[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
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