The
Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
---------------------------------------------------------
Contents of Vol. 12.010 [Sequential No. 201]
Date: 11 May 2008
1) This issue of TMR (ed).
2) Anniversary
messages (continued) [See TMR 12.009]
Professor Lawrence A. Rosenwald
(Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA)
FRIDA (Grapa de) CIELAK
(Mexico City, Mexico)
Dr. Marcos Silber (Department
of Jewish History, University of Haifa)
Boris Sandler, Ed./ Itsik
Gottesman, Asst. Ed., Forverts
(New York)
The Yiddish Leyen-Krayz of
Buffalo, New York
3) Review: Miriam Hoffman's Shlisl – a New Yiddish Textbook (Heather
Valencia)
4) Review: Mirjam Gutschow's Inventory of Yiddish Publications From the
Netherlands (c. 1650-cc.1950)
5) Uriel Birnbaum's "Yosele in Kheyder" and "Yankev
Dinezon"
6) Dutch klezmer group play "Holland terkisher"
1)---------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 May 2008
From: ed.
Subject: This
issue of TMR
Re past issues: ***The opening speech by Nosn Birnboym at
Czernowitz in 1908 in Yiddish [see TMR 12.009] may be found in an English
translation at http://www.ibiblio.org:80/yiddish/Tshernovits/birnbaum-op.html.
From a member of the
Re this issue: ***A brief note on the editor's helpmate, Barbara,
and a few more congratulatory messages on the TMR's anniversary (see TMR 12.009).
***Uriel Birnbaum (13 November, 1894 in
2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 May 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Anniversary messages (continued) [See TMR 12.009]
Barbara M. Prager:
A glaring omission in my mini-biographical sketch in the anniversary
issue TMR 12.009 was mention of my principal
helper and support in my work, namely my very modest wife, Barbara, who
preferred not being candidly praised and having her considerable achievements
enumerated. But to sketch the minimal, she played the viola in the Haifa
Symphony Orchestra for over thirty years, many of them as Principal Violist,
has a first degree in music from
Congratulatory Messages:
Professor Lawrence A. Rosenwald (
A very happy
birthday to you, O now eleven-year-old Mendele Review! I had the honor to
write an article for the very first Mendele Review; when I look back at that issue, and that
article, I'm both awed and delighted at how the Review has survived,
grown, flourished , even transcended itself-- an astonishing success, and all
honor to Leonard Prager for gently and irresistibly making it
happen.
Larry A.
Rosenwald
----------------------
FRIDA
(Grapa de) CIELAK (
200 hundert
numern un 11 yor vos Yidish hot zikh modernizirt a dank MENDELE ONLINE, a
vunderbarer kholem fun Noyekh Miller un fun ale zayne mithelfer un fraynd, a
dank zayn akshoneshkeyt un Leonard Prager’s, tzu bavayzn der velt az Yidish
lebt, un itst iz a gute gelegenheyt az ale mitglider fun MENDELE, vos
tseyln zikh shoyn in di toyznter, az mir zoln aykh vayter shtitsn un aykh ale
opgebn a yasher koyekh un a derkenung far di vunderbare arbet in di elf yor,
alevay vayter, mit vayterdike dergreykhungen un zol G__ aykh bentshn mit gezunt
un hatslokhe! Mit fil anerkenung un hartsike grusn,
Freydl
Cielak (Meksike)
----------------------
Dr. Marcos
Silber (Department of Jewish History)
Biz hundert un
tsvantsik! Lomir hobn nokh a sakh vertfule artiklen fun Mendele Review!
Dr. Marcos Silber
----------------------
Dr. Helen Beer (
Dear Leonard,
It was a fargenign to read your biography (short version) and to
see the photos and have them explained.
You have done much to assure Mendele's success and global impact and you are
still the person who has most seriously and comprehensively investigated der
gantser inyen of Yiddish in
Helen
----------------------
Forverts (
Der
"Forverts" bagrist Leonard Prager tsum 200stn numer funem Mendele
Review.
A yasher-koyekh far ayer vikhtiker kultur-arbet letoyves undzer yidish-velt!
Boris
Sandler, shef-redaktor; Itzik Gottesman, shtel-fartreter farn redaktor, Forverts
(New York)
----------------------
The Yiddish Leyen-Krayz of
The Yiddish Leyen-Krayz of
Sincerely,
Jack Freer, Itsik Goldenberg, Floyd Green, Amy Eglowstein, Velvel Fleischman,
Irving Massey, Harvey Rogers,
3)-----------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 May 2008
From: Heather Valencia
Subject: Review of Miriam Hoffman's Shlisl – A new Yiddish textbook
Miriam
Hoffman, Shlisl tsu yidish/Key to Yiddish. Lernbukh far onheyber.
(
Yiddish
teachers never stop searching for the perfect course-book. During the past
twenty-five years, various new publications have built on the pioneering work
of Yudl Mark and Uriel Weinreich: Mordkhe Schaechter's Yidish tsvey, Sheva Zucker's Yiddish. An Introduction to
the Language, Literature and Culture, Volumes 1 and 2, Marion Aptroot and
Holger Nath's course for German-speaking students Yiddische Sprache und
Kultur, David Goldberg's Yidish af Yidish, and Zuckerman and
Herbst's Learning Yiddish in Easy Stages are all widely used and each
has its strengths and weaknesses, depending on the type and nationality of
student and the particular learning situation. The latest work to join this pantheon is Shlisl tsu
Yidish/ Key to Yiddish by Miriam Hoffman of
The author,
who is well-known to many Mendele readers, has a long and distinguished career
in Yiddish. She is a native speaker whose parents came from
Professor
Rakhmiel Pelz, who was instrumental in bringing her to
There is
indeed much from which to “nash”. The book comprises 666 A4 pages. This format
with its large, clear print and generously spaced layout make it easy for
students to read, but the downside of this is that the book weighs in at almost
two and a half kilos, and is therefore very heavy and unwieldy for them to
carry around! It is divided into fourteen chapters, which vary in length from
12 pages to 37 pages. From the point of
view of subject matter, most of the later chapters have a specific unifying
theme: (such as chapter 9: “Der khurbm,” chapter 11: “folksmayses,” and chapter
14: “Fun der yidisher literatur”), while the earlier ones are a pot-pourri of
different short texts and activities.
The material
which Miriam Hoffmann introduces to the reader is truly impressive. The book is
packed with interesting and lively texts: proverbs, Yiddish sayings, folksongs,
folktales, poetry, depictions of the various Jewish holidays and traditional
Ashkenazic customs, satirical texts, and comic anecdotes. The texts are
wide-ranging and authentic: as well as lively dialogues written by the author
herself, there are letters from the famous bintl briv in the Forverts
from the early twentieth century,
material on Yiddish dialects, on the relationship between Yiddish and loshn
koydesh, on Zionism and
The texts
present the student with a wide range of style and register, and the language
Hoffman herself uses when addressing the reader and in the exercises and
activities is humorous, pithy and idiomatic. The activities for developing
conversational skills, and the exercises to practise grammar points are on the
whole well thought out (though see my reservations below) and form an excellent
resource for teachers. There is a good selection of cumulative rhymes and
dialogues for classroom use, which enable even the beginner to contribute and
feel involved.
Another
attractive feature is the wealth of illustration. The chapters are sprinkled with
little black and white drawings and cartoons, the majority, as the author tells
us, from the satirical journal Der groyser kundes, but some also by the
modern artist Tsirl Waletsky. The
illustrations do not necessarily bear any relation to the particular
content of the chapters, but they add to the varied picture of Jewish life during the twentieth century which the
book as a whole conveys, and provide excellent stimulus for discussion.
As with all
the other Yiddish course books with which I am familiar, Shlisl tsu yidish
begins by teaching the Yiddish alphabet, which is very clearly set out.
However, this introductory section does not stand alone: certain aspects are
not specifically explained: the vowels and dipthongs which are preceded by the shtumer
alef, the use of the melupm vov and khirek yud, or the
function of yud as vowel or consonant. Here and in the pronunciation and
meaning of the large numbers of words which are introduced at the very
beginning, fairly intensive input from the teacher would be necessary.
In the English
version of her introduction, the author notes: “Instead of the usual
glossary, the English translation
follows immediately after the Hebrew element words, as well as phrases and
idioms. Hopefully each student will acquire a Yiddish-English/English-Yiddish
Dictionary and use it whenever necessary.” In fact far more than just the
Hebrew element vocabulary and some phrases and idioms are glossed in this way
in the texts: in the songs and poems, a parallel fairly literal translation is
provided on the left of the page, which is quite satisfactory, whereas many of
the prose texts are peppered with English glosses in brackets. It certainly
enables the students to read more easily when they have the pronunciation of Hebrew-origin words
immediately after their occurrence, but the effectiveness of the strategy as a
whole could be questioned. On the one hand, the student has the satisfaction of
being able to go through a text without pausing to look up words (assuming the
glossed words are the only one he/she needs) but there are, to my mind, other
negative effects. . The translations are not always literal, and in a phrase
containing various components, including, for example, the past participle of a
previously unknown verb, the student may not be clear which component is which
or enabled to learn the new verb. The presence of these glosses within the text
could also be a disincentive for the lazier student to learn the words whose
meaning has been handed to him/her on a plate!
Conversely, they may be an irritation to the student who already knows
the words, whereas with a word list after the passage, the student need
only look up items with which he/she is unfamiliar. Furthermore, these
interspersed words and phrases interrupt the flow and structure of the Yiddish
sentence, which impedes reading fluency.
It could be argued that the more traditional method - an uninterrupted
passage of Yiddish followed by a vocabulary list - is more productive. The
example reproduced below may help readers to decide on the efficacy of
Hoffman's strategy.
(click on image to enlarge)
The author
believes in teaching grammar with a light hand, and one can welcome the fact
that she has eschewed the long descriptive grammar sections in English which
feature in more traditional language courses. Instead, her grammar sections are
short and pithy, focusing on one point with a short explanation – usually in
Yiddish but with English translation of all or part of the explanation in order
to ensure understanding - followed by
examples and exercises to reinforce the point. There is no apparent pattern to
the occurrence of grammar sections within the chapters – which, as I have
already said, are of widely varying length.
They seem to appear at random, so that some chapters contain as many as
twelve new grammatical topics, while others are mainly made up of texts, with
very little or no grammatical input. All the main basic aspects are, however,
covered, and a particularly nice feature are frequent little sections
explaining pairs of elements like visn/kenen, rikhtik/gerekht, forn/geyn,
in/keyn and so on.
There are,
however, some unfortunate errors and inconsistencies in the teaching of the
grammatical points. Terminology is sometimes misleading or confusing: the
section on the present tense of the verb is entitled “Pronomen in der itstiker
tsayt (Declension of Personal Pronouns in the Present Tense)” and is followed,
not by the declension of pronouns, but by the conjugation of the verbs geyn,
kumen, shraybn, leyenen and farshteyn. (Although this section uses the
infinitive of the verb, the concept of the infinitive and the rules for the -n or -en endings are not dealt with
until chapter two, p.73.) There are unfortunate mistakes: under the heading of
“Sentences with an object” the sentences “zi iz a mentsh,” “Es iz an epl” are
given as examples. In the same section “Ikh shrayb a bukh” and “Du trinkst
kave” are given among the examples of plural sentences. At a more advanced
level, the conditional tense is
introduced in chapter 11 (p.535) under the heading “Der bading-hilfsverb
“volt”, which is explained as follows: “Der bading-verb “volt” vert genutst in
beyde teylzatsn. Der bading-verb muz genutst vern mit der fargangener tsayt. [sic]. (Italics in original. This is translated as
“past participle” in the English version of this explanation). However ALL the
example sentences she gives follow the pattern “Ven er veyst vos er tut,
volt er efsher fardint”, as do all the conditional questions in the exercise
for classroom discussion on p.537, e.g: “Ven a fish ken redn, vos volt
er gezogt?”. In the whole section there is not one example of “volt” being used
in both sentence-halves.
The order of
teaching various grammatical items can be confusing: apart from the above
example of the infinitives, we see for example on p. 78 that the student is
expected to do an exercise involving the verb “ton”, but the conjugation of
this irregular verb is not taught until p. 80. The teaching of the past tense is
particularly confusing. In chapter one, having only just dealt with the present
tense, and the verbs zayn and hobn, the author has a section (p.48) on intransitive verbs,
headed “Yiddish has some twenty intransitive verbs that have no object.
Intransitive verbs use the verb to be, zayn, in the Past Tense.” There follows
a list of these verbs in the past tense – without any prior discussion of the
formation of the past tense with zayn/hobn, the form of the past participle, or
the concept of transitive and intransitive verbs. Immediately after this, there
is an exercise to change present tense of “zayn” verbs to past tense (in which
the first sentence is “Du farshteyst a sakh”!), and an exercise with a
mixture of both “zayn” and “hobn” verbs,
though the latter category has not even been mentioned. The past tense is not
formally taught until chapter four, p.116. Here it is stated that “Only a
limited amount of verbs use “zayn” in the past tense” with the verb “zayn” as
the example, and no reference back to the list of intransitive verbs in
chapter one.
These and
other inconsistencies in the grammatical sections are potentially
bewildering for new students and would,
I feel, need to be remedied for a later edition (as would the irritating
profusion of misprints in the English text). However, the weaknesses which I
have mentioned undoubtedly stem largely from the fact that the book is a
collection of the teaching materials which Miriam Hoffman has developed and
successfully used with her students throughout the years, rather than a course
conceived ab initio and systematically planned. In the classroom
situation, the teacher using these materials would be able to smooth out any
misunderstandings and amplify explanations where necessary. Thus Shlisl tsu
yidish should perhaps not be considered as a tool for self-study. Its great
strength is primarily as a source of invigorating materials for classroom
teaching, and it will certainly stimulate lively participation and the
students' understanding of and engagement with the authentic Yiddish language
and culture. It is a valuable addition to the stock of modern Yiddish
textbooks.
4) -------------------------------------
Date: 11 May 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Review of Mirjam Gutschow's Inventory
of Yiddish Publications From the
[A Hebrew version of
this review will appear in Volume 11 of Khulyot]
Mirjam Gutschow's Inventory
of Yiddish Publications from the Netherlands c.1650-c.1950 (Leiden/Boston:
Brill, 2007) is an exemplary production that no one interested in the
socio-cultural history of Dutch Jewry, the development of Jewish printing, the
history of Yiddish and other related subject areas can afford not to know, use
and treasure. We also need to remember, as the author explains from the very
outset in her succinct "Introduction", that it is a reference work
wholly constructed from secondary as distinct from original sources. Seeing is
not necessarily believing, but for the discipline of bibliography actual
examination of texts is a prime desideratum.
Gutschow with full
candor writes: "As a first step towards a comprehensive bibliography of
Yiddish texts printed in the Netherlands, this inventory is based on
information extracted from secondary literature and is therefore subject to the
limitations of these sources..."(1) Her
principal source, she tells us, is Vinograd's Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book "despite
its limitations."(2) In dealing with her
multiple sources she has had to contend with "widespread differences in
orthography, pagination, format, printers, and even the year of
printing."(3) Regrettably, she was unable
to consult all catalogues of libraries having Yiddish books, and especially the
magnificent holdings of Yivo and the New York Public Library. She regrets, too,
omission of most of the pseudo-Amsterdam printings and of calendars and rightly
recognizes the need for studying these subjects further. However, viewing her
project as a whole, one must conclude that its omissions and shortcomings are
dwarfed by what it does achieve. (4)
Ashkenazim began
arriving in the
Items in Inventory are given according to chronology and titles are in Hebrew characters. The usefulness of the work is augmented by a liberal supply of indexes: List of Libraries and Collections, Bibliography (very comprehensive) (6), Indexes of Titles, Authors (includes translators), Printers and Genres. Beneath each item, Gutschow has placed a genre identification. Beside Judaic categories such as "Bible", "Kabbalah", "Liturgy", "Musar", we have the more frequent secular ones such as "Geography", "History", "Humor", "Narrative Prose", "Popular Medicine". YidNet 176 [the suggested system of citation--LP] is an adaptation of Boccacio's Decameron! The book's last section is a skillfully photographed collection of forty plates of title pages (or representative ones) of items listed in the Inventory. The plates give the item number and the items give the plate number. (Plates No. 1 and No. 16 are given here below. Click on images to enlarge)
The state
fought hard against Yiddish and for Dutch; most Jews shifted to Dutch (not
always free of Yiddish elements) by the end of the nineteenth century. A score
or so of Jewish periodicals in Dutch were published in the nineteenth century
(e.g. in
Endnotes
1. Inventory... Page 3.
2
Vinograd, Otsar …..
3. Inventory...Page
3.
4. I would
have been happier if a simple Key to Abbreviations had straightaway
informed me what C, F, R, and Z stand for. (They are catalogues by authors
whose names start with these initials.) And small f. ('leaf") < Latin folium
will be foreign to many users -- IDC and others use leaves.
5. Shlomo Berger's important essay "An
Invitation to Buy and Read; Paratexts of Yiddish Books in
6. A title list of "Yiddish Publications
from the
7. See the Dutch items at: http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/documents/microfilmsotherlanguages.pdf
8. See The Mendele Review 05.001
[4d] (31 January 2001) and http://www.xs4all.nl/~fredbor/0.5/UK/home_uk.html
5)-----------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 May 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Uriel Birnbaum's "Yosele in Kheyder" and "Yankev
Dinezon"
Uriel Birnbaum's portrait of Yankev
Dinezon
(click on image to enlarge)
Uriel Birnbaum's
"Yosele in Kheyder"
6)---------------------------------------------
Time: 11 May 2008
From: Robert Goldenberg
Subject: Dutch klezmer group plays "Holland Terkisher"
The SALOMON KLEZMORIM group was founded by the
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review
Issue 12.010
Editor, Leonard Prager
Editorial Associate, Robert Goldenberg
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