מענדעלע

My name is Ted Alper (My "Hebrew" name -- given to me by fairly nonobservant parents -- is Manis Heschel (the "Manis" shows up in my middle name, "Mason"). ). My wife and I and I became interested in Yiddish about three years ago. We taught it to ourselves with textbooks, dictionaries, newspapers, old movies on video -- and books of poetry we found at the Chicago-area Brandeis book fairs and Asher Library at Spertus College. (We lived in Chicago for two years before returning to the San Francisco area, where we had both gone to graduate school.)

I'm sure our pronounciation is dreadful and we can't consistently craft grammatical sentences, but we can at least work our way through most of Forverts each week -- or at least we could before the birth of our son Morris a year ago put most of our play (and a good bit of our work) on hold.

It's always most fun to try to read books or articles about which one has prior interest. (I still kick myself for not picking up that translation of John Stuart Mill at one book fair.) Anyway, I would be very interested in finding any copies of Yiddish chess books. I have contacted the Yiddish Book Archive, but have not yet received their catalog. Via Gopher, I've located the only Yiddish chess book of which I had prior knowledge (Endewelt and Weisblatt, dos ershte yiddishe shachlehrbuch, Warsaw, 1917) in the John G. White Chess Collection of the Cleveland Public Library, but it is non-circulating.

I might also be interested in yiddish math textbooks (my current job involves computer-based math instruction for talented younger students).

Theodore M. Alper alper@csli.stanford.edu

My name is Keith (Kalman) Weiser and I am a senior at Yale College, Yale U.I am double majoring in German and int'l studies here, and have recently aaplied to graduate programs in Yiddish language and literature with Jewish history. I am eager to speak with any grad students (or others) who are pursuing similar studies and who could inform me about university programs. In particular, I am seeking information about McGill, U. of Texas at Austin, UCLA, Columbia, and Harvard - the five schools to which I have applied. I am very much interested in the interaction between Yiddish- and German-speaking Jews, including the process of linguistic and cultural assimilation of the so-called "Ostjuden" in places such as Galitzia, Vienna, and Berlin.

Ikh bin a mitglid fun a leyenkrayz du un es vet mir hanoe tun zu bakumen ayere entfern oyf yidish.

A sheynem dank alemen,

Kalman Weiser '94 (weiserki@minerva.cis.yale.edu)

It isn't that College Yiddish is a "bad" book. It just isn't good if you are studying at home alone. For a beginner, it doesn't provide enough examples and explanations. Of all the Yiddish teachers that I have met, none depended solely on College Yiddish for their lessons. I wouldn't recommend it if you have no one around to ask questions about what you have studied.

I usually recommend Learning Yiddish in Easy Stages by Zuckerman and Harbst for such people. It is not as intense as College Yiddish. It has eleven chapters, a dictionary and song section and quick descriptions of Yiddish organizations.

Stephen Dowling