[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 19.006

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 19.006
July 15, 2009

1) Yiddish older than German (Charles Nydorf)
2) Yiddish Declaration of Independence (Hershl Hartman)
3) eyer-kikhl (Harriet Weinstein)
4) eyer-kikhl (Zelig Preis)
5) oybst, kazyoner (Eliezer (Lazar) Greisdorf)
6) I.B.Singer's "Tayves" (Norman Buder)
7) Yiddish OCR (Refoyl Finkel)
8) Sh. Bastomski's archive (Jordana de Bloeme)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 6, 2009
Subject: Yiddish older than German

I have added some new material to the blog, Gothic-Yiddish.blogspot.com, 
which addresses the early Germanic foundations of Yiddish. Included are 
etymological notes on "oyganes," "s'gayes," and "skotsl" as well a 
discussion of the development of short "o" in Germanic. The latter 
presents evidence that Yiddish is older than Old High German. A discussion 
of  "klezmer" shows that this Hebrew-origin word may have a cognate in 4th 
century Gothic.

Charles Nydorf

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 4, 2009
Subject:  Yiddish Declaration of Independence

On this 233rd anniversary of the public announcement of the Declaration of 
Independence by the Continental Congress, let it be noted that, when the 
printed Declaration was issued in Philadelphia  (7/8/1776), Yoyne ben 
Fayvish -- Anglicized asJonas Phillips -- bought a copy and sent it to a 
friend in Amsterdam, accompanied by aletter...in Yiddish!

(See Schappes, Morris U., The Jews in the United States, The Citadel
Press, N.Y., 1958.)

Hershl Hartman

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 6, 2009
Subject: eyer-kikhl

The eyer-kikhlekh that I remember from my childhood were the size and 
shape of large soup bowls. They had a delicious only slightly sweet, eggy 
taste. They were thick and substantial. I haven't seen anything like them 
in almost 50 years. I used to buy them for a few cents at the European 
Kosher Bakery on Van Horne and Davaar in Montreal. Does anyone know where 
I can still buy these?

Harriet Weinstein

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 16, 2009
Subject:   eyer-kikhl

Josh Price asks about eyer-kikhl; I wonder if his family came from Europe 
and what country.

Zelig Preis

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: June 26, 2009
Subject:  oybst, kazyoner

Two of the words Frida Cielak asked about rang a bell.  "Obst"  in German 
means fruit.  Ithen checked my Russian dictionary and found that 
"kaziyonyi" means state, government, fiscal, public, etc.  As I remember, 
the word in Yiddish was used for
someone who lives at the government's expense like a pensioner.

Eliezer (Lazar) Greisdorf

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 3, 2009
Subject:  I.B. Singer's "Tayves"

I. B. Singer's short story "Passions" (Tayves) consists of three stories 
told by three different narrators.  The third story is about a Hasidic 
rebbe, Mendele Bekhtever.Toward the end a question is raised about how he 
died.  The answer is that it happened when he was leading services at the 
pulpit and reciting the liturgical poem "Odom Bame Yizake" (in Sephardic 
pronunciation: "Adam Bame Yizake").  He died after he chanted the words 
"Bitfila uvitsdaka yarbe, ulay miyesurin yekhabe" (Sephardic 
=pronunciation).

I have searched for this piyut in a Makhzor for Yom Kippur and in a 
Makhzor for Rosh Hashanah, but somehow it has eluded me.  Can anyone 
locate this poem and tell me precisely where in the liturgy it is to be 
found?

With many thanks,
Norman Buder

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: July 15, 2009
Subject:  Yiddish OCR

I have placed an experimental facility on the web for converting 
black-and-white TIFF
images of printed Yiddish text into Unicode.

The site is

         http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/yiddishOCR.html

If you try this facility, please let me know how it works for you.

Refoyl Finkel

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  July 11, 2009
Subject: Sh. Bastomski's archive

Does anyone know where I might find Yiddish pedagogue and folklorist 
Shloyme Bastomski's (1891-1941) archive, if one does indeed exist?

Thanks,
Jordana de Bloeme
______________________________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 19.006

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