[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 21.005

Victor Bers victor.bers at yale.edu
Sun Sep 11 13:43:22 EDT 2011


Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 21.005
September 12, 2011

1) "kick" oyf yidish (Les Train)
2) Race and Humor in Yiddish jokes (Jack S. Berger)
3) Race and humor in Yiddish jokes (Stuart Filler)
4) Race and humor in Yiddish jokes (Zevi Ghivelder)
5) General inquiry about heirs/estates of Yiddish writers and other 
cultural figures (Leybl
Botwinik)
6) "biz keyn dants" (Maurice Wolfthal)
7) Book of verses sought (Naomi Bloch)
8) Song lyrics sought (Ruth Bork)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 31, 2011
Subject: "kick" oyf yidish

vi zogt men af yidish "a kick" (mitn fus)? un vos iz taytsh "vayse 
khevre"? (hooligans, mistome?) un far vos zenen zey vayse dafke?

a dank,
Les Train

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 27, 2011
Subject: Race and Humor in Yiddish jokes

Many years ago, I heard the following:

Q: What is the difference between a black man at age 20 and age 21?

A: A shvarts yor.

Jack S. Berger

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 27, 2011
Subject: Race and Humor in Yiddish jokes

A saying worth recording is "Don't call me shvartse" --as witnessed, 
recalled, and admired by our dad, Louis Filler, I expect from the 1940's. 
There seem to be Web references. It's an employee, a woman, addressing her 
employers, a couple that she is aware speak about her in front of her and 
on the pretense that she's oblivious to their phrase for her, di shvartse, 
whose rough translation is "the black." Compare Sembene's short film 
tragedy "The Black Girl," whose original French title is "La noire de"; 
i.e., "The Female Black [servant] Of," to be completed with the name of 
the white employer couple. Compare also the tragic-comic bit in the 
feature-length "Bamako," where an unemployed Malian in complete isolation 
is studying conversational Hebrew in hopes of eventual employment. 
(Compare also Phillip Dean's three-act "The Sty of the Blind Pig" on the 
theme They Say I'm Like One of The Family. And the Web indicates a song 
with "stop calling me shvartse" in it.)No, s'z nisht kein (nisht a?) 
Yiddish joke or saying in toto, except for the one word, but it opens a 
cultural interface the size of the universe; as does the traditional 
perception of the American Jews as other than white; or, it may be, a 
universe and a half.

Stuart Filler

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  August 29, 2011
Subject: Race and humor in Yiddish jokes

Referring to racist jokes, please make a note of the lyrics of this old 
tune:Shiker is a goy / shiker iz er / trinken miz er / vayl er iz a goy.

Zevi Ghivelder

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 11, 2011
Subject: General inquiry about heirs/estates of Yiddish writers and other 
cultural figures

1) There is a "Beys Shalom Ash" [Shalom Ash House] in Bat Yam. See: 
"http://www.bat-yam.muni.il/show_item.asp?levelId=3D57805"
2) And a "Beys Leivik" [Leivik House] in Tel Aviv that is the home of the 
Yiddish Writers and Journalists - they may be able to help you vis-a-vis 
Dzigan and Shumakher
See: "http://www.leyvik.org.il/ArticlesEN2.aspx"

3) There is a Shura Turkow - I believe, from the famous Turkow family - 
affiliated with the Arbeter ring in Israel. Contact Bela Briks-Klein at: 
"belaforverts at gmail.com"

Zay gezunt,
Leybl Botwinik

[Moderator's note: Roberta Newman of YIVO can be contacted directly at
rnewman12 at nyc.rr.com. Below is the original posting again.]
YIVO would like to display unpublished letters from the following writers, 
actors, and communal activists on a new web site now in development, the 
Gruss-Lipper Digital Archive on Jewish Life in Poland. As such, we'd 
greatly appreciate any contact information for their literary estates or 
family members:

Shalom Asch
Moyshe Broderzon
Chewel Buzgan
Shimen Dzigan
Zishe Kats
Esther Kreitman
Avrom Morewski
Ignacy Schwarzbart
Yisroel Shumakher
Diana Blumenfeld Turkow
Oyzer Warshavskii
Michal Weichert
Mark (Markus)Yuviler

Thanks very much for any leads anyone out there might have! Please contact
rnewman12 at nyc.rr.com

Roberta Newman
Content Producer/Gruss Lipper Digital Archive on Jewish Life in Poland
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 29, 2011
Subject: "biz keyn dants"

Regarding "biz keyn dants." "Biz keyn" means all the way to. "Dants" could 
be Danzig (Gdansk).

Maurice Wolfthal

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 28, 2011
Subject: Book of verses sought

This is a request for a book which I used as a child - I was born in 
1938.Unfortunately, the book was lost and I was wondering if any of your 
readers would perhaps have a copy of it. I do not know the title - but it 
was a book of verses.
One of the poems in it - and I quote the first four lines:

Ale zogn ikh bin sheyn
Far vos ikh bin gevaksn kleyn
Ikh ken tantsn, deklamirn
Mames gest tsu amuzirn

Here's hoping someone recognizes the verse.

Many thanks,
Naomi Bloch

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 30, 2011
Subject: song lyrics sought

Dear Friends,

My mother used to sing me a children's song the first line of which we 
both believed was:
"Reyzele, hot zi a neyzele, mit fiselekh kortsinke, hoya hoya!"  We both 
treated it as a nonsense song of sorts.  I have since learned that we were 
both mistaken about the lyrics (she is a native speaker of Yiddish), and 
the first line actually is "Reyzele, hot zi an eyzele, mit fiselekh 
kortsinke..."  which makes ever so much more sense.  Does anyone have the 
lyrics for this song?  I'd love to see it through this new lens and have 
since forgotten all the lyrics (Is there a recording of this song?  It's 
not one of the common ones.)

Many thanks, in advance -- a sheynem dank,

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 21.005 
Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct 
your mail as follows:

Material for Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements, i.e. announcements 
of events, commercial publications, etc., always in plain text (no HTML or 
the like) to:

victor.bers at yale.edu (IMPORTANT: in the subject line write "Mendele 
Personal")

Material for postings to Mendele Yiddish literature and language, i.e. 
inquiries and comments of a non-commercial or publicity nature:

mendele at mailman.yale.edu

IMPORTANT: Please include your full name as you would like it to appear in 
your posting. No posting will appear without its author's name. 
Submissions to regular Mendele should not include personal email addresses 
in the body of the message, as responses will be posted for all to read. 
Please send postings always in plain text (no  HTML or the like).

In order to spare the shamosim time and effort, we request that 
contributors adhere, when applicable, as closely as possible to standard 
English punctuation, grammar, etc. and to the YIVO rules of 
transliteration into Latin letters, which are explained in summary form at

http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275
<http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275> .

All other messages should be sent to the shamosim at this address:

mendele at mailman.yale.edu

Mendele on the web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/



More information about the Mendele mailing list