מענדעלע

A rebbetsin is the wife of a (male) rabbi.

Anyone know what we should call the spouse of a female rabbi?

This problem didn't exist during the peak usage of Yiddish, but how do Yiddish speakers handle this now?

E. David Metz

Last month I posted a question about where one can buy Yiddish books in London, promising to give a summary of the personal replies I received, if any.

Only two replies came, from Irwin Mayer and David Herskovic; my thanks to both.

DH says: I live in London and have also been looking for a good Yidish bookshop. The best one I've found to date is Sentinel Books in 80 Manor Road London NW4 2EL. Tel. 0181-346 7430. (He adds that this is for secular Yiddish books, which he guessed, rightly, that I was mainly interested in, and mentions that religious Chasidic books can be obtained from several orthodox bookshops.)

IM doesn't know of such a book store but suggested contacting the Jewish Book Quarterly at: jewish.books@ort.org

Once again, many thanks. I will check out Sentinel Books, although I have a feeling this is the one I looked for (having been given the address the previous year) and it turned out to have moved, according to a sign on the window. I believe that was in Sentinel Square (?), a rather long walk up the road from Golders Green. I assume that Manor Road is the new address, so I'll try again next time I can get to London!

Alan R. King Gipuzkoa, Basque Country

Based on what I have learned concerning my questions about Haredi Yiddish both from the answers which have appeared on Mendele and from private communications from several people with an insider's view, it is indeed clear that Yiddish is not at all a dying language. My colleague, Michael Krauss, here in Fairbanks, who is an authority on the statistics of language endangerment and death, estimates that of the world's approximately 6,000 languages, based on the rate of decline (or increase) of the numbers of child speakers in the recent past, only 5 to 10 percent are "safe", meaning that children will probably still be learning them as their first language at the end of the coming century. On this basis Yiddish is among the tiny minority, 300 to 600, of safe languages in the world. This, despite the fact that Yiddish is often given as a prime example of a dying language, that the use of Yiddish among the non-Hasidic religious and in the less-religious and secular sector (along with its journalistic, literary and theatrical tradition) has certainly declined drastically, and also the fact that the sheer number of speakers has probably dropped more sharply in the last 75 or 100 years for Yiddish than for any other language.

From one of the people who wrote to me from inside the Hasidic community I obtained a recently published Yiddish novel, "Geknipt un Gebindn" by Khaye Rosenburg in Jerusalem. Unlike some other recent Yiddish fiction publications this book seems not to have been subsidized by a committee to see it published; rather, the publisher apparently felt that he could make a profit from selling the book. It is published -- without ISBN or Library of Congress number -- by a Hasidic (I guess) publishing house (Mekur Khaim) which states in the book that the book has been approved as fit for Torah Jews to read, and there are a number of attestations from rabbis to this effect. Though it certainly isn't Sholem Aleichem or Bashevis, the book is captivating enough that I kept reading page after page. It seems to be a continuation of the old "morally uplifting instructive Yiddish literature for women" theme, which was the precursor of the modern Yiddish literary classics. What's most interesting to me is that this and similar books exist at all. I've never seen such books offered for sale by any of the places one usually buys Yiddish books, and, had I not received it from someone inside the Hasidic community I would not have known about it at all. The very existence of such books testifies to the continued vitality of the language in Hasidic circles.

One thing that puzzles me is that in this book, and also in the Hasidic-oriented Yiddish newspapers that I've seen, there are a lot more daytshmerisms than in other Yiddish. For example: shikzal (fate), heykel (ticklish, delicate), shtunde (hour), monat (month) nahrhaftig (nourishing), etc. Some of these are words marked as treyf in Weinreich's dictionary but some aren't in any Yiddish dictionary (that I know of), and I could find them only in a German dictionary. Can anyone explain why so many such daytshmerisms are used in Hasidic Yiddish? After all, Hasidic circles wouldn't have shared the late 19th and early 20th century attraction to German culture experienced in secular Yiddish circles, which produced the phenomenon of daytshmerisms now so hotly debated among certain Yiddish scholars.

Steve Jacobson

David Sherman's comments re the use of 'ober' for 'or' and subsequent confusions when young were interesting. I wonder if in fact his in-laws had acquired the very same confusion when they were young. Don't we find this in many instances, where a gramatically incorrect usage eventually becomes an accepted use? I spoke mameloshen and Polish before I spoke English tho' I was born in Toronto. My Dad was a Galicianer and Mom was a Drilger, so I did have a diverse set of linguistic examples as far as relatives were concerned. But I also attended Yeshiva Torah Chaim Talmud Torah (the late great Rabbi Price's Yeshiva) and we were taught "correct" Yiddish. When I sort of close my eyes and clear my mind, and think about 'ober' and 'oder', all aspects of my Yiddish learning fall on the side of 'ober' *not* being used for 'or'. But if I heard someone using it instead of 'oder', I would certainly have no problems understanding what was actually meant, given the context.

Bernard Katz Guelph, Ontario

From Jerusalem Post, 01-30-1996 (without permission) Copyright 1996 Jerusalem Post.

Two Israel Prize winners named

Profs. Hana Shamrock [spelling from JP - i.v.] and Yehuda Ratzhabi have been selected as this year's Israel Prize winners in Hebrew language, literature and Jewish languages, Arts Minister Shulamit Aloni announced yesterday. Shamrock was cited for his studies on Yiddish, on which he is considered the world's leading researcher. Ratzhabi was honored for his work on the Jews of Yemen. Jerusalem Post Staff

Iosif Vaisman

Does anyone know of instances where the diminiutive suffix -ele- is used to feminize a male? For example, referring to a male secretary named Moishe as "Moishele" in order to give a perjorative, decidedly feminine, slant. Any help would be appreciated.

Jason Payne

In today's Forverts (16 Feb 96) a piece about the engineer who died in the collision of his train in New Jersey a week ago carries the headline, "mashinist fun gekrakhter ban is gehat adurkhgeforn roite signaln," meaning that he had run red signals in earlier years, not necessarily on this occasion. The verb in this headline -- "iz gehat adurkhgeforn" -- is in the pluperfect, isn't it? The form is new to me.

Walter Golman Silver Sp[ring, Maryland