ok, a translation for the Chanukah CD. The songs were: Oy, Linda, Brisket City, Blackberry Whine, Redwood Hillel, Daylight Zadie, Me & Bubbie McGree, I Used to be a Yiddische Singer, The Sukkah is Small.... right? O.K. Translation: I guess everyone knows that "Oy" is just a word to express frustration, more like 'Oh.' Brisket is easy, it's a cut of meat a lot of Jewish women cook for many holidays (I know I do), on the Blackberry Whine one... well, we all know the Jewish Princess jokes.... and we know what "whine" means... I copied this to explain who Hillel was:
Rabbi Hillel was born to a wealthy family in Babylonia, but came to Jerusalem without the financial support of his family and supported himself as a woodcutter. It is said that he lived in such great poverty that he was sometimes unable to pay the admission fee to study Torah, and because of him that fee was abolished. He was known for his kindness, his gentleness, and his concern for humanity. One of his most famous sayings, recorded in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, a tractate of the Mishnah), is "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" The Hillel organization, a network of Jewish college student organizations, is named for him. O.K., Zadie is Yiddish for grandpa, Bubbie is Yiddish for grandma, Yiddische... is obvious (F.Y.I., Fanny Brice started out as a Yiddish singer (singing Jewish songs), then hit it big on Broadway in the mainstream), and, finally, a sukkah is a 3-sided temporary structure most Jews build in the Fall to celebrate the harvest: one more explaination: the Feast of Tabernacles, Feast of Booths, is one of the oldest and most joyous of Jewish holidays, called in the Bible the Feast of Ingathering and today often called by its Hebrew name, Sukkoth [Heb.,=booth]. The holiday lasts for eight days (seven days in Israel). The Feast of Tabernacles, which marked the closing of the harvest season for the Jews of ancient Palestine, is today celebrated by the taking of all meals in a lightly constructed booth roofed with thatch (a sukkah) to recall the shelters of the Jews when they wandered in the wilderness
Also, I've included a link to a site where some common Yiddish words are explained. I see some misspellings, but, who cares?!!
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/...sh/comwor.html
[This message has been edited by Sheryl Klein (edited December 08, 2004).]