Re[4]: Der yidisher tam

[richard_wolpoe <richard_wolpoe...>]

Well I can say the following:

Pierogy is a Polish word.  I don't knwo who got it from whom.

I DO know that gefilte fish has a halahci imperative, that is not separting 
bones on Shabbos.

Same for cholent, having soemthing warm on the oven from before Shabbos.

I cannot separate what is purely jewish from what is purely Eastern European,

BUT, I can look at other customes an note that sepharadim do not have cholent 
but they do have chamin!

And I can listen to Kol nidre from literally dozens of communities and they're 
all similar.  so we can find a common consensus underlying them.  If one set of 
Jews basis nusach on eg the doina, and virtuallly NO other community does, 
doesn't that say something about the melody?  IE that it's likely it was a local
adaptation...

There are no hard and fast rules.  And I do not totally agree with my Polsih 
gentile friends either.  But pumpernickel bread is not originally Jewish nor lox
nor herring etc.  Charoses is.  Get it/

Freilichen Purim

Rich 

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re:  Re[2]: Der yidisher tam 
Author:  <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org > at Tcpgate
Date:    3/10/98 11:42 AM


On  Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:03:28 -0500, Rich Wolpoe wrote:
Mozart and all the rest borrowed extensivly from folk music.  So does
our liturgy.  A number of Polish Gentiles have told me that what we pas of 
as jewish is merely Eastern European stuff.  From pierogies, to blintses, 
etc. etc.  So that yiddisher taam that wells our eyes with nostalgia might 
actually refelct more the Eastern European milieu more than anything 
intrinsically Jewish.

Reply: I'm singling out this statement, Rich, because it's such a perfect 
illustration of misunderstanding the importance of _minhog_. in the 
definition of Judaism. Let me first repeat something I wrote in the 
"Klezmer Trumpet" discussion , 26 Jan 1998. Reyzl had noted:

:Some non-Jews in Balkan countries to this day hear Jewish and call it 
Balkan, unable or unwilling to see anything distinctively Jewish or 
different about it."

The essence of my reply was, what's unique about it, ultimately, is the 
yidishe neshume , or what I'm calling here der yidishe tam (Jewish taste, 
or aesthetic). Aside from the fact that when you're talking about food, 
halakha, kashrus, has greatly influenced the food. I can't recall any 
traditional Jewish pork dishes, but there are lots of Polish ones. 

We ought to get over this complex that Jews borrow culture from everyone 
else, but no one else borrows culture from Jews, or that other cultures 
don't borrow from other cultures. 

It is a historic fact, that when Christianity first was adopted in Rudssia 
at the end of the 10th century A.D., there were already extensive Jewish 
settlements in southern Russia, including the city of Kiev. The oldest 
known Polish coins have writing in Hebrew letters on them -- not because 
they were Jews, but because that was the only writing the Poles had at 
that time.

So when you write:
"A number of Polish Gentiles have told me that what we pas of
as jewish is merely Eastern European stuff.  From pierogies, to blintses, 
etc. etc.  So that yiddisher taam that wells our eyes with nostalgia might 
actually refelct more the Eastern European milieu more than anything 
intrinsically Jewish." I wonder what "intrinsically Jewish" could possibly 
mean to you. Even the halakhic tradition of the East European Jews is 
specific to the historical development of Jewish life IN EASTERN EUROPE. 
Who suddenly made these Polish Gentiles meyvinim on the yidishn tam,
that I should accept their judgment that it is "merely Eastern European 
stuff"? over my own, which is from my family and culture. On the one 
hand, yes it is part of the east European cultural milieu, as with any 
other people from Eastern Europe. We're not from Mars, you know. On the 
other hand, that "merely" sounds like the typically antisemitic or 
Jewish self-hatred thing of, of "Oh, you people have no culture." There 
may not be any ONE Jewish culture, any more than there is ONE Christian 
culture, but there certainly are Jewish cultures, and on the Jewish 
Music List I don't think it would be inappropriate to encourage people 
to learn as much as thye can about the particular culture they happen to 
come from.
Itzik-Leyb