Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 20.008 October 20, 2010 1) Yiddish in the University (Seth L. Wolitz) 2) Cuts at the University at Albany (SUNY) (Barry Trachtenberg) 3) Raising money for university Yiddish instruction (Harriet Murav) 4) Internationale in Yiddish (Leybl Goldberg) 5) Two Versions of Bergelson (Noyekh Miller) 6) Shoemakers, Rabbis and High Foreheads (Lane Silberstein) 7) akshn meshumed (Leybl Goldberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date October 8, 2010 Subject: Yiddish in the University Dear Colleagues: In Europe the institutions that support Yiddish generally receive state support whereas in most American institutions, private or public, there is limited financial support for Yiddish. Let us remember something else! Germany is and will continue to be the center of world study of Yiddish as time goes on. Why? They have state support and they have guilt and they have a project! The plan is to incorporate Yiddish once again as a form of Juedisch-Deutsch, the language of the Jews in Osten into the ensemble of German Kultur. The Eastern European Jews are now being recognized as the best friends of German culture, Kulturtraegers as it were, to the Slavic world and the German language they brought developed in comparative isolation in the East into Yiddish. The horror Hitler wrought was a most grave mistake! The Jews were the best friends of German Hochkultur. It is now the duty of German scholarship to study, esteem and protect the remains of Yiddish and show it is part of the German inheritance. The Polish position however holds a different take of the situation. Yiddish is a language that belongs to Eastern Europe and especially Poland, where it developed based on Slavic syntactical models. Yiddish is a language built on Germanic roots, Slavic syntax and vocabulary, and Hebrew/Aramaic elements. But most importantly, Yiddish culture is based on Slavic literary and cultural models and its Hochkultur reflects the absorption of the best of Slavic literary examples from Polish and Russian literatures and cultures. Therefore, Poland sees itself as the heir, not Germany, to the protection of the Yiddish language and culture. The recent efforts of the Cracow scholars of Yiddish to underscore the integration of Yiddish culture with Polish cultural life in that former capital of Poland is further proof that the Poles are ready to defend Yiddish as part of the patrimony of Poland no less than the German attitude. Time will tell what Russian scholarship will show but already in the plastic arts, many a volume treats the Yiddish cultural artifacts as part and parcel of the Russian-Jewish entente cordiale! And Ukraine and Rumania no doubt will join in too as their economic conditions improve. Therefore, European appreciation of Yiddish is not selfless. There are political and ideological reasons why Yiddish Studies has more intense accomplishment in Europe. Only in France has the study of Yiddish approached a level of quality and quantity that eschews political and ideological interests and appears more purely academic. But even in France, the study of Yiddish and its culture is part of the effort of integrating the Jewish inheritance inside the new France, une culture franaise universelle. Jewish culture from the Yiddish ideally should be as accepted as Alsatian or Breton cultures in the national cultural ideal. La France is a unity of many elements and the Jewish souche must also be included. Europe, therefore, has no problem in supporting Yiddish language and culture if it serves the purpose of the national interests. In America, take my institution, the University of Texas at Austin, it had one of the oldest Yiddish language programs in America but when the Yiddish Professor quit her position, the chair, a Jew of German Jewish origins, decided that Yiddish was a luxury that the Germanic Department could no longer afford. He did not want to hire a new instructor of Yiddish and he made it clear that the classes were just marginal in enrollment. Therefore, the teaching of the Yiddish language had to go. And so ended one of the longest runs of Yiddish being taught as a language of study in the United States. No regrets but some crocodile tears. And even when it seemed possible to privately fund Yiddish, there was raised the question, where could one find a proper Yiddish language teacher! The fact simply is the following: The German departments don't really care about Yiddish, the English departments don't care either and the Hebrew Studis and Jewish Studies Programs hold no stake in Yiddish either. Thus, Yiddish has a few courses here and there and it is going nowhere in America. Sincerely, Seth L. Wolitz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 19, 2010 Subject: Cuts at the University at Albany (SUNY) Dear Colleagues, No doubt you have heard about the proposed cuts to the Humanities programs at the University at Albany. Below are my comments to the Faculty Senate (each speaker was given only three minutes) regarding the changes in Judaic Studies at the University over the past few years and how this new round of cuts will further diminish our offerings. Yours, Barry Trachtenberg Lost in the current discussions about the cuts in the academic programs are the recent changes in Judaic Studies. Founded as a Department forty years ago this very month, Judaic Studies at UAlbany was a forerunner of the burst in Jewish Studies programs that has occurred over the past two decades. Now, more than one hundred and twenty-five Universities in North America and Canada offer Jewish Studies, and it is a field that is continually growing. I arrived to UAlbany in 2003 as one of the first faculty members whose line was to be paid through a public-private partnership (a failed experiment that demonstrated how academic speech can be suppressed through such arrangements). I was the fifth member of a vibrant Department that offered classes in many realms of Jewish Studies. While we never had more than 20 majors at any given time, we often served annually more than one thousand students in our classes, many of whom saw Jewish Studies as a vital part of their education. Our recent external review from 2009 credited us as a "nationally competitive program" with a staff who is "young and energetic" but "lacks the non- replacement of departing faculty". Now, I am the sole full-time faculty member in Jewish Studies, and I, along with a Hebrew lecturer and a handful of adjunct instructors, have had our Department dissolved and we are now housed in History. We are in the process of suspending admission to the major. As part of my responsibility to oversee Judaic Studies, soon to be officially a program, I am to create an interdisciplinary major out of the faculty located across the University, following the model that exists at most other schools. Such a task was already going to prove difficult. Since the Judaic Studies Department was the site where those faculty with an interest in the topic were housed, there are only a few faculty at the University with either the training or the interest in mounting classes and making the long-term commitment to teaching them on a regular basis. Now, with the plan to cut the programs in Theater, Classics, Russian, Italian, and French, I fear that my job may be impossible. At least three of the five programs have faculty with an interest or clear affinity with Jewish Studies. Take the work of French Professor Brett Bowles, for instance, who works on antisemitism in French film. One could also point to Professor of Russian Henryk Baran, who researches the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As well, faculty in the Theater Department are currently preparing a production of Dear Harvey, a play on the life and times of the civil rights activist Harvey Milk. The absence of these programs will be devastating to my efforts to rebuild the Judaic Studies major. Just as the creation of the Judaic Studies Department in 1970 augured future developments in the discipline, the decision to permit its attrition over the past few years has likewise presaged the recent news about the tragic cuts. I strongly suspect that had we not lost our faculty to retirements or to other Universities, we too would have been terminated, rather than only downsized. As the Faculty Senate weighs its decision regarding the termination of these five programs, please consider that the cuts impact constituencies far beyond those immediately affected. It is devastating and shameful that these programs are to be terminated. The effects of these ill-conceived decisions will extend far and wide throughout the University and degrade us all. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 10, 2010 Subject: Raising money for university Yiddish instruction I am trying to restore the teaching and learning of Yiddish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by teaching Yiddish 101-102 myself on an overload basis. I would like to raise funds for undergrad and grad fellowships for the study of Yiddish and for the support of teaching Yiddish (a qualified grad student could do first and second year). The summer programs are extremely expensive, and offering Yiddish as a regular language course during the academic year makes sense for many reasons. Does anyone have information about foundations that would give this kind of support? I would be most grateful for any advice. Harriet Murav 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 11, 2010 Subject: Internationale in Yiddish Here is a version of the Internationale in Yiddish, as I learned it at Arbeter Ring Camp in the 1940s: Shteyt oyf, ir ale vert vi shklafn, in hunger lebn muz un neyt. Der gayst, er kokht, er ruft tsu vafn-- tsum shlakht undz firn iz er greyt. Di velt fun gvald-tatn un laydn, tseshtern veln mir un dan fun frayhayt, glaykhayt a gan-eydn bashafn vet der arbetsman. Dos vet zayn shoyn der letster un antsheydener shtrayt; mit dem Internatsional, shteyt oyf ir arbetslayt. Dos vet zayn shoyn der letster un antsheydener shtrayt; mit dem Internatsional, shteyt oyf ir arbetslayt. Barnett (Berl) Zumoff [Moderator's note: Leybl Goldberg offered a version of the song from the popular reader "Unzer Vort" (Kh. Bez/Bezprozvani and Z. Yefroykin, Maks N. Maisel Farlag, N.Y., 1933, p. 200) and the following translation.] (Literal translation: Arise you all, who like slaves/ In hunger and need must live!/ The sirit-- it boils, it calls to arms/ To the battle it is ready to lead us. The world of violence and suffering/ We shall destroy, and then-- /Of freedom and quality a paradise/ Shall the workingman create. This will be the final/ And decisive battle! /With the International/ Arise ye workingmen!) Leybl Goldberg 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 14, 2010 Subject: Two versions of Bergelson I'm looking at two versions of "arum vokzal" by Dovid Bergelson, both published by the famous Kletzkin Ferlag in Vilna. The first is undated but is marked 3rd edition, the second has no edition number but is dated 1929 and as far as I can tell resembles but is not identical with the Wostok (Berlin) edition of 1922. I assume that the first of these was published some time after 1911 (the story first appeared in 1909) but before 1922 because the main -- and glaring -- difference between the two versions is the orthography and use of nekudes. Briefly, the "3rd edition" version reads as though it were transliterated from a German manuscript (fertieft, oysgedienter, etc.) and distinguishes voiced from unvoiced ayins by adding a segol. The 1922 version on the other hand (and with a handful of exceptions) looks pretty much like something in this week's Forverts. Obviously something pretty major must have occurred in the Yiddish world for publishers to go to the considerable trouble and expense of recomposing the text. My question is: what happened? Noyekh Miller 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 12, 2010 Subject: Shoemakers, Rabbis and High Foreheads Norman Buder asks, "2. Can you cite any other examples from Yiddish literature in hich shoemakers and rabbis are thus compared, or in which shoemakers are depicted as having high foreheads or having other characteristics associated with rabbis, thinkers, etc.?" I.J. Singer's "The Family Carnovsky" presents an opposite example: the young Georg Crnovsky refuses to study Torah. His teacher laments that "Only a shoemaker will I make of [Georg]!" However, I have only read up to this point in the novel. Nor do I remember any descriptions of the boy's head. Lane Silberstein 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 12, 2010 Subject: akshn meshumed Mike Hirsch asked about "akshn mshimet" and said that he thought it meant "stubborn ox". I think what he probably heard from his Ukrainian born bobe was more likely "a farakshente meshumed" or "an akshn, a meshumed," with "meshumed" pronounced "meshimid". A "meshumed" is literally an apostate, an outrageous fellow. "akshn" (spelled ayin-kuf-shin-nun) just means a stubborn person; it has nothing to do with "ox," which is "oks." So, the over all idea might be conveyed as "a pig-headed so-and-so." Leybl Goldberg [Moderator's note: SZ Beer confirms that meshumed (meshumad in Hebrew) is an apostate.] ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 20.008 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct your mail as follows: 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. 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