Sholem Aleichem

This year was 150th anniversary since the birth of the greatest Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem became something for Jews in Soviet Union that help them to identify themselves as a Jews. If you were a Jew you were reading his books, in Russian translation, but still Sholem Aleichem’s books, trying to catch rarely coming out movies as Tavie the Milkman or Wandering Stars. Something what really made you a Jew in former USSR , no it is not a fifth line in your passport, it is a collection of Sholem Aleichem’s work in five volumes which came out in USSR in 1959 to commemorate 100th birthday of great Yiddish writer. If you would visit somebody’s home in former Soviet Union, and would see these books on a bookshelf you could say for sure that this is a Jewish home. The irony of faith – that the last film which was produced in Soviet Union was - Sholem Aleichem’s Wondering Stars, which came out in a late 1991, just before USSR fell apart.

gdeetotdom.ru

The new website was unveiled on a Russian internet, dedicated to all buildings build in Moscow and St. Petersburg proper. Website consist of Google Street View look like feature, and database with photos and details for all buildings of the two Russia’s biggest cities. The name of this site is http://www.gdeetotdom.ru/. I was able to find all the buildings where I lived as well as buildings of my schools and institute. It was very touching, I was full of sentiment and nostalgia for times when I lived where half way around the world.


Check pictures

Chelyabinskaya ul. dom 19 korp 2 apt 207 (1978-1989)

Sretinka ¼ 4 floor (1972 – 1978)

Sacolnechiski Val dom 6 korp 2 Apt 4

Mameloshen (Part 2)

Recently I found really cool map of Yiddish dialects in Europe in end of 19 and beginning of 20 century. That actually pushed me to write a small article about origination of Yiddish dialects as well as a current use of the language in today’s warls.

Yiddish has many dialects, which are usually subdivided into western and eastern dialects. The last one is divided into three main dialects: Northern (so-called. Belarusian-Lithuanian dialect:
Baltic States,
Belarus,
north-eastern regions of Poland,
west of Smolensk Oblast of Russia and
part of the Chernigov region of Ukraine),
South-East ( so-called. dialect of Ukrainian:
Ukraine,
Moldavia,
the eastern region of Romania,
first of all - Moldova and Bucovina,
the southern part of the Brest Region of Belarus and
the Lublin Region of Poland),
Central (or south-west, so-called. Polish dialects:
central and western Poland,
Transylvania,
the Carpathian areas of Ukraine).
There are also transitional dialects on a border of dialect regions. In the early twentieth century the united common Yiddish “klal shprakh” was developed, which gained acceptance mainly in the universities of Eastern and Central Europe. In North America, among Hasidim immerged common dialect based on the "Hungarian" Yiddish, widely used earlier in Transylvania. In the USSR, the grammatical basis of the literary standard served as a Ukrainian dialect, whereas the phonetics based on the northern dialect. Yiddish Theater, in accordance with the tradition of its origin from Abraham Goldfaden (Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre. ), played in averaged Ukrainian dialect (sometimes, referred to as the Volyn).

Western Yiddish, which by some researchers is seen as a separate language, spoken by the Jews in the western regions of Germany, Switzerland and Holland, is now almost dead due to the massive assimilation of West European Jews prior of World War II.


By beginning of XXI century Yiddish speaking world consist of 3 million people of whom 600,000 to 700,000 people considered it as their first language. Here is a short list of countries with a most Yiddish First language speakers.

Israel: 215,000, or 3% of the total Jewish population (1995)
USA: 178,945, or 2.8% of the total Jewish population (2000)
Russia: 29,998, or 13% of the total Jewish population (2002)
Moldova: 17,000, or 26% of the total Jewish population (1989)
Ukraine: 3,213, or 3.1% of the total Jewish population (2001)
Belarus: 1,979, or 7.1% of the total Jewish population (1999)
Canada: 19,295, or 5.5% of the total Jewish population (2001)
Romania: 951, or 16.4% of the total Jewish population
Latvia: 825, or 7.9% of the total Jewish population
Lithuania: 570, or 14.2% of the total Jewish population
Estonia: 124, or 5.8% of the total Jewish population

Aaron is a Золушка of XXIst century.

Золушка, послушай, крошка, потрудись еще немножко...
перемой-ка всю посуду,
и натри полы повсюду,
дров на месяц наколи,
на год кофе намели...
посади среди цветов 40 розовых кустов,
и пока не подрастут подметай дорожки тут...

Aaron is involved in a summer cleaning chores at home. Sometimes it is nice to have extra pair of hands at the house, even small ones.

Aaron is sweeping the sidewalk to the house.

Aaron is shining door knobs and placing figurines next to the Entrance for pleasant view.

"Afghani Zionists" or Israelis in Afghanistan

At that time, then the most of Afghanistan involved in a war action between forces of NATO and not quite dead Taliban, in Balkh province for over ten years, remains relatively calm.
The province is located in the north of the country, near the border with Uzbekistan, and is inhabited mainly by Afghan Uzbeks. Balkh is patrimony of the Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who enjoys the protection from the northern neighbor in Tashkent. In the provincial center of Mazar-i-Sharif industry operates, more or less normally transportation works on time, commerce is well established, and even some tourist services present for occasional rear tourists. It is only province which has steady number of Israeli entrepreneurs which risk doing business in a constantly war-torn Afghanistan. One of the first came in late 1990 - early 2000's via former USSR countries. All of the Israeli businessmen holders of dual citizenships and, in addition to Israel's documents (which in Afghanistan, of course, do not advisable to show), are the holders, of Russian or Kazakh passport. Israelis visiting Balkh every few months, but most of the time they are housed in the neighboring republics of Central Asia, or in Israel. In Afghanistan, they have created joint ventures, officially registered as the Kazakh-Afghan and Uzbek-Afghan joint companies. Most of the time, they are food industries, in some cases they are used an Israeli technologies to do business in Balkh. Local security authorities, in some cases, aware of the fact that these "Kazakh" and "Russian" businesses are in fact the Israelis but, for regular "modest fee", Balkh’s authority have a blind eye for "Afghani Zionists."