מענדעלע

Bruce Mitchell denies that he has 'bashed' Ruth Wisse. However, his opening line is:

"In response Dovid Robboy's recent message, I can only express my total dismay that a self-professed academic can call a language spoken by at least 200,000. Americans (1990 U.S. census figures - a fact, not emotional dismay, prejudice, politics, etc.) "dead".

'Self-professed academic'??? Last I heard, Dr. Wisse was a chaired professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard University. I would think that even Mr. Mitchell's Oxford would take the holder of such a position to be an academic, no 'self-professing' needed. I will not comment on the accuracy of his quote nor on the odds that he has actually read anything by her.

Gail Gaston says of Wisse:

"If she loves the language, culture and literature as David stated she did, she should be fighting to preserve it. That's what takes real courage, not facing the grief of losing it. I am not a Yiddish scholar, an "old crank" or a part of the "haredim". I just think that Yiddish is worth preserving and in that context, I will be attending a program at the University of Arizona, Tucson."

Well, that's really super -- but would not Wisse's spending her entire professional life researching Yiddish literature and teaching it, including teaching it to some of the brightest young people in the world as a chaired professor at Harvard, count almost as much in the Yiddish-preservation effort as your attending a week-long non-credit summer school program???

Ellen Prince

It is very difficult for me to understand the dismay that Bruce Mitchel feels if someone called Yiddish dead. My first language was Yiddish but as a secular Jew I have little occasion to use it and my friends who nostalgically are trying to learn it are ludicrous. Also I don't understand why Yiddish speaker seem to think that Ashkenazi Jews who speak Yiddish are the salt of the earth and if Yiddish dies a great misfortune will occur. Maybe sad, but in opinion very possible. Every time Jews are allowed to breathe they adopt the majority language as the Jew adopted Greek instead of Hebrew in the second century BCE. The Hebrew bible at that time was probably translated into Greek so the Jews who could not read Hebrew could at least have a translation to read. The conditions allowing Yiddish to flourish were not admirable and I pray that they may never occur again.

Joshua Kleiman

Grieving for Yiddish (or calmly pronouncing its death) afflicted lately more than one of our deservingly respected Yiddish scholars. Ruth Wisse has been quoted on this screen on several ocasions (06.010, 07.109, 08.075, etc.). David Roskies in his article in Forward (July 31, 1998) stopped short of making the diagnosis for Yiddish, but admitted that he "would much rather live - tongue-tied" in the non-Yiddish speaking environment of today "than in the imaginary Yiddish-speaking Ashkenaz of yesterday". Janet Hadda, who used "a particularly engrossing discussion on Mendele" for the exposition of her article in The Jewish Quarterly (Issue 170, Summer 1998), ventured into the deeps of classical psychoanalysis in its Freudian flavor to explain that the mourning is responsible for the state of "denial" of those who don't agree that Yiddish is dead.

As far as I am concerned (Freud or no) Yiddish language is neither dead nor dying. It existed with virtually no secular culture for centuries (until as late as just two hundred years ago) and if worst come to worst will continue in such a "limited" mode for the centuries to come. On the other hand, Yiddish culture is in bad shape indeed. (Without starting a semiotic discussion, I'm assuming here that language is a self-sufficient primary sign system which can exist without what I call _culture_ for the purpose of this argument. By _culture_ I mean creative expression in letters and fine arts and consumption of the products of such expression, as distinguished from the anthropological, sociological, and other definitions of culture).

And those of us who cherish this culture are legitimately worried. And, of course, there can be no taboo on discussing this painful matter. So, what's wrong with the abovementioned and similar references and why do they stir a sharp negative reaction that by many is considered objectionable?

These articles and speeches are addressed to the audience, that at large does not really know whether Yiddish is alive or dead and does not really care. They are addressed to the audience that faces a severe (perhaps the deepest in its modern history) identity crisis. Congregations approach 100% atheistic membership. Ethnic identity rapidly succumbs to intermarriage and assimilation. Political causes across the spectrum, that once cemented large subgroups of this population, all but lost their appeal. Zionism has graduated from one of its important phases and does not seem to be able to enter another. This list can go on...

An encouraging bright stroke on the gloomy background is the fact that this audience recognized (or at least started the process of recognizing) its problems. Multiple bureaucracies are redistributing enormous amounts of money from one set of largely ridiculous failed projects to another set of new projects that already display the early signs of the same outcomes. And here is another positive moment: these bureaucracies and their constituencies are confused and seem to be more open to constructive suggestions than ever.

The time is ripe for those with strong voices and geniune interest in preserving Yiddish to come forward and say: Here is the great Yiddish culture, your unclaimed heritage. Take it! Teach it to your children in day schools, in Sunday schools - it may help them understand better who they are and where they come from. Learn it yourself, it may serve as your lucky ticket into the post-postmodern world, where the diversity is a means rather than a goal and where all the distinct pieces are necessary to complete the big cultural mosaic.

What do we hear from these strong voices instead? (I do not want to belittle what numerous enthusiasts do from their kitchens, but here I mean the voices that originate at the lecterns of our finest universities with all the clout that accompanies them. I also don't mean the monographs that sell in 400 copies as a medium for this communication, I mean the same major Jewish newspapers and magazines that don't hesitate to inform the public that Yiddish is dead.) I can't remember any recent advocacy for practical steps of strengthening Yiddish in the printed large circulation media. Am I missing something?

Would such appeals on behalf of Yiddish, should they be made, be percieved by some as idealistic or quixotic? Probably. Would they prove to be futile? We would never know unless we try.

More than sixty years ago in his bitter essay _On a mazl_ Avrom Koralnik attributed Yiddish misfortunes to the lack of Maecenases. He was not talking about financial supporters, but rather about readers and writers, "who felt that they were doing themselves honor when they approached" the language and literature. At the time the essay was written, it may have seemed an exaggeration. Today it does not.

Iosif Vaisman

p.s. In this posting I did not attempt to tell anybody what they should do. I just tried to explain that people may blame the messengers not because they don't like the messenger or the message, but because they beleive that a particualr message-messenger-medium tandem is not appropriate. i.v.

I have been following the discussion re. Prof. Ruth Wisse and her comments on the "death" of Yiddish. A number of correspondants mentioned the present situation in the Haredi community (both Hasidic and non-Hasidic) where Yiddish is very much a living, vibrant language spoken in the street, at home, and in the batey medroshim.

Sitting before me is a copy of Der Yid, one of two weekly papers that are read in the Satmar Hasidic community. Since I receive this paper regularly I can state that this issue, which is only 104 pages, is one of the smallest I've ever received. It's full of community, national, international news, regular columns on Jewish history, Torah, traditional Jewish texts, finance, health, letters to the editor, technology (yes, technology!), hashkofoh, political analysis, biographies of tsadikim, and serialized books the latest of which is " Der shpion vos hot geratevet amerike". There are also classified ads (this issue has over 200) and general ads mostly in Yiddish. The address is: Der Yid, 13 Hooper st., Brooklyn, NY 11211. I have no connection at all with the paper or the Satmar group.

Regardless of your personal opinion of these people (and since most of you don't know them personally be careful before you come to any conclusions) they are linguistically living what most of us only discuss on the Internet or do as a hobby or nostalgic whim. If Yiddish is to survive into the 21st century it is people like the readers of this paper and many others like it that quietly publish on a regular basis who will keep it alive. Curiously they have no interest in Yiddish per se. It is their medium of communication, not a cause or a subject for study. However, by virtue of the fact that it has served for so long as the language of the Jewish people and as a medium for Torah they consider it a holy language (according to one well known Torah personality of years past).

When I inquired at the National Yiddish Book Center and YIVO not too long ago I was told that they didn't know of anyone attempting to comprehensively collect and preserve "that type" of Yiddish material. " That type" of Yiddish, by the way, consists of many original books, poetry, journals and a myriad of audio tapes of often fascinating talks, music, etc. Almost all of it is being put out by small, independent publishers in Brooklyn and other centers. I have no doubt that it far surpasses in output and consumption anything produced by the secular Yiddish camp.

I write the above because, as you may discern, I strongly believe that "that type" of Yiddish, as authentic, alive Yiddish, is just as worthy of recognition and preservation as "unzerere" Yiddish.

Hershl Goodman

This is a different song than the one Abe Chasid was asking about, but it seems to be related. I think I ran across it in a book of Yiddish folksongs about 35 years ago, and my memory of it is somewhat garbled. It appealed to me then, and still does. Maybe some Mendelyaner knows it better and can correct my version, or at least render it in a consistent dialect. It would be interesting to know whether it is derived from the songs that Andrey Bredstein and Serge Mitelman contributed, or vice versa, or whether it is a distant cousin.

Bisti mit mir broyges? Veys ikh nit farvus. Geyst arim a gantsn tug, Arupgelozt di nuz.

Efsher vilsti visn Tsi ikh hob dikh lib. Lomir zikh ariberfurn Tsi dem gitn yid.

Tsi dem gitn yid, A pidien im gebn, Zol er far indz got betn Af a lang git lebn.

Zol der giter yid Indz beyde bentshn Az mir zoln fun hant an Lebn shoyn vi mentshn.

Az mir veln furn Fin dem gitn yid, Veln mir ariberfurn In shtetl af dem yarid.

Dort vel ikh dir koyfn A zeyger mit a keyt, Un di zolst far mir koyfn Zeydns af a kleyd.

Bob Poe

Does anybody know the origins and exact meaning of the term padonye/pedonye? It must be slang for a kind of seedy night club or bar.

Thanks,

Joel Rubin

In the course of an interview, a fellow Jewish genealogist in Chicago, Lisa Thaler, was told of an ancestor who "wore shoes with golden heels." She guesses that this is a literal translation from a Yiddish saying or expressio and has asked me about it. "I don't know,"said I, and promised to try to find out.

Can someone help?

Arn Abramson

Rick Turkel's perception of Galitzyaner cooking is different from mine. I was brought up in a Galitzianer home and my mother never used tomatoes in her cooking. Our next door Italian neighbor did. My mother did serve retakh mit tzibeles un shmaltz. She prepared a lukshen kugel mit zaltz un feffer uber di gefilte fish iz geven gemakht mit a bisl tzuker. Oy vey, es hot mir farglist a shtikele lokshen kigel mit zaltz un feffer un a bisl reytakh mit tsibeles un shmaltz. And it's your fault, Rick Turkel, if my cholesterol soars from the shmaltz and I get heartburn from the retakh.

And, if you are wondering why I weave in and out of two dialects, its because I was taught Yidish in a Galatziane heym at first but the Arbeter Ring Shulen taught us in the King's Yidish, Lithuanian.

Anita Schonhaut Appelbaum

I am in completely new territory here and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the variety and content of postings to Mendele. After my first visit, I was moved to make some comments, but in my naivete and inexperience in this media I sent E-mails to the writers rather than posting my remarks to everyone in general.

I am not a Yiddish scholar; the closest I ever came to learning the language was when my zaide sat down with the Jewish Forward and pointed to the all the letters trying to teach me alef, beys... I was not raised in a home where Yiddish was spoken, nor where most Jewish holidays were observed. What I did learn came from my grandparents informally. When we visited them often I watched and listened and absorbed all the rituals and Yiddish expressions. It was all stored in my mind and heart; the plucking of the chickens for Shabbos dinner, the aroma of fish being "gefulted", the lighting of the candles on Friday nights, the visits to the synagogue on Yom Kippur to hear the ram's horn, my zaide reclining among his pillows at our Pesach seder, and so much more.

For more than fifty years I heard no Yiddish But it tugs at my heart I even love to hear English spoken with a Yiddish accent, it reminds me of who I am. I found a wonderful recording in my local library called "The Yiddish Dream". It contains many old favorite Yiddish folk songs. (By the way, if you have not heard Mandy Patinkin's CD "Mamaloshen", I recommend it.)

I have spent the last two nights scrolling back and reading all of your postings for the last two months. I tried to mouth the Yiddish words and struggled to comprehend their meanings, and appreciated the English translations. I must be honest and say that the scholastic discussions were really over my head. Some of you might turn away when I say that the erudite comments relating to grammar, syntax, rhyming in poetry, etc. were more than I bargained for. My connection to Yiddish is an emotional one, but I want to hold fast to that connection.

Yiddish is not irrelevant. It may be many things today, neglected, hidden, forgotten by many, but irrelevant? NO! It lives in the hearts of those who love it and struggle to keep it alive.

To those of you who referred to Camp (the way I heard it was Nishgedayget) and Camp Kinderland. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that. I attended Camp Kinderland when I was about ten or so. Aside from all the usual fun camp activities, I remember we started every morning around the Soviet Union flag and sang "Arise, ye workers......"! I didn't know the words, but we had to sing it before we had breakfast, so I learned fast.

Should I apologize for the length of this letter? If you were bored, I suppose you skipped over it and went to the next posting. But I had to do this; so much feeling welled up in me as I read what each of you has written, that I had to "let it all hang out" (is there a Yiddish expression for that).

A new friend in Yiddishkeit, I hope,

Gail Gaston