מענדעלע

In the New Union Prayerbook "Gates of Repentance" for the Days of Awe, there are included in the meditations part of the Yom Kippur afternoon service the first two verses of "Zawg nit keyn mol" in the original Yiddish followed by an English translation. This past Yom Kippur my wife and I read these verses from the bimah so that they were indeed part of the service.

Morrie Feller Phoenix

In my childhood I always understood my parents to say "khezhme". Has anyone else heard this variant? (The first I heard of "khezhbon" was recently in Jerusalem).

Jack Feldman

Lisa Tomlinson asked about ha-Signon ha-Ivri textbook [6.198]. The author, Magnus Krinski (1863-1916) wrote several Hebrew textbooks that were published many times in both hemispheres. Among them "ha-signon ha-ivri: kurs gavoha le-limud ha-safah ha-ivrit ve-safrutah" (Varshah: ha-Or, 1922, 11th edition) and "Reshit daat sefath eber" (New York: Druckerman, 1926, 25th edition).

To answer Lisa's question about Yiddish textbooks we don't have to look far away. Magnus Krinski wrote "Der idish lehrer" (Varshe: Bikher far ale, 1920, 4th edition) and "Ertsihung: finf kapitlekh iber der ertsihung fun idishe kinder" (Varshe: Bikher far ale, 1908). He also co-authored "Literatur visenshaft: lehrbukh far di idishe un algemeyne literatur teorye" (Varshe: Bikher far ale, 1908).

As to the level of old textbooks (btw, why "it is striking that such a fine text was actually taught ... in Poland"? Whose inferiority implied in the remark? Polish Jews? Tsar's censors?), Shtetl's library has selections from two Yiddish primers:

Eliezer Steinbarg, Alef Beys (Czernowitz: Kultur, 1921) http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/Book/alefbeys.html and Yaakov Levin, Der onfanger (New York: Idishe Shul, 1922) http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/Book/onfanger.html

Compare them to your firstgrader's textbook today. Results may provoke some thinking.

Iosif Vaisman

Further examples of Hebonics:

Standard English: May I take your plate sir? Hebonics: You've hardly touched your food! What's the matter, there's something wrong with it?

In case of a mother or grandmother answering the phone: Standard English: It's been so long since you've called... Hebonics: You didn't wonder if I'm dead yet?

David Robboy

Mikhl Herzog's translation [6.197] [of the 17th century poem] renders the last line:

das Mauschel und ein Jud ein Ding sey."

as:

The Mauschel and that a Jew is a thing" [object?]

The last line is a literal translation. It more likely means: "or that Mauschel and a Jew is one and the same."

Regarding the word mauscheln: I've heard it used for a card game for money in which you start with a very low amount and the nature of the game increases this to horrendous sums very fast. Has anyone come across this game?

Michael Kranz

To two eminent cousins are discussed in Volume 6.197, both on the subject of "Mauscheln." Mikhl Herzog mentions Nicolas Slonimsky, the musician/writer, who died just one year ago at the age of 101; and Michael Steinlauf discusses Antoni Slonimski, the poet. They were both grandsons of Hayim Zelig Slonimski, scientist, inventor, and founding editor of HaZefirah, the long-running Hebrew newspaper published intermittently from Warsaw and then Berlin.

With all respect to Herzog, however, I believe the 1909 criticism of Mahler that Slonimsky cites does not actually use the word _Mauscheln_. The language is nonetheless revealing. Slonimsky gives both the original German and his English translation:

[The music] "... _juedelt_. Das heisst: sie spricht musikalisches Deutsch, aber mit dem Akzent, mit dem Tonfalle und vor allem auch mit der Geste des oestlichen, des allzu oestlichen Juden."

"...it _acts_ Jewish. This is to say that it speaks musical German, but with an accent, with an inflection, and above all, with the gestures of an eastern, all too eastern Jew." (Lexicon of Musical Invective, p. 121; _italics_ in the original.)

Following the Slonimsky reference, Herzog also quotes from Max Weinreich's citation of Johann Christof Wagenseil, the German philologist and encyclopedist. There exists a small but important literature on how heavily composer Richard Wagner drew upon another work of Wagenseil for the vocabulary and historical detail of "Die Meistersinger."

Regrettably, since the first performances many have argued that the opera's antagonist, Beckmesser, was intended as an anti-Semitic stereotype. He is portrayed with a crabbed and awkward musical style -to say nothing of his pedantic and uninspired pronouncements on the art of music -- and it is widely argued that the opera is, among other things, the artistic counterpart to "On the Jewish in Music," Wagner's infamous and immensely influential anti-Semitic prose tract which he re-issued soon after Meistersinger's premiere. In this essay, Wagner advances the view that Jews are intrinsically incompatible with European society. Though I don't believe he uses the word _Mauscheln_, his point of departure is precisely what he characterizes as Jews' offensive, alien pronunciation of German, how that indelibly taints their music and, by extension, all other arts they may pursue. Beyond being the prototype for the kind of musical criticism Slonimsky cited, this essay was a seminal work in the broader history of German ideological anti-Semitism, and the concept of _Mauscheln_ -- if not the word itself -- plays no small role in its central rationale.

In his book "Wagner & Wagenseil" (1927), Herbert Thompson translates into English from Wagner's early plot notes for the opera, occasionally inserting in brackets [ ] the composer's original German term. In the description of the rules of the singing contest, which forms the central core of the plot, we encounter the following, reproduced exactly as Thompson has printed it.

[In the event of a tie, the contestants must] '...be heard again, until the honour of 'winning belongs to one, and he is found to have been guilty 'of fewer mistakes than the others, or else has made no slips 'at all, and is therefore said to have sung smoothly '[glatt]. 'The prizes are now awarded...' etc.

Nu? It's hard not to laugh when you know they didn't allow treyf.

Ron Robboy