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November 01, 2009
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere
The Yiddish reads: “Jimmy Cagney in Taxi.”
Haveil Havalim #241 is up and live, presented this week by Simply Jews. Enjoy.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at November 1, 2009 10:11 AM
Comments
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Wow! I've heard of people who weren't Jewish picking up Yiddish as children, but Jimmy Cagney actually read it? Amazing!
Looks like the word "Taxi" in Yiddish has a typo, though -- a final mem instead of a samekh.
Posted by: Rahel at November 1, 2009 10:06 PM
"...Looks like the word "Taxi" in Yiddish has a typo, though -- a final mem instead of a samekh. ..."
right
the Samech in that font, is present as the first letter on the top right, in the transliteration of the word 'Strand'
btw,
the font is a variant of the classic Vilna font, one of the earlist typesetting fonts that the first copy of the talmud was printed
an interesting story about this, is that the font designer was a student of Bodoni, and introduced the curvatures common in the italic font, to the square outlines of the Sefer Torah font, as everyone wanted a printed font that was 'different' from Sefer Torah font
(this font is also closest to the Sefardi Sefer Torah font, but quite different from the European variations)
so if any of you out there know art historians of this period, they will be very interested to here that the first Hebrew printing press font, that is still used until today as *the* traditional prayer and holy book font, is of the Bodoni design school.
Posted by: exdemexlib at November 2, 2009 06:30 AM
With my somewhat knowledge of German I was surprised at how similar some Yiddish words were.
My friend Larry told me a funny story about seeing the movie Blazing Saddles in Westwood years ago - he said every time Mel Brooks spoke Yiddish you could hear scattered laughter in the theater - you knew where the Jews were!
But don't ask me to read it.
Posted by: Bill Brandt at November 2, 2009 08:32 AM