_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 01.010 22 June 1997 1) Yiddish Matters: From the Editor 2) _Chulyot_: English abstracts* 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 From: lprager@research.haifa.ac.il Subject: YIDDISH MATTERS: FROM THE EDITOR --The tenth no. of _The Mendele Review_ On the occasion of this tenth number I am happy to announce that _The Mendele Review_ [companion to _Mendele_] and _Chulyot_ ('Links') [the Hebrew language journal of Yiddish language and literature edited by Shalom Luria and Haya Bar-Itzhak of Haifa University] have entered into a cooperative relationship and will from time to time reprint one another's articles. The long poem "Evigingo" by Leyzer Volf which appeared in _The Mendele Review_ 01.007 was romanized from the Yiddish version in _Chulyot_ 3. Readers who enjoyed reading the romanized version may at some time wish to read the poem in its Yiddish-letters garb. --On romanized texts Reading Yiddish texts that are romanized according to the Standard Yiddish Romanization (which is based on the Standard Yiddish Orthography) is often a useful exercise in learning Standard Yiddish. There are a number of Mendelists who are beginning students of Yiddish that have not yet mastered the Yiddish _alefbeys_. They are generally grateful to have access to extended texts in romanized Yiddish. Articles in _Chulyot_ in Hebrew will (with permission from living contributors) be translated into English; Yiddish articles and texts from _Chulyot_ will be romanized and possibly translated as well. --Things to Come in _The Mendele Review_ _The Mendele Review_ recognizes that its highly variegated international body of readers come to Yiddish with divergent backgrounds and diverse linguistic/cultural baggage. There is no reason why any truly interested reader should be discouraged from taking his fill at any repast _The Mendele Review_ can offer. During the coming months we will publish both linguistic and literary essays by writers and scholars from the past (e.g. Moyshe Nadir, Noyekh Prilutski, Nokhem Shtif, Hilel Tseytlin) and the present (e.g. Mortkhe Shekhter, Dovid-Elye Fishman, Ariela Krasni). --On bibliographical lists Bibliographical lists such as appeared as separate numbers of _The Mendele Review_, e.g. vols. 01.003 [by Iosif Vaisman] and vol 01.009 [by Hugh Denman] may not properly belong in an electronic journal intended principally as a vehicle for essays and reviews. With increased experience and closer contact with its readership, _The Mendele Review_ will learn how best to organize its varied interests. Ideally, all material of a reference nature should be separately proferred and so placed as to be conveniently accessed. Let me take this opportunity to thank the many readers who sent email messages expressing their appreciation for vols. 01.003 and 01.009. These seemingly dry lists apparently meant a good deal to some of our readers. More on _Kalevala_ in Yiddish from Zachary Baker Both _Mendele_ and _The Mendele Review_ are implements for extending our knowledge of the still largely uncharted sea of Yiddish bibliography. New facts are constantly coming to light. In the wake of _TMR_ 01.008 I received from Zachary M. Baker, Head Librarian of Yivo the following tidbit that was a total revelation to me: "Have you seen the selection for children published in Vilna before WW2?: _Kalevala: finisher epos: 15-te rune_. Yidish: Hersh Rozenfeld. Vilne: Naye Yidishe Folksshul, 1929. 14 pp. (Baveglekhe khrestomatye). It goes to show that Hersh Rozenfeld had the _Kalevala_ on his mind for some time before the longer version came out." Gathering isolated facts makes possible at a later stage the composition of a rich mosaic. __Norman Zide's Query A small and hearty band of Mendelists were not deterred by the 402 lines of Longfellowish trochaic tetrameter (vol. 01.007) nor by the pedagogic pantry which followed (vol. 01.008) and even had sufficient energy to spare to email their impressions and criticisms. Norman Zide wrote: "Yiddish Longfellow! Interesting stuff. Could Leyzer Volf have been familiar with any of the numerous parodies of Hiawatha? Were there any in Yiddish? German? Leyzer Volf has temperamental -- and metrical -- affinities (I can say nothing of influence -- did he read English?) with Edward Lear, e.g. (I don't have a copy of his poems at hand), the poem about the Yonghy Bonghy Bo that begins: On the coast of Coromandel / Looking eastward to the sea...." The affinities beween Lear and Volf are real and their basis is the strong surrealistic strain in both poets. Volf was familiar with several European literatures but does not appear to have known English or to have read English writers. Whether Volf knew of Yiddish or German parodies of _Hiawatha_ -- such parodies surely existed -- I do not know. "Evigingo," of course, is itself partially a parody of Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ as rendered in Yiddish by Yehoash. __Seth Wolitz on "correcting" Yehoash Seth Wolitz, while appreciative of vol. 01.008, objected to the regularization of Yehoash's obsolete spellings: "The critical apparatus provided is a lovely task well executed indeed. My only concern is your 'correcting' Yehoash's translation into 'correct' Yiddish. In fact it is time we put aside any thing called correct Yiddish which never took shape actually until after World War II when it was a little too late and not accepted fully in any case. By having the variety we have, we see what a rich fertile state Yiddish really was as it sought its channels and voice. But like France in the 16th Century the variety does it no harm but reveals the width and liveliness of the language and culture." As a declared partisan of the Standard Yiddish Orthography on which the Standard Yiddish Romanization is based, I can only disagree with this view. What is described as "a rich fertile state" is more aptly called chaos and disorder. Shakespeare in the 16th century may have signed his name seven different ways (and not, like the Yiddish writer who writes "Noyekh mit zibn grayzn," out of ignorance). Should we boycott the presently accepted _Shakespeare_ as narrowly constrictive, suppressive of the creative potential of the English language? I think not. We should of course not tamper with the spelling of Old Yiddish texts (except for correcting obvious scribal errors and omissions) . For certain scholarly purposes it is legitimate to present modern Yiddish texts in their original spellings. But if one is at all interested in the continued use of Yiddish as a communicative medium and the preservation and cultivation of modern Yiddish literature, then a standardized spelling and other standard conventions are useful and desirable. The issues raised here, however, are important and should be discussed more thoroughly. __Cooperative relationships with other journals In this issue of _The Mendele Review_ I am happy to give the English abstracts of the soon-to-be-published _Chulyot_ 4, hopefully thus promoting the international and multilingual character of Yiddish studies, as well as making better known the contribution of Israeli scholars to Yiddish studies. _The Mendele Review_ will seek cooperative relationships with other journals devoted to Yiddish studies. Indeed, in today's mail I received the happy news that _Oyfn shvel_ (New York), a journal especially valuable for essays on contemporary Yiddish, grants _The Mendele Review_ permission to reprint articles from its pages. --How to order _Chulyot_ _Chulyot_ 4 (1997) [as well as nos. 2 and 3] can be purchased from _Chulyot_ c/o Department of Hebrew Literature, Haifa University, Eshkol Tower, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 31999, Israel. The price is $15 (postage included). --Homework for the summer months: Abraham B. Yehoshua's new novel, _Masa el tom haelef: roman bishlosha chalakim_ ('Voyage to the End of the Millenium: a Novel in Three Parts') [Tel Aviv: Hakibuts hameuchad, 1997] touches significantly on the themes of Yiddish and Ashkenaz as well as, centrally, that of Israeli identity. Miri Rubin writes: "Yehoshua's deference to the 'oriental' is evident, above all, in his robust portrayal of the tanned, sunny patriarch Ben-Atar and the throaty arabesqes of his language, compared with the northern dialect, embryonic Yiddish, which is characterized as 'a local language, muddy, Teutonic, into which he also scatters a few Hebrew words, broken and lachrymose'. Indeed, the novel is full of images of pairs, dichotomies and contraries...." ("Ben-Atar's wives," _TLS_, The Times Literary Supplement, London, 13 June 1997, p. 26) Scholars can tell us little about the Yiddish of 1000 years ago, but a writer -- for purely esthetic ends -- can construct a fictional image of proto-Yiddish to satisfy a wide range of fantasies and prejudices. What should we think of Yehoshua's medieval, yet metaphorical, Yiddish and Ashkenaz? 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 From: lprager@research.haifa.ac.il Subject: _Chulyot_: English abstracts Abstracts of _Chulyot_ 4 (1997) --Mendele Moykher-Sforim, "My (Last) Journey" This is one of the very last texts in the Mendele archives to be published. Its subject is Mendele the Bookseller in an hour of extreme financial need when he is forced to consider selling his hungry and exhausted old companion, his horse. But when he encounters the foul talk of the horsedealers at the market, he pulls back, ashamed and full of pity for his barely breathing four-legged friend. Reprinted from _Shtern_ (Minsk, 10 July 1939, 1-4) and translated into Hebrew. --Arn Vorobeytshik, "From Mendele Moykher-Sforim's Laboratory" Arn Vorobeytshik (1895-1941), who worked in the Alukrainisher Muzey far Yidisher Kultur Oyf Mendeles Nomen (Mendele All-Ukrainian Institute for Jewish Culture) in Odessa and edited the miscellany _Mendele un zayn tsayt_ ('Mendele and His Times') (1939), and was undoubtedly an expert on Mendele's manuscripts, sketches the relationship between Mendele's story "My (Last) Journey" and his later plans and works. He argues for a connection between the story and Mendele's famous novel _Di kliatshe_ ('The Mare'). --Khone Shmeruk, "A Foreign Work Recast from German or An Original and Innovative Italian Variant?" This essay deals with a brief period in the history of Yiddish literature, mainly in the 16th century. A new freshly innovative work somehow broke into the established literary traditions. Epic works such as the _Shmuel-bukh_ and the _Melokhim-bukh_ exemplify the system of reworking style and content from German originals, a system that held sway in the second half of the 14th century. Jews understood the _daytshmerish_ texts quite well. And then unexpectedly appeared Elye Bokher's _Bove-bukh_, a long chivalric romance in Italian ottava rima meter. Elye Bokher (1468-1549) founded a new literary school, whose most interesting production is _Pariz un viene_ ('Paris and Vienna'), written either by Elye Bokher or by one of his students. The works of the new school are also from a foreign source, but their original treatment is abundantly clear. --Chava Turniansky, "_Pariz un viene_ -- a 16th-Century Yiddish Literary Work from Italy" The post-World War Two discovery of a number of Old Yiddish books and manuscripts has radically altered the view of Old Yiddish literature held by the older scholarship. Our new understanding of Old Yiddish literature is in large measure the work of Khone Shmeruk. In addition to his fundamental research on Old Yiddish literature, especially that of Renaissance Italy, he has now given us a critical edition of the recently discoverd complete text of _Pariz un viene_ (Verona 1594). Here is given a brief summary of the contents of this work, illustrating the literary qualities which explain its exemplary position in Old Yiddish literature. --Shlomo Berger, "On Abraham Levy's Travelogue (Amsterdam 1764)" The West Yiddish travelogue of Abraham Levy ben Menachem Tall is a rare Jewish exemplar of the popular 18th century _grand tour_. Levy's descriptions of his travels through Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Italy between 1719 and 1723 show how a Jewish young man perceived both Jewish and Christian environments, what matters occupied him and what he hoped to achieve from his long trip. Living in a period of significant changes in the Jewish world and needing to understand Christian modern society as well, Abraham's medieval and modern attitudes intertwined. We see how he reacts to East European Jews, how he describes gentile society, where he places the boundaries dividing Jew from gentile. In such descriptions as that of Vienna, he shows how one can harmonize two different worlds. He is able to describe the gentile world in a neutral manner. Ultimately he returns to his own world. --Shmuel Werses, "Women's Voices in the Yiddish Weekly _Kol-Mevaser_" The importance of _Kol-Mevaser_ (Odessa and St. Petersburg, 1862-1871) in the development of Yiddish fiction in the nineteenth century has been long acknowledged. The present essay details the periodical's particular role as an outlet for women's voices and concerns in Russia and Poland in the 1860s, discussing women as readers, as writers of essays and letters-to-the-editor, and as translators. The periodical reflects the position of women in the family and in education in its frequent -- and heretofore insufficuently noted -- discussion of these themes. --Ziva Shamir, "Bialik's Apocalyptic Prophecies _Dos letste vort_ and _Davar_" The bulk of Bialik's prophetic poetry is a typical product of the first decade of the twentieth century and forms one of the undoubted peaks of his literary career. However, the figure of the prophet as poetic speaker was almost exhausted within Russian and Yiddish poetry of the last decades of the nineteenth century. Bialik at the turn of the century wrote a dramatic dialogue in Yiddish, _Dos letste vort_ (1901), whose speaker is a suffering apocalyptic prophet. The critics and scholars who greeted his well known Hebrew poem _Davar_ as his first prophetic poem were uninformed. _Davar_, in fact, is a synthesis of motifs and topoi to be found in the works of many of Bialik's predecessors and in many of Bialik's own poems, such as his unpublished juvenile "Belev hayam" ('In the Midst of the Sea') or his poem of reproof "Achen chatsir ha'am" ('Surely the People is Grass'). The prophet in Bialik's poems combines uncompromising opposites: fierce public orator and individualist romantic poet; aristocratric leader and vulgar commoner; fighter for justice and timid escapist. Though Bialik used a conventional persona rooted in the 19th century, he did so with his typical ingenuity, creating an original poetic figure. This paper traces the creation of this figure within the corpus of Bialik's collected works. It surveys its precedents, both in Yiddish and Jewish-Russian poetry; it explores the revolutionary innovations introduced by Bialik despite reliance on traditional characterizations. It concludes that the pseudo-prophetic poem _Davar_ is an impossible combination of elevated Biblical language and commonplace problems. It reflects the disorientation confronted by the poet and his contemporaries in 1904 owing to the death of Herzl, the Uganda crisis, the weakening of Ahad Ha'am's influence, and the approaching 1905 revlution. In order to express this sense of complete disorientation of all values, Bialik made intentional use of ambiguous words and phrases of both high and low levels of meaning, words that had gradually become pejorative though not originlly such. Total disorientation is expressed through the generic patterns of the _danse macabre_, the poem closing with a picture of a disreputable creature, lame and vulgar, staggering slowly toward death. This is Bialik's description of a decademt nation that refuses redemption, his reply to the traumas and atrocities faced by Man in a godless world. -- Max Erik. "Kasrilevke" Alongside Tevye the Dairyman and Menakhem-Mendl, Kasrilevke is the third of Sholem-Aleykhem's three great characterizations, the work of the last fifteen years of his life (1901-1915). This essay examines Sholem-Aleykhem's Kasrilevke, comparing it to Mendele Moykher-Sforim's shtetl repertoire. Sholem-Aleykhem created two opposing Kasrilevkes, one facing the past and the other the present; one is drawn romantically and the other realistically. The two Kasrilevkes contradict one another and are internally contradictory as well. According to Erik's Marxist analysis, the source of these multiple contradictions lies in the vacillations and lack of direction of the petty-bourgeois author himself. --Avidav Lipsker, Joseph Bamberger, "Rabbi Amram's Coffin" "Rabbi Amram's Coffin" is a story found in the Old Yiddish _Mayse Bukh_ (first edition Basel, 1602). The present thematological study examines this relatively rare attempt to judaize a Christian story of the death of St. Amram, a semi-historical 7th-century figure who was tortured to death and buried in Regensburg; a church was erected over his grave. The Jewish variant relates a similar tale of a Rabbi Amram of Cologne who asked to be interred in Worms and a boat magically carried his body to Mainz (in another variant: to Regensburg) and the Christians built a church over his grave. The Jews of the city stole the corpse and buried it according to Jewish law. This tradition of conflict between Christianity and Judaism over ownership of a holy place and over hagiographic legend also inspired Yoysef Opatoshu's _Eyn tog in Regensburg_ ('A Day in Regensburg') (1933), a novel which expresses contemporary facets of an age-old struggle between conflicting cultures. --Michael Astour, "Zalmen Reyzen (1878-1941) -- (A Memoir)" The Yiddish original of this essay appeared in _Oyfn shvel_ (October-December 1985). Its author spent his youth in Vilna in the cultural sphere of Zalmen Reyzen, under whose editorship he began his literary activity. The essay tries to draw the main lines of Reyzen's many-sided character and personality: pioneer of Yiddish philology, historian of Yiddish literature, organizer and exponent of secular Yiddish culture, biographer of Yiddish authors, editor of one of the most important Yiddish daily newspapers in Poland. The essay also casts new light on the last two years of Reyzen's life spent in Soviet jails and terminated with a bullet. --Yechiel Szeintuch [Yekhiel Sheyntukh], "Aaron Zeitlin's Sojourn in Erets-Yisrael" The Erets-Yisrael chapter in Aaron Zeitlin's [Yiddish: Arn Tseytlin] life and literary works remain unknown to this very day. Aaron Zeitlin's spiritual biography is conceptually and realistically connected to life in Erets Yisrael in the early 1920s, when the author, together with his younger brother Elchanan, settled in and then had to leave the country nine months later. The article deals with one aspect of Aaron Zeitlin's biography in Erets Yisrael, as well as with his spiritual struggles there and their reflection in his Hebrew poem "Kedem" ('East'). Additionally, the article deals with the year 1920/1921, the Zeitlin brothers' life in Jaffa, Jerusalem and Zichron Yaakov. The experiences of this period are later reflected in Aaron Zeitlin's literary works in Hebrew and Yiddish, which include, among others: the drama _Brener_ ('Brenner'), the comedy _Di yidishe melukhe oder Veytsman der tsveyter_ ('The Jewish Kingdom or Weitzman the Second') and especially his novel _Brenendike erd_ ('Burning Earth'). One may add to the list his Hebrew and Yiddish Erets Yisrael poems, as well as his Hebrew dramatic writings. The issues dealt with in this article introduce both the Erets Yisrael chapter in Zeitlin's Hebrew and Yiddish writings and his written correspondence. The latter will soon be published in the volume _Birshus harabim ubirshus hayachid -- Arn Tseytlin un di yidishe literatur: briv un dokumentn tsu der yidisher kultur-geshikhte tsvishn beyde velt milkhomes_ ('Public and Private: Aaron Zeitlin and Jewish Literature -- Letters and Documents of Jewish Cultural History Between the Two World Wars') (Jerusalem 1997). --Shalom Luria, "Alter Kacizna (1885-1941), Artist of Many Genres" This essay aims to acquaint the Hebrew reader with the creative world of an extraordinary artist, one of the most talented of the young men who grouped around Y.-L. Perets in Warsaw and who after his death became prolific writers. Alter Kacizna [Yiddish: Katsizne] wrote plays, poems, stories, a novel, feuilletons and other works. He even published his own journal, _Mayn reydndiker film_ ('My Talking Film') and filled it from A to Z by himself. This Polish Yiddish writer was cruelly murdered by Ukrainian collaborators at the Jewish cemetery of Tarnopol. --Alter Katsizne [Kacizna], "Boris Arkadyevitsh Kletskin" The Vilna publisher and community activist Boris Kletskin was known throughout the Jewish world for his dedication to Yiddish literature and to everything which was daily created in Yiddish. He published hundreds of books and periodicals and he assisted Yiddish writers, teachers and scholars to develop secular-Yiddish cultural values. Alter Kacizna was a close personal friend of Kletskin's and knew him intimately. In this essay Kacizna records his impressions of this Yiddish magnate and revolutionary who went bankrupt subsidizing an entire culture. --Dov Sadan, "On Moyshe Valdman [Moshe Waldman] the Poet" This essay initiates a new feature in _Chulyot_: fragments and quotations in and about Yiddish from Dov Sadan's huge literary estate. This is Sadan's introduction to the major collection of Waldman's poems, _Fun ale vaytn_ ('From All Distances') (Tel Aviv, 1980). It includes, in addition to an evaluation of Waldman's poetic achievement, translations of two of his poems. --Shalom Luria, "Exemplary Yiddish Poems" Another new feature of _Chulyot_, this section undertakes to present outstanding specimens from the boundless stores of Yiddish poetry, to translate them into Hebrew, and to comment on them briefly. The selections in this issue include H. Leyvik's "Oyf di vegn siberer," Moyshe Kulbak's "Di vile in der Nyeman" (a section of his poem _Raysn_ ['Belorussia']) and Avrom Sutskever's "Ikh tor nit" (the third poem in his cycle of poems "Ineveynik." --Chaya Fisherman, Yiddish in Israel: Appearance and Reality Research on the status of Yiddish in present-day Israel reflects an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon, namely that the use of this language, which was once the instrument of a large segment of the Jewish people, has declined and the language has become converted into a value. In Israel prior to 1948 Yiddish was the most used mother tongue of those spoken in the country, competing with Hebrew. The lower the mastery of Hebrew, the more was Yiddish used among the older population of European origin. Today it is spoken in the homes of many families from Eastern Europe, but it is not perceived as a language competing with Hebrew. Among ultra-Orthodox Jews it served and still serves as the everyday language in all domains. Yiddish has an additional function beyond its being an instrument, namely that of being a symbol of Jewish identity. It is a bridge to _yidishkayt_ for a large section of the Jewish people. The study is based on replies to a questionaire regarding attitudes to Yiddish from 80 students aged 16 to 18 and 52 students and teachers aged 20 to 50. There was no significant difference in the replies of the two groups. Those who knew or were studying Yiddish had a more positive attitude to the language than the rest. Even those who did not speak Yiddish but were studying it found value in the language. In the associative dimension Yiddish was perceived in a more negative light than in the cognitive dimension. Aspects such as Yiddish being the language of the aging, an old-fashioned and diaspora language, emerged more in the associative dimension, whereas in the cognitive dimension the prominent aspects were the nostalgia and humor in Yiddish and its being the lingua franca of the Jewish people. The associative dimension reflects feelings that have not undergone filtering and selection in order to meet normative expectations. A correlation is found between the two dimensions in the issue of Jewish identity as symbolized by the language. --Isaac Ganuz, "'The Wicked Woman': A Yiddish Folktale" The author presents and briefly comments on a folktale he discovered in the Yiddish weekly _Lider vokh_ of 30 November 1932. The story tells of an old bachelor, a scholar, who would marry no one but a wicked woman, thus assuring his entrance to _gan-eydn_ ('Paradise'). The ending of the story is almost ludicrous: the husband dies from the wife's malevolent goodness. The story is also given in Hebrew translation. --Jacob Zeifter, "The Town of Ushpitsin" In his memoirs the author describes the Jewish community of Ushpitsin (Polish: Oswiencim; German: Auschwitz). He is impelled to express his grief and shock at the horrors of the Auschwitz death factory, but he also wishes to recapture the sweet memories of his childhood and youth in a place to which history has decisively allotted a singular association. The essay appeared in Yiddish in _Seyfer Ushpitsin_ ('The Ushpitsin Book') (Jerusalem 1977, pp. 355-361). --Simon Bruner, "There was something magical about it" The author discusses the literary, folkloristic and scholarly dimensions of Jacob Zeifter's essay on the Jewish community of Ushpitsin, a rich and wondrous amalgam of history and legend. Prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, Jews formed 40% of the town's general population. The Jewish community was deeply rooted, culturally and religiously vibrant, a center of saints and scholars, home of the near-legendary Rabbi Abele Shnur. --Dalia Kaufman, "A Poet Who Lived Before His Time" The author compares two Yiddish translations of Krilov's proverbs: one, virtually unknown and rare, by Sh.-Y. Katsenelenbogen (Vilna, 1861) -- a copy of which she was able to find in St. Petersburg through clever detective work -- and another by Tsvi-Hirsh Raykerson (Zvi Hirsch Reicherson) (Vilna, 1879). Both translators were _maskilin_ ('enlighteners'). Katsenelenbogen's work had a foreword in biblical Hebrew in which he wrote that "it was time to take action for my people and write for them in the disparaged Yiddish language, the only language they know." The author reviews thematic treatment, linguistic components, figurative language, folkloric expressions, rhyme and versification, monologue and dialogue forms, use of myth, and modes of judaization. She finds Katsenelenbogen's text close to the original, idiomatically rich, integrating relatively few German and Russian elements. Raykerson's text on the other hand, while close in content to the original, is decorated with German words, adopts Russian elements (mainly from the original) which appear next to simple Yiddish with a Lithuanian ring. Katsenelenbogen employed a syllabo-tonic meter, unusual in Yiddish verse at the time; Raykherson used rhymed prose and sometimes rhymed in foreign languages. --Franz Kafka, "A Talk about Yiddish" This is a talk given by Kafka in 1912 in honor of his friend, the Yiddish actor Jaques Levi (1887-1942), who that evening gave a performance of speeches from the Yiddish dramatic repertoire to a largely assimilated Prague Jewish audience. Kafka is not strong here on the history of Yiddish, but he does communicate his deep feeling for the language. --Khaym Grade, "Ariel of Yagur" (reprinted from _Tsukunft_, New York) --Arye Sarid, "How the Poem 'Ariel of Yagur' Was Composed" In 1945 the author was sent to Poland by the Hechaluts movement in Palestine to organize collectives and training farms for _aliya_ candidates. He encountered numerous Jewish orphans hidden by Polish families in the years of the Nazi occupation. Rescuing these children and helping them reach Erets-Yisrael became a passion of his life. The poet Khaym Grade observed this drama closely and poured out his feelings in the poem "Ariel of Yagur." The Ariel of the poem was none other than Arye Sarid, who at that time was a member of Kibbutz Yagur. --Eliyahu Binyamini, "Lyube Vaserman, a Forgotten Yiddish Poet" Leafing through the journal _Sovetish heymland_ the author uncovered several delicately wrought poems of Lyube Vaserman, whose last years were spent in Biro-Bidjan but who had actually begun her literary career in Palestine. He found the scarce little book of her poems, _Farnakhtn_ ('Evenings') (Tel Aviv, 1931) and argues she is an unjustly forgotten poet. Three of her poems illustrate his argument. *Edited (and/or translated) by Leonard Prager ----------------------------------------------- End of _The Mendele Review_ vol. 01.010 Leonard Prager, editor Please direct all correspondence to: lprager@research.haifa.ac.il