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Thank you - a sheynem dank - to all our members who have graciously contributed to Yiddishkayt. Will you help out? 
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Yiddishkayt around the web:
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 Saints & Tzadiks at the Skirball
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 Renowned Irish vocalist Susan McKeown and Lorin Sklamberg, lead singer of the award-winning Jewish American band The Klezmatics, join forces for an unforgettable evening of song from both Yiddish and Gaelic traditions.
Accompanied by guitarist Aidan Brennan, the duo's collaborations, culled from rare archive material and traditional songs, create a beautiful, heartfelt interweaving of Jewish and Irish music, showing that love, death, betrothal, and betrayal transcend culture and national boundaries and unite us all. Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 8:00 PM at the Skirball Cultural Center 2701 North Sepulvedad Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90049 Click here to buy tickets and hear a sample of the music!$30 General; $25 Members*; $20 Students |
When Cesar Chavez Boulevard Was Brooklyn Avenue
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 | | Japanese Soldier, Jewish Soldier, Mexican Soldier. 2011 |
A Dream Deferred: The intersection of Jewish, Latino, and Japanese American Histories - Boyle Heights (circa 1940's) Artist Mike Saijo appears at the Caporale/Bleicher gallery, presenting a mixed-media installation that examines three ethnographic cultures -- the Japanese-American, Latino, and Jewish communities residing in Boyle Heights during the 1940's. The various ways in which these groups historically and spatially converged are what created both the physical and the social landscape of modern day Los Angeles. The artist references traditional Japanese printmaking, illuminated manuscripts, war photography and street graffiti to chronicle the past as an allegory and etiology of contemporary cultural events. Show runs: March 23-April 8, 2011. Saturday-Monday 2-6 PM; Tuesday-Friday 12-6 PM 355 North La Brea Los Angeles, CA
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KEHILE - COMMUNITY CALENDAR
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| To have your event considered for the Yidbits Kehile Calendar, please submit your event to events@yiddishkayt.org at least two weeks prior and include all information in the body of the e-mail (no attachments, except for pictures).
TEMPLE ALIYAH & CONGREGATION SHIR AMI PRESENT
Joys of Yiddish In English
This two and a half hour event features: - Archie Barkan, LA's favorite Yiddish M.C. and raconteur
- Mel Gordon, storyteller and humorist, & professor of theater, dance & performance studies at UC Berkeley
- Janet Hadda, emeritus professor Yiddish language and literature at UCLA
- Zalmen Mlotek and Daniella Rabbani, memories of the Yiddish Theater, in live performance.
Sunday April 3, 2011, 2-4:30 PM at Temple Aliyah 6025 Valley Circle Boulevard Woodland Hills, CA Tickets are $10 and available on-site. For more information contact Clara Rosenbluth at (818) 348-1498
AT THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE FOR YIDDISH CULTURE & LANGUAGE...
And the Words Belong to the People A Celebration of Yiddish Poetry
A program featuring a talk by special guest Dr. Colleen McCallum-Bonar on African American bodies in Yiddish poetry and the announcement of the winner of the CIYCL International Yiddish Poetry Translation Contest. Sunday, April 10, 2PM at the Institute for Jewish Education 8339 W. 3rd Street (East of La Cienega, at Flores) Los Angeles, CA Refreshments & Valet Parking Available Admission: $6 CIYCL members; $8 General
Free for full-time students For reservations and information, contact Miriam Koral (310) 745-1190 | miriam@yiddishinstitute.org |
| Der Vortsman - Luck & Lukshn, Tsvits & Eats |
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The Vortsman, meaning "man of his word," brings you the story of a different Yiddish word or phrase each month.
Written by Hershl Hartman, long-time Yiddishkayt Board Member and Education Director at the Sholem Community
This month, Der Vortsman ranges from a Yiddish-Oriental connection to the ever-changing verbiage of the Internet. To keep things straight, let's follow a twisting timeline:
We've been asked for a Yiddish equivalent to the ubiquitous term mazel tov, as it appears in both the American Heritage dictionary ("used to express congratulations or best wishes") and the one on my Mac ("a Jewish phrase expressing congratulations or wishing someone good luck").
The query led us to point out that Yiddish, like its cousin, English, has words and phrases of many origins. In the case of Yiddish, the major sources are Middle High German, Slavic tongues, and Hebrew/Aramaic (loshn koydesh-the Holy tongue). mazel tov derives from the latter, of course. Its usage in Yiddish is most clearly indicated by transliterating it as mazltov; it appears in Yiddish literature and dictionaries as two words, but hyphenated: mazl-tov.
The point is that the Hebrew/Aramaic origin of words or phrases doesn't make them any less Yiddish, just as the Latin/French origins of words like "beef" and "mutton" don't make them any less English. As we advised our questioner: "The Hebrew/Aramaic element of Yiddish is as intrinsic and vital as is Latin in English. (Check out the origins of 'intrinsic' and 'vital.')"
Still, if one considers German-origin words to be somehow "more Yiddish" - Der Vortsman strenuously disagrees - one might choose to say zol zayn mit glik - may this (event) be fortuitous/lucky.
A somewhat side-note: somewhat surprisingly, it's my abbreviated computer dictionary, not American Heritage, that points out the actual meaning of mazltov: "literally, good star." Since luck, in ancient times, was thought to be influenced by the stars or constellations, hope for good fortune was expressed by the wish for a good star. Nowadays, we might wish someone "a good horoscope."
As to the Yiddish-Oriental connection, it's found in a new restaurant in Culver City, named "Lukshon." When it was reviewed by Irene Virbila in the "Times" on Feb. 25, 2011, Der Vortsman stifled his guffaws long enough to email this to that leading restaurant critic: "Your review missed the fact that the restaurant's name is a play on the Yiddish word for noodles: lokshn (or lokshin for the vowel-deprived). In Southern Yiddish, it's pronounced "lukshn." The singular is loksh (or luksh), and a tall man is described as a "langer loksh" - a long noodle-strand." Ms. Virbila replied that she loved that description.
Which brings us to the Internet or, as some call it, Googleland.
Ye not-so-olde editor of Yidbits asked about some Yiddish neologisms (newly invented words) to match the web-based English neologisms that assault us almost daily. He already knew that Yiddish for "computer keyboard" was klavyer, and that "email" is blitspost (lit., lightening mail), but what about Facebook and Twitter...and the verb tweet?
He'd already come up with ponimbukh for the first, and Der Vortsman had earlier opined that the Yiddish tsvits or tsvitsh was the logical cognate for "tweet." But what about the copyrighted brand-name, Twitter?
Away we went to the dictionaries...and discovered a conundrum. In his groundbreaking 1898 volume, Alexander Harkavy did not include any word for "twitter" in the Yiddish-English section, but did list tsvitshern in the much larger English-Yiddish section as the equivalent for "twitter...(of birds)." Thirty years later, in his Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary, Harkavy listed tsvitern as the verb, "to twitter." Notice that he dropped the shin (sh-sound) in the intervening decades.
On the other hand, Uriel Weinreich's 1968 dictionary, four decades after Harkavy's last, lists the verb tsvitshern in the balanced-size English-Yiddish half, while, in the Yiddish-English half, "twitter" appears as tsvitshe(r)n, with reysh (r-sound) apparently optional.
So we turned away from the philologists and turned to a real expert on folk-speech: Sholom Aleichem (Sholem Aleykhem). In a brief description of a child's intoxication with nature at springtime, included (in Yiddish and English) in the "Sholem Family Hagada For a Secular Celebration of Peysakh," the Yiddish classicist writes of a string of swallows emitting a tsvits-a tweet. We'll buy that (though we won't tweet it).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Have a question for the Vortsman? Send him an email and ask the meaning of a favorite, or confusing, word or phrase. |
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Telephone: 213.389.8880 | Fax: 213.365.0702 | info@yiddishkayt.org
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