{"id":1271,"date":"2018-05-19T09:32:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T13:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summerofjim.com\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2018-05-19T09:32:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-19T13:32:15","slug":"the-mamaloshen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/?p=1271","title":{"rendered":"THE MAMALOSHEN"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1791 Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement.\u00a0 It was the territory within Russia where Jews were permitted to live. It included all of\u00a0Belarus<\/a>,\u00a0Lithuania<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Moldova<\/a>, much of present-day Ukraine<\/a>, parts of eastern\u00a0Latvia<\/a>. And with Second Partition of Poland in 1793, the Pale included much of Poland and all of Lithuania.<\/p>\n

My maternal Grandmother, Sophie was born in 1880ish Warsaw, then still part of the Tsarist Empire.\u00a0 She spoke Polish, understood Russian, both Slavic languages; but the lingua franca <\/em>for Jews, spoken in the home, and amongst their co-religionists was Yiddish (the mamaloshen \u2013 <\/em>\u201cmother tongue\u201d), which was and is a Germanic language.\u00a0 When she moved to America at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> Century, she added another Germanic language<\/em>, English to her verbal skill set (although she never gained literacy in it).<\/p>\n

My Mother was able to pick up Yiddish from my Grandmother (we called her Mommie Sophie).\u00a0 Mom developed a decent facility with Yiddish, and as a kid I would sometimes hear Mom and Mommie Sophie having extended conversations in Yiddish.\u00a0 Drawing the camera back, I think it was their language of \u201cdisagreement.\u201d\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand what was being said (and I am sure that was the idea), but words were exchanged in a hurried and excited manner, in a somewhat elevated volume. It wasn\u2019t as if they were telling dirty jokes in Yiddish, either.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t, \u201cchubdah, chubdah, chubah, chubdah\u201d; and then a bunch of laughter. Yeah, I think they were disagreeing about this, that or the other thing. Probably something family related, and not <\/em>whether the flanken<\/em> was too dry.<\/p>\n

My Dad knew a few words and phrases, too.\u00a0 More than anything, he put Yiddish into play as a vehicle for humor.\u00a0 Which brings to me to the following.<\/p>\n

Zack has sent me a book: The Encyclopedia Blazertannica<\/u>, which is an alphabetic listing of subjects that, by and large, relate to things soccer. However, under the letter \u201cY\u201d is this off-topic entry:<\/p>\n

YIDDISH<\/u><\/strong>: No language does spite more creatively.<\/p>\n

Two of the examples contained to illustrate the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cAle tseyner zoln bay dir aroysfaln, nor eyner zol blaybn \u2013 af tseynveytok!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Or, in English, \u201cMay all your teeth fall out except for one \u2013 so you can get a toothache!\u201d<\/p>\n

And my personal favorite\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cZol dayne fis vern farholtzzene dayne bokyh ful mit vaser un dayn kop gamakht fun gloz azey ayer fis farbent, vet ayer boykh zidn un dayn kop vet plastn!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Or, in English, \u201cMay your feet be made of wood, your stomach be filled with water, and your head be made of glass so when your feet catch fire your stomach will boil and your head explode!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lest you guess otherwise, I never heard such horrible words from the lips of Mommie Soph, or <\/em>my Mother!<\/p>\n

Yes, I know a few words and can get the gist of a couple of phrases.\u00a0 And it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that you know a few words, too!\u00a0 English is a voracious language, gobbling up vocabulary from languages across the planet\u2026 including Yiddish.\u00a0 Among the terms that have crept into our tongue\u2026 bagel, blintz, chutzpah, glitch, kibitz, klutz, lox, nebbish, nosh, schlep, schlock, shnook and tushie\u2026 all are derived from Yiddish\/German that entered into this country via Ellis Island\u2026 just like my Grandmother did!<\/p>\n

L’chayim!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1791 Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement.\u00a0 It was the territory within Russia where Jews were permitted to live. It included all of\u00a0Belarus,\u00a0Lithuania\u00a0and\u00a0Moldova, much of present-day Ukraine, parts of eastern\u00a0Latvia. And with Second Partition of Poland in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}