What with Valentine's Day upcoming, the Vortsman's fancy turns to...well, you know. (BTW: Isn't it fascinating how the candy, flower and jewelry industries have managed to turn the religious Saint Valentine's Day into a totally secular orgy of spending -- to the point that the
Jerusalem Post offers all sorts of
tshatshkes for the occasion? Really!!)
The magisterial Thesaurus of The Yiddish Language (
der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh) -- over 150,000 words, idioms, phrases and proverbs -- has seven dense columns in the categories of Love (
libe) and Loving, Belovéd (
libenish, libling), which we'll get to in a minute.
First, though, two expressions in common ("street") American Yiddish that send the
Vortsman and others with grammatical sensitivities right up the nearest wall. They are:
geys oys mit for "go out with," and
ikh lib dikh for "I love you." (The latter even made it up from the street to popular Yiddish theater songs.) So what's wrong with expressions that many have heard from their American-born, sometimes Yiddish-speaking parents? Plenty.
gey oys actually means to perish, or die! It's
gey aRoys that means to "go out." And, while it is not unusual for someone to
gey oys nokh (to die for love of) someone, that rarely happens when one merely plans to
gey aroys (go out) with that certain person.
While mis-translated English is the culprit in the above example, both English and German collaborated to traduce a heartfelt declaration. "I love you" and "ich liebe dich" are okay in London and Berlin, respectively, but in Yiddishland,
lib is not a verb form in this construction. If one wishes to win at love, one says
ikh hob dikh lib (I have love for you).
Curiosity: While, in English, "necking" implies any aspect of the full
circumference of the body part between head and shoulders, Yiddish is
quite restrictively specific:
haldzn has the same romantic meaning, but
means "throating," thereby eliminating eroticism at the nape.
None of the Yiddish-English dictionaries show Yiddish equivalents for "boyfriend" or "girlfriend," though there are many words for more intense relationships. One could surmise that, in Eastern Europe until the early 20th century, casual dating was not a common social practice. However, there are curious folk-expressions for a romantically-involved couple that have no direct equivalents in English:
kutsenyu-mutsenyu and
ketshele-metshele -- both indicating "spooning" or "puppy love."
Interestingly, the Thesaurus includes, adjacent to terms of domestic bliss (
sholem bayis), an implied recognition of gay love:
dovid un yohoynisn and
benyomin un senderl. The first pairing refers to the biblical David and Jonathan, while the second implies a romantic attachment between the heroes of
Mendele Moykher-sforim's (Mendele the Bookseller's) classic novel,
mesoyes benyomin ha'shlishi (Travels of Benjamin the Third), based on Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Love is, of course, a major theme in Yiddish folksong: desire, despair, parting, betrayal - they're all there. One of the favorites among the
Vortsman's friends, around the campfire in summer camp, was adapted from the folk tradition by the Soviet Yiddish artists Itsik Fefer (text) and M. Beregovsky (music) and was fairly recently rendered into singable English.
Oyfn Oyvn (Tumba, Tumba)
(each line is followed by the refrain: tumba, tumba, ba)
oyfn oyvn zitst a meydl,
un zee heft a vaysn kleydl.
iz a bokher ongefloygn;
hot dem fodim upgetsoygn.
ay, du bokher, ay du frayer,
s'vet deer kostn zeyer tayer!
kh'vel nit fregn deer fun vanen;
kh'vel nit oplozn fun danen.
kh'vel dikh haldzn, kh-vel dikh leebn;
iz der bokher dort farblibn.
oyfn oyvn zitsn tsveyen,
nit zey heftn, nit zey neyen...
(To which we'd add, laughing: to vo'zhe tuen zey??)
| On The Oven
(each line is followed by the refrain: tumba, tumba, ba)
On the oven sits a maiden.
Sews a white dress, spirit laden.
Came a fellow, o so daring;
Pulled a white thread, never caring.
"Ay, you fellow, I see clearly:
That will cost you very dearly!
"I won't ask if far or near -
but you'll never leave from here!
"I will love you, I will kiss you -
all your friends will surely miss you!"
On the oven, two are sitting:
Neither sewing, neither knitting...
(So what are they doing??)
English translation ©2002 Hershl Hartman
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Have a question for the
vortsman? Send him an
email and ask the meaning of a favorite, or confusing, word or phrase.
On the eve of his 75th birthday, the well-known Russian poet and
scientist Alexander Gorodnitsky set out for Belarus, where his parents
were born and raised and where, in the fall of 1941, the Nazis murdered his entire family. The film follows his travels throughout the country hoping to find his grandparents' grave and the remnants of the Yiddish language. His search eventually brings him to Israel where his son and granddaughters now live. Today, his grandchildren speak Yiddish.
