[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 21.002

Victor Bers victor.bers at yale.edu
Wed Jun 9 22:28:15 EDT 2010


Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 21.002
June 8, 2010

1) Songs about food (Khane-Faygl Turtletaub)
2) Songs about food (Harriet Weinstein)
3) Songs about food (Tom Putnam)
4) Chaim Grade's unpublished works (Hershl Bershady)
5) "A khasene in bronzvil" (Shimen Neuberg)
6) "A khasene in bronzvil" (Hugh Denman)
7) Shloyme Berlinsky (Magdalena Ruta)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 16, 2010
Subject: Songs about food

Milna Kartowski might like to include the song "Varnishkes" in her 
program. It is a comic song about cooking.  Of course, there is always 
"Bulbes."

Khane-Faygl Turtletaub
2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 19, 2010
Subject: Songs about food

A few years ago I did a presentation on "A Brief History of Jewish Music." 
I explored how Jewish Music encompasses aspects of daily life. I discussed 
how the Jewish people had an almost reverent attitude towards the food 
they ate. Food actually played a significant role in the immigration of 
Jews to North America in the late 19th and early
20th centuries.

Here is a list of some of the songs in my presentation:

"Lomir Alle Zingen a Zemerl"

This song is all about the difference in foods that rich and poor people 
eat. Famines that struck Russia, from the 1890's onwards, reduced the 
Jewish masses to destitution. The poor often subsisted on a diet of dark 
bread, potatoes, and herring. Wealthy Jews, on the other hand, consumed an 
abundance of rich foods that included meat, fruits, baked goods and dairy 
products. America, the destination of the impoverished and the persecuted, 
empowered Jews who had been subsisting on the verge of starvation. By 
eating foods once the preserve of the Jewish upper classes, they engaged 
in an act of class reversal. The formerly poor started to eat blintzes, 
kreplach, kasha varnishkes, strudel, noodles, knishes, and, most 
importantly, meat every day.

The second song is "Bulbes." This song is all about potatoes.

Potatoes were a common, inexpensive food. The Jewish cook took the humble 
potato, grated it, added onion, chicken fat, eggs and flour, and the 
potato kugel was born. Do any of you remember any favorite potato dishes 
that you ate when you were young? Even though food is plentiful today, 
Jewish recipes are still versatile concoctions of plentiful and 
inexpensive ingredients.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------The 
next song is "Hudl mitn shtrudel."

The next song is "Homentashn." Yachne-Dvoshe bakes some homentashn. But
unfortunately, it turns out that she is not such a good cook.

The next song is "Kartoflzup mit shwomen." This is a song about potato 
soup with mushrooms. Yossl asks for these various dishes from his mother. 
She says, "You have chutzpa to ask for this."

The next song, "Di mame kocht varenikes," is about Mama cooking a common 
Jewish dish, varenikes.

The next song is about gefilte fish.

The next song, "Amol iz geven a yid," is concerned with not having enough 
food to serve on Shabbos. Shabbos meals were associated with chicken soup, 
roasted meat, gefilte fish, cholent, cakes and fruit. Historians wrote of 
the elaborate preparations and week-long scrimping endured by the poor so 
that they could enjoy delicious foods on the Sabbath. The Sabbath and its 
foods elevated their ordinary lives and bore witness to the intimate 
connection between sanctity and food.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next song is "Shabes bay dem tish." A man complains about the woes 
that modern life and especially the freezer have brought to his Shabes 
table: dried-out knishes, cold soup, old cholent and hard challah.
I hope this helps.
Harriet Weinstein
3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 17, 2010
Subject: Songs about food

Milna Kartowski is looking for texts and songs about the Yiddish cooking 
tradition. There must be dozens of hundreds. But one song to enjoy (more 
about eating than cooking) is Kapelye's "Chicken," on their album of that 
name. You'll find it - where else? - at Amazon. Or be kosher and shop at 
Klezmer Shack.

Tom Putnam
4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 17, 2010
Subject: Chaim Grade's unpublished works

Dear Mendelyaners,

Chaim Grade's widow recently died.  Her comments about I.B. Singer, as 
quoted In the NYTimes obit, are very negative.   She makes Singer out to 
have devoted a preponderance of his work to the antics of "dybbuks" and 
goblins, and compares his work unfavorably to that of her husband's.

My Yiddish is approximately that of a somewhat backward eight year old who 
listened in at the door as Yiddish speaking adults talked, laughed and 
sometimes cursed.  Alas, I cannot read the language.  Singer's work is 
accessible to me only in translation.  Many of his novels and stories, 
such as The Manor, The Estate, The Family Muscat, The Slave, The Magician 
of Lublin, A Day of Pleasure, for examples, have very few if any dybbuks.
Without taking anything away from Chaim Grade, Singer's work is on the 
whole  a magnificent literary achievement.   They are great works of art.
I do not know Grade's work.  I have only read his The Yeshiva, which his 
wife says has been badly translated.  I cannot judge the veracity of the 
translation.  But there is no doubt the English prose is clumsy.

I don't know what has animated the curious and totally unnecessary 
competition between the forces of Singer and the forces of Grade, but 
surely there is room for two great contemporary Yiddish writers?  Before 
Yiddish declines even further, I hope that Grade's untranslated works can 
find really good, sensitive translators.

Hershl Bershady

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 19,2010
Subject: "A khasene in bronzvil"
Der original "A khasene in Bronzvil" iz gedrukt in "Goldene Keyt" 42 
(1962), zayt 25-35 (s'iz gring tsu gefinen mit der  hilf fun der 
Bashevis-biblyografye fun Roberta Saltzman).

Shimen Neuberg
6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 17, 2010
Subject: "A khasene in bronzvil"

The story sought, namely "A Wedding in Brownsville,"  appeared originally 
under the title "A khasene in bronzvil" in "Di goldene keyt" 42 (1962), 
25-35, as is easily ascertained in Roberta Saltzman's indispensible Isaac 
Bashevis Singer: A Bibliography of His Works in Yiddish and English, 
1960-1991. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002,
220pp. [see items A 249 & C7]. The sole caveat here is that 
unfortunately Saltzman, a librarian at the New York Public Library, felt 
obliged to follow the perverse Library of Congress practice of 
transcribing khes as h (omiting the subscript dot). Such a transcription 
is no doubt appropriate for Hebrew (albeit with subscript dot), but 
completely inappropriate for Yiddish, as all YIVO-devotees will readily 
acknowledge, thus this story will be found in Saltzman's "Romanized 
Yiddish Titles Index" (195-211) under "Hasene in Bronzvil."

We should be grateful to fraynd Marc Caplan for pointing out the affinity 
to Shotns baym hodson which I certainly had not previously registered.

Hugh Denman
7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 17, 2010
Subject: Shloyme Berlinsky

Sholem aleykhem,

On behalf of one of my friends I am looking for any piece of information 
about the life and writings of Shloyme Berlinsky. I would be very grateful 
for any hint.
A groysn dank,
Magdalena Ruta
______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 20.001

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