United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Pelz leaned over, transferring his own knife and fork. In Yiddish: "Grandmother, I hear you've been flirting with Doctor Isadore Aarons. Now, don't you let me hear any more such nonsense. The young girls in this house got to walk the straight line." The old face broke still more furiously into wrinkle, the hand reaching out to top his.

'Not unless you publish seditious Yiddish. Keep your pistols out of print. If my own skin is safe, that doesn't mean I'm made of stone like these Tartar devils. Landlord, the vodka. We'll drink confusion to them. 'I I have none, stammered the landlord. 'I haven't the right. 'There are no rights in Russia, said the censor good-humouredly. The landlord furtively produced a big bottle.

The housekeeper rudely broke the spell! "You comrades had better eat that poetry for dinner," she said. We all looked and all understood all save the poet. He looked aghast, thinking in Yiddish. "Go on," somebody said, but the poet was a sensitive youth and could sense an atmosphere quicker than most of us. "Wood," said the housekeeper, pointing at the few sticks lying around the block.

Of the nineteen, four did not answer, three were temporarily disconnected, six replied in Yiddish, five were not the B. Cohen he sought, and one swore he was Irish and that his name was spelled Cohan and pronounced with an accent on both syllables.

You can't Jew me!" The two men eyed each other quizzically. "Perhaps," the owner of the store observed slowly, "perhaps some of your ancestors were once Yiddish. In which case there ought to be a bond of sympathy between us. You may have that book for a nickel. What, no! Your cheeks are hollow, your fingers thin. A nickel is too much for you. I will take your chain in exchange."

And in Yiddish, "He is my only consolation." And again in English, "If it wasn't for him life wouldn't be worth living. Good-by," she said, as we paused in front of the elevator door. "Don't forget what I told you." She was ill at ease again The elevator came down from the upper floors. We shook hands and she entered it. It sank out of sight.

The Jews there seldom came in contact with outside civilization. The languages they used were Hebrew as the literary tongue, Yiddish among themselves, and the local Slavonic dialect with their non-Jewish neighbors. Russian was strange, not only to the great majority of Jews, but to the Russians themselves.

"Nevertheless, every night as soon as I had closed my shop, I set forth on a voyage of exploration, impelled by sheer restlessness; and during the day I listened eagerly to the talk of my customers in Yiddish a language of which I was supposed to be entirely ignorant. But I learned nothing.

She was pouring a flood of Yiddish endearments and diminutives about the newcomer, when the surprised practitioner arrived. Mrs. Simons scouted the idea of a nurse; she would come upstairs, her daughters would come upstairs what was it, one baby! Martie was allowed a cupful of hot milk, and went to sleep with one arm about the flannel bundle that was Margaret.

Her knowledge of Yiddish is not merely intellectual; though not herself a Jewess, she evidently enters into the heart of the people who express their lives and aspirations in Yiddish terms. Young as she is, Miss Frank is, indeed, a remarkable linguist; Hebrew and Russian are among her accomplishments.