[Mendele] Mendele Volume 18 number 6

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 18.006
July 16, 2008

1) "Yidishe kultur" copyright (Hershl Hartman)
2) "Yidishe kultur" copyright and the name Buzi (Gershon Freidlin)
3)  sof-oyses (Lyber Katz)
4)  sof-oyses (Barry Goldstein)
5) Clara Lemlich speech sought (Martin Cohen)
6) theatrical adaptation of "The Travels of Benjamin the Third" (Michael
Bergman)
7) nebekh (Martin Jacobs)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 4, 2008
Subject: "Yidishe kultur" copyright

As a non-expert on intellectual property laws, I can only note that the few
copies of "Yidishe kultur" in my possession (all from the 1990s) bear no
indication of copyright in either English or Yiddish.  I note, too, that
Vol. LIX, No. 11-12, Nov.-Dec. 1997, lists a redaktsye-kolegye (editorial
board), most of whose members are alive and active in Yiddish.

Hershl Hartman

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 4, 2008
Subject:  "Yidishe kultur" copyright and the name Buzi

1)  Re: Yidishe Kultur copyright-----check with Susan Goldberg or Eugene
Orenstein; they might help.

2)  The name Buzi:  aside from being that of a prophet's father, it is an
affectionate term. - e.g., Boris Tomashevsky used it as a nickname for his
Bessie ("Buzele"), at least until he took himself a different wife.

FYI:  I believe that "Berl" Mark was usually called "Ber" (if not
"Bernard").

I translated his "Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto" (Schocken) through a
committee connected to "Yidishe kultur" activists.  Mark's widow, Esther,
later asked me also to translate his book on Auschwitz, but we had neither
a publisher nor a committee to sponsor the project.

Gershon Freidlin

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 5, 2008
Subject: Soviet orthography

In her explanation of adoption by the Soviets of a streamlined Yiddish
orthography, Goldie Segal (Vol. 18.004) sees a sinister motive. There is,
however, a straight-forward explanation. The majority of the population in
the country immediately after the 1917 revolution, Jews included, were
illiterate. To remedy the situation, the outdated orthography of a number
of languages was streamlined. The Russian language, for example, dropped a
number of unnecessary letters making the orthography almost phonetic. Thus,
children, still in kindergarten, could be expected to read. Prior to the
Revolution, there had been a number of attempts to streamline the Yiddish
orthography and many of those proposals were adopted so that the Soviet
Yiddish orthography also became almost phonetic. Having grown up in the
Soviet Union in the 1920's, I was able by the age of 7 to read and write
both Russian and Yiddish. But, on arriving in the US by the mid-30's, I
found reading Yiddish words spelled in Hebrew difficult and writing
impossible, especially if the word was new to me. Although I find no
special problem with using some other symbol for a few closing consonants,
I would like to know what, except tradition, made a nun, a tsadik, a mem,
etc. so special as opposed to their cousins, the beys, the gimel or the
daled?

Lyber Katz

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 4, 2008
Subject:  Soviet orthography

The Soviets tried to eliminate the Hebrew connection in Yiddish by changing
loshn-koydesh words to phonetic spelling.

The motivation for this is usually given that the Soviets were interested
in purging religion from everything, but I wonder. If that were the case,
I'd have thought that they'd have stolen a march on the Nazis, who rejected
"decadent" Greek roots in favor of purely "Aryan" ones (Nieder mit
"Telefon." Herauf mit "Fernsprecher"!).

To the extent that one can know, how much was due to anti-religious
philosophy rather than "rationalizing" the orthography (cf. G.B. Shaw's
discomfort with the possibility of spelling "fish" as "ghoti")? The
Soviets, beyond being anti-religious, were hyper-rational, stealing a march
on Mr. Spock, human nature be damned.

Barry Goldstein

[Moderator's note:  Rakhmiel Peltz and Gennadi Estraikh, among others, have
written extensively about Soviet orthography.  Mordkhe Schaechter's "Der
eynheytlekher yidisher oysleyg" also deals with the subject.]

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 3, 2008
Subject:  Clara Lemlich speech sought

Does anyone know where I can find a transliteration of the Yiddish speech
Clara Lemlich gave in the Great Hall at Coopers Union, in which she called
for a general strike?  The result was the "Uprising of the 20,000."

Many thanks.

Martin Cohen

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 5, 2008
Subject:  theatrical adaptation of "The Travels of Benjamin the Third"

I recently came across an article that stated that there had been a Yiddish
theatrical adaptation of Mendele Moykher Sforim's "The Travels of Benjamin
the Third."  I could not, however, find any more information about it.

Does anyone know of such a thing?

Thank you.
Michael Bergman

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 7, 2008
Subject: nebekh

I've seen different explanations of the origin of "nebekh."  One opinion is
that it is from the German "nie bei euch" (roughly, "it should never happen
to you"); another is that it is from a Slavic word for "poor" (Harkavy
gives this as the Polish "niebogi" but I believe S. Birnbaum prefers the
cognate Czech word.)

The German "nebbich" is a borrowing from Yiddish.  German has many such
"Jiddischismen," such as "shnorer," "meshuge," "tsores," etc.  See, on this
topic, Hans Peter Althaus, "Zocker, Zoff & Zores: Jiddische Woerter im
deutschen."

Martin Jacobs
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End of Mendele Vol. 18.006


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