QUOTE (asoul @ Feb 22 2008, 09:34 AM)

In the novel 'Der Golem' by Gustav Meyrink I read that talmudists who know thieves' jargon are called 'bocherleh'. Is it true? And if it is so where do they use such specific language? Is it method to transmit secret knowledge?
You seem to be referring to the following passage in the 'Golem', in the chapter 'Nacht'/'Night':
QUOTE
»Es ist das Lied vom ›chomezigen Borchu‹«, erklärte uns lächelnd der Marionettenspieler und schlug leise mit dem Zinnlöffel, der sonderbarerweise mit einer Kette am Tisch befestigt war, den Takt. »Vor wohl hundert Jahren oder mehr noch hatten zwei Bäckergesellen, Rotbart und Grünbart, am Abend des ›Schabbes Hagodel‹ das Brot – Sterne und Hörnchen – vergiftet, um ein ausgiebiges Sterben in der Judenstadt hervorzurufen; aber der ›Meschores‹ – der Gemeindediener – war infolge göttlicher Erleuchtung noch rechtzeitig draufgekommen und konnte die beiden Verbrecher der Stadtpolizei überliefern. Zur Erinnerung an die wundersame Errettung aus Todesgefahr dichteten damals die ›Landonim‹ und ›Bocherlech‹ jenes seltsame Lied, das wir hier jetzt als Bordellquadrille hören.«
*
Now, I don't know in which language you've read the book, and somehow, you being Ukrainian, I doubt you are able to manage the original German, but I (who have read the book many times in the original language and am obsessed with old Prague) can see no reference to 'talmudists who know thieves' jargon' being called 'bocherlech'.
The term 'bocherlech' Meyrink used here is a 'deutschmerisch' version of 'bochrim' (Heb. 'bachurim'), meaning nothing more than Yeshiva students. That Meyrink, himself a non-Jew, cannot be trusted entirely when it comes to Jewish customs, can also be deduced from the exotic term 'Landonim' (also amended to 'landomin' in the truly excruciatingly bad English translation) he uses, which means... nothing, actually. What he was
probably referring to was 'Lamdonim', a term which could be translated with 'learned talmudists', if you like.
Also, in his re-telling of the well-known Prague folk tale of the 'chometzige Borchu', he mentions that this story happened on 'Schabbes Hagodel', something which any one reasonably aquainted with Jewish traditions and customs would recognise as rather odd, since that is the Schabbos
before Pessach. The 'Chometzige Borchu' refers (in Western Yiddish) to the beginning of the Maariv at the end of Pessach (because that's when we're allowed to possess and consume chometz again).
All this doesn't mean that the 'Golem' is not a great work, in fact it's one of my favourite books, a classic of German phantastic literature, or that Meyrink's description of the Josefov before the 'Assanierung' is completely inaccurate: he just didn't know much about Judaism, since most if not all of his friends were Jewish, but very assimilated: the knowledge he could glean from them was bound to be half-baked and misunderstood. His description of the
atmosphere of the old Judenstadt is peerless, as is his use of 'Prager Deutsch' (which, incidentally, can be useful to people wanting to know how that actually sounded like).
But there is definitely no place for theory of conspiracy of Jewish people holding secret knowledge in thieves jargon code against Ukrainian people, understandski?
*The only available, rather clumsy English translation of the passage:
QUOTE
"It's the song of the chomezig borchu, the blessing of the leavened bread", the old puppeteer explained with a smile as he softly beat out the rhythm on the table with the tin spoon that, oddly enough, was fixed to the table by a chain. "It must have been a hundred years ago or more that two bakers, Redbeard and Greenbeard, put poison into the bread rolls they were star-shaped and crescent
shaped on the eve of the first Sabbath in Passover, Shabbes Hagodel, to cause the wholesale murder of Jews in the Ghetto. But the beadle the meshores was warned in time by a divine revelation and managed to catch the two would-be murderers and hand them over to the authorities. To commemorate this miraculous deliverance from death, the learned scholars, the landomin and the bocherlech, composed this strange song which you can hear now being played as dance music in a brothel.