[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 19.001

Sun May 17 22:46:59 EDT 2009

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 19.001
May 15, 2009

[Moderator's note: haynt vert Mendele alt 19 yor!]

1) Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought (Francine Perlman)
2) Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought (Harriet Weinstein)
3) Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought (Bob Rothstein)
4) Zionist group s"s (Jack Berger)
5) Zionist group s"s (Gerry Yankl Kane)
6) Oyberland, oyberland (Perets Mett)
7) Yiddish OCR (Refoyl Finkel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 19, 2009
Subject: Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought

In reply to the April 17 request for lyrics to Holocaust songs sought by 
Joseph Tolz:

Here are lyrics sung by Mark Levy on his album, "Bin Ikh Mir a Shnayderl, 
Yiddish Work Songs."

>From the notes enclosed with the CD:

"To close, we have a song by the beloved composer off 'Oifn Pripichik', 
which hails the colonists who have come to Palestine to work their own 
fields and build a new life with hope for a better future.

Groyser got, mir zingen lider -
undser hilf bistu aleyn.
Nem tsunoyf di snopes, brider,
bis di zun vet untergeyn.

Loz di zun unds brien, brotn -
zi hot unds geshaynt fun glik.
Zet, dos broyt iz unds gerotn.
Kinder, keynmol nit tsurik!

Lozn undsere kinder visn
fun a lebn oyf der velt,
as dos broyt un yeder bisn
iz fun undser eygn feld."

Francine Perlman

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 5
Subject: Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought

groyser got, mir zingen lider
undzer hilf bistu aleyn!
nemt tsunoyf di snopes, brider,
biz di zun vet untergeyn!

loz di zun undz brenen, brotn,
zi hot undz geshaynt tsum glik;
zet, dos broyt iz undz gerotn,
kinder, keyn mol nit tsurik!

groyser got, du helfst dem mentshn,
ven er ruft tsu dir in noyt,
zolst undz vayter take bentshn
mit hatslokhe un mit broyt!

nemt tsunoyf aykh ale in eynem,
nakhes hobn mir shoyn fil,
un dem goldenem krants dem sheynem
fun di zangen trogt in shul!

lozn undzere kinder visn
fun a lebn oyf der velt,
az dos broyt un yeder bisn
iz fun undzer eygn feld.
http://zemerl.com/cgi-bin//show.pl?title=Dos+Lid+Fun+Dem+Broyt

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Harriet Weinstein

3)----------------------------------------------------
Subject: Lyrics to Holocaust songs sought
Date: May 4

Joseph Toltz asked in MENDELE 18.26 about "a Zionist song composed in 
Yiddish, and sung before the war in Poland [...] to the tune of the 
well-known Russian song 'Volga, Volga'." The first two lines he quoted 
(but not the second two) are from Mark Warshawsky's  "Dos lid fun broyt," 
which he dedicated to "di yidishe kolonistn tsu zingen in feld nokh der 
arbet." Chana Mlotek published the melody and three stanzas of the song in 
her collection "Mir trogn a gezang." The text published in the Buenos 
Aires Musterverk edition of Warshawsky's songs contains six stanzas; the 
sixth repeats the first.The last two lines of each stanza are repeated. 
The melody in both editions is similar but not identical to that of 
"Sten'ka Razin" ("Volga, Volga"). Here is the Musterverk version:

Groyser got, mir zingen lider -
undzer hilf bist du aleyn -
nemt tsunoyf di snopes, brider,
biz di zun vet untergeyn.

Loz di zun undz brien, brotn,
zi hot undz geshaynt tsum glik;
zet, dos broyt iz undz gerotn -
kinder, keyn mol nit tsurik!...

Groyser got, du helfst dem mentshn,
az er ruft tsu dir in noyt -
zolst undz vayter take bentshn
mit hatslokhe un mit broyt!

Nemt tsunoyf aykh ale in eynem,
nakhes hobn mir shoyn fil,
un dem goldenem krants, dem sheynem,
fun di zangen trogt in shil.

Lozn undzere kinder visn
fun a lebn af der velt,
az dos broyt un yeder bisn
iz fun undzer eygn feld.

Groyser got, mir zingen lider...

Bob Rothstein

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  May 5
Subject:  Zionist group s"s

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Socialist_Workers_Party

It is the Zionist Socialist Workers Party by its Russian initials.

Jack Berger

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  May 5
Subject: Zionist group s"s

The left wing Zionist group Mark Fromowitz is asking about was the Zionist 
Socialist Workers' party.  They were positioned between the Bund and the 
Zionists.  They were close to the position of Syrkin.

Barry Trachtenberg's book, "The Revolutionary Roots of Modern Yiddish, 
1903-1917," is an excellent exposition of the revolutionary politics that 
surrounded the development of Yidishe visnshaft.

Gerry Yankl Kane

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  May 14
Subject: oyberland, unterland

Does anyone know what the terms "oyberland" and "unterland" mean in terms 
of Hungary i.e. which parts of Hungary do they refer to?

Perets Mett

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 8
Subject: Yiddish OCR

You can now find two texts in UTF-8 that I have generated using my OCR 
(optical character recognition) program on TIFF images from the National 
Yiddish Book Center:

 	http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/yingele_ringele.utf8.html
 	http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/motl_peysi.utf8.html

I do not know the copyright status of this material.

I put a lot more work into the first text than the second, cleaning 
theTIFF images and looking through the output (using Vim and my spelling 
list) to fix obvious errors.
For the second, I just used my program interactively on a few sample 
pages, added information on some letters that the program was not 
interpreting correctly, and then ran the program in batch mode on the 
whole text.

My program doesn't do well at all with (1) letters that are joined (that 
is, there is no vertical clear space separating them), (2) pages that are 
askew to the point that no horizontal clear space separates lines, (3) 
graphics that prevent it from separating lines, (4) flaws that introduce 
clear space in the middle of a letter.  With effort, I think I can fix 
some of these flaws.

This effort is a proof of concept, not an attempt to construct perfect 
texts.

My OCR software is available under the Gnu General Public License. If you 
want to play with it, just contact me.  If there is another text you would 
like me to try OCR on, that would be helpful as well.  One nice thing 
about these two texts is that the printing is very clear.

Refoyl Finkel
______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 19.001

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