Yiddish Theatre Forum [YTF]
Joel Berkowitz, Editor
______________________________________________________
Vol. 04.001
Date: 24 February 2005
From: Jerold C. Frakes
Book Review: Isaak Euchel, _Reb Henoch, oder: Woá tut me damit. Eine jdische
Kom”die der Aufkl„rungszeit_. Ed. Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka, with
Delphine Bechtel and Shmuel Feiner. jidische schtudies, 11. Hamburg: Buske,
2004. ISBN: 3-87548-379-0. 282 pp.
The son of a Jewish merchant of Copenhagen, Isaak Euchel (1756-1804) wrote the
play "Reb Henoch, oder: Woá tut me damit" -- one of the last Yiddish (or in
large part Yiddish) plays written in Germany -- while living in Berlin in
1793. The play may also plausibly be characterized as one of the first modern
Yiddish comedies. Euchel was a Maskil, that is, a devotee of the Haskalah, the
Jewish Enlightenment, dedicated to the reform of Jews and Judaism on a
rationalist, (in large part non-Jewish) European model. In some scholarly
circles it is indeed Euchel rather than Moses Mendelssohn who is seen as the
founder of the Haskalah. During the early 1780s, Euchel studied oriental
languages, philosophy, and pedagogy at the University of K”nigsberg, where
Baltic Jews were at the time already studying in some numbers. Among
German-speaking universities at this time, however, it was only K”nigsberg
that allowed Jews to study any discipline other than medicine, and Euchel was
the first Jewish student admitted in the humanities. In 1786 he was also the
first Jewish candidate for a university faculty position at K”nigsberg (in
oriental languages), although his candidacy was ultimately rejected due
directly to his Judaism, the rejection notification having been penned by none
other than Immanuel Kant himself, one of Euchel's former teachers who was then
rector of the university. Already in 1783 Euchel edited the Hebrew-language
Maskilic journal _Ha-Meassef_. It was ten years later in Berlin that he wrote
the play _Reb Henoch_" In both this play and Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn's
_Leichtsinn und Fr”mmelei_, the other most prominent Maskilic comedy of the
period, the primary focus of the drama is on a crisis in a bourgeois Jewish
family stemming from various states of transition (or lack thereof) from
traditional to 'modern' values in the lives of various members of a single
extended household and its multiple circles of friends and acquaintances. The
crisis -- and the comedy -- arise from intergenerational problems in
communication, in motivations toward assimilation and conversion, and toward
the adoption or rejection of Enlightenment values. Many of these multifaceted
and interacting conflicts can be represented and dramatized via language use,
and Euchel is an absolute master of this strategy, whose equal in this regard
one can long seek in the history of European drama.
The fine volume under review here presents an edition of the play, along with
an extensive apparatus. There are six introductory essays: Shmuel Feiner,
"Isaak Euchel -- Der Grnder der jdischen Aufkl„rungsbewegung"; Delphine
Bechtel, "Reb Henoch, oder: Woá tut me damit? -- Hybride Sprache,
Zwittergestalten: Kulturen im Kontakt in einer jdischen Kom”die der
Aufkl„rungszeit"; Roland Gruschka, "Der Sprachenkosmos in Reb Henoch und die
Sprachverh„ltnisse der Berliner Haskala"; Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka,
"Die Handschriften und Druckfassungen der Kom”die," "Zu Rezeption und
Gebrauch: Varianten, Zus„tze und Eingriffe," and "Zu dieser Ausgabe."
Thereafter follow: a diplomatic edition of the original Hebrew-alphabet text,
a facing-page Roman-alphabet transcription of that text, a German translation
-- in footnotes -- of those words, phrases, sentences, and dialogues in the
text that a speaker of modern standard German (the primary target audience of
the volume) would have difficulty immediately understanding; a separate and
lengthy section of explanatory notes; and a bibliography of relevant research
literature. In the essays by Aptroot and Gruschka there is a full discussion
of the textual bases of the edition (manuscripts and printed books), which
proves especially important since the extant versions of the play vary from
three to five acts; the Copenhagen manuscript in three acts is here chosen and
compellingly justified as the base text. One might note that the large number
of characters and scene changes makes it at least improbable that the play was
intended to be staged; more likely it was simply read, or small groups in
private settings arranged readings with assigned roles, for which there is
actually some evidence in the Copenhagen manuscript.
While I as a matter of principle oppose the use of Roman-alphabet
transcription as scholarly edition of a Yiddish text, I cannot object to the
inclusion of such a transcription here, first of all because the original
Hebrew-alphabet text here constitutes the primary edition and is itself
scrupulously edited on the basis of all relevant text witnesses, and secondly
because of the rather astonishing heteroglossia of the text itself, which the
editors here both amusingly and quite descriptively refer to as the
_Sprachenkosmos_ of the text. The text does indeed present a linguistic Babel:
the characters 'judaize', 'hebraize', or 'germanize' their speech; there is
constant language-, code-, and register-switching, which serves among other
things to characterize the speakers and to position them in the multiply
intertwined Jewish and intercultural Jewish-Christian social, educational, and
economic hierarchies. The language use of any given character depends on some
combination of some of the following factors: the intra-Jewish cultural
identity of the character, of his/her interlocutor(s) at any given moment, and
of other potential auditors of the utterance; the target register of speech,
and the cultural focus of the utterance. The author makes magisterial use of a
broad linguistic palette for the sake of characterization and plot motivation.
Characters thus speak West Yiddish, Plattdeutsch, Standard German, English,
and French -- or a combination or approximation of those idioms -- depending
on the moment, mode, conversation partner, topic, emotional, ideological,
religious, or cultural 'intent.' There are subtle and not so subtle nuances
beyond these simple identifications of language, however, so that some of
characters are shaded by their attempt to speak French (the language of the
nobility and the educated elite, but also of international revolution), or
their 'hopelessly' Jewish-inflected pseudo-standard German, just as others are
by their perfect and native or successfully assimilated _Philosophendeutsch_;
others are characterized even more interestingly by their attempts to speak
standard German while managing only a vague Platt version of it, or the
Englishman's inherently comical macaronic Germano-English, or Hedwig's
interlarding of her German with incorrect French ("mon scher mama"), or the
former _kheyder belfer_'s (teacher's assistant in a traditional
Yiddish-speaking Jewish elementary school) attempt to speak in the
philosophical register of Enlightenment German, or the actual elite speech of
the Enlightenment. There is hardly a sentence or utterance that is not
susceptible to such analysis -- and, one can easily imagine, it must have
provoked explosive laughter on the part of the original audience. In such a
situation, one must still insist on the use of the Hebrew-alphabet original
text, but one may likewise have little objection to a Roman-alphabet
transcription of the Germanized Yiddish, Yiddishized German, and other
examples of the broad range of hybridized dialects and registers represented
in the text. In some significant sense, the play is thus demonstratively
'multicultural' two centuries avant la lettre. In some senses, the characters'
deictic names are as significant as are their various modes of speech: Henoch
(the pre-Noachic patriarch) and his wife Jittel (= Judith = Jewess), represent
the conventional and tradition Orthodox and speak, appropriately, the moribund
West Yiddish. On the other end of the spectrum are the university-educated
doctor, Nathan (whose name immediately recalls the title character of
Lessing's play "Nathan der Weise," the epitome of the German Aufkl„rung), and
Markus (the conventional secular form of the traditional Jewish name
Mordechai, the intercultural go-between of the traditional Purim play), who
represent the pure Haskalah and thus speak standard German.
The play thus mercilessly caricatures the traditional characters via their
language use, the ostensibly rigid and narrow-minded traditional customs that
govern their daily existence (set off against the ostensibly rational
principles of the Enlightenment), their socio-economic position in society (in
the merchant identity of the traditional orthodox Jews vs. the new
'opportunities' open to Maskilim and especially to converts), the ostensibly
hypocritical morals of the traditional society as represented by the Talmud
scholar, here Henoch's only apparently pious son Shmuel, by whom the serving
girl is pregnant (set off against the 'freethinking' daughters who do not shy
away from relationships [even extra-marital ones] with Christians). Thus
linguistic, philosophical, economic, and moral themes are key throughout. One
should note, however, that Euchel's social critique is not altogether
one-sided: the non-Jews, the pseudo-Maskilim and even the Maskilim themselves
are also objects of his penetrating satire, although perhaps in a somewhat
milder form than are the representatives of traditional Judaism.
One can expect that this interesting play, which for obvious reasons is of
central importance for both the history of the Haskalah movement and the
history of Yiddish drama, will by means of this excellent edition by Aptroot,
Gruschka, and their team, now finally receive the attention it deserves.
Jerold C. Frakes
University of Southern California
_______________________________________________________________
End of Yiddish Theatre Forum 04.001
Yiddish Theatre Forum
Joel Berkowitz, Editor
Leonard Prager, Senior Adviser
Editorial Board
Zachary Baker Barbara Henry
Miroslawa Bulat David Mazower
Avrom Greenbaum Nina Warnke
Seth Wolitz
Subscribers to Mendele (see below) automatically receive The Mendele
Review and the Yiddish Theatre Forum.
Send "to subscribe" or change-of-status messages to:
listproc@lists.yale.edu
a. For a temporary stop: set mendele mail postpone
b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail ack
c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name
d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele
-----------------------------