RE: Re[4]: Der yidisher tam

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Still on March 10th....

>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 virtually NO other community does, 
>doesn't that say something about the melody?  IE that it's likely it was a 
>local
>adaptation...

Adaptation from what?

It could be a local innovation or it could be a local Jewish innovation 
or a local Jewish hybrid.  You also have to know that Romanian and 
Hungarian Jews lived under Moslem Ottoman rule for at least 150 years 
and then parts of this territory became part of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire.   Jews played a critically important role and enjoyed great 
political, cultural, and economic freedom under the Ottomans.  Travel 
and movement was very easy for them throughout this enormous and powerful 
empire and we really don't know of everything they brought and where.  
As for why some things didn't travel northward, e.g., Poland and 
Lithuania, I can say that you can't expect the kind of dissemination 
across these culturally and politically warring borders as you would 
expect within a homogenous Christian society, as e.g., Central 
Poland.  (BTW, the Ukraine was under Polish rule for a very, very 
long time too.  The Ottoman Empire at one point extended to the very 
borders of Poland.)  For Polish, Lithuanian, and Bielo-Russian Jews, 
whose territories were not influenced by this very different, 
non-Christian Turkish culture, doinas may have sounded too "Greek", 
too "Turkish" or too "oriental" or too "different" to adopt, even if 
this would have been a totally Jewish creation.  There is little that 
I have seen that was adopted outright as a whole from the southern 
territories.  There was tremendous resistance to many things that 
Rumanian Jews had already adapted/developed as folkways.  Yiddish 
theater, which developed in Romania and from there traveled everywhere 
else, is a prominent, even stellar exception, but remember the trouble 
Goldfaden had with the music of his first plays - something worth 
analyzing here.  On the other hand, if you look at the history of 
tomatoes and eggplant, mamelige, etc. (which came up from the same 
Southern region), including the awful controversy about tomatoes 
became unkosher, you would see what I mean.   

The reason for a cultural pattern being the same across all borders - 
(1)  It may have emanated from one single source.
(2)  It may have emanated from one single source and was not allowed
to be changed in any way.  The rabbis may have wanted the same 
supplications from all Jewish communities at the same time during Yom 
Kippur and Rosh Hashana.   
(3)  It usually means that the dissemination is too recent for variations
to have arisen, but since we know that Kol nidre is very old, this 
can't be the reason here.

(Are you sure that the same nign is also extant in Italiani service? 
Yemini and Indian too?  I tend to doubt it, but I really don't know.)    

But the converse of this is not necessarily true.  The rabbis may 
have insisted in this case that form be as immutable as the content, 
but that does not necessarily mean that if you find local variations, 
the original did not emanate from a single source and a Jewish one at 
that.   Furthermore, there are millions of examples of certain ancient 
forms disappearing from its original location and then reappearing in 
displaced communities elsewhere, including the whole Sefardic and Yiddish 
language and culture.  That's why Germanists love to study Yiddish.  
They want to know what used to exist in Medieval or old German or old 
Germanic dialects and was then transplanted into Eastern European 
territory, but for one reason or another not retained by the developing 
Modern German.   Quite often, Jews picked up some cultural pattern or 
skill in local territory A, took it with them to territory B, while some 
other form either arose or was adapted in territory A once the Jews left.  
We can even see many examples of this in Eastern Europe today now that 
the Jews have left.  

As Itsik-Leyb already mentioned, there was also a whole Slavic Jewry 
that entered Eastern Europe from the East way before Yiddish-speaking 
Western Jews migrated there.  They spoke what is referred to today as 
"Slavonic".  We know little of their cultural ways.   There was a 
prominent migration from Asia and the Caucasus during 800-1200 AD but
we also know that there were very active mercantile Jewish communities 
in Southern Europe before 100 AD.  We know little about the cultural
ways of either of these communities, neither do we recognize remnants
today.   Sefardic and even contemporary Middle-Eastern culture are 
limited in informing us about the distinctive features in folkways of 
these Jewish communities.    

I am not insisting that Jews created or introduced doinas to the 
region.  I am saying that from the facts that you are presenting, 
nothing can be known.   The fact is that Armenians and Greeks also 
played an important role in Ottoman mercantile life and they could 
have made important contributions to the music in this region, 
however, we also know that they don't remain in this area as a 
distinctive ethnic element and the Jews do.  There must be some 
important reasons for that.  Since this more southern region has 
never been my territory of study, I don't know enough about its 
history to be more specific.  (I am hoping to go with prominent 
folklorist Dov Noy on a tour to Moldavia and Bukovina this summer 
(June 30-July 6) and hope to learn a lot. 

There is another argument here which is very important.  Polish 
and Russian territories were among the very last in Europe to end 
feudalism.   Few people today remember how dark and dismal the life
of a peasant/serf was and what cultural services Jews performed in 
this economic system.   The Church always wanted the credit for 
the cultural contributions Jews made in the lives of the masses 
and made sure the Jews got blamed for whatever went wrong.   Don't 
expect the true history of the contributions Jews made to be told soon 
from within these territories, even after 50 years of Communism ended.

Another important factor when it comes to music in the Romanian-
Hungarian territory is the role played by the Gypsies and the 
stimulation such a cultural exchange afforded Jews in the realm of 
music.  I say this because it's my impression that there was a 
greater proportion of gypsies in these territories than in Poland 
and Lithuania.  I really have never seen comparative figures for the
Gypsy population across these territories, and so this only my 
impression.  I hope someone who knows the facts corrects me on this 
if I am wrong.    

Anyone can do folk etymology, but only hard-nosed multi-disciplinary, 
cross-linguistic, and cross-cultural research can reveal the answers 
to the issues raised here.   A tremendous amount of hope was placed 
on one young expert on Jewish languages, including the Eurasian ones, 
Dr. Paul Wexler, who could have theoretically told us lots of 
interesting things, but he, unfortunately, went off his rocker and 
has claimed in the last 6 years that both Hebrew and Yiddish are 
Slavic languages.  Not too much credibility is left in his scientific 
methodologies after his last two books.  There are now several 
research projects going on around the Crimea which we hope will reveal 
lots of interesting material about early Jewish life in this region.

Understanding cultural borrowing, adaptation, hybridization, and 
creativity is very complicated.  We all know that etymology is the 
oldest Jewish sport, but the fact is that it is really unproductive 
to try to guess at things from the limited perspective American Jews 
have.   To do this properly you need to intensely study diachronic 
histories of each territory within a continent if not a whole region 
or the world.   There are people who are doing that already.  Then 
will come other experts who will analyze their evidence and then we 
will all know.   I wish we could apply the bread and khale analogy 
to Jewish music but we just can't.   It doesn't work like that.  I 
also don't think that pumpernickel bread is distinctly Jewish, but 
Jews were probably the ones to introduce it to America.   They should 
get some credit for that, but then I don't know what role they played 
in either Western or Eastern Europe vis-a-vis pumpernickel.   Since 
baking is a craft, and Jews were the craftsmen, they had to play an 
important role in European society, especially in feudal societies 
and Poland and the Ukraine were feudal till very late.   Now a more 
controversial matter is who introduced round khales to whom in the 
Ukraine?   No time for this discussion and it won't help with the 
doina question anyway.   

Yes, you are safe in saying that kharoyses is Jewish, but what you 
don't know is that Jews in different regions used different products 
to make their Jewish kharoyses.   I happen to have about 22+ different 
kharoyses recipes from different communities around the world and we 
can all say that they are Jewish and pasty. 

I strongly suggest that we read the works of Mark Slobin, Albert 
Weisser, Chana Mlotek, and many other ethnomusicologists.  In fact, I 
hope to be setting up THE definitive Yiddish web site for YiddishNet, 
my Yiddish news and information news service and hope to collect as 
many excellent academic papers on Yiddish music as possible.   These 
papers will, of course, also be available at Ari's klezmer site.  So, 
if you have any ascii versions of any such pertinent works, please 
let me know about it.  But please don't send me anything yet.

Remember, think eggplants.  They are a good analogy to the doinas.


Please forgive my grammar.  Don't have time to edit myself.


Writing to support my friend Itsik-Leyb who has had to nebekh carry
the whole scholarly perspective alone on this list.   You know, Richard,
he is write in everything he has written.


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky
YiddishNet




----------
From:  richard_wolpoe (at) ibi(dot)com[SMTP:richard_wolpoe (at) ibi(dot)com]
Sent:  Tuesday, March 10, 1998 5:02 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant.
Subject:  Re[4]: Der yidisher tam 



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