[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 22.007

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 22.007
October 12, 2012

1) Hebrew vs. Yiddish, 1930 (Hershl Hartman)
2) Es loyfn, es yogn shvartse volkns" (Jane Peppler)
3) Yoshke Pandre (Eliezer Greisdorf)
4) frande/fronde/prande/pronde (Martin Jacobs)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:   September 27
Subject: Hebrew vs. Yiddish, 1930

The daily email blast, "Jewdayo," marking historical events every day (some
reflecting
pride in Jewish history, others shameful in various ways), recorded the
following for
yesterday, Sept. 26:

A mob of several thousand Jews protested outside the Mograbi Theater in Tel
Aviv on
this date in 1930 against the screening of one of the first feature-length
Yiddish-language
talkie movies, Mayn Yidishe Mame ("My Jewish Mother"), starring Seymour
Rexite.
The rioters included several members of the so-called "Army for the Defense
of the
Hebrew Language" who broke into the theater, threw ink at the screen and
smoke bombs
at the crowd. The police eventually broke through the mob and made arrests,
but the
protestors returned a second time and forced the screening to end, although
many of the
viewers refused to leave the theater until the lights were shut off. This
was just one of
numerous violent attacks on Yiddish culture in pre-statehood Palestine,
where Hebraists
were intent on repressing the language that they held in contempt.

"Yiddish was a force to be reckoned with in this period. It provided the
name for and was
an integral part of the Yiddishist movement that posed an alternative to
Zionism. . . . The
language issue became a convenient tool of political conflict within
contemporary Jewish
culture." --Yael Chaver, What Must Be Forgotten: The Survival of Yiddish in
Zionist
Palestine

Hershl Hartman

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 15
Subject: "Es loyfn, es yogn shvartse volkns"

A version of this song can be found online sung by Aliza Azikri on a
recording called
Festival of Yiddish songs - 1973. I suspect it is not the original because
it is credited:
Composer: Rafi Gabai
Lyrics Source:    H D Nomberg.

Jane Peppler

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 10
Subject: Yoshke Pandre

When I was a little boy and my mother spanked me or threatened to spank me
an uncle of
mine used to tease me with this little verse:  Yoshke Pandre  ligt oyfn
bank, az men
shmayst em, zogt er a dank.  Even at the age of three  or four I understood
that he was
teasing me.  Years later I came to understand that Yoshke, a familiar form
of Jehoshua,
was a slightly disrespectful term for Jesus. Many years later, when we were
already in
Canada, I asked my uncle if he knew the meaning of Pandre.  He did not, nor
did my
father who was a graduate of a yeshive in our (so called) home town of
Wilno.  I also
asked a well known poet friend of the family about Pandre.  He was familiar
with the
verse but he also did not know the meaning origin of  Pandre. Sometimes in
the l970s I
came across a book "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" by a specialist in
ancient
semitic languages, John Allegro.  In this book he tries to prove that the
Christian bible is
nothing but a cover story for an ancient mushroom cult which dabbled with
LSD.
(Mishuge mayne sonim.)   This is where I again encountered our friend
Yoshke Pandre
on p.125.In the footnotes to this chapter he also claims that the rabbis
referred to Jesus by
that name in the Talmud.  Apparently, this was the name of the Roman who
fathered
Jesus.  The connection being that the mushroom amanita muscaria has a
spotted head and
the panther (pandera in Greek) has a spotted skin. So, it seems that we
Jews have been
despised for countless generations for  having crucified a sacred mushroom.
(Tate, du lakhst?  A klog tsu dayn gelekhter.)

Eliezer Greisdorf

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 22
Subject: frande/fronde/prande/pronde

Due to the archaic orthography, the Yiddish word I am inquiring about could
be any of
these. It occurs in a handwritten letter, as follows: tayere frande madam
bermann [body
of letter]
ayer frande bibi
Can anyone tell me what it means?

Thanks in advance,

Martin Jacobs

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 22.007

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