Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 21.007 October 24, 2011 1) Words to "Tsugeklept sought" (Ann Rabinowitz) 2) dreyen a spodik (Barry Goldstein) 3) dreyen a spodik, shantazh (David Spodick) 4) shantazh (Dina Levias) 5) dreyen spodik, shantazh (Elvira Groezinger) 6) "bomb" in Opatoshu's work (Nathan Weinstock) 7) Jacob Gordin's "The Yiddish Queen Lear" and "Mirele Efros" (Max Shulman) 8) Call for Papers for Conference: The World Elsewhere (Department of German, Berkeley) 9) The Bund on Wikipedia (Eli Russ) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 18 Subject: words to "Tsugeklept" sought I would like to find the lyrics of a song recorded in Lemberg in 1908 by Minna Bleichmann (later wife of Morris Axelrad) which is entitled "Tsugeklebt." Minna is singing so fast on the recording that it is difficult to decipher what she is singing.Thanks for any help on this inquiry. Ann Rabinowitz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 4 Subject: dreyen a spodik The writer also used the expression "dreyt dem spodik." Again, neither Uriel Weinreich nor Harkavy contains the word "spodik." "spodik" and "dreyen a spodik" are in Uriel Weinreich (and probably Harkavy): p277 (from the right), 516 (from the left): "high fur cap" and "bother, annoy" Barry Goldstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 6 Subject: dreyen a spodik, shantazh You will see by my name why "spodik" is familiar to me. A spodik is two things: a  saucer and a conical black fur hat. "dreyen a spodik"  means to annoy someone or put someone on, -  identical to " hakn a tshaynik." "shantazh" is easy, it's French for "blackmail" ("chantage") and M.Friedman can find it in the English-Yiddish (not in the Yiddish-English) section of Uriel Weinreich's dictionary, but of course you have to know French to guess that --- my 5 years finally paying off. zayt gezunt, David Spodick 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 3 Subject: shantazh Marvin Friedman on Sept. 25, asks (in Mendele, Vol.21.006) for the meaning of the word "shantazh":the word is the French word "chantage" (which comes into Yiddish via Russian): it means blackmail."Faire chanter," a verb, is "to blackmail"; in Russian, it's "shantazhirovats." Dina Levias 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 4 Subject: dreyen a spodik, shantazh Answering the query of Martin Friedman on "shantazh" and "spodik": Shantazh means blackmail (Polish szantaz, originally French, chantage). Spodik comes also from Polish, spodek (saucer) - as I don't know the exact context, it could mean that he is turning the saucer, thus looking for things hidden underneath (as a metaphor). Hoping to have helped you. Best, Elvira Groezinger [Moderater's note: Similar responses were also received from Eric Weitzner, Lazar Greisdorf, Leonard Fox, Sonia Kovitz, Zulema Seligsohn, John Burke, Jack S. Berger,Michael Koplow, Tzilla Kratter and Noyekh Miller. Some contributors also noted that a spodik is commonly worn by Gerer Hasidim. Mordkhe Schaechter, z"l, used to explain that "spodik" - the type of hat - represents a person's head in this expression. Hence,"dreyen a spodik" means "dreyen a kop."] 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 4 Subject: "bomb" in Opatoshu's work Tayere Mendelianer, In one of Opatoshu's tales, he has a group of friends sitting at a cafe terrace singing: "Oy,a bomb, oy a bomb!" Can anyone tell me what "a bomb" is? Obviously, not a bomb! Thanks already, Nathan Weinstock 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 9 Subject: Jacob Gordin's "The Yiddish Queen Lear" and "Mirele Efros" I am looking for a translation of Jacob Gordin's "The Yiddish Queen Lear" or "Mirele Efros." So far, I have been unable to locate one to help in my own work. Any thoughts, ideas? His other works "The Yiddish Kenig Lir" and "Got, Mentsh, un Tayvl" are readily available, but Mirele as famous as it is has been hard to locate. Any help is appreciated. Max Shulman 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: October 23 Subject: Call for Papers for Conference: The World Elsewhere THE WORLD ELSEWHERE "For you the city, thus I turn my back: There is a world elsewhere." From Coriolanus, Shakespeare Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference University of California, Berkeley March 16-18, 2012 Keynote speakers: Professor James A. Schultz, Chair, Department of Germanic Languages, UCLA Professor David Shneer, Department of History, University of Colorado The power of literature is to imagine worlds. From Wolfram von Eschenbach's Kingdom of Zazamanc to fantastic imaginings of faraway lands in Medieval and Early Modern Cosmographia and from Calvinist cities upon hills to Kafka's penal colony, its renderings and attempted realizations have fueled the imagination, sparked debate, and far too often led to disaster. The world elsewhere may, following Thomas More, be called Utopia, but this is both a "good place" and "no place," making such constructions inherently fraught with challenges from pragmatism and problematic in their definitions of what "good" is. These worlds are often fantastic, but can also be terrifying; are often familiar, but upon closer inspection utterly alien. They are "imaginative spaces" in which we work through the hopes, fears, desires, and possibilities that human experience engenders.  They provide the means through which we imagine ourselves as part of a world, a universal community.  The Internet and digital media grant us new power to simulate our imagined worlds.  But how have the nature and use of these imagined worlds changed in our increasingly interconnected and globalized age? For the conference, we encourage an interdisciplinary approach, seeking papers from scholars of modern and medieval literature, film and philosophy, history and art history, linguistics and sociology, and related disciplines. We especially encourage submissions on Yiddish literature. The conference will be held in Dwinelle Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, March 16-18, 2012.  Please submit a 300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by December 31, 2011, to: theworldelsewhere@gmail.com. Possible topics include, but are in no way limited to: Travelogues (e.g. Felix Fabri, Mendele Mocher Seforim's The Travels of Benjamin the Third) The past as imagined world World literature and the making of worlds Models of an ideal society (religious, philosophical, artistic, political) Social media and connectivity The reconstruction of language families (e.g. Proto-Indo European, Proto-Germanic) Dystopian mirrors of modernity Feminist utopian literature Nostalgia for place (e.g. the shtetl, Heimat) The imagined worlds of moving pictures Utopian socialism and artistic communes (e.g. East Germany, Worpswede) Colonial and post-colonial fantasies Encounters with the "New World" (e.g. Karl May, Alexander von Humboldt) Frankfurt School utopias The circulation of stories New forms of authorship, publication and readership Alternate histories Conference organizers: Jenna Ingalls, Tara Hottman, Kenneth Fockele theworldelsewhere@gmail.com Department of German 5319 Dwinelle Hall University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-3243 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date:  October 3 Subject: The Bund on Wikipedia Friends, In honor of the 114th anniversary of the founding of the General Jewish Labor Bund of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia in Vilna on October 7, 1897, The Bund on Wikipedia Project invites you to join our growing online movement of Wikipedia Editors dedicated to creating and editing Wikipedia articles about the Bund. Our Project seeks to assist professional and non-professional researchers of the Bund, as well as to preserve the memory and legacy of the Bund through Wikipedia. Since our inception in 2009, the Project has created and edited nearly 100 Wikipedia articles on the Bund, and has donated them to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. We ask that you take part in our Project by becoming a Wikipedia Editor, or support our work with a monetary gift or source material. For more information, please visit our website: http://bundwiki.weebly.com/. Yours, Eli Russ Founding Director The Bund on Wikipedia Project http://bundwiki.weebly.com/ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 21.007 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@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 in the body of the message, as responses will be posted for all to read. Please send postings always in plain text (no  HTML or the like). 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@yale.edu (IMPORTANT: in the subject line write "Mendele Personal") In order to spare the shamosim time and effort, we request that contributors adhere, when applicable, as closely as possible to standard English punctuation, grammar, etc. and to the YIVO rules of transliteration into Latin letters, which are explained in summary form at http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275 . All other messages should be sent to the shamosim at this address: mendele@mailman.yale.edu Mendele on the web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/ _______________________________________________ Mendele mailing list Mendele@mailman.yale.edu http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/mendele