_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 02.035 25 December 1998 |-------------------------------------------| | In Memory of | | | | | | Zosa Shaykovski [Szajkowski] | | (ne Shayke Fridman [Frydman]) | | | | (1910-1978) | |-------------------------------------------| 1) Yiddish Matters: From the Editor (Leonard Prager) 2) "Preface" to Zosa Shaykovski's _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_ (Max Weinreich) 3) "Introduction" to _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_ (Zosa Shaykovski) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 December 1998 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Yiddish Matters a. This issue: Though several months late, we are pleased to honor the memory of Zosa Shaykovski two decades after his death (on 26 September 1978). Shaykovski [Szajkowski] was an outstanding historian of French-Jewish life who was for years associated with YIVO and who published much of his work in Yiddish. He deserves to be remembered by students of Yiddish as well as of the related areas which he assiduously investigated. We here give the English versions of his "Introduction" and Max Weinreich's "Preface" to a pioneer linguistic work of his, _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_.* This essay was preceded by the author's "Yidishe motivn in der folkskultur fun komto-venesen in 17tn-19tn y'h" [_Yivo bleter_ 19:3 (May-June, 1942, 312-341], whose English abstract tells us: "After a brief introduction concerning the life of the Jews in the four towns of Comtat Venaissin: Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon, Isle sur Sorgue, the author shows Jewish influences in the non-Jewish folk culture of that region. References to Jews, their way of life, their religion and their rabbis are to be found in Christmas carols, Christmas plays, comedies and satires, proverbs, etc. The Jewish motifs are introduced either for burlesque or in an attempt to convert the Jews." A footnote in the _Yivo-bleter_ essay tells us that a discussion of Shuadit, the Comtadine Jewish language, will appear in the next volume of Yivo's _Filologishe shriftn_. This promise did not materialize, but six years later the linguistic essay appeared as a separate publication. Many Ashkenazic Jews call Christmas _nitl_ , which also means 'Christmas carol'. Shaykovski devotes a section of his study to "yidishe" nitlen -- the term 'Jewish carols' stems from Christians. He writes: "in komta-venesin iz geshafn gevorn a tshikave provansalishe nitl literatur mit yidishe un nit-yidishe motivn, vos iz umbakant in andere provintsn fun frankraykh; afile in provans mi|khuts komta-venesin, vu es zaynen yo geven andere provensalishe lider vegn un kegn yidn, veys men nisht fun dem min shafungen. mir meynen do di azoy gerufene Noue Juzioou 'yidishe nitlen' (nitl-lider)." (p. 22) ['A curious Provence Christmas-carol literature with Jewish and non-Jewish motifs, unknown in other French provinces, was created in Comtat-Venaissin. Works of this sort are unknown outside of Comtat-Venaissin even in Provence where Provencal songs about and against Jews did exist. We are referring to the so-called "Jewish Christmas-songs" [yidishe nitlen]' (transl.: LP)] This work reminds us not only that Yiddish is central to the study of Jewish interlinguistics but that significant works on Jewish languages are written in Yiddish. However, if we regard Modern Hebrew as a Jewish language -- not all do -- a half-century after Max Weinreich wrote these words, history has rendered them inapplicable: "[among Jewish languages, Yiddish] has the largest number of speakers, and the richest supply of available literary sources." Fifty years ago these words were true. There are a number of Yiddish strands connecting to the Comtadine Jews. M. Bernfeld has written of Chuadit in _Kiyum_ (Kiem) 12 (Paris 1948). The burial in 1925 of Ashil Zhakob Astrik, the last Jew in Cavaillon, inspired Sholem Ash [Shalom Asch] to write a story, the title of which some Ash expert can recall for us. Moshe Lazar's edition of macaronic Hebrew-Provencal poems is a feature of Comtadine Jewish culture that will be of interest to many _TMR_ readers. We are reminded of macaronic poems with alternate Yiddish and Slavic lines. [See Moshe Lazar, "Lis Obros: Chansons Hebraico-Provencales" (Edition Critique D'Apres Tous Les Mss. Connus) in Moshe Lazar, ed. _Romanica et Occidentalia; Etudes dediees a la memoire de Hiram Peri (Pflaum)_. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1963, pp. 290-346.] b. Correction: The email addresses of Eliezer Niborski are: eniborsk@ens-lyon.fr or: Eliezer.Niborski@ens-lyon.fr * Z. Shaykovski. _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_. mit a hakdome fun maks vaynraykh. nyu-york: aroysgegebn fun mekhaber mit der mithelf fun yidishn visnshaftlekhn institut-yivo, 1948. [English title page: Z[osa] Szajkowski. The Language of the Jews in the Four Communities of Comtat Venaissin. With a Preface by Max Weinreich. New York: Published by the Author with the aid of the Yiddish Scientific Institute - YIVO, 1948. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 December 1998 From: Leonard Prager Subject: "Preface" to Zosa Shaykovski's _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_ (Max Weinreich) Max Weinreich Preface Zosa Szajkowski's study will undoubtedly arouse among students of the Jewish past in France considerable interest. Although a good deal was written on the Jewish communities in Avignon and Comtat-Venaissin, their language was never submitted to a systematic study. In this work the author presents in a comprehensive manner the very considerable material that he had gathered on this subject. Students of Romance Languages will be grateful to him. But in addition to the new material, the author has adopted a new methodological approach to the subject and in this respect, the work transcends the sphere of interest of the Romance scholar. All Jewish languages that came into being after Hebrew originated in the following manner: the Jews adopted foreign language elements and recreated them in their own linguistic pattern. (It appears that the history of the Hebrew language, too, does not in the main deviate sharply from this scheme.) Hence, the earlier students of Yiddish sought in it the Germanic components, the students of Dzudezmo (Judeo-Spanish) the Spanish components, and so on. Gradually, students of Yiddish began to realize that this is not the proper procedure. Surely, it is quite interesting to see what German elements have been preserved in Yiddish and what Spanish elements in Dzudezmo. But far more significant are the language patterns that originated with the Jews. In analyzing these "Jewish" patterns, the easiest task is the identification of the Hebrew-Aramaic components. More difficult (and more important) is the task of determining the morphological and semantic modifications that these elements have undergone in their adaptation to the new language. Even more significant is a study of the process of recreating the non-Jewish elements in the Jewish linguistic pattern. Finally, the synthesis of these different elements into a functional whole is to be studied. Herein lies the significance of the author's pioneer work. He begins -- and this is the proper procedure -- with a description of the geographic and social locale in which the language of the Jews of Avignon and Comtat-Venaissin originated. Then, in treating of the language proper, he not only points up the words of Hebrew origin but also analyzes their subsequent morphological and semantic developments as well as the modifications of the Romance elements in the speech of the Jews. To what extent he has succeeded in describing particular phonemes and forms, Romance scholars will judge. Of one thing I am certain: The author has set out on the proper path in maintaining that in the Four Communities of Avignon and Comtat-Venaissin a new Jewish language had been in the process of development and had already attained to substantial stature when suddenly arrested in its growth by a new turn in the history of those communities. In respect to the so-called "Judeo-Provencal" texts of the 17 - 18th centuries, the author's accomplishment is specially noteworthy. Earlier students had concluded that since these texts were translations from Hebrew and written in Hebrew characters, or new original texts in Hebrew characters, they fully represented the language of the Jews of the Four Communities of that period. However, a comparison with a similar phenomenon in Yiddish will serve as a warning against such hasty conclusions. Following Mendelsohn's translation of the Bible, for a period of some fifty years, there came from publishing houses of Vienna, Karlsruhe, Bruenn, and others, scores of so-called "Yiddish" books. Older catalogues designated these books as Judeo-German. Recently, they came to be catalogued as Yiddish. But in these cases the term Yiddish is a misnomer. Judeo-German may be applied if we agree beforehand that the term denotes something different from Yiddish. Throughout the entire history of the Yiddish language, from the oldest Bible translations to late 19th century Shomer, the tendency to germanize Yiddish is noticeable in many writers. But germanized Yiddish is still very different from German. In the aforesaid Vienna, Karlsruhe, and similar editions, although they are printed in Hebrew characters, we have nothing but German, unless a stray Yiddishism found its way into the book against the will of the author. This kind of literature can not be classified in the same category with Yiddish. Similarly, a detailed study is needed to determine whether the Judeo-Provencal texts of the 17-18th centuries are pure Provencal in Hebrew characters or they represent a special literary style based on the actual spoken language of the Jews; in other words, whether they are to be compared to the aforesaid works, which were German in Hebrew characters, or to our older Yiddish literary language. One thing the author clearly establishes: the Judeo-Provencal texts do not reflect the spoken language of the Jews of the period. Whence the new approach to a Jewish language that our author manifests? His work was completed in the Yivo. He applied to his subject the approach elaborated in the study of Yiddish. The study of Jewish languages must take a lead from research in the Yiddish language, since Yiddish is the most widespread and the most differentiated of Jewish languages, and has the largest number of speakers, and the richest supply of available literary sources. On the other hand, research in the Yiddish language should benefit from the author's contribution. Let us hope that the fact that the author's study was accepted by the Yivo will lead students of Yiddish to a general interest in all Jewish languages. It becomes increasingly clear that the need of "Jewish interlinguistics (or "Jewish philology," as Solomon Birnbaum phrased it in 1937, _Yivo Bleter_, vol. XI, p.198, to distinguish it from the "philology of Yiddish") is an urgent matter. One can attain to a more profound grasp of the essence of one Jewish language through an understanding of other Jewish languages. Then, by comparing different Jewish languages we come close to understanding the essence of Jewish linguistic creativity, which is so pronounced an element in Jewish culture history, and thereby we gain a clearer perspective of the Jewish genius in general. Max Weinreich February 29, 1948 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 December 1998 From: Leonard Prager Subject: "Introduction" to _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_ (Zosa Shaykovski) Zosa Shaykovski Introduction In the Comtat Venaissin which was a Papal province in Southern France there lived prior to the French Revolution some 2000 Jews who united mainly into four communities of the cities Carpentras, Avignon, Cavaillon and Isle-sur-Sorgue. In the studies made until now about these communities mention is made of a language of the Jews (in these four communities) who are known in historical writings as _Comtadine Jews_. _Geographical Boundaries of the Speech of the Comtadine Jews_. A distinction must be made between the speech of Comtadine Jews and the language of the Jews in the other parts of Provence: there was no single language among all Provence Jews which we could term Judeo- Provencal as is done by some scholars. The Comtadine Jews surely had their speech and the Sephardic Jews in other parts of Provence surely had languages of their own. The Sephardic Jews who had settled in South-Western France as far back as in 1492 had brought with them their own tongue, traces of which have been preserved to this day. The Jews of Nice had a dialect of their own. For this reason we speak exclusively of the tongue of the Comtadine Jews. _Name of the Tongue_. To this day we have no name for the speech, merely various designations and characterizations by various chroniclers and investigators. In a Carpentras manuscript written by a gentile, the speech of the Comtadine Jews is called CHUADIT, which stems from the Hebrew _yehudit_. Apparently, the Comtadine Jews themselves thus called their speech. Owing to the unreliability of the source and the lack of clarity as to the pronunciation of this word we refrain for the present from applying this name to the speech. _Other Tongues among the Comtadine Jews and the Rise of a New Language_. At a certain period the Comtadine Jews made use simultaneously of the three languagea: Hebrew, Provencal and French. In the course of time, from elements of these languages there arose a new dialect, a fusion of the three languages. In general the four ccmmunities were a melting pot of various influences and doubtless had their influence also on language. Chronologically Hebrew came earlier among the Jews, but Provencal, too, was familiar to them: at a certain period Provencal was the language of intercourse among the Jews. But French also was familiar to the Jews to a certain extent. There are numerous testimonies concerning the existence of a new tongue springing from elements of those three languages. However, from 1789 onward the speech of the Comtadine Jews was on the decline owing to the emancipation of those Jews who turned to speaking Prench and the exodus of Jews to other parts of France. Of this tongue only a handful of words have survived in use until our days. _Sources_. We possess no single linguistic monument entirely written in this tongue and by a person who spoke the language. The speech of the Comtadine Jews evoked an interest among the surrounding Jewish population already in the XVII century and possibly earlier. In Comtat Venaissin there sprang up a curious literature of ecclesiastic creations and worldly comedies and satires written in Provencal with interspersed words from the speech of the Jews and for this reason they are the most important source for us in studying the speech of the Comtadine Jews. _Prior Investigations_ In transcribing copies of these curious literary productions the Carpentras bibliophiles of early XIX century added glossaries with translations of the words from the language spoken by the Comtadine Jews. However, these allusions to the speech of the Comtadine Jews remained for a long time unknown to modern investigators. The first person to evince a close interest in this dialect was the Alsatian cantor R. Hirschler who had settled in Southern France and took an interest in the expressions of the speech that had survived among the Comtadine Jews. In 1894 he published a glossary of some 200 words. The comedy _Harcanot et Barcanot_ which Hirschler published in 1896 is the most important linguistic monument in the speech of the Comtadine Jews that has come down to us. Subsequently, the Avignon scholar Dr. P. Pansier, published another text of the comedy. However, the comedy was not written prior to 1789, as is assumed by some. As a matter of fact, the comedy was written as late as at the beginning of the XIX century. Its author was probably the weli-known French-Jewish attorney and historian Bedarride of Montpellier. Consequently it was written by an outsider who had not known since his birthday the speech of the Comtadine Jews. _The researches of Dr. P. Pansier_ of Avignon are the most notable of all those carried out to-date concerning the speech of the Comtadine Jews. However, he has committed no end of errors and his contributions can serve only as a source for further investigations. French author A. Lunel, the historian Cecil Roth, F. Mistral and a considerable number of other authors of Provencal dictionaries also touched upon this subject. _The Statutes of the Jewish Communities_ in the Comtat Venaissin have been included by the generality of investigators till now as a source in their attempts to compile glossaries of the Comtadine Jews as have likewise been notarial acts and other similar documents. However, the statutes of the comunities are translations from Hebrew originals which have not come down to us. The notaries recorded the translations according to the by-word-of-mouth translations made by the emissaries of the communities. Consequently we cannot know positive1y as to how far the special turns of phrase in the Statutes are indeed words from the language of the Comtadine Jews. Por this reason as well as for many others, the specific expressions of the Statutes should not find any place in a glossary of the speech~ of the Comtadine Jews. _Critical Appraisal of the Sources_. The make-up of the linguistic monuments that are known to us is singularly fortuitous and not overly reliable. We do not know a single document of which we could say positively that it has been written by a Comtadine Jew and in his own tongue throughout. The linguistic documents that have been preserved for us were not written by persons who spoke the tongue of the Comtadine Jews but by outsders who positively did not know that tongue. One has to be cautious as to the words of the Jewish manner of speech with which are interlarded the Comtadine ecclesiastical productions and worldly comedies of the XVII century. These are by-and-large productions with a tendency to caricature the Jews; the words are interspersed, above all, in order to produce a comical effect and, accordingly, they might have easily been distorted. Owing to this chance make-up of the sources it is also impossible to determine the chronological date of origin of this new language of the Jews. The earliest documents (known to us) interlarded with words of Provencal origin that already had assumed clear-cut new forms in the mouths of the Comtadine Jews come from as late as the 17th century. All-in-all we possess more numerous secure data and testimony _concerning_ the existence of a tongue of the Comtadine Jews, than linguistic monuments _in that tongue_. _A spoken tongue or a written language?_ A question comes up as to which alphabet the Comtadine Jews used in writing their language. According to common sense and as exemplified by other languages among the Jews, the Comtadine Jews, too, should have used the Hebrew alphabet. The Provencal texts of the Comtadine Jews are indeed rigged out in the Hebrew alphabet. But, quite to the contrary, all known sources in the speech of the Comtadine Jews are written down in the Latin characters. But this becomes understandable when one takes into account the fortuitous make-up of the sources that are known to us. The question is whether the speech was at all used in writing. Here we have to do with a language which owing to the emancipation went out of existence even before it had managed to reach the status of a more or less developed written language. At the present stage of research of this speech and with the present-day make-up of the sources which are not over-reliable it is difficult to reconstruct the entire grammar of this speech and we can analyze but several rules. Several characteristic rules are indeed an exception in the midst of the surrounding Provencal language and there still remains the task of finding out the causes of the peculiar phenomenon, e.g. of the transition s > f. But the data in favor of the existence of the phenomenon are such that one cannot deny it as a reality. Likewise we can merely give the characteristic features of the phonetics of this speech. Some of the laws (x > i) are conjecturally nothing but graphic phenomena, i.e. non-Jews have found only the definite Latin characters for certain Hebrew sounds. Other phenomena (a > e) are not peculiar to the speech of Comtadine Jews, merely a burlesque of the Jews in the monuments that have reached us. The author is compiling a glossary of approximately 500 words in the speech of the Comtadine Jews. This study was started in Carpentras and Avignon in 1941 and concluded in 1942 in New York, while the author was a member of the Research Training Division ("Aspirantur") of the Yiddish Scientific Institute - YIVO. --------------------------------- End of _The Mendele Review_ 02.035 Leonard Prager, editor Subscribers to _Mendele_ (see below) automatically receive _The Mendele Review_. Send "to subscribe" or change-of-status messages to: listproc@lists.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele mail postpone b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail ack c. 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