Re: Klezmer

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

>
>Hold on Joe, you may have stumped Even-Shoshan himself! :-)
>
>All the Best,
>
>Moshe Denburg


Dear Moshe,

As the customer in the restaurant on the lower east side said when he asked
the waiter to taste his soup and the waiter said, "Where's your spoon?",
"Aha!" (complete text of this well known Jewish joke available on request.)

Although I am really minimally learned in Hebrew, I had a suspicion that
this one would not be obvious.  Thank you for helping delve into this
mystery.  I hope someone can help get to the bottom of it. Of course, we
have access only to what was written in manuscripts that have survived and
we'll never know how people spoke in their daily conversations that were
never written down, but it would be instructive to see what evidence exists
in the written record.

Zayt gezunt,

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
voice/fax: 413-624-3204

For readers who missed the beginning of this episode of the conversation:

Joe,

You wrote:

>Does anyone know of any examples of early use of the term kley-zemer in
>hebrew literature before the term entered Yiddish such as in midrash,
>talmud, tanakh?

On further digging, your question is a very valid and interesting one. The
citations from Hebrew literature that I found in my Even-Shoshan dictionary,
(after he defines the term 'kli zemer' as a musical instrument), utilize the
term, *in Hebrew*, as meaning the 'musician'. However, this is definitely a
case of the re-fertilization of Hebrew after the Yiddish developed its
meaning, since Even-Shoshan makes it plain that this meaning has been
acquired from the Yiddish.

However, I have not yet been able to locate a citation that utilizes, in
Hebrew, the term 'kli zemer' as musical instrument. This is puzzling, since
there _must_ be such an instance in order for Even-Shoshan and others to
make a claim on its Hebraic definition. The only way to proceed is to look
up the term 'kli...' in a complete Concordance (which includes Tanach _and_
Talmud).

Since I don't have such a tome handy, perhaps someone else in the discussion
group would oblige.  In the meantime, I'll put it on my 'do' list.