מענדעלע

Dear friends:

There exists in Swedish a fine book "Jiddischland" ("Yiddishland", Bokforlaget Nya Doxa, 1996) by Salomon Schulman (b. 1947), a son of surviving Polish Jews, nowadays a children's doctor, writer and translator (he has a o translated I.L Peretz into Swedish). Below is a translation, a bit rude perhaps, but it should be interesting, from the introduction. Schulman presents Yiddish culture as a coherent unity. He writes about everyday life in the shtetl, literature, music, film, Bund, Jews in Bolshevist Russia, Holocaust, the story of Jews in Sweden, Hasidic strains etc. Through all this runs a desperate longing for his unseen brother Zwi, murdered by the Nazis four years old. "Too young to live but old enough to die", as Schulman writes.

I hope you'll enjoy this little tidbit.

Salomon Schulman: From the introduction to "Jiddischland"

In Yiddishland

"Way up in my teens when people asked which languages I could speak I replied with an enumeration that excluded Yiddish, as I only spoke that language with a selected few. When these few individuals in their turn had to state what language they spoke, they almost always replied: "German". With my own school German as a reference I could hardly believe that anyone would swallow this white lie. And when more and more _gojim_ self-centredly stated that in that case it had to be Swiss German I was on the edge of bursting with laughter.

These repeated scenes were of course rooted in Jewish tragicomedy. Yiddish was their caste mark and the language of their sufferings. For them it was a question of hiding their stain, having been the chosen Untermenschen, mocked by all and everyone.

They mediated their idiom to us with an extreme hesitation, if at all. Many of them wouldn't like to see us as the next doomed generation, worn in these fragile linguistical clothes. In our homes there was a constant, almost desperate, mixture of Polish, Yiddish and Swedish.

In a paradoxical way the situation reminded of the 50's in the Soviet Union. The son of a Russian Yiddish poet once tried to explain to me why he didn't speak Yiddish. Nobody at all _spoke_ Yiddish, he said, it was _whispered_

I had the good luck myself of being fed with Yiddish rather constantly. The rest was an unbelievably confused mix of Polish and Schwedish ("Schwenska" in the original, alluding to the German "Schwedisch" and the Swedish "svenska" IJ). I must admit, however, that it was a relief for me to begin going to school, being able to escape from this cacophony of words and at last polish that so often criticized accent of mine.

You may imagine my astonishment when I, about 15 years old, picked a Hebrew book out of my dad's bookcase to contemplate the boring prayers. They looked just like the ones I had gone on with in _cheder_. To my surprise the book was written in a totally incomprehensible Hebrew. I had heard about Armenian, but it would have been very much unlike my dad to keep the knowledge of such an ancient language for himself.

Then as a bolt out of the blue the first word appeared from this blurred mass of a text: Brezezin. Brezezin, hell that was my parents' hometown!

Then I continued, as a matter of course, to spell my way through this presumptive Hebrew publication that showed up to be printed in pure Yiddish! Within the course of some minutes I was delivered of my illiteracy. A whole world opened up for my enthusiastic eyes.

Now, when I have become a cultivated person, goodness gracious me, and people ask me which languages I speak I always first of all, and with pride, reply: Yiddish."

Ingemar Johansson

Yes, Gitl, there is a Yiddishland. No mere metaphor, it was not only my country, it was the land of my birth.

I think Harshav was talking of palpable fayer un vaser un himl un erd in his wonderful anthology, _American Yiddish Poetry_ University of California Press 1986 ISBN 0-520-04842-3. I quote from page 22.

"It is important to realize that when a Yiddish poet wrote poetry, that poetry was not part of a normal nation-state with a stratified society. The Yiddish poet did not have Yiddish schools, universities, philosophers, sociologists, research institutes, police stations, bus drivers and such all around him. Literature was "everything." It was a substiture for religion and for statehood, it was a state in itself, "Yiddishland"; to abandon it was to abandon the whole culture. Hence the enormous importance of literature in the eyes of its adherents......"

To try to chronicle Yiddishland, the Secular Jewish home in its heyday, its vigor was about political activism that was geknipt un gebindn to a burning love, akin to religious fervor, for 'enormously important' literature. I remember there was always a 'minyan' in our crowded, unspacious living-room, and much heated literary pilpul about Asch or Yoshe Kalb or Avrom Reisen or fe, Bashevis or Peretz or Dovid Edelshtadt,,,,, but, Gitl, not about religious literature - no Hillel or Shamai and whether you could eat an egg if the hen laid it on a holiday.

Gitl, if you had been at this round table and had seen the reverent faces of my relatives in debate, or of the ingenious Arbeter Ring teachers whose energy filled us with their idealism, you too would have believed in the religion and patriotism of Yiddishland, in the statehood of thisYiddish Camelot.

My memories, so sweet and deep, sweep me a step beyond Harshav; literature was not a substitute for, it was, religion and statehood for them.

Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan Boynton Beach, Florida

It seems that the word Yiddishland became better rooted in French, where I was able to find it in five titles (as oppose to zero in English). Why?

Mady Atlan, Manhattan, le nouveau Yiddishland d'Isaac Bashevis Singer. In: Les Aspects litteraires du biculturalisme aux Etats-Unis / Paris: Presses de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 1986. 174 p. ISBN: 2904315306

Alain Brossat, Le Yiddishland revolutionnaire / Paris: Balland, 1983. 362 p. ISBN: 2715804334

Dossier: le Yiddishland en France depuis 1880 / Paris: Liana Levi, 1997. 142 p. ISBN: 2867461618

Les revolutionnaires du Yiddishland / Paris: KUIV Productions et Antenne 2, Broadcast on 19 Jan 1989 (video)

Ben Zimet, Yiddishland / Paris: Ness Music, 1994 (audio, Ness Music 886080)

Iosif Vaisman

A friend of mine was telling a story in which the word "Yakhne" had a prominent part. I have heard a word that has a similar sound, specifically "Yakhtsn," which, according to Weinreich means "a privileged person." There are all sorts of possibilities of using that word with heavy sarcasm. But "Yakhne," which Leo Rosten defines as a gossip or a shrew, is not to be found in either Weinreich or Harkavy. I am assured that in the Bronx, it was used a great deal. Not having lived in the Bronx, I cannot vouch for this. Can anyone enlighten me. Thank you in advance.

Gitl Dubrovsky

Marion Troia asked about "Di Jidishe Zaytung" [07.194]

I believe the New York Public Library has Di Jidishe Zaytung (El Diario Israelita) on Microfilm from 1923-1973 complete. It can probably be borrowed via interlibrary loan.

Regards,

Ronald Florence Maple Lawn Farm, Stonington, CT

Does anyone know where the use of "etz" and "enk" for ihr and eich comes from?

Avromyaakov Amkraut

Tayere mendelyaner:

A kurts brivele tsu dertseyln aikh az undzer IWO (yivo) hot aroisgegebn a zeyer vikhtiker un origineler bukh. Geshibn oyf shpanish fun Jose (Iosef) Judkovsky, "El tango, una historia con judios" ( der tango, a geshikhte mit yidn) iz di ershte oysgabe vegn dem inyen dershinen oyf der gorer velt. Es vern dertzeylt in im, ale gesheenishn vos hobn tzu ton mit yidn un tango (muzikers, dikhters, zingers,u.a.v.). Mit a monat tsurik iz dos bukh tsum ershtn mol forgeshtelt gevorn inem Buenos Ayreser internatsionaler bukh-yarid mit groys derfolg. In tsvey vokhn arum, vet dos zelbe geshen in Yerushalaym in a farzamlung fun di dortike Tango Akademie, un mitn shraybers onveznhayt.

Mir vartn oyf ayer entfer. Zayt gezunt. Simkhe Drayer

A big "yasher koah" to Manaster Ramer. It's just this mishmash of his scholasticism and our armchair linguistics that makes Mendele so exciting.

Yosef Gilboa

Jason Payne asked about "deconstruction" and "post-structuralism" in Yiddish [07.195].

Answer: Dekonstruktsye, poststrukturalizm.

Sincerely, Mordkhe Schaechter