Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Chain Gangs
One thing about the Passover Seder that never seems to change is that battles are fought between those around the table who insist on singing every stanza of the incrementally repeating chain songs at the Haggadah’s end and those who wish to make shorter shrift of them. My father belonged to the latter camp. By…
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Culture A Sweet Passover for All
Forward reader Benzion Ginn is seeking information about the origins of the Yiddish expression a zisn Pesach, “[Have] a sweet Pesach,” as a Passover or pre-Passover greeting. Wondering whether such a greeting is traditional or whether it is rather a modern American invention of “Passover food providers, such as Manischewitz,” Mr. Ginn writes that he…
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Culture Whither Macedonia?
I don’t know how many of you have been following the dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia — or, as it is still officially known by the United Nations, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) — over the name “Macedonia.” The latest installment is the Greek government’s threat to veto FYROM’s acceptance…
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Culture Of Domestic Sorceresses and Noisy Beggars
Fred Emil Katz writes from Baltimore: “I have long been struck by the fact that Yiddish has an assortment of words for incompetent men, such as shlemiel, shmegege, and shlimazel, to name just a few. The culture that produced such epithets was one in which men might spend their entire adult lives pursuing a career…
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Culture Myths and Facts
A common belief that turns out to be a myth, and an assumed myth that might be true: This is the balance sheet of my March 14 column, “Last Names, Lost In Translation.” For believing in the myth, I have been properly chastised by Arthur S. Abramson of Mansfield, Conn., and the novelist Dara Horn….
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Culture Are There Israeli Palestinians?
We may be through with my columns on “Arab Jews,” but not with some of the issues raised by them. Here’s a letter from Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld of Carlsbad, Calif.: “I have another, similar conundrum. A pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel lady with whom I wasted several months in fruitless correspondence referred in one of her communications to…
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Culture Last Names, Lost in Translation
Dennis Fleishman of Toms River, N.J., has a question that, he writes, “has been lingering in my mind for quite some time. What determines the pronunciation in English of the vowel in names ending in ‘-stein’? Sometimes it’s pronounced like the vowel in ‘pie’ and sometimes like the vowel in ‘feet.’ Is there a rule…
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Culture Who Were the Assyrians?
If I were provident, I’d save this letter, which arrived some two months ago, until December. But who can wait so long? So here it is now, from John Miller of Bryan, Texas: “Every year it happens. As December arrives, our local newspaper prints a Hanukkah article, either as a compulsion to be ‘inclusive,’ or…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish „דאָס לעבן רופֿט“ — אַ ליד פֿון מאָראַלישער קלאָרקייט פֿאַר אונדזערע צײַטן‘Life Calls’ — a Yiddish poem of moral clarity for our times
חנה סאַפֿראַנס בוך פּאָעזיע איז אַרויס בעת דער וויעטנאַם־מלחמה און איינס פֿון די לידער הייסט טאַקע „אַ מאַמע אין וויעטנאַם“.
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