Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 23.009
October 14, 2013

1) khay-gelebt (Barry Goldstein)
2) vi halt men bay zay (Dina Lˇvias)
3) Itzik Mangers "Ovntlid" (Helen B. Katz)
4) Bialik in Yiddish (Hershl Hartman)
5) "Moyshe moroshe" (Jack Falk)
6) American antiwar and peace writing (Larry Rosenwald)
7) Peretz' "Shma yisroel oder der bas" (Jeanette Lewicki)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 26
Subject: khay-gelebt

An advertisement for the new Arumnemik Yiddish-English Verterbukh:

"let the good times roll! it's a wonderful life!"
"es iz geven khay-gelebt: we had a great time"

Barry Goldstein / berish goldshteyn

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 15
Subject: vi halt men bay zey?

[Moderator's note: This is a response to Stanley Levine's posting of August 3. He writes, 
"The only thing that still bothers me is that it is in the form of a question, not an 
exclamation."]

Dear Mr. Levine,
Punctuation is meant to render the speaker's INTONATION.
A question can, "unquestionably", be equivalent to an exclamation. And vice-versa.
Ex. : "Who goes there ?" ; or : "Oh, why do we have to listen to this?! " etc.etc...

On the other hand, if anyone can explain why a sentence beginning with "Vi halt
men..." and ending with a question mark should be translated as a wish
"(h)alavai... !" "Zol ... !", please let me know.

- My example, "Why do we have to listen to this?!" is a clear answer, I think:
it means, "I wish the speaker would stop."

The situation described by a question and by an exclamation may be essentially the same 
("shoyn" can of course add impatience to a question), but form matters also, and to me 
there is a difference in point of view between impatience and a wish-statement.

- That depends on how URGENT the wish happens to be!
Yours sincerely,

Dina Lˇvias

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 4
Subject: Itzik Mangers "Ovntlid"

Tayere Mendelyaner,

In the poem "Ovntlid," Itzik Manger writes about a "zumer-foygl."
Here is the whole verse:

shtiler ovnt. tunkl-gold.
a zumer-foygl flit.
di fligl zayne gro un gold,
avek in got-bahit
zol khotsh a tsiter fun zayn fli
arayn tsu mir in lid.

Zumer-foygl, I did not found in any dictionary. On one hand, a "zumer-feygele" is a 
butterfly. On the other hand, Manger is found of birds.
So I wondered if there is a way to know for sure if he meant a Sumer bird or a butterfly? 
Maybe there exists a translation of the poem old enough for him to have reviewed it? Or 
could he have translated it himself?

The complete text of the poem is, for instance, there:
http://rama01.free.fr/yidlid/chansons/ovntlid.htm

A sheynem dank in foroys,
a gut un a gezunt yor!

Helene B. Katz

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 18
Subject: Bialik in Yiddish

Going through piles of paper on my dining table (don't ask!), I retrieved an unsigned note 
handed to me after one of my lectures at the L.A. Yiddish Culture Club. The subject is 
Israel's "national poet" who wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish. It reads, in English 
translation:

"About Kh. N. Byalik:

He once strolled the street in Jerusalem with a friend, both of them speaking Yiddish. It 
was shabes (the Sabbath). An acquaintance approached him and said: 'Khayim Nakhman 
Byalik in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, speaking Yiddish rather than Hebrew! You are 
violating the Sabbath!' Byalik replied in these words: 'Speaking Hebrew is a heavy 
task and requires exertion (i.e., forbidden on the Sabbath), while Yiddish just speaks 
itself.'"

Hershl Hartman

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 25 
Subject: "Moyshe moroshe"

In Mendele 23.008, Al Grand seeks the full text to "Moyshe moroshe..." This song 
appears as part of Joel Engel's "KinderLider" (Berlin: Juwal, 1923), with the following 
lyrics:

 

   Moyshe, moroshe af yener velt

   Varf mir arop a zekele gelt!

 

   Tsu vos toyg dir a zekele gelt?

   Tsu koyfn a ferd un a vogele!

 

   Tsu vos toyg dir a ferd un a vogele?

   Shteyndlekh tsu firn.

 

   Tsu vos toyg dir shteyndlekh?

   Oyftsumoyrn a beys-hamikd'shl.

 

   Tsu vos toyg dir a beys-hamikd'shl?

   Arayntsutretn un G-t tsu betn.

 

Thanks to the Jewish Theological Seminary, the entire score is available
online:
http://garfield.jtsa.edu:1801/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1381802286758~932&loc
ale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=1
0&search_terms=joel%20engel&adjacency=N&application=DIGITOOL-
3&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true
 
Jack (Yankl) Falk

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 26
Subject: American antiwar and peace writing

Dear friends, tayere khaveyrim,

I'm making an anthology of American antiwar and peace writing for the Library of 
America, and wondered whether readers of Mendele might have texts to propose for that 
anthology.  They need to be American, they need to be focused on questions of war and 
peace (as opposed, say, to poems focused on social justice, of which there are a ton, but 
nit dos bin ikh oysn), and they need to be good; purity of attitude matters less than
excellence.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
al dos guts,
Larry Rosenwald

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 27
Subject: Peretz' "Shma yisroel oder der bas"

Many thanks to the folks who sent links to the Peretz story I sought and to the every-
helpful Internet Archive, Yiddish Book Center.

Here it is:

http://archive.org/stream/nybc209325#page/n138/mode/1up
Best
Jeanette Lewicki
______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 23.009

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