מענדעלע

Ruvn Millman seems to have misunderstood me when he wrote:

>Ellen seems to think that if more people read the English Forward it >doesn't matter if there is Yiddish on the air in New York or not.

My point was that, if money is the issue (as it always is), then the more people that subscribe to the English Forward, the more money the Forward Association will have, and the more likely they are to be able to afford Yiddish programming on WEVD.

>The least we can do >is to voice our opinion before it is all over.

Well, yes, that is indeed the _least_ you can do. If you'd like to do a little more than the least, you can pay a subscription fee to the Forward Assn. (I think it's called 'Put your money where your mouth is.') Or find them sponsors.

And of course I am also all for subscribing to the _Yiddish_ Forverts -but I assumed that all concerned Mendelyaner who can read Yiddish already did that!

Ellen Prince

In Mendele 6.072 Bruce Gale asks whether the s in "s'hitzed" is an English addition or adaptation. It seems to me possible this could be a dialect form of "tsi" -- as in "tsi-hitzed," heated-up. My grandparents used to say of some one perturbed or anxious that he or she was "tsi-ujit." ("ujit" is the best shortened form I can do.) I suppose "ujit" is a slavic word.

Hershl Bershady

The word is properly "tze(r)hitzt," meaning "heated up." The prefix "tze(r)-" forms an intensive verb, e.g., "tzerbrokhn" [broken(-down, beyond repair)], "tze(r)kokht" [(over)cooked], etc. I've heard "tzehitzt" used more commonly as a synonym for "(oys)farfrumt" than for "b'roygez," but that may just be an artifact of the circles I travel in. My sense is that "upset" or "excited" are probably more accurate than "angry;" I like "worked up" as a good, general English gloss because of its broad applicability.

Hope this helps. Gut moed alemen.

Rick Turkel

I grew up in a Yiddish-Russian-English speaking family with both parents prolific Yiddish writers. I remember my father, born in Belarus and grown up in the Ukraine, using an expression "pif paf un poter gevorn" with the pif and the paf accompanied by slapping the palms of the hands accross each other. It was used in the sense of "bang, bang and all done!" when trying to convince me that a job, such as washing the dishes, shouldn't take long. Since both pif and paf were used by children as shooting sounds when playing with toy guns, is it posssible that pi pa po is just an abreviation and that "bang bang" is Yinglish?

Lyber Katz

Ellen Goldbaum and Andrew Kolin asked about a book on uprising in Warsaw ghetto published in France in 40s or 50s in Yiddish. Possible candidates include:

Bernard Mark. Der oyfshtand fun Varshever Geto. Pariz: Organizatsye fun Poylishe Yidn bay dem Poylishe komitet fun natsyonaler bafrayung, 1945. 61p.

Yizkor tsum tsvaytn yortog fun heldishn oyfshtand in Varshever geto. Paris: Arbeter-Haym, 1945. 47p.

Der denkmol fun Yidisher gvure un martirertum. Paris: Yidishe Folks-bibliyotek, 1948. 16p.

Moris Mendzshitski. Dem ondenk fun di martirer un kemfer fun Varshever geto; eyn-un-draysik tseykhenungen. Paris: Oyfsnay, 1950.

Berl Kuczer. Geven amol Varshe... zikhroynes. Pariz, 1955. 331p.

Iosif Vaisman

The second of the two books sought by Ellen Goldbaum and Andrew Kolin is doubtless Bernard Goldstein's "Tsvontsik yor in varshever bund, 1919-1939" (Twenty years in the Warsaw Bund) (New York, 1960). It is available at the YIVO library.

Michael Steinlauf

How do you say _maiden name_ in Yiddish?

Of course, one could say "ir meydlsher nomen iz geven..." [her name prior to her marriage was...].

But there is a folksy way of expressing it in Yiddish.

The formula is: _Fun der heym_iz zi geven a (former family name), for instance "a Fridman, a Shmulevits, a Bakaleynik," etc.

In this context "fun der heym" [from her home] means that until the woman got married her family name was a... (specified, as in the examples above), and that, upon her marriage, as was customary in former years, was changed to that of her husband's last name.

Zellig Bach, Lakehurst, NJ

Martin Davis's "pseudo-curse" with "the mildest of content" (_du zolst esn kreplekh_) may not be so innocent after all, given the following proverbial context:

Ven me shlogt est men kreplekh: az men shlogt kapores [yom kiper], az men shlogt heshaynes [sukes] un az men shlogt homenen [purim]. Un az der man shlogt di vayb, esn zey beyde kreplekh (Sh. Einhorn).

Bernstein has a slightly different variant:

Ven men shlogt, kokht men kreplekh.

He adds an explanation:

Bay yidn iz a minheg tsu kokhn kreplekh dray mol in yor, nemlekh: erev yom-kiper, ven men shlogt kapores, hoyshone-rabe, ven men shlogt hoyshanes, un purim, ven men shlogt homen. Der folksvits zetst nokh tsu a firtes mol--ven men shlogt dos vayb.

Bob Rothstein