The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to MENDELE) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 08.007 [Sequential No. 146] 16 June 2004 1) About this issue of TMR (ed.) 2) Review of Joel Berkowitz, ed. _Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches_ (Michael Steinlauf) 3) A French translation of the 1602 editio princeps of _Mayse bukh_ (Astrid Starck) 4) The Contribution of Ayzik Zaretski to Yiddish Linguistics (Zelda Newman) 1)--------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 June 2004 From: Leonard PragerSubject: About this issue of TMR This issue of TMR centers on three works from widely different branches of Yiddish studies -- theatre, linguistics and Old Yiddish literature -- areas in which few of us are specialists but in which most of us as Mendele readers would admit to a strong curiosity at the least. Michael Steinlauf's detailed and informed review of _Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches_ edited by Joel Berkowitz, is a virtual vade mecum of Yiddish theatre scholarship. Steinlauf places the Berkowitz collection of essays in its proper context and critically examines each essay, alert to inconsistencies and errors but also to fresh insights and originality. Criticism of the kind and level of Steinlauf's can only encourage serious studies of Yiddish theatre; Steinlauf sees the Berkowitz volume as a promising beginning. Zelda Newman is a veteran student and admirer of the Soviet Yiddish linguist Ayzik Zaretski (1891-1956). In a short essay she gives her reasons for valuing one work of Zaretski's in particular, his _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ (Moscow, 1926). Dr. Astrid Starck announces her forthcoming translation into French of the 1602 Basle edition of the _Mayse bukh_. Her work includes a facsimile of the entire 1602 Basle text, the editio princeps of which there are now only two copies left. Dr. Starck's work is bilingual (French on the left page, Yiddish on the right page) and her translation is the first, not only in French but from the editio princeps. Her work includes extensive annotation of the text. Dr. Starck's work is thus of special importance from a textual perspective -- we will now have a tool for examing variants and cruces and, more generally, the evolution of the 1602 text. Dr. Starck will discuss the book at a gala evening on June 24th at the Institute of Jewish Studies of the University of Basle under the auspices of the Institute, the University Library and the publisher, Schwabe Verlag. This work may be ordered from Schwabe Verlag: _Un beau livre d'histories / _Eyn shoen Mayse bukh_ Traducton du yiddish, introduction et notes par Astrid Starck. Schriften der Universitaetsbibliotek Basel, Band 6/1 and 6/2 2004. 2 Baende. CXXXIV, 875 Seiten. Leinen mit Schutzumschlag. Fr. 128. / Euro 89.50. ISBN 3-7965-1091-4. ISSN 1422-7517. Schwabe AG Verlag Steinentorstrasse 13 4010 Basel / Tel. 061 278 95 65 / Fax 061 278 95 66 / verlag@schwabe.ch / www.schwabe.ch CH-4132 Muttenz Shweiz / Switzerland 2)---------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 June 2004 From: Michael Steinlauf Subject: Review of _Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches_, ed. Joel Berkowitz Joel Berkowitz, ed., _Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches_ (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), 269 pp. "Unique and almost unnatural is the path of Yiddish theater research." So begins Jacob Shatzky's introduction to the last (and nearly the only) Yiddish-language anthology devoted to serious scholarship on the history of Yiddish theater, _Arkhiv far der geshikhte fun yidishn teater un drame_. Published in Vilna in 1930 by Boris Kletskin, under the auspices of the Ester-Rokhl Kaminska Theater Museum and Archives of the YIVO, the collection was intended as the first volume of a serial publication (which never developed presumably because of lack of funding). Its five hundred pages include over twenty articles and another twenty-some annotated documents (materyaln tsu der geshikhte). Perusing the _Arkhiv_ today one feels immersed in a lost and legendary world . Yet Shatzky's volume has found contemporary successors. Over the past decade, four volumes of scholarship on Yiddish theater have been published in Poland and one in Israel: _Pamietnik Teatralny_ [Theater Journal] (Warsaw) 41 (1992); Jan Michalik and Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, eds., _Teatr zydowski w Krakowie: Studia i materialy_ [Yiddish Theater in Krakow: Studies and Materials] (Krakow, 1995); Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska and Malgorzata Leyko, eds., _Teatr zydowski w Polsce_ [Yiddish Theater in Poland] (Lodz, 1998); Malgorzata Leyko, ed., _Lodzkie sceny zydowskie_ [Yiddish Theater in Lodz] (Lodz, 2000); Mordechai Altshuler, ed., _Hateatron hayehudi bevrit hamoatsot: Mekhkarim, iyunim, teudot_ [Yiddish Theater in the Soviet Union: Studies, essays, documents] (Jerusalem, 1996). With the exception of _Teatr zydowski w Polsce_, which is a collection of conference papers, these volumes are similar in structure to Shatzky's _Arkhiv_. The five volumes comprise about 2000 pages. There has been nothing comparable in English, however, and that is why Joel Berkowitz's anthology is cause for celebration. More modest in size than its counterparts -- it contains eleven articles (all based on conference papers) along with an editor's introduction and bibliography -- it is a pioneering volume that necessarily lays a foundation, implies an agenda, for Yiddish theater scholarship in the English-speaking world. Because it is the first and as yet the only such publication in English, it will repay careful scrutiny, both in its parts and as a whole. Let's begin with the parts. Ahuva Belkin's article, "The 'Low' Culture of the Purimshpil," is a long overdue introduction to the _purimshpil_, that is, to the traditional roots of modern Yiddish theater. Belkin focuses on, rather than apologizes for, the bawdy, transgressive content of the _purimsphil_. She points out that until recently mainstream academic criticism has avoided literary analysis of such folk genres, and connects her own work to the postmodern interest in recovering the history of the Other. It should be noted, however, that in Yiddish scholarship at least, the matter has not been so straightforward. Belkin cites Tsinberg's and Erik's scorn for the _purimshpil_. But other scholars, such as Prylucki, Schiper, Shatzky and Weinreich, were hardly so dismissive. Indeed, Prylucki published the texts of meticulously transcribed _purimshpils_ nearly a hundred years ago. The work of these scholars, though rooted in outmoded notions of _folksshafn_ rather than a notion of the Other, should be given its due. Belkin is to be highly commended for subjecting the _purimshpil_ to the light of contemporary theory, specifically, the work of Victor Turner and above all Bakhtin. She correctly points out, however, that Bakhtin's ideas need to be modified when applied t o Jewish culture. Thus, while the _purimshpil_ is an excellent example of "popular festive" culture that mocks and degrades everything high and thereby turns the world upside-down, the relationship of even the most socially marginal Jews to their own high culture was more ambiguous than that of their Christian counterparts. This, as Belkin points out, is because Jews were nearly universally literate and therefore even the "carnivalesque" holiday of Purim maintained a relationship to text, to the Scroll of Esther, as well as to a host of related biblical and midrashic materials. A further distinction, one which Belkin does not explore, concerns the physicality of the carnivalesque, its link to eating, drinking, defecating, copulating, birthing and dying. What can be seen as unambiguous momentary freedom in the Christian context is complicated in the Jewish case by the association between physicality and the _goy_. Unlike for Bruegel's peasants or Rabelais' Gargantua, for Jews carnival designated something besides a taste of utopian freedom: it also meant momentarily embracing, indeed becoming, the Other. Liberating to be sure, though not unambiguously so. Nahma Sandrow's essay, "Romanticism and the Yiddish Theater," is the distillation of years of experience reflecting on, writing about, and working in Yiddish theater; her writing is suffused with a unique insider's sensibility. Unlike more narrowly academic scholars, Sandrow is unafraid of explaining, for example, that "[t]he tears that we nowadays dismiss as sentimental reaction were valued by nineteenth-century Romantics as nature's free response to truth -- an attitude that Yiddish theatregoers preserved well into the twentieth century" (55). Sandrow's use of the notion of Romanticism brings together some of the frequently noted characteristics of Yiddish theater -- what she terms its variety, emotionalism, nationalism, and rebellion -- within a single conceptual framework. Interesting things result; her perspective allows us to think, for example, of the aesthetic of Second Avenue operettas and 20th century expressionist dramas on a single continuum. She is also right to suggest the aesthetic roots of Yiddish theater in the late 18th and early 19th century; this helps explain why Schiller and Gutzkow, for example, were still popular on Yiddish stages in the early 20th century. As with other such syntheses, however useful, this one threatens to overstep its bounds. Sandrow concludes: "Indeed one could think of Yiddish theatre itself as a splendid Romantic rebel, making art in the teeth of starvation, persecution, migraton, assimilation, and -- as time passed -- the ageing of its own artists and audiences" (59). One could, of course, think of things this way, but at the risk of ignoring the shabby, crassly commercial side of this theater, the reality of so many popular productions. One can usefully apply the perspective of the Romantic to Yiddish theater history, but one must avoid thereby romanticizing that history. Barbara Henry's article, "Jewish Plays on the Russian Stage: St. Petersburg, 1905-1917," is problematic. The title is ambiguous: is the author's subject Russian-language plays, Yiddish-language plays, or both? In his introduction to the volume, Berkowitz says the article is about Yiddish plays in Russian translation (18, 24). But Henry's article devotes only two paragraphs to this subject (66-67, with additional footnotes on 70-71). These paragraphs are actually quite interesting; Henry suggests, for example, that in such plays, the Pale of Settlement functions like the Wild West in American literature. But unlike the rest of the article which is well-documented, this discussion is not footnoted. Where do her conclusions here come from? What Henry's piece is mainly about is not Russian-language plays but Yiddish plays staged in Russia. And what is astonishing about her article is the complete lack of Yiddish sources. Henry makes use exclusively of "[r]ecent scholarship based on Soviet and Russian sources and archives" (61) as well as her own research in Russian-language sources which she uses to "contradict...the conventional view of [Yiddish theater] as a moribund art form, revived only under the ministrations of the Bolshevik state" (62). Henry appears unaware that this view was conventional only in the Soviet Union. She then devotes herself to presenting Russian-language "evidence of a continuing Yiddish theatrical tradition both before and after the ban of 1883" (62). Henry does not cite a single Yiddish source. She is apparently unaware of Nokhem Oyslender's _Yidisher teater, 1887-1917_ (which, it happens, is based on exhaustive study of Russian newspaper reviews), as well as numerous other works, not to mention the Yiddish press and Zilbercweig's 6-volume _Leksikon_. What makes all this truly inexplicable is Henry's acknowledgement of the "comments on this chapter" of several reputable Yiddish theater scholars including Berkowitz (who in fact mentions Oyslender's work in his introduction) (61, 18). In recent years, new English-language studies of Goldfaden have begun to appear, most notably articles by Seth Wolitz and a dissertation by Alyssa Quint. This is an important development; previous scholarship on Goldfaden has particularly suffered from id eologically motivated approaches. More than ever, it appears, understanding Goldfaden in all his complexity, as batkhn, maskil, and impresario rolled into one, is critical to re-evaluating the theater which he was said to have fathered. The volume under review reinforces this trend with three essays on Goldfaden, by Paola Bertolone, Seth Wolitz, and Miroslawa Bulat. Bertolone's article, "The Text of Goldfaden's _Di kishefmakherin_ and the Operetta Tradition," is the product of a scholar clearly knowledgeable in European theater history. The article, however, lacks a consistent argument; it is frequently hard to follow and sometimes contradictory. Some of these may be problems of translation from the original Italian. For example, Bertolone seems to dismiss the accepted notion of Goldfaden as the father of modern Yiddish theater as "a myth." But she never deconstructs this myth and, moreover, later seems to support it by calling _Di kishefmakherin_ close to "the origins of Yiddish theater" and describing Goldfaden as "lay[ing] the foundations of the modern Yiddish theatre" (79, 83). She disagrees with Oyslender and Finkel about the existence of a clear break in Goldfaden's work after 1881, but provides little to substantiate a different view. It is also quite an over-simplification to describe Goldfaden as moving "from Haskalah to Zionism" (79). There is an interesting analysis of Hotsmakh that traces him back to the _purimshpiler_ tradition (82), but this is followed by an attempt to theorize about Goldfaden's use of theatrical space based on the cover illustrations of early published versions of _Di kishefmakherin_, illustrations with which, knowing contemporary publishing practices, Goldfaden probably had little to do. Bertolone concludes with brief descriptions of two later productions of _Di kishefmakherin_, Granovsky's at the GOSET and an Italian version staged in 1998 in Trieste. The latter, in which Bertolone was personally involved, seems to have been a wonderful transferral of Goldfaden into contemporary theatrical practice. Seth Wolitz's piece, "_Shulamis_ and _Bar kokhba_: Renewed Jewish Role Models in Goldfaden and Halkin," compares the cultural political subtexts of Goldfaden's most celebrated "national" creations with those of Halkin's recreations fifty years later in the Soviet Union. Wolitz begins with a marvelous formulation of the national context of Yiddish theater: "the Jewish stage dared to become the lost sovereign land of Israel, restoring through performance the national homeland of the past and the future" (88 ). This is a far cry from Zionism. Wolitz then offers a fine analysis of Goldfaden's _Shulamis_ as a heroine rooted both in the _eyshes khayl_ tradition and, even more so, that of Western Romantic opera. Wolitz's discussion, drawing on intimate familiarity with both Jewish and European sources, is exemplary. Among the delights he throws our way is the fact that Goldfaden's most common link to European operetta was probably by way of contemporary Ukrainian musical melodramas (91). He also points to the biblical/orientalist turn in mid-nineteenth century European opera that doubtless provided, perhaps more than midrash, a context for the world of _Shulamis_ (92). In contrast to Bertolone, who sees an artist vacillating as he creates a new genre, Wolitz insists on a Goldfaden who "knew precisely what he was doing" (90), including the creation of tableaus and the musical structure of his plays. Wolitz frames his discussion of Halkin's work by noting that the larger issue of the Soviet turn to folk themes as a way of beating bourgeois art is still insufficiently explored. This is a particularly important matter in our own little world, since much of the valuable Soviet scholarship on Yiddish theater proceeds out of these currents. In the late 1930s, a time of shallow "proletarian" art (as well as deadly peril for Soviet artists), the use of folk sources at least offered audiences a bit of depth and traditional resonance. For Halkin, as Wolitz shows, the result was a folklorized Goldfaden projecting a "bizarre peasant or proletarian vision of the single-class state" threatened by invaders (97). Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky immediately comes to mind. Miroslawa Bulat's study, "From Goldfaden to Goldfaden in Cracow's Jewish Theatres," is among the fruits of over a decade of assiduous research into the history of Yiddish theater in the author's home town of Krakow. Bulat commands Yiddish as well as Polish sources; among the Polish scholars who have written about Yiddish theater in recent years, she is the only one to have made Yiddish theater her exclusive focus. Her article demonstrates the possibilities of such a monographic approach, but also its limitations. Bulat has fully exploited newspaper and archival sources (in one case the Ringelblum Archives), and is thereby able to trace sixty years of successive productions of Goldfaden in Krakow. The sources, typically, reveal much more about the "art" productions of Weichert, Manger and Zygmunt Turkow than about the earlier "traditional" popular ones. Bulat chronicles the polemics that developed around the "art" productions, which typically turned around their "authenticity." To learn about the "traditional" productions, however, one can't limit oneself to Krakow. One needs a sense of the development of Yiddish theater in Poland as a whole, along with theoretical and theater-historical perspectives from which to interpret these developments. Bulat emphasizes the apparently unique situation in Krakow, where the "better" Yiddish theater was nurtured by a small group of Polish-speaking critics and cultural activists. She notes the coexistence during the interwar years of "traditional" and "artistic" productions of Goldfaden. Was this coexistence, as she suggests, a function of Krakow's general cultural conservatism? Until the situation in other cities, and especially Warsaw, is examined, it is too soon to say. Many contemporary critics regarded "traditional " versions of Goldfaden as primitive, while the new "artistic" productions were hailed as nationally creative. But when we factor in Wolitz's observatons about the national content of Goldfaden and, indeed, popular Yiddish theater as a whole, the movement "from Goldfaden to Goldfaden" becomes more nuanced -- and more interesting. The volume under review includes an article about Yiddish theater in Vienna, and two about Yiddish theater in London. Brigitte Dalinger's "Yiddish Theatre in Vienna, 1880-1938" is an admirable survey, with particularly interesting material on popular songs and plays with topical references that were common at the turn of the century. But would it not help, for example, to relate the history of Yiddish theater in Vienna to the development, beginning during World War I and lasting for about a decade, of a flourishing Viennese Yiddish literary scene populated by emigre modernist poets and writers? Here and elsewhere in the volume as a whole, considerably more could have been done to situate theater history amidst larger cultural currents. Dalinger concludes by pointing out that "for every Moscow, New York, or Warsaw, there were many Kharkovs, Philadelphias, and Viennas" (117). The history of Yiddish theater in the latter cities is eminently worthy of study. In our little world, however, we still know so little about the former that turning to the latter sometimes seems like an indulgence. Leonard Prager's article, "The Censorship of Sholem Asch's _Got fun nekome_, London, 1946," is a fascinating note on an entirely unknown (and odd) corner of Yiddish theater history. Prager illuminates a particular incident, the circumstances surrounding the banning of Asch's controversial play by the Lord Chamberlain's office, which licenced all new plays performed in Britain. Even more important, Prager presents a new research source, first uncovered by Brad Sabin Hill (currently head librarian at YIVO): the archives of the Lord Chamberlain's plays at the British Library. Prager provides a useful appendix listing applications to the Lord Chamberlain's office, by author and by date (1880-1961), for licenses to perform Yiddish plays. David Mazower's essay, "Stories in Song: The _Melo-deklamatsyes_ of Joseph Markovitsh," focuses on another discovery: a collection of dramatic poems set to music which Mazower unearthed by recovering forgotten manuscripts from veteran Yiddish actors in England. Mazower presents a synopsis of Markovitsh's life set amidst the Yiddish theater in London, then conducts us into what Mazower plausibly argues were Markovitsh's greatest creations. Mazower suggests that these _melo-deklamatsyes_ may represent a unique art form. Yet such works certainly had antecedents in the tradition of _forleyzungen_, dramatic readings of literary and dramatic works, occasionally with musical accompaniment, going back at least to the turn of the twentieth century and perhaps earl ier, to the Broder Singers. In a marvelous bit of serendipity, I was recently contacted by Paula Eisenstein Baker, whose forthcoming edition of the chamber music of Leo Zeitlin includes compositions called _melodeklamatsyes_ that were composed in Vilna in 1922. When she asked me whether I had ever heard of the genre or whether it may have been unique to Zeitlin, I was delighted to be able to refer her to Mazower's article. A history of this genre clearly remains to be written. John Klier's article, "'Exit, Pursued by a Bear': The Ban on Yiddish Theatre in Imperial Russia," shows what can emerge from rigorous archival work in recently accessible Russian archives. Klier is rooted in comprehensive knowledge not only of state policies toward Jews but toward other minorities in the Russian Empire. He succeeds in illuminating a key event in Yiddish theater history, the 1883 imperial ban on Yiddish theater. This event has heretofore been wrapped in the kind of hearsay and legend that, as Joel Berkowitz points out in his introduction, is typical of much of what has been passed down to us as theater history. Klier convincingly argues that the ban was not ideologically motivated, as previously believed, but rather the product of typical low-level antisemitism according to which anything not specifically permitted the Jews was prohibited. This analysis of the ban's origins helps explain the well-known phenomena of its inconsistent enforcement throughout the empire, as well as the problems connected with its supposed lifting. Klier shows that even after the First Russian Revolution, which previous scholarship has seen as a turning point in the legal fortunes of Yiddish theater, Yiddish troupes were sometimes kept from performing. The ban, casually instituted, was apparently never lifted, although after 1905 it seems to have been increasingly ignored. In her article, "The Child Who Wouldn't Grow Up: Yiddish Theatre and its Critics," Nina Warnke conducts us into the little-known world of American Yiddish theater criticism. This was a discourse essentially created by a group of radical intellectuals with Russian populist / socialist values. Its cornerstone was a rejection of so-called "folk" performances in favor of "realism," which in practice amounted to the rejection of Goldfaden, and all the more so of his _shund_ epigones Hurwitz and Lateiner, and the canonization of Jacob Gordin. The most commonly used trope was that of educating children to be adults. Sometimes Warnke does not make it sufficiently clear that she is only talking about the United States. We should remember that by the first decade of the twentieth century, in Warsaw Y. L. Peretz was calling Gordin a _shund_ writer and working and reworking his own dream play, _Bay nakht afn altn mark_. Then came the Vilna Troupe, Habima, GOSET, Yung Teater, and other innovative companies, followed by an entourage of enraptured Eastern European critics. Warnke's central argument is sound and important: that we inherit a historiography that has marginalized popular theater, and that today we need to turn precisely to this "despised 'child,' the Hurwitzes and Lateiners, and Gimpls and Mishurats, the methods and messages they used, and the audiences they entertained...not from the vantage point of their critics...but as a legitimate art form" (216). As we do this, however, we should remember to peruse Shatzky's _Arkhiv_ as well as the work of Soviet scholars of the same period. Here we will discover pioneering approaches to Yiddish folk and popular theater. These writers' assumptions are rather different from our own, of course, but they are equally far from those that motivated turn-of-the-century American Yiddish critics. In his introduction, Joel Berkowitz provides a useful sketch of the historiography of Yiddish theater. He correctly stresses that "artistic and ideological agendas have driven much of the research on the subject" (12). Like Warnke, he emphasizes the need for research on popular Yiddish theater, whose history has been largely ignored in favor of "art" theater. The latter, after all, constituted only a small proportion of what Jewish audiences saw on the stage. Historians must address the history of so-called _shund_, and do so using methods that are rather different from those employed in the study of high culture. >From our contemporary vantage point, it is less its hoped-for parity with other great national theaters than its powerful popular presence that may be most attractive about Yiddish theater. Berkowitz also correctly points to one of the key difficulties in our field, the fact that "[m]uch of what has been written about the subject has tended to recycle half-truths, unconfirmed anecdotes, misconceptions, and perhaps even outright lies" (12). John Klier's article, as noted above, disentangles one important case of such confusion. Unfortunately, Berkowitz unwittingly provides another example in his introduction. Discussing the origins of Yiddish theater, he cites accounts of a professional Yiddish theater in Warsaw in 1838 performing the work of "a very talented young actor and playwright, Herr Isaac Shertsshpiler of Vienna" (4). Berkowitz gives Sholem Perlmuter as his source, and follows his suggestion that the name in question may be Shoyshpiler; Perlmuter in turn cites Weinreich.[1] But twenty-five years before Perlmuter, Jacob Shatzky had already cast doubt on these accounts by citing a contemporary claim that they were "pure fabrication" and "a satire." The likelihood that this was in fact the case is strengthened if we reject the emendation of _sherts_ to _shoy_ and recall that in German, _scherz_ means 'joke'. This matter clearly merits further research.[2] Shatzky, supplemented by recent Polish scholarship, is also our source for the earliest reliable reference to Yiddish theater in Warsaw, an account of performances of plays on biblical themes with songs and dances staged at a dancehall known as Pod Trzema Murzynami [Under the Three Negroes] in 1832.[3] There is also a more general problem in Berkowitz's introduction, and it concerns the manner in which he configures the historiographical field. "Just as New York looms large over American-based studies, Moscow has dominated the attention of scholars writing about the Yiddish theatre in Europe," writes Berkowitz (17). In a footnote, he then cites work that has been done "in other areas of Eastern Europe," first in Rumania and finally in Poland (18). But this skews both history and historiography. For one thing, it marginalizes the history of Yiddish theater in interwar Poland, which was extraordinary in terms of the number and quality of its "artistic" companies as well as the size and social composition of its audiences. By the 1930s, Yiddish theater in America was declining; American Jews were bringing their aging parents to the Yiddish theater while they themselves went off to Hollywood movies. In the Soviet Union, for all of GOSET's international acclaim, Yiddish theater faced dwindling audiences even as deadly shadows lengthened around Mikhoels and his colleagues. In Poland, young audiences of _folksinteligentn_ thronged to the "better" theaters and the literary cabarets, while masses of _yidn fun a gants yor_ filled the _shund_ theaters. Even as Yiddish publishing in Poland began to decline in the 1930s, Yiddish theater attendance surged. An enormous amount was written about Yiddish theater as well, both reviews and historical studies, not to mention the recent works cited at the beginning of this review. Until the Holocaust, Poland remained the world center of Yiddish theater, as it remained the world center of Yiddish culture as a whole, for its three and a half million Jews continued to represent the most direct contemporary link to the entire history of Ashkenaz. A pioneering work that first brings the field of Yiddish theater history into English-language scholarship has a responsibility to make such things clear. While there is nothing wrong with presenting what one has, however marginal (e.g., Yiddish theater in Krakow but not in Warsaw), one does have a responsibility to make one's limitations explicit. There are also a number of editorial oversights in the volume. Wolitz, for example, states that "biblical plays could pass muster before the Russian authorities as part of the Western cultural tradition" (88), but Klier suggests otherwise (164). Wolitz also mentions the story, discredited by Klier, that it was a performance of Goldfaden's _Bar kokhba_ that provoked the Yiddish theater ban (89). Henry states, incorrectly, that the ban on Yiddish theater expired in 1908 (61). Such errors should have been corrected and discrepancies resolved, or at least noted. And why does Bertolone cite Goldfaden's titles in German and not in Yiddish (77, 83)? Berkowitz's introduction is to be commended for the useful annotated bibliographical information in his footnotes, which directs us, among other things, to actors' memoirs published in book form; studies of actors, playwrights, and directors; and works on Yiddish theater in Argentina (nn. 22, 25, 33). But his bibliography (221-55) seems to have been compiled less carefully. Footnotes from the articles reappear here in bibliographic format. But some of these works are relevant only in the specific context of the articles in which they are cited (e.g, Ben-Sion's _Evrei reformatory_ or Dregel's _Khorosho sshityi frak_) and have little place in a general bibliography. The entry, "Diamant, Zaynvl, _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_," makes no sense unless we know, from the context of Bertolone's article, that Diamant is the author of the _Leksikon_ article on Goldfaden. Why cite the same article by Fuks-Mansfeld twice, once in Dutch and once in German? What sense does it make simply to list _Ale verk fun mendele moykher sforim_? On the other hand, one searches in vain, for example, for the theater criticism of Y.-L. Peretz or the scholarship of A. Gurshteyn and Moyshe Beregovski. Nevertheless and above all, with all its strengths and faults -- a beginning! Michael Steinlauf ---------------- Notes 1 _Yidishe dramaturgn un teater-kompozitors_ (New York, 1952), 27-28. 2 Jacob Shatzky, "Tsushtayer tsu der geshikhte fun dem far-goldfadenishn teater," _Yidish teater_ (Warsaw) 1 (1927): 288-90, citing _Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums_ 2 (1838), nrs. 89 and 155, 3 (1839), nr. 12; these accounts in turn cite the _Journal de Francfort_ as their source. 3 Jacob Shatzky, "Yidisher teater in Varshe in der ershter helft 19tn yorhundert," _Yivo bleter_ 14 (1939), 2-3; Faustyna Toeplitz, "'Pod Trzema Murzynami': Z dziejow teatru zydowskiego w Warszawie," _Pamietnik Teatralny_ 41 (1992): 187-91; Redakcja [Zbig niew Raszewski], "Szesc glos do artykulu Jakuba Szackiego," ibid., 193-209. 3)-------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 June 2004 From: Astrid Starck Subject: A French translation of the 1602 editio princeps of _Mayse bukh_ Many TMR readers will be familiar with Moses Gaster's two-volume English translation of the _Mayse bukh_ published by the Jewish Publication Society in 1934 [_Ma'aseh Book; Book of Jewish Tales and Legends Translated from the Judeo-German_]. Fewer TMR readers, perhaps, will identify Freud's famous Anna O. with the feminist Bertha von Pappenheim who was engaged with the _Mayse bukh_ (as well as a translator of Mary Wollstonecrafts' "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" into German). Like Gaster five year s later, Pappenheim based her work on the 1723 edition [See _Allerlei Geschichten, Maasse-Buch: Buch der Sagen und Legenden aus Talmud und Midrasch nebst Volkserzahlungen in Judisch-Deutscher Spache_ / nach der Ausg. des Maase-Buches Amsterdam 1723 bearb . von Bertha Pappenheim ; mit einem Geleitwort von I. Elbogen (Frankfurt a.M. : J. Kauffmann, 1929)]. We are not surprised that the women's activist Pappenheim was drawn to the _Tsenerene_ (See Jacob ben Isaac aus Janow. _Zeenah u-reenah, Frauenbibel_ / Ubersetzung und Auslegung des Pentateuch von Jacob Ben Isaac aus Janow ; nach dem Judisch-Deutschen bearbeitet von Bertha Pappenheim ; hrsg. vom Judischen Frauenbund (Frankfurt a. M. : J. Kauffmann, 1930). Gaster's translation, as he himself explains, was based on the Amsterdam edition of 1723. Gaster writes: "The present translation is based on the Amsterdam edition of 1723, which is identical with that of 1701, and, with the exceptions noted above and some dialectal variations, with the edition of 1602. All these books are extremely rare, and very few complete copies of any of them are known. The Amsterdam edition forms an exception in the manner of completeness." (p. xii) More recently, Ulf Diederichs' G erman version of the _Mayse bukh_, like Gaster's, follows the Amsterdam edition of 1732. [See _Das Ma'assebuch_. Altjiddische Erzaehlkunst. Mit 33 Bildern. Ins Hochdeutsche Uebertragen, kommentiert und herausgegeben von Ulf Diederichs. [Muenchen 2003. 845 S., Fr. 25.20.] French translation by Astrid Starck of title page of the _Mayse bukh_ Un beau livre d'histoires Approchez, messieurs et mesdames, venez voir ce beau livre d'histoires qui, jamais, au grand jamais, depuis que le monde existe, n'est sorti d'une imprimerie. Il contient plus de trois cents histoires faites toutes a partir de la _Gemara_, du _Rabota_ et du _Behaye_. Et des histoires de rabbi Judah le Pieux, il ne vous en manquera pas une seule. Vous y trouverez aussi les histoires du _Sefer hasidim_, du _Sefer ha-mousar_ et du _Yalqout_, comme vous le constaterez a la fin dans ma table des matieres. Voila pourquoi, mes cheres dames, vous avez devant vous les livres en yiddish au grand complet. A present, vous possederez meme la _Gemara_ en yiddish. Ainsi vous aurez la Torah dans toute son integralite. Par les bons soins de Jacob fils d'Abraham, qu'il repose en paix, de la sainte communaute de Meseritch en Lituanie Ici a Bale la grande en l'an 362 selon le petit comput Chez Conrad Waldkirch. 4)------------------------------------------------------ Date: 16 June 2004 From: Zelda Newman Subject: The Contribution of Ayzik Zaretski to Yiddish Linguistics The Contribution of Ayzik Zaretski to Yiddish Linguistics Even if Zaretski had written nothing but _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ and issued only the 1926 edition, he still would deserve a place of honor in the annals of Yiddish linguistics. The virtues of _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ are not immediately obvious. This grammar which proceeds from the level of morphemes and ranges upwards to the level of sentence groups, does not have any new theoretical message. It is, as its title suggests, a practical, not a theoretical grammar. It claims to be formalist in methodology (in the manner of the Soviet formalists of the 1920s) and it does in fact use formalist methodology. There are no particularly new, theoretical insights to be found here. Why, then, is it so important to the history of Yiddish linguistics? Its importance lies in the ambitious goals it sets for itself, and in the way in which it piles data upon data in an effort to gain an understanding of the facts. Zaretski envisioned his grammar as a bi-directional grammar: in its first direction it was to proceed form sound to meaning, thus taking the forms of grammar as primitives and meaning as a derivative notion; in its second direction it was to proceed from meaning to sound, thus taking meaning as primitive and the forms of grammar as derivatives. The great bulk of _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ is taken up with the First Direction; the Second Direction is allotted only a very small portion of the whole book. But it is this Second Direction that is most ambitious. Here Zaretski sets up outlines that have yet to be filled in by any linguist since then, outlines that could serve as lifetime projects for future linguists. One such outline concerns itself with what Zaretski calls _objective relations_. Here we find a quasi-formal logic whose basic terms are topic and predicate. We should note that Zaretski does not say here how _topic_ is to be related to _subject_, or in what way _predicate_ differs from and should be related to _verb_. But the outline is there nonetheless. A second attempt at getting at the logic of sentences uses the terms _agent_, _action_, _circumstance of action_. Once again there is no discussion of the ways one might relate _agent_ to _subject_. Nor are we told why or when to prefer one set of logical terms over the other. The answers may not be there in the grammar, but the challenges clearly are. In addition to the _objective relations_, there are also something Zaretski calls _subjective relations_. Under this heading Zaretski outlines, once again very schematically, the grammatical ramifications of what has come to be called the speech situation. Here we find notes on the relationship of the speaker and the addressee to each other and to the utterance at hand. For example , in order to explain the meaning of words like: _gor_, _dokh_, _den_, _take_, we need to refer not only to the speaker's attitude to the facts at hand, but also his attitude toward the addressee and the addressee's state of mind. One wonders what Zaretski might have done with these outlines had he not been subjected to silence as a result of the Soviet crackdown on Yiddish in the thirties and forties. The innovative Second Direction that appears in the first edition of _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ did not appear again in either the second or the third editions. Apparently its experimental nature was not looked upon favorably. In any case it this Second Direction that makes the first edition of _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ interesting to historians and challenging to contemporary linguists. So much for the partially realized promise; let us proceed now to the genuine achievement. I said before that Zaretski's second major achievement is the way in which he piles data upon data in an effort to achieve understanding. As any linguist knows, a good deal of the truly creative work of a linguist is the finding of solid, interesting data, not data that is chosen for the way in which it obligingly confirms the validity of a proposed rule, but data which fits no rule but `feels' as though it shoul d. And one form, or one phrase, or one sentence, for that matter, will not do. In order to be certain that the phenomenon is not simply an idiosyncratic quirk for the linguist, there should be more than one form or one phrase, or one sentence. And if the data is taken from newspapers, books, and converstions, if, in other words, it is a true sample of the living language, then so much the better. This is the greatness of _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_: it is chock-full of interesting data. Its data i s taken from newspapers, from the classics, and from conversations. There are times when Zaretski's explanation of the data is stunningly correct; there are times when his explanation is only partially correct. But even when the explanation is somewhat lacking, we know how to proceed to amend or revise because the data is there. An example of data for which we are given a completely satisfying explanation is that on stress placement in noun compounds If we look at the following chart we will see why the rule for stress placement is initially vexing: [To make certain readers see these columns despite the problems of formatting in ascii, I give the columnar data in linear form: --ed.] 1. ADJ + NOUN: zup lefl, zikher nodl, shtum loshn 2. NOUN + ADJ: oder sheni, oylem ho'emes, kise hakoved 3. NOUN + NOUN: yeshiva bokher, tahare breyt, tog bukh 4. NOUN + NOUN: goles shpanye, eys tsore, beys medresh A. tate-mame, dovid hameylekh B. oreman, guterfraynd C. eser makes, nayn teg, taryeg mitsves BUT drayfus, drayek >From a look at column 1 we might think that the first element of a compound takes stress. When we compare this with column 2, we revise our notion. It is the second element (in this case, the adjective) which is stressed, we say. But this formulation does not help us in deciding where the stress is placed in N+N compound . As we see, sometimes the initial element of a N+N compound is stressed (as in column 3) , and sometimes the second element of the compound is stressed (as in column 4). Before we give Zaretski's explanation, we might note that it will not help to suggest that the entries of column 3 behave differently form those of column 4 because the column 3 entries are _Germanic_, whereas the column 4 entries are _Hebraic_. True, the pattern that is exemplified by column 3 is _Germanic_, whereas the pattern exemplified by column 4 is _Hebraic_, but both patterns are so wholly Yiddishized that Hebrew elements can be found in the Germanic type (witness _yeshive bokher_), and Germanic elements can be found in the Hebraic type (witness _goles shpanye_). The explanation, Zaretski says, lies in the head/modifier relationship. Wherever the head/modifier relationship obtains within a compound, then the modifier is stressed. This explains the stress movements from initial stress in column 3 (where there is a prenominal modifier), to final stress in column 4 (where there is a post-nominal modifier). The entries under headings A, B, and C are given to show that the general rule does have modifications. The entries of A have no obvious head/modifier relationship. In these cases (the semantics of which Zaretski discusses in some detail ), the rule is simply that the second element is stressed. The entries of B are not true compounds, as we can see from the possibility of inflecting them internally for number and gender: _oreman_/_oremelayt_, _guterfraynd_/_gutefrayndine_. Thus, if there is no true compound (as in B), or if there is no head/modifier relationship (as in A), then the second element is stressed. What of column C, where we have true compounds, and a head/modifier relationship? The answer, it would seem , is that compounds with numbers behave erratically; sometimes the stress is on the modifier; sometimes it is on the head. What is particularly nice about this explanation is that it holds true for adjectival compounds also. Though I will not go into details, the basic rules remain the same: where there is no head / modifier relationship, the second element is stressed, wher e there is such a relationship, the modifier is stressed, and compounds with numbers behave erratically. Another interesting analysis is the analysis of word order. This is one of those cases in which the explanation is neither totally explicated nor totally correct, but, because we are presented with so much data and the right direction, we can take Zaretski's explanation further and obtain a clearer picture than the one he presents. The most interesting facts to emerge from Zaretski's data on word order are those that surface when the topic of the sentence does not coincide with the subject of the sentence. Zaretki does not mention the notion of topic here; he simply presents the data. But there is no doubt that the data point to this analysis. Consider the following sentence: _Bay di kinder, ober_, _iz_ di natur nit zi shtarbt, nit zi shteyt tkhiyes ha-mesim oyf. Why is there an _iz_ in this sentence? Zaretski says that it is a _fictive_ verb inserted so that the second place should be occupied by the inflected verb. But that is only part of the picture. The subject of this sentence is _di natur_, its predicates are _shtarbt nit_ and _shteyt nit oyf tkhiyes hamesim_. What , then, is the function of the phrase _bay di kinder_? It, I submit, is the topic of the sentence. And when the topic _place_, typically the sentence-initial place, has been filled by something which is neither a subject, nor a predication setting, then this topic position is followed by the _fictive_ verb _iz_. After this, the sentence proceeds along its normal course, with the sentence subject in [the new] first place and the _true_ inflected verb of the sentence in [the new] second place. Thus a careful analysis of Zaretski's data leads us to the realization that Yiddish has a formal way of distinguishing topics of a sentence that are not subjects of that sentence. (A more detailed discussi on of this question can be found in my dissertation "An annotation of Zaretski's _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_" and in my paper "The Discoursal _iz_ of Yiddish".) There are many other questions touched upon lightly by Zaretski which merit further investigation The questions are there and the data is there. What remains is for serious students of Yiddish to read _Praktishe yidishe gramatik_ carefully and pursue answers to the questions it poses. Zelda Newman Lehman College, CUNY znewman@lehman.cuny.edu -------------------------------------------------------- End of The Mendele Review Vol. 08.007 Editor, Leonard Prager Associate Editor, Joseph Sherman Subscribers to Mendele (see below) automatically receive The Mendele Review. 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