[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 20.006

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language 
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 20.006
October 7, 2010

1) Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to Learn" 
(Dina Levias)
2) Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to Learn" 
(Morrie Feller)
3) Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to Learn" 
(Jack S.Berger)
4) Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to Learn" 
(Larry Rosenwald)
5) Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to Learn" 
(Gilda Brodsky)
6) Number of Mendele subscribers (Moyshe Horvits)
7) Yiddish Sources Website updates (Gerben Zaagsma)
8) Digitalized Yiddish collections in the Lithuanian National Library 
(Jordan Kutzik)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:   September 13, 2010
Subject: Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to 
Learn"

I know the US is a continent, and the situation described by Z.S.  Berger 
is probably a true reflection of American reality. But, living in 
Switzerland as I do, I have a feeling that there is more interest in 
Yiddish learning and more activity in that field in Europe! Could Prof. 
Niborsky be requested to comment?

Dina Levias

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date:   September 26, 2010

Subject: Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular 
Language that Few Bother to Learn"

In response to Zachary Sholem Berger's post in Mendele 20.005, I would 
like to offer the
following:

The National Yiddish Book Center, in addition to collecting over 1,500,000 
Yiddish books, has made thousands of these books available on the Internet 
from which they can freely be downloaded.  So the question is: Who will 
read all these books? And the answer is: very few.It seems to me, 
therefore, that the NYBC has an obligation to create the readers who will 
read these books. It can do this by offering scholarships for its online 
Yiddish course. The NYBC should also create a special curriculum for the 
training of Yiddish teachers, as well as providing resources for those who 
are serious Yiddish scholars.Inasmuch as the NYBC has recently received a 
$3,000,000 gift, the financing of these programs should not be a problem. 
Morrie Feller

3)----------------------------------------------------

Date: September 12, 2010
Subject: Zachary Sholem Berger's "The Popular Language that Few Bother to 
Learn"

It is with considerable sadness that I agree with Zackary Sholem Berger's 
thesis.It has been said by philologists that to preserve a language, as a 
living language, requires a critical mass of about a million speakers.
The one victory achieved by the Nazis, was to have excised and cauterized 
the taproot of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewry. The world of the 
twentieth century and forward does not place the same demands for a 
"Jewish lingua franca" on us, as the world of the past thousand years, or 
so, did.The exception to this is among Haredim, who seek the enciphering 
attribute of an arcane language, to maintain a barrier between themselves 
and an outside world they deliberately choose to hold at arm's length.
I do not have any response to this problem to offer that I believe is 
either practical or workable. It is why, many years ago, I decided to 
assume the burden of translating Yizkor Books from Yiddish (and Hebrew) 
into English. I believe that Zackary is right, in that there will always 
be autodidacts, just like there are specialists today who can read 
Babylonian cuneiform and Egyptian heiroglyphics. However, for the larger 
majority of the interested population, effort would be well directed 
towards bringing these beautiful and very important texts out, from behind 
the language barrier where they exist today, so they can be more generally 
appreciated and understood.

Jack S. Berger

4)----------------------------------------------------

Date:  September 13, 2010
Subject: Zachary Sholem Berger's "A Language Studied By Few"

Re: Zackary Sholem Berger's very interesting, very melancholy reflections 
on the study of Yiddish language in academic institutions - yasher koyekh. 
First and foremost, they're deeply moving and thought-provoking.Second, I 
had a couple of thoughts.

1) I too was a member of the editorial board of the New Yiddish Library. I
    too am puzzled by the fact that, as Ruth Wisse is quoted as saying, the
    books in that series "have not yet made their way into the life stream
    of American culture."  Why is that?  I've sometimes wondered whether
    Yiddish literature - Yiddish fiction at any rate, the story bout
    Yiddish poetry is significantly different - is essentially a local
    literature.

One time I talked the members of an eclectic reading group I was 
part ofinto reading Hillel Halkin's translations of Sholem Aleichem's 
Tevye stories.  Terrific translations, in my view, terrific stories.  The 
members of the reading group had a different judgment;  for them, the 
stories were minor, "not like Tolstoy."  These were all serious and 
thoughtful readers.  Just a single incident, obviously, but it left me 
wondering.

2) Mr. Berger writes, "The highly regarded translators of 
a previous generation languish in nursing homes or have passed away."  Not 
sure whom he has in mind;  in my
view, though, which I know not everyone will share (I've written some 
fairly polemical pieces on the translation of Yiddish literature, some of 
them published in the Mendele Review), many of the translations being 
produced today, including those in the New
Yiddish Library, are as good as or  better than the translations that 
preceded them.

3) It's my impression - others will have more precise information 
- that the academic study of Yiddish is flourishing in Europe more than it 
is in America.  If that's in fact the case, it raises the question of what 
makes for that difference.  Maybe the problem that Mr. Berger describes so 
convincingly and poignantly is a specifically American problem, and has 
its roots in specifically American habits of thought and institutions.

Al dos guts, a gmar tov to all, Larry Rosenwald

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 22, 2010
Subject: Zachary Sholem Berger's "A Language Studied By Few'

I found this posting to be particularly interesting.  I was raised by my 
grandmother who spoke only Yiddish to me.  Sadly, I only answered her in 
English.  Now forward to the present - I am in my 80's and spend the 
winter months in Florida.  My neighbor prevailed upon me to take the 
Yiddish course offered at the club house so we could converse with a 
Russian condo owner who also spoke some Yiddish - and since I understood 
it, I was a step ahead of anyone else.  So I registered for the course - 
that was three years go.....and it has been a rewarding experience for me. 
I have a lot to learn - I still search for words - but it is amazing how 
much I can recall. The sad part is that the teacher now has about 15 
people in the class - she tells me that when she started some 20 years 
back, there were about 100 students....most of them are now gone.  It is a 
beautiful, expressive anguage and one can only hope that it is not lost to 
future generations.

Gilda Brodsky

6)----------------------------------------------------

Date: September 12, 2010

Subject: Number of Mendele subscribers

Tayere shamosim,

S'zet oys az veyniker Mendelianer shteln frages oder entfern af zey. 
Efsher darf emetser fregn Rut Vaysn "lebt yidish oder nit?" (shmeykhl) 
Mayn frage: vifl mentshn krign yetst Medele? un vifl hobn es 
gekrogn,lemoshl, mit finf yor tsurik? A dank faroys un "tak derzhat! 
(Rusish) for "hang in there!"

Moyshe Horvitz

[der untershames entfert: haynt, zogt der computer, 1935. 
mit a por yor tsurik--efsher 2000] 
7)----------------------------------------------------

Date: September 27, 2010
Subject: Yidddish Sources Website updates

Dear Mendelyaner,

This is just a short notice to say that it is now possible to receive 
updates to the Yiddish Sources website by email. See this announcement:

http://yiddish-sources.com/news/updates-by-email

Best regards,

Gerben Zaagsma

8)----------------------------------------------------

Date: September 24, 2010
Subject: Digitalized Yiddish collections in the Lithuanian National 
Library

http://www.epaveldas.lt/vbspi/simpleSearch.do

The national library of Lithuania has a digital collection of about 180 
Yiddish language publications that were published in Lithuania and 
territory which is now Lithuania (most importantly Vilne/Vilnius) scanned 
online which can be viewed for free. Many of the daily and weekly 
newspapers are represented in their entirety (or close to it) for periods 
of several years to decades, as well as some well known (and many not so 
well known) magazines, literary journals and the like. Altogether the 
collection represents tens of thousands of pages.  Needless to say, this 
is an invaluable resource for Yiddish students, historians, linguists, 
writers, translators, journalists teachers/professors and anyone else ho 
would enjoy reading the Lithuanian and Polish Yiddish press.  Individual 
articles and authors can be located through the Index to Yiddish 
Periodicals (Hebrew University)

http://aleph500.huji.ac.il/F/?func=file&file_name=findb&local_base=iyp01&con_lng=heb

It can be navigated in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English.

All the best,
Jordan Kutzik 
_____________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 20.006

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