Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 15.038
December 30, 2005

1) Yiddish Terminology Sought (Goldie Milgram)
2) a tentserin (Lloica Czackis)
3) goyitse (Maurice Wolfthal)
4) Arnold Mostowicz and his father (Henia and Nochem Reinhartz)
5) Story Title Sought (Laura Mincer)
6) tomid vs. keseyder (Felicitas Payk)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 5
Subject: Yiddish terminology sought

How I enjoy reading along and learning new terms via this list.
Two questions:

1. When I was in the Ukraine, a woman yelled at me in Yiddish to the
effect, according to the translator, "Don't pee down my back and tell me
it's raining.  There's no such a thing as a woman rabbi." What is the
Yiddish for the phrase "don't pee down my back and tell me it's raining"?

2. Right now I'm working on a book intended to shift the culture of Jewish
education toward meaning, relevance, joy, connection, community-building,
empowerment of students in their learning, etc. Can list members please
help me get the correct Yiddish and/or Hebrew terms for each category and
please correct any misperceptions I might have about the terms as I define
them below. I hope to help faculty and teens train in the roles below:

1. Maggid, maggidah   [story teller]

2. Mashpia [spiritual guide, talks with student about his/her experiences
of G*d, holidays, oppression, relationship through a Jewish lens, attends
to spiritual health and development]

3. Badhan [satirist, comic who is able to educate through the creativity of
this medium]

4. M'zamer, m'zameret [minstrel, balladeer, knows more than hazzanut, can
put in song the culture of a family and an institution]

5. Oman, Omenet [artist, illustrator, cartoonist....are there nuanced words
for these?]

6. Playright/Midrashist

8. Journalist/pamphleteer

9. Klezmer/Jewish/Israeli dance teacher/specialist

If there are any categories of village culture-building roles that I've
left out - please advise!!

Goldie Milgram

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 19
Subject: 'a tentserin' fun Tsilye Dropkin

I am looking for the Yiddish original of the short story  "a tentserin" by
Celia Dropkin (1935), which appears as "A dancer" in English translation by
Shirley Kumove in "Found Treasures" (Toronto:  Second Story Press, 1994).

PDF, fax, email, any format would be greatly appreciated.

Lloica Czackis

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 19
Subject: goyitse

Felicitas Payk asked about a female form for "goy." My mother used the word
"goyitse."  She was from Buczacz (then Poland, now Ukraine).

Maurice Wolfthal

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 24
Subject: Arnold Mostowicz and his father

Valentine Mitchell Publishers in London recently published "With a Yellow
Star and a Red Cross: A Doctor in the Lodz Ghetto." We translated the book
from the Polish because we consider it an important addition to Holocaust
literature. Arnold Mostowicz's father was in his youth a friend of Sholem
Aleichem and Y.L. Peretz, and later wrote for the Lodz Yiddish press and
created with Moshe Broderzon the Lodz Yiddish Theatre Studio (precursor of
the Ararat).  Arnold Mostowicz was intimately connected with Yiddish and
Yiddish literature.

Henia and Nochem Reinhartz

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 26, 2005
Subject: Story Title Sought

I need to know in which Yiddish novel or short story the following scene
(or a similar one)is described: Night. A dying zaddik. His chassidim open
the synagogue and enter, carrying inside the bed with the dying man. They
blow the shofar several times like during Yom Kippur to compel God to heal
the zaddik. Some of them say: even if it's Wednesday, let's make Shabes!
They leave the synagogue at dawn, sure that, after such a moving ceremony,
the zaddik will be soon restored to health (the next day he dies).

I will be very grateful for any answer!

Laura Mincer

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 30, 2005
Subject: tomid vs. keseyder

I have an inquiry regarding the use of tomid and keseyder. Are these two
words synonyms, and can therefore be used interchangeably? Or is their
usage dependent on different contexts? And a second question: I know that
tomid stems from Hebrew "tamid," but is keseyder also of Hebrew origin? It
sounds like that, but as I am not 100% sure, I'd appreciate any
clarification.

Kh'vintsh aykh alemen a freylekhn khanike,
Felicitas Payk

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End of Mendele Vol. 15.038


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