Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 20.002 June 8, 2010 1) Songs about food (Khane-Faygl Turtletaub) 2) Songs about food (Harriet Weinstein) 3) Songs about food (Tom Putnam) 4) Chaim Grade's unpublished works (Hershl Bershady) 5) "A khasene in bronzvil" (Shimen Neuberg) 6) "A khasene in bronzvil" (Hugh Denman) 7) Shloyme Berlinsky (Magdalena Ruta) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 16, 2010 Subject: Songs about food Milna Kartowski might like to include the song "Varnishkes" in her program. It is a comic song about cooking. Of course, there is always "Bulbes." Khane-Faygl Turtletaub 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 19, 2010 Subject: Songs about food A few years ago I did a presentation on "A Brief History of Jewish Music." I explored how Jewish Music encompasses aspects of daily life. I discussed how the Jewish people had an almost reverent attitude towards the food they ate. Food actually played a significant role in the immigration of Jews to North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here is a list of some of the songs in my presentation: "Lomir Alle Zingen a Zemerl" This song is all about the difference in foods that rich and poor people eat. Famines that struck Russia, from the 1890's onwards, reduced the Jewish masses to destitution. The poor often subsisted on a diet of dark bread, potatoes, and herring. Wealthy Jews, on the other hand, consumed an abundance of rich foods that included meat, fruits, baked goods and dairy products. America, the destination of the impoverished and the persecuted, empowered Jews who had been subsisting on the verge of starvation. By eating foods once the preserve of the Jewish upper classes, they engaged in an act of class reversal. The formerly poor started to eat blintzes, kreplach, kasha varnishkes, strudel, noodles, knishes, and, most importantly, meat every day. The second song is "Bulbes." This song is all about potatoes. Potatoes were a common, inexpensive food. The Jewish cook took the humble potato, grated it, added onion, chicken fat, eggs and flour, and the potato kugel was born. Do any of you remember any favorite potato dishes that you ate when you were young? Even though food is plentiful today, Jewish recipes are still versatile concoctions of plentiful and inexpensive ingredients. The next song is "Hudl mitn shtrudel." The next song is "Homentashn." Yachne-Dvoshe bakes some homentashn. But unfortunately, it turns out that she is not such a good cook. The next song is "Kartoflzup mit shwomen." This is a song about potato soup with mushrooms. Yossl asks for these various dishes from his mother. She says, "You have chutzpa to ask for this." The next song, "Di mame kocht varenikes," is about Mama cooking a common Jewish dish, varenikes. The next song is about gefilte fish. The next song, "Amol iz geven a yid," is concerned with not having enough food to serve on Shabbos. Shabbos meals were associated with chicken soup, roasted meat, gefilte fish, cholent, cakes and fruit. Historians wrote of the elaborate preparations and week-long scrimping endured by the poor so that they could enjoy delicious foods on the Sabbath. The Sabbath and its foods elevated their ordinary lives and bore witness to the intimate connection between sanctity and food. The next song is "Shabes bay dem tish." A man complains about the woes that modern life and especially the freezer have brought to his Shabes table: dried-out knishes, cold soup, old cholent and hard challah. I hope this helps. Harriet Weinstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 17, 2010 Subject: Songs about food Milna Kartowski is looking for texts and songs about the Yiddish cooking tradition. There must be dozens of hundreds. But one song to enjoy (more about eating than cooking) is Kapelye's "Chicken," on their album of that name. You'll find it - where else? - at Amazon. Or be kosher and shop at Klezmer Shack. Tom Putnam 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 17, 2010 Subject: Chaim Grade's unpublished works Dear Mendelyaners, Chaim Grade's widow recently died. Her comments about I.B. Singer, as quoted In the NYTimes obit, are very negative. She makes Singer out to have devoted a preponderance of his work to the antics of "dybbuks" and goblins, and compares his work unfavorably to that of her husband's. My Yiddish is approximately that of a somewhat backward eight year old who listened in at the door as Yiddish speaking adults talked, laughed and sometimes cursed. Alas, I cannot read the language. Singer's work is accessible to me only in translation. Many of his novels and stories, such as The Manor, The Estate, The Family Muscat, The Slave, The Magician of Lublin, A Day of Pleasure, for examples, have very few if any dybbuks. Without taking anything away from Chaim Grade, Singer's work is on the whole a magnificent literary achievement. They are great works of art. I do not know Grade's work. I have only read his The Yeshiva, which his wife says has been badly translated. I cannot judge the veracity of the translation. But there is no doubt the English prose is clumsy. I don't know what has animated the curious and totally unnecessary competition between the forces of Singer and the forces of Grade, but surely there is room for two great contemporary Yiddish writers? Before Yiddish declines even further, I hope that Grade's untranslated works can find really good, sensitive translators. Hershl Bershady 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 19,2010 Subject: "A khasene in bronzvil" Der original "A khasene in Bronzvil" iz gedrukt in "Goldene Keyt" 42 (1962), zayt 25-35 (s'iz gring tsu gefinen mit der hilf fun der Bashevis-biblyografye fun Roberta Saltzman). Shimen Neuberg 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 17, 2010 Subject: "A khasene in bronzvil" The story sought, namely "A Wedding in Brownsville," appeared originally under the title "A khasene in bronzvil" in "Di goldene keyt" 42 (1962), 25-35, as is easily ascertained in Roberta Saltzman's indispensible Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Bibliography of His Works in Yiddish and English, 1960-1991. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002, 220pp. [see items A 249 & C7]. The sole caveat here is that unfortunately Saltzman, a librarian at the New York Public Library, felt obliged to follow the perverse Library of Congress practice of transcribing khes as h (omiting the subscript dot). Such a transcription is no doubt appropriate for Hebrew (albeit with subscript dot), but completely inappropriate for Yiddish, as all YIVO-devotees will readily acknowledge, thus this story will be found in Saltzman's "Romanized Yiddish Titles Index" (195-211) under "Hasene in Bronzvil." We should be grateful to fraynd Marc Caplan for pointing out the affinity to Shotns baym hodson which I certainly had not previously registered. Hugh Denman 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: May 17, 2010 Subject: Shloyme Berlinsky Sholem aleykhem, On behalf of one of my friends I am looking for any piece of information about the life and writings of Shloyme Berlinsky. I would be very grateful for any hint. A groysn dank, Magdalena Ruta ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 20.001 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct your mail as follows: Material for Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements, i.e. announcements of events, commercial publications, etc., always in plain text (no HTML or the like) to: victor.bers at yale.edu (in the subject line write Mendele Personal) Material for postings to Mendele Yiddish literature and language, i.e. inquiries and comments of a non-commercial or publicity nature: mendele at mailman.yale.edu IMPORTANT: Please include your full name as you would like it to appear in your posting. No posting will appear without its author"s name. Submissions to regular Mendele should not include personal email addresses, as responses will be posted for all to read. 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