The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
---------------------------------------------------------
Contents of Vol. 12.014 [Sequential No. 205]
Date: 25 July 2008
1)
This issue of The Mendele Review
2) "The Jerusalem Conference: A Century Of Yiddish
1908-2008" (Yechiel Szeintuch)
3) A Note on Avrom Karpinovitsh (ed.)
4) "Zikhroynes fun a farshnitener teater heym" [Part One – Yiddish Text] (Avrom
Karpinovitsh)
5) "Memoirs of a Lost Theatre Home" [Part One –
English Translation by Shimen Yofe]
[Shimon Joffe]
6) First Afro-American to Earn Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies
(Jennifer Hambrick)
7) "Gerekhtikeyt"
('Justice') from Y.-Y. Shvarts' Epic Kentuki (Robert Goldenberg)
8) Yiddish versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin (Robert Goldenberg)
9) Periodicals Received: Yidishe
heftn no. 127/8 [July/August 2008]. Issue theme:
10) Cover of songbook, Mir trogn
a gezang [includes Gebirtig's
"Motele"] (Eleanor Mlotek)
11) "Motele" lyrics
and score (Eleanor
Mlotek)
12) "Motele" sung by Menakhem Bernshteyn
13) Portrait and biographical sketch of Menakhem
Bernshteyn [Menachem
Bernstein], Haifa-based folksinger and reciter.
1) ---------------------------------------------------
Date: 25 July 2008
From: ed.
Subject: This
issue of TMR
This somewhat
crowded issue of TMR welcomes the first Afro-American Yiddish scholar to
our Yiddish studies community, reproduces "Gerekhtikeyt"
('Justice'), a moving section of Y.-Y. Shvarts' epic Kentuki (1948), and dwells briefly on Yiddish
versions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. A newcomer to
Yiddish translation gives us his rendition of an Avrom
Karpinovitsh text, and we conclude with a section on
the Gebirtig song "Motele",
sung by another newcomer to the TMR.
2) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Yechiel Szeintuch
Subject: "The
One reason for
planning the conference was to address three major issues about Yiddish and
Yiddish culture in the last one hundred years:
1. Yiddish cultural history in the last century.
2. Existing active Yiddish culture in the Jewish world.
3. What to reinforce and what future projects that serve Jewish studies to plan
for.
The organizing
committee is interested in receiving feedback concerning these three issues.
Replies will be distributed to conference participants by the Dov Sadan Project at the
Please write
to dovsadaninst@mscc.huji.ac.il
The Organizing
Committee
3) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: ed.
Subject: A Note on Avrom
Karpinovitsh
Avrom Karpinovitsh
was born in 1913 in Vilna, the city which became his lifelong subject. During World War Two he lived in the
Reference: Nayer leksikon
fun der yidisher literature,
Vol. 8, cols. 147-8.
4) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Avrom Karpinovitsh
Subject: "Zikhroynes
fun a farshnitener teater heym" [Part One – Yiddish Text]
"Zikhroynes fun a farshnitener teater heym" [Part One –
Yiddish Text]
5) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Shimen Yofe [Shimon Joffe]
Subject: "Memoirs of a Lost Theatre
Home" [Part One – English Translation by Shimen Yofe]
"Memories of a Lost Theater Home" (Part One)
When theater-goers were scarce and income low, and the task of running
the household became unbearable, my mother would burst out with "I wish
this business would go to the devil." My father at such moments would look
at her with his dark shining eyes, full of accusation, and groan. "Rachel,
Rachel, how can you say such a thing?" My mother, out of regard for him,
would not reply. She would give a wave
of her hand and go off to the kitchen to prepare a modest meal. Had she held my
father's look for just a moment, she would have seen herself reflected in her
own curse. The theater burned in my father's eyes – burned and was not
consumed.
*
My father's father was a rabbi in Slobodke, a
poor section of
There was another apprentice working in the printing shop, a relative
of the partner Shriftzetser. The two boys became
attached to one another. Both of them, while bending over a layout of a page of
the Talmud were carried away by thoughts of other worlds: bright and colorful,
the opposite of the leaden gray of the printing works. My father's friend later
became well known as the actor Shlomo Shriftzetser, a masterful portrayer of Sholem
Aleichem characters on the stage.
In later years my father and Shlomo Shriftzetser continued to recount youthful stories
about each other. Again and again, my
father would tell how Shriftzetser dressed up as a
devil and frightened the workers out of their wits. Shriftzetser
related how on one occasion my father
was found hanging upside down in the attic and was quickly taken down -- he
wanted to know how long he could hang head down since he was preparing himself to become a circus acrobat.
Shlomo Shriftzetser's
path to the theater was swift. He was an actor body and soul. My father, on the
other hand, never became an actor. Though he himself lived in constant inner
turmoil, he could not give expression to this condition. The quiet background
of a rabbi's home constrained him. He tried his powers on the stage just once,
and that was by accident. The actor Ayzik Samberg,
one of the most prominent players on the Yiddish stage in the period between
the two World Wars, was taken ill. He had the role of the Messenger in Anski's Der Dybbuk, a very successful play in the thirties. In my father's theater, it played for a whole
season to full houses, even pleasing my mother. And now, a misfortune occurred
-- Ayzek Samburg took ill
and there was the possibility that a few performances might have to be
canceled. My father dug in his heels. Performances that draw crowds cannot be
canceled, he declared. And he also didn't want to lose the income, so badly
needed to run the business. My father convinced the actors' committee headed by
Avrom Moreski, who played
the Miropil Tsadek
('saintly man') in this play, that he could substitute for Aizik
Samberg until the latter recovered "A beard I have," he said -- my
father started his beard when a young man -- " so I'll put on a kapote ('kaftan') and say a few words."
He made his first and last debut in the role of the Messenger at a
Saturday matinee, walking onto the stage dressed in his own beard and a kapote and quietly whispered the
well known words "The bridegroom will arrive in time." Someone in the
audience didn't hear him clearly and shouted out, "Karpinovitch,
talk louder." My father promptly answered:
"I am not an actor, I am only replacing Samberg, so I don't have
to talk louder." With this appearance my father bid farewell to the stage
for good. He no longer wanted to replace anyone, even at the cost of closing
the booking office.
My father came to the theater indirectly. While his friend Shlomo Shriftzetser toured
*
World War One broke out. Hunger reigned in my mother's cast iron
cooking pot. My father spent whole days running about looking for bread to feed
his family. An honored ancestral name came to his aid -- the rabbi of Shnipishok,
my grandfather's friend, sent my father to talk to the city commandant about
founding a free kitchen to feed the poor in the suburb of
My father convinced the general to release food for the free kitchen.
In this he was assisted by a soldier who worked in the staff office. The
soldier's name was Arnold Zweig, later to become famous as the author of The Case of
Sergeant Grischa, a work based on a true case that came to
the author's attention while serving in Vilna. Arnold Zweig, in spite of his
being assimilated and far removed from Jewishness,
took much to heart father's desire to save Jews from hunger. I remember, as if
through a thick fog, the
The theater, it would seem, was father's fate written in the heavens.
Among the cooking pots in the kitchen, a bit of theater was played out by a
dark pretty little girl, who, like a kitten, would rub herself against father's legs. Her mother worked in the
kitchen peeling potatoes. The little girl later was celebrated on placards under
the name Khayele Kushner. She acted in the Yiddish
theater in
____________________________
Avrom Karpinovitsh
[Abraham Karpinowitz], "Zikhroynes
fun a farshnitener teater heym," in Vilna, mayn Vilna, Tel-Aviv: I.L. Peretz Publishing House, 1993, pp. 85-100. [Note: this text
has been arbitrarily divided into three parts for the convenience of the
reader.]
6) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Jennifer Hambrick, The New Standard
Subject: First Afro-American to Earn
Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies
The url below points to a popular article about a fledgling
African-American Yiddish scholar whom TMR is pleased to welcome to the Yiddish studies
community. Following the article are comments of a number of readers concerned
that Yiddish in roman letters be written according to the well-established Yivo rules – a sentiment that TMR vigorously
encourages.
http://www.tnscolumbus.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2932
7) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Robert Goldenberg
Subject: "Gerekhtikeyt"
('Justice') from Y.-Y. Shvarts' Epic Kentuki
"Gerekhtikeyt" ('Justice', 1922)
8)
---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Robert Goldenberg
Subject: Yiddish versions of Uncle
Tom's Cabin
In his
overview article "America" in the groundbreaking Encyclopaedia
of Jews in Eastern Europe (Yale/Yivo,
2008), Eli Lederhendler writes: "The prolific Ayzik-Meyer Dik published a
Yiddish version of Uncle Tom's Cabin
(Di shklaferay, oder
Di Laybegenshaft, 1887) to air the issues of
slavery and freedom, incidentally Judaizing the story
(Uncle Tom and his emancipated family convert and join the Jewish
people!)" [p. 33]
On the title
page of Dik's work we read a typical promotional
passage: "This is a frightening and wonderful true story that happened in
America a little over forty years ago and that involved a certain Negro (Moor)
"Uncle Tom" who was the slave of a certain Jewish planter (estate
owner) Abraham Shelby. This story is written in English and has been translated
in all languages. Now we have a Yiddish translation with a fine 'Introduction'
by A.M.D . …Vilna, 1887.
A cover of a 1911 translation of Uncle Tom's
Cabin by Y. Yofe is given below.
9) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Yidishe heftn
Subject: Periodicals Received: Yidishe heftn no.
127/8 [July/August 2008]. Issue theme:
10) ---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Eleanor Mlotek
Subject: Cover of songbook, Mir trogn a gezang [includes Gebirtig's "Motele"]
11)
---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: Eleanor Mlotek
Subject: "Motele”
lyrics and score
12)
---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: ed.
Subject: "Motele"
sung by Menakhem Bernshteyn
"Motele" sung by Menakhem Bernshteyn
Artist: Menakhem Bernshteyn [Menachem Bernstein] (Please see next section for Portrait,
Biographical Sketch)
Accompanist: Haggai Spokoiny
Recording Technician: Tal Daniel
13)
---------------------------------------------------
Date:
25 July 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Portrait and biographical sketch
of Menakhem Bernshteyn [Menachem Bernstein], Haifa-based folksinger and reciter.
|
|
Menakhem Bernstein was born in |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review Issue
12.014
Editor, Leonard Prager
Editorial Associate, Robert Goldenberg
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