מענדעלע

For Perl Teitelbaum:

Aliza Greenblatt, 1888-1975

[Ben Yomen] hot aroysgebn drai bikher: Yomen, Ben. Lider far shul un heym. Philadelphia: Itshe V. Biderman, 1946 Yomen, Ben. Roberto, the Mexican boy. Chicago: Whitman, 1947 Yomen, Ben. Oneg Shabat lider. Miami Beach, Fla.: B. Yomen, 1962

Leon Wajner, 1898-1979

Iosif Vaisman

In Mendele 5.221, Perl Teitelbaum asked for biographical information about 4 Yiddish songwriters. I've found the death dates for two of them:

Aliza Greenblatt died in Brooklyn on September 21, 1975; Elkhonen Indelman died in New York on April 21, 1983.

(This information comes from the Leksikon fun Yidish-shraybers, 1986).

Roberta Saltzman New York, NY

Does anyone reading this know the meaning of the (Yiddish) word "skatine"? I encountered it in a story by Sholem Aleichem, and I have looked everywhere for it, but couldn't find it anywhere (Yiddish, Russian, Ukranian dictionaries and the "Oyster").

Steve Jacobson

I'm so confused. I feel guilty (not because I'm confused but because guilt is a natural state of my being).

Rick Gildmeister [5.220] has commented on what he refers to as Alsatian Yiddish. Just a few weeks ago, I posted on what I referred to as Judeo Alsatian. I was thinking of the rather unique language called "Alsatian" written in Hebrew characters. It is not at all clear to me if Rick's reference is the the same thing about which I was speaking but using a different name, or yet another specialized language used by Alsatian Jews.

So far I have commented that, while in Alsace last summer, I spoke Yiddish to people with no communication problems whatsoever.

I also mentioned that a local dialect used in the countryside left me out in left field whenever it was spoken, and my inquiries about what that language was were given the response "Alsatian." I could not understand a single word of it. But it was the lingua franca for all commercial affairs in the villages I visited and some Jews wrote in that language using the Hebrew alphabet.

Rick, tell me a little more about this thing you call Alsatian Yiddish. Is it Yiddish with Alsatian words in it, or is it a completely different dialect with which a Yiddish speaker cannot normally communicate.

More and more I find that whenever someone wants to describe a language used by Jews, they give it a title XXX-Yiddish. I got a call from Norm who described a special Judeo-Chinese and I wonder if this could also be called Chinese Yiddish though it has absolutely no relationship to Yiddish whatsoever. And this is further complicated by the fact that certain hypenations have a very clear meaning; i.e., Lithuanian-Yiddish, Polish-Yiddish, etc.

But what is Alsatian-Yiddish? I am going to lie down now. My head hurts. I think I can speak a language that I don't even know anything about.

If I wander into Arizona and go on the Navaho reservation and teach them some Yiddish, would that become Navaho-Yiddish? Or if I wrote on Jewish topics in the Navaho language, would that become Judeo-Navaho?

I need a standard, desperately. I also need a cold compress and a good recipe for salte noces (which are Lithuanian cheese kreplach)!

If this entire note sounds incomprehensible, it is because it has been written in Judeo-Californian (sometimes called Mohave-Yiddish).

Dan Leeson Los Altos, California

Shalom,

I have question - I want to translate some poems to Yiddish, but... from Polish language. And is someone who would like to translate this? and who knows Polish language of course ?

Thank you.

P. Bruno Dorman

My father worked for the Forvertz for many years up till the time he died in 1954.

We were told that the usual comment was that for each obituary printed, that was one less reader. It seems that crying over the death of Yiddish goes a long way back. Mendele is great for refreshing memories and restoring the shmaltz we all need to keep in touch.

abe bloom

Some conceptual precision is in order.

1. Yiddish is a language.

2. "The grammar of the language determines the properties of each of the sentences of the language...The language is the set of sentences that are described by the grammar": Noam Chomsky Rules and Representations, p. 220.

3. A language, thus conceived, is an abstract object.

4. Abstract objects can never die.

5. Therefore, Yiddish can never die. (The good news).

6. A person's language should be defined in terms of the grammar for the language represented in the person's mind: Rules and Representations, p. 120.

7. The smaller the number of persons who have the grammar for the language represented in their minds, ie. the smaller the number of persons who are fluent in the language, the more the language tends to be considered a dead language.

8. An unnatural catastrophe earlier in this century resulted in there being vastly fewer persons fluent in Yiddish, compared to the number of persons who would otherwise be expected to be fluent in Yiddish today. (The really bad news).

9. We tend to consider a language "dead" when the number of users of the language is much smaller than it used to be at some earlier point in time.

10. For example, the number of Churchmen who are fluent in Latin today is relatively small compared to, say, the number of persons in the Roman Empire who used to be fluent in Latin. So Latin is considered a dead language.

11. The number of Chassidim, Mendelyaners, survivors, takers of Yiddish courses and those with a nostalgia for the past who are fluent in Yiddish today is relatively small compared to the number of persons who were fluent in Yiddish prior to the earlier-mentioned catastrophe.

12. Therefore, Yiddish too may be considered a dead language. (The bad news).

13. I suspect that many people who are proud of their fluency in Yiddish today would not be quite so proud if Yiddish were not a dead language.

14. "One swallow does not a summer make": Aristotle. Pockets of Yiddish resistance do not make an army.

Arnie Herschorn Toronto