The
Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
---------------------------------------------------------
Contents of Vol. 10.003 [Sequential No. 168]
Date: 27 March 2006
1) This issue of TMR (ed).
2) Artists' Portraits of Yiddish Writers, 2nd Series (David
Mazower)
3) Two languages locked in embrace: Hebrew and Yiddish (Zelda Kahan
Newman)
4) A Reply to Ghil'ad Zuckermann on "Israeli" (Amitai HaLevi)
5) Remembering Sophie Tucker (1884-1966)
a. A general description of Sophie
Tucker's life
b. "Mayn yidishe mame" in
Yiddish by Sophie Tucker, 1928 – audio file (Jan Hovers)
c.
Yiddish text of "Mayn yidishe mame" (ed.)
d. Romanized text of "Mayn yidishe
mame" (ed.)
e. "Mayn yidishe mame" in
English by Sophie Tucker, 1928 – audio file
(Jan Hovers)
f.
Sophie Tucker's 1928 Dutch "Mayn yidishe mame" record
illustrated (Jan Hovers)
g.
Leo Fuld's Dutch record of "Mayn yidishe mame" illustrated
(Jan Hovers)
6) Adina Bar-El's Grininke beymelekh – a further notice (ed.)
Click here to enter: http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/tmr/tmr10/tmr10003.htm
1)----------------------------------------
Date: 27 March 2006
From: ed.
Subject: This issue of TMR.
This issue is richly attuned
to both eye and ear. *David Mazower continues his project, begun in TMR vol. 10, no.2, of displaying
portraits of Yiddish authors by graphic artists of note. *Zelda Kahan Newman
and Amitai HaLevi respond to Ghil'ad Zuckermann's writings on
"Israeli". *The fortieth
anniversary of Sophie Tucker's death is marked by featuring the great
comedienne singing that masterwork of deep nostalgia, "Mayn yidishe
mame" (also known as "A yidishe mame"), a classic in the
Jewish-American musical repertoire, and an historical marker as well of the
heroic immigrant experience. A 1928 Dutch 78'' recording provided by Jan
Hovers' site (www.78rpm.hovers.nl) gives us the basic Yiddish version on one side and an English version
on the other. The Tucker items in this issue begin with a useful link to a
review of the singer's life that does not omit her significant feminist and progressivist
contributions. The song "Mayn yidishe mame" can be heard in its two
versions and the picture of the actual 78'' record is given. An additional
Dutch version of the same song sung by Leo Fuld is also illustrated here. This
rich material is gathered here thanks to the generosity and cooperation of Jan
Hovers. The transcription of the lyrics of the song, in Yiddish and in Latin
letters, is by the editor. He was assisted in identifying a number of hard-
to-distinguish words by Ben-Zion Ronen. If TMR readers hear other words,
they are invited to let us know what they are. Readers will of course catch the
Americanisms (e.g kitshn 'kitchen') and the dialecticisms (e.g. fin [fun]
'from'). *Please note the revision in
the notice of Grininke beymelekh, which incidentally was recently very
favorably reviewed in HaAretz by Benny Mer (HaAretz [24.3.06, p.
hey 1], or click here
for an online version).
2)----------------------------------------
Date: 27 March
2006
From: David Mazower
Subject: Artists' Portraits of Yiddish Writers, 2nd Series
Artists'
Portraits of Yiddish Writers
By
David Mazower
My previous article on the subject
of artists’ portraits of 20th-century Yiddish writers ended with an
invitation to readers to come forward with information about other similar
portraits. I am grateful to three
correspondents who did so.
Joseph Opatoshu’s grandson,
Dan Opatoshu, wrote with details of several portraits of his grandfather by
contemporary Jewish artists. They include “lifesize busts, woodcuts, ivory
carvings, Chagall pen and inks, and even satirical cartoons from the European
and American Yiddish press”.
The Yiddish literary scholar
Joseph Sherman, who is currently completing a biography of Dovid Bergelson, is
keen to trace a portrait of Bergelson mentioned in a memoir by the writer Rokhl
Korn. In an essay entitled “The Destruction of Yiddish Culture” she describes visiting
Bergelson in his home in Moscow during WW2 and being shown the portrait by
Bergelson himself. Its current
whereabouts are unknown.
And Zachary Baker mentioned a
portrait of the Montreal Yiddish poet Ida Maze by the artist Louis Muhlstock.
He also recalled the reading room of the old YIVO library on Fifth Avenue:
“There were a number of
artists’ portraits of Yiddish writers on the wall behind the circulation desk.
I am unable to recall exactly which ones hung there, though one in particular
really stood out: a self-portrait, in oil, by Moyshe Leyb Halpern. I believe
that there were portraits of Sholem Aleichem, H Leyvik and Jacob Glatstein as
well. There was a bas-relief of Peretz, which once prompted a perplexed Xerox
repairman of West Indian background to ask me why we had a sculpture of Stalin
hanging there.”
I hope to include
illustrations of some of these portraits in future articles in this series.
Mention of Moyshe Leyb
Halpern’s self-portrait also serves as a reminder of the large number of
artist-writers and writer-artists in the Yiddish literary world, the former
group being considerably more numerous than the latter.
The Yiddish-speaking artists
who contributed occasional art criticism, prose, poetry or memoirs to the
Yiddish press include: Yude Tofel, Isak Likhtnshteyn, Louis Lozovik, Boris
Aronson, Yonye Fayn, Yankl Adler, Uriel Birnbaum, Moyshe Oved, and, of course,
Mark Chagall. Another was Josef Herman, whose sketch of the Whitechapel Yiddish
poet Avrom-Nokhem Shtensl is included below.
Far fewer writers displayed anything like comparable artistic ability.
Apart from Moyshe Leyb Halpern, Moyshe Broderzon was an accomplished artist,
and Sutzkever was capable of some very good self-caricatures. Even rarer are
those who have made equally significant and talented contributions in both
spheres. Yonye Fayn, the Brooklyn-based artist and author born in Russia in
1914, who has defied his increasing infirmity and continued to produce
remarkable work with an intensity and vigor of a man half his age, is one
notable example. Another is that of Yosl
Kotler, the brilliant radical satirist, pupeteer, sketch-writer and
caricaturist. The prodigious talents of
Kotler and his partner Zuni Maud have yet to be properly documented. I have included some of Maud’s work in this
issue, but his remarkable artistic gifts and extraordinary range of caricature
portraits of modern Yiddish writers deserve a full gallery of their own in a
future edition.
Gallery:
Josef Herman (1911 - 2000)
Born in Warsaw in 1911, Herman
matured as an artist in Poland in the 1930s. He escaped via France to Britain,
and became perhaps the leading postwar representative of a continental
tradition in British art. Fluent in
several languages including Yiddish, Herman was a cosmopolitan humanist who
nonetheless maintained a lifelong attachment to Yiddish culture and Jewish
tradition. He is a masterful colorist,
whose dark, brooding oil paintings are light up by intense enamel-like flashes
of colour. He was also a prolific draughtsman who left behind a vast quantity
of sketches and notebooks when he died a few years ago.
Herman wrote regularly on art
for The Jewish Quarterly, a literary magazine edited by his friend and
fellow Polish-Jewish émigré, Jacob Sonntag. He was also closely involved with Yiddish
cultural groups in London, and especially with the Yiddish-speaking circle in
Whitechapel organised by the poet Avrom-Nokhem Shtensl (1897 - 1983). Born into
a distinguished rabbinical family in Poland, Shtensl achieved an international
reputation as a Yiddish poet in Weimar Germany, fled the Nazis and arrived in
London in the mid-1930s. Passionately devoted to the Yiddish language and his
beloved Whitechapel, he became a familiar figure in the East End as the editor,
leading contributor and chief salesman of the Yiddish literary magazine Loshn
un lebn (Language and Life).
Herman’s sketch of Shtensl was
one of several he made in the 1940s, perhaps observed during one of the poet’s
regular shabes literarishe nokhmitogs, Saturday afternoon
literary gatherings often held in those days above a kosher café on the
Whitechapel Road.
Portrait sketch of Avrom-Nokhem Shtensl
By Josef Herman
(click here for higher resolution)
Charcoal and pencil on paper, 60 x 46.5 cm
c. 1946
Ben Uri Gallery - the London Museum of Jewish
Art
Zygmunt Menkes (1896 - 1986)
The artist Zigmunt Menkes and
the writer Sholem Ash were friends and compatriots whose lives followed similar
paths: both were born and grew up in Poland, lived in France in the 1920s and
30s, and spent their later years in the United States.
Menkes was born in present-day
Lviv (formerly Lvov/Lemberg) and studied art in Poland and then Berlin. He
settled in Paris in 1923, and became a leading member of the Montparnasse
colony of Jewish émigré artists, along with Eugene Zak, Raymond
Kanelba, Leopold Gottlieb, Leon Weissberg and many others. Menkes was one of the most lyrical colorists
of the School of Paris group and continued to paint his soulful, dark-hued
portraits, nudes, still-lives and paintings of Jewish religious life until well
into his eighties. In 1935 he left for
New York, and eventually settled in Riverdale, New York where he died in
1986.
Asch and Menkes both frequented
the same Paris hang-outs, notably cafes like La Rotonde and Le Dome. Asch owned one of Menkes’ finest Jewish subjects, a large
double portrait of a father and son enveloped in a prayer-shawl, which hangs to
this day in the study of the Asch house-museum in Bat Yam, Israel. This portrait, painted shortly after both men
had found refuge from Nazi-occupied Europe in the United States, was presumably
commissioned by Asch himself.
Portrait of Sholem Ash
by Zygmunt Menkes
Oil on canvas,
c 1940
Private
collection, UK
Henryk Berlewi (1894 - 1967)
Berlewi was born in Warsaw,
and spent his early years as an artist moving between Poland, France and
Germany. An important practitioner and
theorist of modern graphic and abstract art,
Berlewi was also a highly skilled draughtsman who sketched most of the
leading figures in Warsaw’s thriving Yiddish literary and cultural scene of the
1920s. He died in Paris in 1967.
Menakhem Kipnis was the
leading Jewish folklorist in interwar Poland. Popular and likeable, he was a
man of many parts: a scholar and professional ethnographer, an enthusiast for
Jewish popular culture and folkways, and a much-loved singer and performer.
Born in Volynia in the Ukraine in 1878, his childhood was spent as a travelling
synagogue chorister. From 1902 to 1918 he sang tenor in the chorus of the
Warsaw National Opera. At the same time he began to collect Yiddish folk songs
and stories and contribute articles to the Warsaw Yiddish press, writing on
cantorial music and folklore. Kipnis was also an accomplished professional
photographer whose studies of Polish Jewish life appeared in the Sunday sepia
supplements of the New York Yiddish Forverts from the late 1920s. Kipnis
died of a blood clot in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942; his enormous collection of
Jewish folklore materials was with him
to the end but was never recovered.
(For more on Berlewi’s varied artistic career, see the articles
by this author and Seth Wolitz in recent editions of The Mendele Review, TMR
vol. 9, no. 5 and TMR vol. 9, no. 6. For details of Kipnis’
remarkable life, I am indebted to Itzik Gottesman’s recent scholarly monograph Defining
the Yiddish Nation / The Jewish Folklorists of Poland, Detroit, Wayne State
University Press, 2003)
Portrait of Menakhem Kipnis
by Henryk Berlewi
Pencil on paper,
c1925
Private
collection, UK
Zuni Maud (1891 - 1956)
Maud was born in Vashilkov
near Grodno, Russia. He came to the United States in 1905 and studied art at
Cooper Union Institute and the National Academy of Design. Maud was soon making a name for himself as a
cartoonist for the New York Yiddish press (especially for satirical journals
like Der kibitser and Der
groyser kundes) and a prolific illustrator of Yiddish books. An artist of exceptional fluency and
versatility, Maud was equally at home working in oils, woodcut, charcoal or
ink. He was also a humorist who teamed
up with the equally gifted and versatile artist/writer Yosl Kotler (and Jack
Tworkov) to create an extraordinary Yiddish radical marionette theatre in
Manhattan in the 1920s.
Moyshe Nadir (1885 - 1943) was
the darling of America’s Yiddish-speaking radical and Bohemian intelligentsia
following his conversion to the Communist cause. His dazzling irreverent verses, full of
nonsense words and witty rhymes - a sort of cross between Mayakovsky and the
Marx Brothers - ensured him a loyal and devoted readership. Maud illustrated an
early Nadir pamphlet of erotic verse (Vilde royzn / Wild Roses,
published in 1915) and contributed these sketches of Nadir to the celebratory
anthology published in 1926. Maud does a
superb job of capturing Nadir’s likeness - his mop of curly hair, sleepy eyes
and chubby cheeks - while also conveying his egocentric, capricious and
sarcastic personality.
4
portraits of Moyshe Nadir
by Zuni Maud
(reproduced in Noyekh Shtaynberg: A bukh
moyshe nadir, New York, Leben, 1926)
3)---------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Zelda Kahan Newman
Subject: The identity of two languages locked in embrace: Hebrew and Yiddish
The
identity of two languages locked in embrace:
Hebrew
and Yiddish
By
Zelda Kahan Newman
In recent years Paul Wexler
shocked many when he claimed that Yiddish is essentially a Slavic language
unrelated to Hebrew or German[i], and Ghil`ad Zuckermann got equal shock value from his claim that
what he calls “Israeli”[ii], and others call “Modern Hebrew” is not the language of Isaiah.[iii] I will contend here that
these claims rest for the most part on a similar straw man built up only so
that it can be knocked down with shock and awe. There is, however, a serious question that
their claims raise. It is an ontological
question that has vexed philosophers since Heraclites and one that we would do
well to consider. I will do my best to provide
an answer to this question and I invite others to consider the issue
seriously. Finally, my own research has
shown that some of the patterns of Yiddish are derived from the Hebrew-Aramaic
that the Jews who settled in Ashkenaz brought with them from the
Wexler claims that Yiddish
arose in a mixed Sorbian (Slavic)-Germanic environment. The speakers of Early Yiddish “relexified”
their language to High German early on (between the 9th and the 12th
centuries), and then (at least 300 years later), “relexified” their speech once
again to the Yiddish that Ashkenazic immigrants brought with them to their
area.[iv] This makes Yiddish, according
to Wexler, a Slavic language.[v]
If one were to agree with
Wexler that Yiddish is essentially a Slavic language (as Zuckermann appears to
do), and if one were to suppose that Yiddish is the sole component of the newly
revived Hebrew language, then one would
have to conclude that Hebrew is also a Slavic language. However, while Wexler makes this last claim,
Zuckermann does not. As Zuckermann sees
it, the revivers of Modern Hebrew, all native speakers of Yiddish themselves,
did in fact transfer the linguistic patterns of Yiddish to this new creation of
theirs. However, he claims that Yiddish
is only one of the contributors to Modern Hebrew. As he sees it, older forms of Hebrew as well
as Yiddish “act equally as primary contributors”[vi] to Modern Hebrew. He admits
that “while Israeli phonetics, phonology and syntax are European, its
morphology and basic vocabulary are mainly- albeit not exclusively- Semitic.”[vii]
For all that the claims of
Wexler and Zuckermann seem outlandish, a look at the finer print of their
writings shows that they set up a straw man only so that they can knock it down
with great fanfare. Wexler claims that
Yiddish is not genetically a Germanic language[viii] and Zuckermann claims that Modern Hebrew can not be “genetically
classified”[ix] as a Semitic language. But as
both know, and Zuckermann himself so aptly puts it, “the reality of linguistic genesis
is far more complex than a simple family tree allows.”[x] Even languages that are not
“engineered” (as Hebrew was) undergo non-genetic changes. Areas are invaded and conquered or over-run,
the conquerors, (or new immigrants), speakers of an alien language, lend new
elements to the over-run language. We
need only consider what the Norman Conquest did to English[xi]. Occasionally, interaction
between two very different languages is entirely peaceable. If the interacting languages are radically
different, the result of this inter-action is serious non-genetic change. This has occurred in the Carpathian region of
Hungary-Romania, where the meeting of a Romance language and a Finno-Ugric
language resulted in a new mixed language that incorporated features of both
languages.[xii]
Once we learn to look past the
red herring of genetic linkage, we will find a hidden agenda behind the claims
of both Wexler and Zuckermann. Both feel
there is a need to sever the link between ancient and Modern Hebrew. Wexler makes no attempt to keep his agenda
secret: “The explicit purpose of resurrecting “Old Hebrew” was to justify the
claim of most contemporary Jews to be descended from an earlier Palestinian
Jewish people and hence the sole [sic!] rightful heirs to
First to Wexler. Few thoughtful contemporary Jews would be
foolish enough to contend that all modern Jews are “descended from an earlier
Palestinian Jewish people”. Nor has the
claim been made that any living Ashkenazic Jew has had only forebears who can
be directly traced to
Zuckermann, who admits that
earlier versions of pre-Modern Hebrew contributed to Modern Hebrew, seems to
have an ontological problem. For him, if
there is no continuous chain of native speakers of Hebrew, and indeed there is
none, then later speakers of Hebrew can not be said to be speaking the same
language. Here we have hit that thorny
question first brought up by Heraclites and known to modern philosophy as
“Diachronous Identity”[xv].
Different
Stages of “the same” object
The problem simply put is:
when an object changes over time, in what sense can a later version of that
object be considered “the same as” (or “identical to”) the earlier version of
the object? Heraclites, of course, had a
simple answer: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and
yet others go ever flowing on.”[xvi] For him, there was no
identity over time. And yet humankind
has wanted to consider an object “the same” over time. How to do this?
Philosophers have attempted
all sorts of strategies to get at a satisfactory answer. Here I will consider only one approach, the one
that appeals the most to me. This
approach admits that there are different senses of identity. In the strict sense, later versions of a
changed object are not identical to the original object, but there is a loose
sense in which a later version of the object can be said to be identical to an
earlier version.[xvii] This is possible because the
object has different instantations at different moments in time. At any moment, the later, slightly changed,
object is understood to be part of the
same sequence as the instantation that preceded it and the instantation that
follows it. In this way, the earlier
members of the sequence are said to be loosely identical with the later members
of the sequence.
Wittgenstein's
family of resemblances
In his Philosophical
Investigations Wittgenstein addressed the question of what is common to
language activities or what makes the various activities into language or part
of language. This is not the same
question as we posed above.
Nevertheless, we do well to look at the approach Wittgenstein takes: his
insights are worthy of importation. If borrowed, they can shed light on our own
very vexing question. Here is what he
says about language activities:
“I am saying that these
phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all-
but that they are related [italics in the original] to one another in
many different ways. And it is because
of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all language.”[xviii] Further on he suggests that
we examine the disparate phenomena carefully.
“And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of
similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities,
sometimes similarities of detail. I can
think of no better expression to characterize these familiarities than `family
resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build,
features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., overlap and criss-cross in
the same way.”[xix]
If we substitute different
stages of a language for Wittgenstein's different language activities and use
Wittgenstein's insight about looking for family resemblances, we come up with
the following formula for different stages of “the same” language: in order for
different instances of language to be considered “the same” language, there
must be family resemblances, common crucial elements of language that hold up
over time. And what might these elements
be?
The
Hebrew alphabet
For any Jewish language (and
most especially for Hebrew, the Jewish language), the foremost element
would have to be the use of the Hebrew alphabet for the written language. After all, it is the Hebrew alphabet that
ties Jews to their cultural heritage.
As for the other elements, the
answer is by no means obvious. I would
like to call on all who think deeply on this issue to give the best answer they
can to the question I have posed here. I
have suggestions of my own, but I will be happy to amend them or to entertain
other , better suggestions.
Core
lexical items
In the twentieth century,
linguists developed a system of measuring the differences and historical
distance between two corpora of language.[xx] They took a core of basic
vocabulary items consisting of items like body parts, numerals, terms for
social relations and geological features and compared the two corpora to see
how different they were. The assumption
was that these core lexical items are less subject to change than other parts
of a language. Similarities within this basic core of lexical items was said to
be a good indication of a genetic relationship.[xxi]
This concept of a core of
crucial lexical items can be used as an
indicator of Jewish Diaspora languages.
Any Jewish Diaspora language must have a core of lexical items for concepts
that are uniquely Jewish. A Jewish
language without terms either for bris/brit or mila is
unthinkable. Indispensable, too, are
lexical items like t(e)filin, mezuza, matsa, and tora. Jewish identity is deeply bound up with these
terms and there is no way a Jewish language can get by without them. It is no surprise that we find Hebrew-derived
words for all these terms in Yiddish. We
have every reason to expect them in every and any other Jewish Diaspora
language in the world.
The core of lexical items for
the Hebrew language itself is a different matter entirely. If Hebrew is to be used not as the second or
third language of a community, but as its first language, then we would expect
the core lexical items to be just those
that are candidates for the core corpus of any human language. Terms for social relations (like man and
woman, father and mother), terms for food and drink, and for numerals and
geographical features are just those that we test for. And these very terms are the ones that have
remained in the vocabulary of Hebrew all these thousands of years. Speakers of Modern Hebrew (the very speakers
that Zuckermann insists on calling speakers of “Israeli”) use the very same
terms for these concepts as did speakers of Biblical Hebrew. That alone should be enough of a similarity
to make us feel that we are speaking of “the same” language.
Intonation
If the Hebrew language and the
concept of a stable corpus of crucial lexical items run both across Jewish
languages (where the core items focus on specifically Jewish items) and within
varieties of Hebrew (where core items focus on the basics of all human
culture), a specifically Jewish intonation is a cross-pollinating
phenomenon. It is a feature that began
with pre-Diaspora Hebrew and Aramaic.
It was carried over to Ashkenazic Yiddish, and it has traveled from
there back to Modern Israeli Hebrew.
This is not the place to
recapitulate in full my argument for the origins of modern Yiddish
intonation. Briefly put, I have
suggested that some of the intonation patterns of modern Yiddish entered the
language via the Talmudic chant brought to Ashkenaz by exiles from the
A second paper I have written,
this one on the language of one of Aharon Appelfeld's books, finds these very
same (now) Yiddish intonation patterns in the
language of a modern Hebrew author.[xxiii] It is not as though Appelfeld
consciously used these patterns. The
fact is, though, that there is no way to understand the language of his book
without assuming that Yiddish intonation lurks in the background.
The only Jewish Diaspora
language of which I have some knowledge is Yiddish. It is tantalizing to suppose that other
Jewish languages also have intonational elements that are derived from their
community's Talmudic chant pattern. It
is for others with a knowledge of other Jewish languages to pose this question
and look for this connection.
Conclusion
Once we realize that Wexler's
and Zuckermann's shocking claims are based on the false assumption that the
only possible identity between languages is genetic identity, we are left
asking ourselves what it is that gives languages identity over time. We have argued for a “loose identity” that
looks for “family resemblances” between different versions of Hebrew and
different Jewish languages.
I have posited three features
of a Jewish language. The first, which
travels vertically in time, is a core of stable lexical (culturally Jewish)
items. The second, use of the Hebrew
alphabet can (and does) move horizontally across languages. The third, intonation patterns, have shown
that they can (and do) travel in a loop: the ones I know began as features of
Hebrew-Aramaic. They were transferred to
Yiddish, and after centuries of lodging in this Diaspora Jewish language, they
have been “repatriated” to Hebrew, the primary Jewish language. Are these the only features that “identify” a
Jewish language? It is likely that there
are others. I invite others to help find
them.
Lehman College, CUNY
[i] Paul
Wexler, Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the
Kiev-Polessian dialect, (Berlin and New York, 2002)
[ii] Ghil`ad
Zuckermann, “Mosaic or mosaic? The Genesis of the Israeli Language”, www.zuckermann.org/mosaic.html,
p.1
[iii] He claims
that Israelis can understand Isaiah only because “they study the Old Testament
at school for eleven years.” p.3
[iv] Wexler,
pp.1-2. The rest of his book is a
clarification and justification of the claim he makes early on in the book.
[v] See fn
IV. In particular, Wexler claims his
hypothesis predicts that Yiddish “exhibits no (or few) German grammatical
features that violate Slavic grammar”. p.13
[vi]
Zuckermann, p.1
[vii]
Zuckermann, p.3
[viii] This is
the essence of Wexler's argument throughout his book.
[ix] See
Zuckermann, p.1
[x] Zuckermann
himself admits that the family tree (Stammbaum) model does not do justice to
the “complex genesis of Israeli”, p.7
[xi] These
facts are (obviously) known to Zuckermann.
What distinguishes Hebrew from these other cases is that the other
languages have had a continuous written and spoken language, while only written
Hebrew has had a continuous history.
[xii] Personal
communication. I had students from this mixed area who spoke
this mixed language as well as varieties of (more or less) Standard versions of
each of the other languages.
[xiii] Wexler,
p.41
[xiv]
Zuckermann, p.3 Zuckermann uses the term “Old Testament” where I would
prefer "Hebrew Scriptures."
[xv] For a
serious explanation of this issue see “Diachronous Identity Puzzles” ,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-time
[xvi] See no. 12
of the Fragments, Heraclites,
http://ratmachines.com/philosophy/heraclites
[xvii] See Chisholm,
R., “The Loose and Popular and the
Strict and Philosophical Senses of Identity” in Care, N and Grimm, H. Perception
and Identity, (Cleveland, 1969), pp.82-106.
[xviii] Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E. Anscombe,
(Oxford, 1977), p.31e
[xix]
Wittgenstein, p.32e
[xx] This
method is called lexico-statistics.
See Sarah C. Gudschinsky,“The
ABCs of Lexico-statistics”, in Language in Culture and Society,
Dell Hymens, ed. (New York, 1964), pp.612-623.
[xxi] See fn
xx. Both Wexler and Zuckermann are
(obviously) familiar with this method.
Both feel it is not to be used for the case they examine. Although I think Zuckermann is quite right to
speak of the complex genesis of Hebrew, I believe he underestimates the
importance of this core vocabulary.
[xxii] Zelda
Kahan Newman, “The Jewish Sound of Speech: Talmudic Chant, Yiddish Intonation
and the Origins of Early Ashkenaz” in The Jewish Quarterly Review, XC,
nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2000), pp.293-336.
[xxiii] Zelda
Kahan Newman, “Yiddish Haunts: the Yiddish Underpinnings of Appelfeld's Laylah
Ve-od Laylah” in Mikan, Journal for Hebrew Literary Studies: the
World of Aharon Appelfeld, vol.5 (Beer Sheva, January 2005), pp.81-90.
4)---------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 March 2006
From: Amitai HaLevi
Subject: A Reply to Ghil'ad Zuckermann
re. "Israeli"
Dear Editor of The Mendele Review,
In maintaining that
"Modern Israeli Hebrew is only very partially a direct descendent of
Biblical Hebrew," Ghil'ad Zuckermann does violence to the term "descendent". "Descendent" is not
synonymous with "clone". Languages, like people, are the
direct descendents of more than one ancestor.
Itzhak Laor's argument that "the Israeli highschool graduate cannot
deal with a chapter of Tanakh that he
has not studied beforehand without a Biblical Hebrew dictionary" (true of,
say, the Book of Job but hardly
of Genesis or Samuel) is evidence that."the Tanakh is
written in a foreign language", makes no more sense that saying that the
fact the American highschool
graduate cannot deal with the Canterbury Tales without a
glossary, proves that Chaucer wrote in a foreign language.
If what Zuckermann and Laor
(whose political agenda is not irrelevant to the issue in question) are really
saying is that Modern Israeli Hebrew is not "identical" with Biblical
Hebrew, they are breaking through an open door. Secular Hebrew literature of
the Enlightenment (Mapu, Smolenskin, Sh. L. Gordon, etc. was indeed written in
Biblical Hebrew, but the language was
enriched with Mishnaic Hebrew -- replete with Aramaic and Greek elements -- by
Bialik and his contemporaries a century ago. The language of Modern Hebrew
literature drew heavily (principally via
Agnon), on Rabbinic Hebrew as well. Nor should we ignore the infusion of Arabic and Spanish features,
derived from the literature of the Golden Age in Spain.
The spoken language is, of
course peppered with Yiddish, Russian, French, Arabic, Ladino, etc. Children
call their parents "abba" and "ima" (Aramaic), enjoy eating
"shnitsl (German) ve-tshipsim (English with a superfluous Hebrew plural),
or perhaps "uevos `haminados" (Ladino), but most characteristically
"falafel" and "`houmos" (Arabic). Incidentally, there are
two classical ways "lenagev" (to wipe, Biblical) houmos with
"pitta" (Arabic): with a "vish" or a with a
"dukh" (corruption of "durkh"). Not Biblical Hebrew
to be sure, but Hebrew nonetheless.
Finally, while the teaching of
Tanakh can and should be improved, Israeli teen-agers relate to the lyrics
of love songs like "yonati be hagvei hasela" (Song of Songs 2:14) and
"el ginat egoz" (Song of Songs 6:11) quite well.
Amitai Halevi
Dr. E.A. Halevi, Professor
Emeritus
Department of Chemistry Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
32000, Israel
5)--------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 March 2006
From: Jan Hovers and ed.
Subject: Sophie Tucker Remembered
a. A general description of
Sophie Tucker's life
Please visit http://www.jwa.org/discover/comedy/tucker.html
b. "Mayn yidishe mame" in Yiddish by Sophie Tucker, 1928 – audio
file (Jan Hovers)
Follow http://www.78rpm.hovers.nl/tuckerB.wax
c. Yiddish text of "Mayn yidishe mame"
(ed.)
„îÖÇï ééÄãéùò îàÇîò“ [èò÷ñè ÷àÈøéâéøè ôÏåï ÷åìèåø-÷àÈðâøòñ 28/3/06]
[âòæåðâòï ôÏåï ñàÈôÏé èàÈ÷òø àéï 1928 àéï ìàÈðãàÈï]
1. Ôé àéê ùèÖ ãå [ãàÈ] àåï èøàÇëè
2. ÷éîè [÷åîè] îéê ôÏàÈø îÖÇï àÇìèò îàÇîò.
3. ðéùè ÷Öï àÈôÌâòôÌàÇ÷èò éòð÷ò
4. àåï ðéùè ÷Öï àÕñâòôÌåöèò ãàÇîò,
5. ðàÈø àÇ îåèòø ôÏåï ôÏòøöÖÇèï [ôÏàø öÖÇèï],
6. ôÏéï [ôÏåï] âøÕñ öøåú àÖÇðâòáÕâï,
7. îéè àÇ ëÌùøä ééÄãéùò äàÇøõ
8. àåï îéè ôÏéì ôÏàÇøÔÖðèò àÕâï.
9. àéï ãé æòìáò ÷ìÖðò øåî÷òñ [öéîòøï]
10. Ôé æé àéæ àÇìè àåï âøåé [âøàÈ] âòÔàÈøï
11. æéöè æé àåï ðÖè àåï çìåîè
12. ôÏéï [ôÏåï] ãé ìàÇðâ-ôÏàÇøâàÇðâòðò éàÈøï
13. Ôòï ãé äÕæ àéæ ôÏåì âòÔòæï
14. îéè ãòí ÷ìàÇðâ ôÏåï ÷éðãòø ùèéîòñ;
15. àéðòí ÷éèùï [÷éê] äàÈè âòùîò÷è
16.ãòø ùáú ÷éâì [÷åâì] îéèï öéîòñ.
17. àéø îòâè îéø âìÖáï àÇæ áÖÇ àéðãæ [àåðãæ]
18. äàÈè ðéè âòôÏòìè ãòø ãìåú;
19. àÈáòø ãàÈê ôÏàÇø àéðãæ [àåðãæ] ãé ÷éðãòø
20. äàÈè âò÷ìò÷è àÕó àÇìòñ.
21. ãàÈñ ùèé÷ì áøÕè ôÏéï [ôÏåï] îÕì
22. ôÏìòâ æé àéðãæ [àåðãæ] ôÏøÖÇÔéìé÷ âòáï,
23. àåï ôÏàÇø àéøò ÷éðãòø ÔàÈìè æé ãàÈê àÇÔò÷âòìÖâè ãòí ìòáï.
24. àÇìÖï âòøàÈîè, àÇìÖï âòðÖè, àÇìÖï âòÔàÇùï àåï âòáéâìè,
25. âòàÇøáòè áÖÇ èàÈâ, âòàÇøáòè áÖÇ ðàÇëè
26. àåï àéîòø [ùèòðãé÷] àÇ ÷éðã âòÔéâìè.
27. àåï àÈè ãàÈñ äÖñè àÇ ééÄãéùò îàÇîò.
28. àåï Ôé âìé÷ìòê æÖÇè àéø îòðèùï
29. ÔàÈñ àéø äàÈè ðàÈê àÖÇòøò îàÇîòñ,
30. ãòí àÖáòøùèï ãàÇøôÏè àéø áòðèùï
31. àåï îéè àéø ùÖèì ùòîè æàÇê [æéê] ðéè
32. àåï äàÇìè àéø ðéè ôÏàÇøäàÇìèï.
33. àéø ãàÇøôÏè àéø ÷éùï [÷åùï] àéøò äòðè
34. àåï àéø àÇæÕ èÖÇòø äàÇìèï;
35. àéø áøÕëè áÖèï [áòèï] âàÈè
36. ôÏàÇø àéø âòæéðè [âòæåðè] àåï ôÏàÇø àéø ìÖáï [ìòáï].
37. ôÏåï àÇìòñ âåèñ àåï øàÇë÷Öè [øÖÇë÷Öè]
38. ÷òï òø àÖÇê àÇ ôÏåìò âòáï,
39. îéìéàÈðòï èàÇìòø, ãÖÇàÇîàÇðèï [áøéìéàÇðèï], äÖÇæòø âøÕñò, ùÖðò,
40. àÈáòø àÖï æàÇê àÇó [âòùøéáï: àåéó] ãòø Ôòìè ãàÈñ âéè àÖÇê âàÈè ðéùè îòø Ôé
àÖðò,
41. àÇ ééÄãéùò îàÇîò, æé îàÇëè ãàÈê æéñ ãé âàÇðöò Ôòìè,
42. àÇ ééÄãéùò îàÇîò, àÕ Ôé áéèòø Ôòï æé ôÏòìè.
43. àéø ãàÇøôÏè ãàÈê ãàÇð÷òï âàÈè, ÔàÈñ àéø äàÈè àéø ðàÈê áÖÇ æéê.
44. àéø ÔÖñè ðéè Ôé èøÕòøé÷ ñ'Ôòøè
45. Ôòï æé âÖè àÇÔò÷ öå âéê.
46. àéï ÔàÇñòø àåï ôÏÖÇòø
47. ÔàÈìè æé âòìàÈôÏï ôÏàÇø àéø ÷éðã.
48. ðéùè äàÇìèï àéø èÖÇòø,
49. ãàÈñ àéæ âòÔéñ ãé âøòñèò æéðã;
50. àÕ, Ôé âìé÷ìòê àåï øÖÇê àéæ ãòø îòðèù
51. ÔàÈñ äàÈè àÇæàÇ ùÖðò îúÌðä âòùòð÷è ôÏéï [ôÏåï] âàÈè,
52. ðåø [ðàÈø] àÇï àÇìèéèù÷ò ééÄãéùò îàÇîò, îàÇîò îÖÇï!
d. Romanized text of "Mayn yidishe mame" (ed.)
Mayn
yidishe mame [transcription corrected
28.3.06 by Kultur-kongres]
as
sung by Sophie Tucker in 1928 in
1. vi ikh shtey du [do] un trakht
2. kimt [kumt] mikh for mayn alte mame.
3. nisht keyn opgepakte yenke
4. un nisht keyn oysgeputste dame,
5. nor a muter fun fertsaytn
6. fin [fun] groys tsures [tsores] ayngeboygn,
7. mit a kushere [koshere] yidishe harts
8. un mit fil-farveynte oygn.
9. in di zelbe kleyne rumkes
[tsimern]
10. vi zi iz alt un gru [gro] gevorn
11. zitst zi un neyt un kholemt
12. fin [fun] di lang-fargangene
yorn
13. ven di hoyz iz ful
gevezn
14. mit dem klang fun kinder shtimes,
15. inem kitshn [kikh] hot geshmekt
16. der shabes kigl [kugl] mitn
tsimes
17. ir megt mir gleybn az
bay indz [undz]
18. hot nit gefelt der
dales
19. ober dokh far indz [undz] di
kinder
20. hot geklekt oyf ales
21. dos shtikl broyt fin moyl
22. fleg zi indz [undz] frayvilik
gebn
23. un far ire kinder volt zi dokh
avekgeleygt dem lebn.
24. aleyn geromt, aleyn geneyt, aleyn
gevashn un gebiglt,
25. gearbet bay tog, gearbet
bay nakht
26. un imer [shtendik] a
kind geviglt,
27. un ot dos heyst a yidishe mame.
28. un vi gliklekh zayt ir mentshn
29. vos ir hot nokh ayere mames,
30. dem eybershtn darft ir bentshn.
31. un mit ir sheytl shemt zakh
[zikh] nit
32. un halt ir nit farhaltn.
33. ir darft ir kishn ire hent
34. un ir azoy tayer haltn,
35. ir broykht beytn [betn] got
36. far ir gezint [gezunt] un far ir leybn [lebn].
37. fun ales guts un rakhkayt[raykhkeyt]
38. ken er aykh a fule gebn,
39. milyonen taler, dayamantn [brilyantn], hayzer groyse, sheyne,
40. ober eyn zakh af der
velt dos git aykh got nisht mer vi eyne
[CHORUS]
41. a yidishe mame,
zi makht dokh zis di
gantse velt;
42. a yidishe mame, azoy vi biter ven zi felt.
43. ir darft dokh danken
got, vos ir hot ir nokh bay zikh.
44. ir veyst nit vi troyerik s'vert
45. ven zi geyt avek tsu gikh.
46. in vaser un fayer
47. volt zi gelofn far ir kind.
48. nisht haltn ir tayer,
49. dos iz gevis di greste zind;
50. oy, vi gliklekh un raykh iz der mentsh
51. vos hot aza sheyne metone geshenkt fin [fun] got,
52. nur [nor] an altitshke yidishe mame, mame mayn!
e. "Mayn yidishe mame" in English by Sophie Tucker, 1928 – audio
file (Jan Hovers)
f. Sophie Tucker's 1928 Dutch "Mayn
yidishe mame" record illustrated (Jan Hovers)
g. Leo Fuld's Dutch record of "Mayn
yidishe mame" illustrated (Jan Hovers)
6)--------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 March 2006
Subject: Adina Bar-El's Grininke beymelekh – a further notice (ed.)
We repeat the announcement of
this new book to include a useful telephone number accidentally omitted from TMR 10.02.
Adina Bar-El. Beyn haEytsim haYerakrakim; Itoney
yeladim beYidish uVeIvrit bePolin 1918-1939. Jerusalem: Dov Sadan Institute [Hebrew
University] / Zionist Library [World Zionist Organization], 2006, 519+XXX pp.
[ISBN 965-440-055-3]. 1st 100 copies in Israel will cost 60 shekels
postpaid [check to Yechiel Szeintuch (Makhon Dov Sadan), Dept. of Yiddish,
Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel. (Messages may be left 24
hours a day at (972) (2) 588-3527)]. Overseas orders to Adina Bar-El,
Moshav Nir-Yisrael, Israel [Tel-Fax 972-8-6729354]. [English title: Under
the Little Green Trees; Yiddish and Hebrew Children's Periodicals in Poland
1918-1939; Yiddish title: Grininke beymelekh)].
---------------------------------------------------------
End
of The Mendele Review Vol. 10.03
Editor,
Leonard Prager
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