Re: Yiddish on List (was: Itsy Bitsy Spider and other Liturgucal Themes)

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

I've been on a train for the last 3 1/2 days and didn't see Alana's request
for translations of Yiddish words and the discussion that followed before
sending the message below.

In my years of teaching, I always felt that one good question from a
student is worth pages of lesson plans.  So, I have no objection to
supplying the translations when requested.  I may not always make the
assumption that people need the vocabulary lessons. (These words may get
used so much on the list as to become familiar).

So, please ask either privately or publicly and I'll be happy to supply
translations in the same manner.  I'll also know that you're paying
attention.  I'd rather do that than clutter up a posting with too many
translations of words you already know.  Besides, if you ask the question,
you're more likely to remember the answer, and I'll find out which Yiddish
words are and are not familiar to non-Yiddish speakers who are interested
in Jewish music.

Earlier today, I sent the following which I had written on the train on Friday:
At 11:25 PM 2/24/98, W. Morrison wrote:
>It is the ultra-simplistic mindlessly cheerful nursery-rhyme quality of the
>former melodies that I object to. If Barney
>(he-should-be-swallowed-whole-by-a-T-Rex) were Jewish, he would sing them.
>
>They say nothing positive to me, and they do not deserve the words they
>convey - instead, they trivialize the meaning of the prayers. They do not
>enhance my davening experience, rather they impede it, and make me feel
>like a 3 year old who isn't allowed to sit with the grownups.

I must agree.  And to the list of inappropriate themes I'd like to add a
certain HaYom, HaYom, HaYom from Rosh Hashana musaf that sounds like it
belongs in a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.  (If you've heard it, you
know which one I mean.)   Now I do enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan.  And perhaps
because I do, I also have the associations that make me feel that this tune
on Rosh Hashana is absolutely ludicrous.

I also think that Sholom Secunda's Germanic setting of Adoshem, Adoshem,
Keyl Rakhum v'Khanun, for the 1931 short movie, A Chazn on Trial, with
Leybele Waldman, is so beautiful that I love to perform it in my  band's
recreation of that piece.  But I wouldn't want to sing it that way on the
Yomim Naroyim.  It conveys a feeling of majesty, yes.  But where's the
rakhmones?

> I am on a campaign at
>>my shul to replace them as much as possible with more suitable tunes.

Me too!

By the way, i'm on my way home from Tucson where I had the opportunity of
hearing some beautiful davening of the Shabbos Minkhe nusakh as sung by a
man who grew up in Vilne.  He was kind enough to sing some examples onto a
tape for me to study from.

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
413-624-3204
http://www.crocker.com/~ganeydn