up in his shtetl
(Zawichost, Poland), his name, Dovid, was considered unlucky because it was
a palindrome (daled-vov-daled.)  Has anyone else ever heard of this
superstition?  I'm wondering if this belief was widespread, and if anyone
knows anything more about it.

Thanks,
Margie Newman

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 17.020


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