Yiddish @ Sydney

I'm attempting to do this, and have decided it would be fun to see where Reb Avrom (Yiddish 4 and sitting in on Yiddish 2) is at the moment.

So, let's see if the new toy works, with Yiddish even...

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אוי! טו אַ קוק!

We all know that the Internet is "really" only for North America (i.e., the US and if the PTBs of the Intratubes are being generous Canada, and okay England sometimes), so with the start of the new academic year there almost upon them, there are some ideas floating about.

First, Firefox is going to be bundles into a "campus edition" with plug-ins that Mozilla thinks will help students (Zotero for references and tags, FoxyTunes music player and Last.fm support, and StumbleUpon for searching). It's not available for download just yet, but will be shortly.

Notely is a web-based collection of tools, including a calendar, to-do list, contacts, course listing, notes, etc. Notes are downloadable as pdf, doc or txt files. It's available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish (although when I clicked Spanish it stayed in English and when I was using the English Notely decided it wanted to be French). You can upload material and share via email, Facebook (see yesterday) and RSS.

Not bad.

And now I need coffee.

Yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald, it was claimed that Facebook users, which Sydney Uni has quite a few, waste up to $5billion a year for their companies. (The article is online here). All of this rests on the assumption that employees spend an hour a day of their productivity time on Facebook (as opposed to Moveable Type or a 6A blog instead...)

There has been reaction to this has been cropping up all over, including on Ross Dawson's "Trends in the Living Networks" ("Companies that close networking doors jeopardize their future), Steven Lewis on "ZestDigital" (Facebook set to destroy Australia by tomorrow" )and Rand Leeb-du Toit's blog "MetaRand" (Facework: good for your health too!).

It might be worth a look at the reaction of those people who use Facebook and other social networking sites as a part of their business before passing judgment.

Listening to YidCore still? Good.

Then perhaps you should also look -- if this is your shtik -- to SoCalled, a Yiddish hiphop artist (his newest album is reviewed in The Cleveland Jewish News). His myspace is interesting (not so much with the visuals, but the music, is quite good). I like "These are the Good Old Days" but you all realized my taste on Thursday in class.

Here is another review of SoCalled.

Also in music news, two hasidic rappers are creating controversy with their new album that features songs by Madonna and 50 Cent -- in Yiddish. Don't believe me? The article has clips but they don't seem to work for me, so I tracked down the CD. Here's a link to the CD. Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" is track #5; 50 Cent's "In da Club" is track #3. Track #8 isn't half bad, either -- a bit strong on the accent ;)

While I'm on a roll: a peek at a bar mitsve rap

Many of you are aware that three years ago, the LA Jewish school system came up with a plan to introduce Yiddish into the high school curriculum as a foreign language. Aided by funds from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, the program has been implemented at the New Community Jewish High School in the San Fernando Valley.

The Foundation's funds were limited, and in recent days a donor came through with a $250,000 gift to ensure that Yiddish continue for at least five more years.

So mazl tov to the LA Yiddish program -- biz hundert un tsvantsik.

As reported in the Yiddish Forward and in the BBC, a huge cross has been erected as a memorial for the victims of the Stalinist purges 70 years ago. The cross has been erected in Butovo, near Moscow, a former execution site.

The BBC article makes no mention of the fact that 55 years ago, Stalin ordered the execution of a group of Jewish poets, writers and intelligentsia whose murders the Yiddish world remembers on August 12. The Yiddish Forward does make mention of the yortsayt, but I cannot find an article in the English website.

Instead, I will point you to an article by Prof. Joseph Sherman, "The Murder of Soviet Yiddish" from The Mendele Review of 12 August 2003.

Way back in the Dark Ages -- i.e., before most of my students were born, or even thought of -- I worked at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. (It's much prettier now) In my office alone we heard Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English and Yiddish. Once in a while other languages, but no one made a fuss. No one batted an eyelid if there were tourists mixing with Israelis, khasidim mixing with -- well, anyone else. When they mixed with the animals, then the fuss started.

Not sure why this fusion of languages and sub-cultures is noteworthy noewadays, but it is. This one reporter was bemused by the fact that visitors were speaking Yiddish (and that they don't know a swan from a duck nor a frog from a turtle) and that the families were mixing Ethiopian immigrants, French tourists and some American woman who likes her Popsicles.

An essay about Yiddish and Jewishness and growing up in post-WWII New York. An excerpt from Dreams of an Insomniac.

Yiddishkeit in America

Yesterday, in The Australian (p. 9), there was a report about the impending cull of subjects at the University of Melbourne. Among those to be hardest hit are languages, history and arts' subjects. To quote:

...at least a dozen Chinese subjects cancelled from next year, as well as Indonesian, Arabic and German classes.
Some Russian and Swedish subjects will also get the axe from next year, along with Hebrew (emphasis mine), literature, film and philosophy.

That means that as of next year, if I'm not mistaken, one university in Victoria will teach modern Hebrew (Monash) just as only one university in NSW teaches it (we do). Same situation as Yiddish, by the way. And possibly other languages.

254 subjects are to be axed, with an other 227 suspended. 108 new subjects will be created in their place. The article goes on to say that this is related more to "an annual process" than the new model implemented by the University, financial problems or a curriculum review.

The targeting of language subjects (among others of course) is interesting in light of today's article complaining that students aren't taking up the opportunity to study abroad.

A shortage of students willing to study abroad is causing international embarrassment for Australian universities, which stand accused of being more interested in export dollars than educational exchanges.
Cost has been identified by universities as one of the key reasons preventing students from heading overseas for a semester, along with lack of credit transfers and language issues (emphasis mine).

There is a quote in there that while 400 Dutch students came here, only 40 Australians went to study in Holland.

Language issues? Where do we teach Dutch? Not here. And it doesn't look like the University of Melbourne is a candidate either.