_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 03.005 14 March 1999 1) Yiddish Matters: From the Editor (Leonard Prager) 2) Son and Father: Henri Diament, and Zaynvl Diamant (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date:14 March 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Yiddish Matters It is not unusual to find -- for a variety of historical, sociological and, simply, familial reasons -- that many children of Yiddish writers and scholars, even of earlier generations, have not known Yiddish and have even been indifferent to Yiddish. It is to the credit of Henri Diament, z"l -- who was born in France, came to America as an adolescent and settled in Israel as a young adult -- that in his latter years he became increasingly respectful of his father's creative achievement in the Yiddish language. In a memorial address for Professor Diament (an accomplished linguist and distinguished onomastician) I trace the father's career as one source for understanding the life path of his son. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date:14 March 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Son and Father -- Henri Diament and Zaynvl Diamant University of Haifa Faculty of Humanities Department of French Language and Literature 8 March 1999 ASSEMBLAGE IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR HENRI DIAMENT Son and Father: Henri Diament (1933-1999) and Zaynvl Diamant (1904-1963) by Leonard Prager In his _Mayn leksikon_, a highly individual kind of biographical dictionary, the Yiddish poet and essayist Meylekh Ravitsh concluded his eulogistic entry on Zaynvl Diamant, whom he knew personally, with the following words: "mit freyd un shtolts flegt mir zaynvl oft dertseyln vegn dem nakhes fun zayne gerotene zin un zeyere karyeres vi visnshaftlers. mistome hot ot der nakhes gringer gemakht dem azoy frien letstn blik oyf dem eymek-habokhe. iz dos a treyst. zol zi vern fartseykhnt."(1) ['With pride and joy, Zaynvl would often tell me about his two successful sons and their scholarly careers. This pleasure doubtless eased his all-too-early last look at this Vale of Tears. That is some comfort. Let it be recorded'.] If I have chosen on this occasion to talk about the writer Zaynvl Diamant, father of the scholar Professor Henri Diament, alav hashalom, it is at least partly because in my not infrequent encounters with Henri through the years, his father's work was often the subject of conversation. It could not have been more than weeks ago that Henri asked me some question about Yiddish. He had hoped some day to read all of his father's work in Yiddish, which was not one of his strong languages. A better reason for talking about Henri's father is the insight such a focus yields on his own complex history. Reading the entry on Zaynvl Diamant in the standard Yiddish biographical dictionary, the _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_, I found myself asking why there was no mention of family. But from 1933 on, the year of Henri's birth, the father's stormy history was a large part of the son's patrimony and crucial to understanding Henri's life story. Here is a sketch of the father's odyssey, one which encompasses the radically divergent worlds of the Polish shtetl, the Polish socialist Bund, the Parisian Yiddish-speaking proletariat of the late twenties and early 1930s, Nazi-occupied France, detention camp and residence in Switzerland, and finally New York, particularly its seething Yiddish cultural arena in the late forties and fifties: Zaynvl Diamant (1904-1963) 1. Zaynvl Diamant was born in the shtetl of Turbin, in the Lublin district of Poland and at the age of four moved with his family to the shtetl of Krushnik in the same district. He was given a traditional education (kheyder and yeshiva), and also attended a secular school and had private lessons in secular subjects. He began to write at an early age and is said to have kept a diary at age 10 in which he recorded the events of World War One in rhyme. During the war years he left his studies and started to work as a tailor, studying on his own and reading widely in Hebrew, Yiddish and world literature. 2. Through his older brother Shmuel he was drawn into the socialist Bund, the largest organization of Jewish workers in Poland, where he soon proved himself an able organizer and speaker. He founded a trade-union association in his town as well as a library, evening courses, and an amateur theater. In the early 1920s he represented the Lublin region at Bundist conferences in Lublin and Warsaw and under the initials Z.D. and the pseudonym "Secretary" wrote reports for the Bundist and the Lublin Yiddish press. 3. In 1928, at the age of 24, he emigrated to France and settled in Paris, where he worked in a factory while studying French in an evening school. He continued to be active in the Jewish trade-union movement and in Jewish communal and cultural life. For a time he was secretary of his landsmanschaft -- apparently many others had emigrated to France from the Lublin area. In 1933, the year Henri was born, he made his literary debut in the weekly _Parizer handls-tsaytung_ with a humorous story of Parisian Jewish life, which was followed by stories, verse, sketches, essays, and feuilletons in Yiddish periodicals throughout the world, including the Warsaw _Folkstsaytung_, the New York _Forverts_, the Paris _Naye prese_ and many others. 4. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War Two, he volunteered (at age 35) for the French Army and a year later was mobilized in France for the Polish Army in Exile. In the summer of 1940 he was imprisoned by the Germans but escaped after a short period. For the rest of 1940 and the first half of 1941 he lived in Paris under the German occupation. [The Germans invaded France on May 19, 1940 and Paris fell on the 14th of June.] In the summer of 1941 he crossed over to the "Free Zone" of France. For the next two years he lived in Nice, which was under Italian control, and he was one of a group of Jewish refugee writers active in rescue work. His essay on this chapter of French Jewish history, "Jewish Refugees on the French Riviera," is widely cited.(2) In 1943, when the Germans occupied all of France, he hid for a while in the mountains outside Nice. In October 1943, with the help of the French underground, he found safety in Switzerland, where through 1944 he was interned in a Swiss military camp. 5. In the Swiss detention center he was active in social and cultural work in the employ of the Swiss Jewish Refugee Aid Organization, arranging and giving evening courses. He was freed from the camp in 1944 and lived in Geneva. He wrote for the Swiss Jewish refugee weekly, _Der baginen_ and _La revue juive_ in Geneva, and sent stories and essays to the leading Yiddish periodicals in America and Hebrew periodicals in Israel. He also wrote widely for children in such journals as _Kinder zhurnal_ (New York) and _Davar leyeladim_ (Tel-Aviv). In 1946 he published his first book, _Untern haknkrayts_ ('Under the Swastika'), a collection of eight stories, plus -- as we might expect from Henri's father -- a glossary of foreignisms. Meylekh Ravitsh reviewed this book enthusiastically and seventeen years later recalled that, appearing soon after the Shoa, it was in a certain sense new. "_untern haknkrayts_ iz dershinen bald nokh dem dritn khurbm un iz -- in a gevisn zinen -- geven epes nayes."(3) Ravitsh felt that "es hot gehat in zikh yene stoishe ru, un yene kleyne doze fun bitern humor, vos iz olel nokh shtarker untertsushtraykhn un aktsentirn di tragik."(4) ['It possessed that stoical calm and that small dose of bitter humor which can accentuate the tragic.'] 6. In 1948 (at age 44) Zaynvl Diamant emigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. For a time he was a traveling agent for the _Algemeyner yidisher entsiklopedye_, for which he also translated materials from Hebrew, French, German and English. In 1954 he joined the staff of the _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_ and until the end of 1956 was in charge of of its archive and card catalogue. Ravitsh wrote in his _Mayn leksikon_ that "er iz vi fun der hashgokhe aleyn tsugepast gevorn tsu zitsn in a literarisher kantselarye fun a bildungs-ministeryum un forshn, koregirn, tsugreytn manuskriptn tsum druk."(5) ['Providence itself created him to fill a literary post in a department of education and to research, correct, and prepare manuscripts for publication'.] "hot dokh undzer bidne yidish nisht keyn bildungs-ministeryum, iz Zaynvl Diamant gezesn in der redaktsye fun der leksikon fun der yidisher literatur un hot gegreyt di biografyes." (6) ['But our poor Yiddish has no Ministry of Education, and so Zaynvl Diamant sat in the editorial office of the _Lexicon of Yiddish Literature_ and prepared biographies']. His second book, _Oyf ale vintn_ ('On All Winds'), a collection of twenty-one short stories, was published in New York in 1957. Until his death in 1963 he wrote numerous literary biographies, including those of major figures such as Khayim Grinberg and Khayim Grade. There are Hebrew, English, French and Portuguese translations of some of his stories. There is no composite bibliography of his work (except for the references given in the _Leksikon_ entry). This account is in large part a free translation of the unsigned entry in the _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_.(7) Zaynvl Diamant was a member of the staff of the _Leksikon_ in 1958 when it was written and was probably the main source of the facts presented there, which in any event could hardly have been critical. In the wake of the Shoa, _Leksikon_ entries often had a memorial quality which muted negative evalutations. Yet the several folio pages devoted to Zaynvl Diamant in the _Leksikon_ are justified by the scope of his career as a whole. The evaluative section of the entry comes from an unpublished ms. by the same Meylekh Ravitsh I cited earlier. He writes that Zaynvl Diamant "belongs to the generation of realistic fiction-writers who became known after the end of World War II and whose subject naturally was tied to the events of the Shoa. At heart he is a romantic and therefore gravitates towards the pathetic and the extra-natural in his realistically detailed stories. Though most of his stories are tragic, in his best work they never lack a quiet humor. Zaynvl Diamant also commands the art of making extraordinary events believable, employing as he does the solid means of the honest narrator who observes closely. Apparently, a large part of his stories are drawn from his own experience and from first-hand observation."(8) Ravitsh saw Diamant's output -- two books -- as small for so talented a writer in a lifetime of 59 years. Yet his final estimate of Diamant's work is deferential and generous: "a shtiler mentsh, a shtiler shrayber, un es iz im bashert geven oyftsushteln an eygnartik vinkl in dem filtsimerdikn hoyz fun der yidisher literatur."(9) ['A quiet person, a quiet writer, he was destined to establish his own individual corner in the many-chambered house of Yiddish literature."] Diamant would have treated such an assessment with self-irony. In his story "Der veg tsu eybikayt" ('The Road to Eternity') the young Parisian Yiddish poet Berele Kharef must weather the envious barbs of his fellow aspiring literati at the Workers' Cafe. He has poured all his energies into publishing his first book of poems, a costly matter which arouses their envy. "in der arbeter kikh, tsvishn khevre shrayber un kinstler "yunge muze," iz itster berele kharef un zayn bikhl lider geven bay yedern oyf der tsung: -- un gey veys , -- hot Naftole zinger zikh gornisht gekent oys|khidesh|n -- az der yung hot farmogt azoy fil gelt! -- vos heyst? hot yankele pizmen farentfert -- er iz dokh a shnayder! -- take an emeser shnayder?! hot simkhe|le dramaturg zikh ge|khidesh|t. -- vos fregstu epes? -- hot im Meylekh|l shleyn opgeentfert -- er iz dokh der bester shnayder tsvishn di shraybers un der bester shrayber tsvishn di shnayders!...(10) ['In the Workers' Cafe, among the Young Muse Society writers and artists, Berele Kharef and his book of poems were on everyone's tongue.' -- "And who would have guessed that the youngster had so much money, wondered Naftoli Singer. . -- What do you mean, replied Yankele Pizmen -- after all, he is a tailor! -- A real tailor? Simkhele Dramaturg pondered. What are you asking about? Meylekh Shleyn countered. He is the best tailor among the writers and the best writer among the tailors!...'] When Diamant made his debut in 1933, he too was a tailor. The story, as seen in these few lines, shows the author using names as descriptors and characteronyms, presaging his son's great fascination with onomastics. Indeed, Zaynvl Diamant is attentive to a range of language phenomena, particularly dialects and sociolects. Nowhere can this be better observed than in his 1961 novella "an orntlekh teyhoyz" ('A Respectable Teahouse'), set in a Polish town during World War One.(11) The story tells how Mekhele Shnayder, a pious widower with two grown daughters, a grown son and two small daughters, tried to ward off poverty by conducting a "respectable" teahouse for the soldiers of "froyem-yoysef" (Franz-Josef) stationed in Glikev, an effort which ultimately fails in ways he could not foresee and which dramatize a clash of cultures in a time of rapid change. This tragic tale is not without comic elements and is much enlivened by the author's representation of colloquial and other speech. In Glikev Yiddish, "ikh vel dikh nisht toyshn" is pronounced as "yekh yel-dekh nish' toyshn." The "kirishe" military (_kira_ is an anagram for "keysar yarom hodo" ['Glory to the Kaiser!'] are called "shmate-lyalkes" ('rag-dolls') because they are so neatly and vainly uniformed and because they wear cloth leggings on their lower legs. Glikev is not accustomed to their terms of address: "afile breyndl di kekhin, rivke|le di tikerin [St.Y. _tukerin_] binele di vaser-tregerin zenen bay zey oykh geven 'genedike frau'."(12) ['Even Breyndl the Cook, Rivkele the Bathhouse Attendant and Binele the Water-Carrier were all addressed by them as 'Gracious Madam'] Note too how the Yiddish ear heard _genedike_ for the German _gnaedike_.] The author shows Glikev Jews speaking a fractured German (13) and a servant-girl adopting the elevated Yiddish of her former wealthy employers (14). His dialogue individualizes his characters and helps evoke their milieu (15); one character quotes a Polish proverb, a typical practice.(16) The Diamant family were among the fortunate few who found asylum in Switzerland, much in the news today because of alleged cooperation with the Nazis and possession of confiscated Jewish wealth. Two striking stories in _Untern haknkrayts_ ('Under the Swastika') are set in the family's Swiss detention period and focus on the theme of identity. The linguistic dimension of this theme interested Henri greatly; I would further claim that the theme as a whole interested him. The dedication which precedes "In kinderheym" ('In the Children's Home') reads: "mayne zundelekh: hershele un peysekh'l -- a matone" ['to my little boys, Hershele and Peysekh -- a gift'].(17) Hershele, of course, is Henri. It is a rather grim story to have given to one's children, but the perspective of 1946 is not that of today. The scene is a home for Jewish refugee children in a Swiss village. The narrator is a child and the events are all seen through a child's eyes. The children play at war and think it is splendid and are annoyed when their game is suspended by the adult supervisor. The children's game, of course, reflects the outside reality which they do not understand. The Shoa is introduced through the boy Henri who wants his mother -- who has been deported -- to come and put him to bed at night. (Apparently the author at this time did not think of his Hershele as Henri.) The children are cruel to the half-Jewish Pyero ['Piero'] whom they have seen at bedtime praying on his knees with his Catholic mother who comes to say goodnight to him. They tell him he is not a Jew and beat him up. The story ends in a bedtime scene with the child Piero rejecting his mother and declaring he is a Jew and jumping up on his bed and singing out a fragment of "Hatikva" that some of the children have been singing: "Od lo avda tikvateynu" ('We have not yet lost our hope'), the meaning of which he cannot know. The story leaves us with a powerful impression of the tangle of confused identities which the Nazis created or exacerbated. In "Beltrami shtarbt" ('The Death of Beltrami'; French translation 'La mort de Beltrami') we find several Jewish refugee patients in a Geneva hospital ward. The central image in the story is the forbiddingly impersonal atmosphere surrounding the death of the poor Swiss shoemaker, Beltrami, whose end contrasts sharply with death in a Polish shtetl. (18) With this death as background and binding narrative thread, the life of the ward unfolds. The Swiss resent foreigners, especially _youpins_ (i.e. Jews); an assimilated French Jew turns his back on his unassimilated fellow Jews until he himself experiences anti-semitism and affirms his Jewishness. Sister Marie attempts to convert an orphaned Jewish youth, and the Jewish writer in the cast of characters (the author's persona) cautions that at this tragic hour in Jewish history it is wrong to cross over to the enemy (19). And amidst the cold and hostile climate of the ward, the Jews trade Yiddish witticisms. Henri would have been able to explicate the ethnophaulisms (the ethnic slurs) which appear in this story, as for example in this passage: "eynem a yidisher shnayder fun parizer 'pletsl', kemat a ben-shivem, hot men do a nomen gegebn 'negus'... un ot der 'negus', iz dos do, in dem shpitol-zal, der spetsimen, der muster fun di 'poloney' [Fr. Polonais]... loyt im urteylt men do dos poylishe folk, di plitim, di yidn... farfelt amol der 'negus' zikh di hent tsu vashn far an esn, zenen ale 'flikhtlinge' shmutsike, men darf zay nisht lozn onrirn dos lebl broyt, nor a shvaytser muz dos broyt tseshnaydn..." (20) ['An almost 70-year old Jewish tailor from the Paris 'Pletsl' has been nicknamed Negus and serves in this hospital as the specimen 'Polack'. He is the standard by which the Polish people, the refugees, the Jews are judged. If Negus happens to forget to wash his hands before a meal, all refugees are filthy and should not be allowed to touch a loaf of bread, only a Swiss should be allowed to cut the bread...'] But against verbal slights like _youpin_ and _Negus_, the Jews have their own verbal defence. When the proselytizing Sister Marie, a Swiss German, reads the Gospel to her patients in a faltering French, one of the Jewish patients remarks: "a shlekhter bal-koyre" ['a poor reader of the Tora']. When she turns back to look at the patients before leaving the ward, her action is described "vi, lehavdl, der khazn tsu 'bo'u be|sholem'"(21) ['like, forgive the comparison, the cantor when he comes to the passage "Come in peace"']. In "The Death of Beltrami" the dying shoemaker is asked if he wishes to see a priest. He does not. The author wonders if this refusal is not perhaps a last protest at the injustice of the world. Deathbed statements have great dramatic force and the author returns to this device in one of his very American stories, one which strikes me as in some respects autobiographical.. The two main characters are defined by the title of the story, "Tate un zun," ('Father and Son').(22) The time is the week of parashat Vayekhi, which deals with the death of Jacob and the blessing of Joseph. The Makrivitser rov, Rabbi Margolis, reviews his life as he lies on his death bed in a New York hospital: he has lost his community and his family in the Shoa, except for his son, who in a sense he has also lost. The son, Yoysef, his father's _kadish_ and hope, is a professor in Los Angeles. There is a long history of alienation between father and son, but it is the father who has turned his back on his son. The son has carved out his own style of Jewishness and is involved in Jewish studies and in work for Erets Yisrael. The father has been slowly coming to see American Jewry in a positive light. Their philanthropy, their work for Erets Yisrael now loom large for him. He is moving towards reconciliation with his son. The long absent son is reunited with his father in an emotional scene in the hospital. At the story's end the Rabbi tries to inpose an oath on his son in the biblical manner -- by placing of the hand on his thigh -- but he dies before he can even express what oath he wants his son to take. The ritual of Joseph taking an oath before Jacob is mimicked but not completed and this irresolution is significant. The story emblemizes the conflict between traditionalist father and modernist son, representing on one level two large camps of the Jewish people and on another two different value systems. The story borrows from Henri's biography in so far as it shows a European-born son who succeeds as an academic in America and cements his ties with the Jewish people in a Zionist and humanist spirit. The old world has its cultural claims on this son but he is not bound by an iron oath to live according to any of its established rhythms. Henri, to a considerable degree, lived his life according to his own lights. And that is not inconsiderable. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Endnotes 1) Meylekh Ravitsh. "Zaynvl Diamant," _Mayn leksikon; yidishe shraybers, kinstlers, aktyorn, oykh klal-tuers in di amerikes un andere lender_. band IV, bukh 1. tel-oviv: velt-rat far yidish un yidisher kultur, 1980, p. 178. 2) "Yidn oyf der frantsoyzisher rivyere unter italyenisher okupatsye," _Yivo-bleter 37 (1953), 234-348; English translation: "Jewish Refugees on the French Riviera," _Yivo Annual of Social Science_ 8 (1953), 264-280. 3) _Mayn leksikon_, p. 178. 4) idem. 5) idem. 6) idem. 7) "Zaynvl Diamant," _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_, New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1958, 2:485-488. 8) ibid., col. 487. 9) _Mayn leksikon_, p. 178. 10) "Der veg tsu eybikayt," _Oyf ale vintn_, p. 18. 11) Diamant, Zaynvl. "An orntlekh teyhoyz," in Pat, Yankev, Meylekh Ravitsh and Zaynvl Diamant, eds. _Almanakh yidish_, New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1961, 94-148. 12) ibid., p. 96. 13) ibid., p. 99. 14) ibid., p. 109. 15) ibid., p. 105. 16) ibid., p. 110. 17) "In kinderheym," _Oyf ale vintn_, p. 123. 18) Diamant, Zaynvl. "Beltrami shtarbt," _Untern haknkrayts_. pariz: farlag fun A. B. Tserata, 1946, p. 115. 19) ibid., pp. 105-106. 20) ibid., p. 97. 21) ibid., p. 114. 22) Diamant, Zaynvl. "Tate un zun," _Oyf ale vintn_. nyu-york: alveltlekhn yidishn kultur-kongres, 1957, pp. 291-300. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- References Diamant, Zaynvl. _Untern haknkrayts_. pariz: farlag fun A. B. Tserata, 1946. [8 stories, glossary] 222 zz' Diamant, Zaynvl. "Yidn oyf der frantsoyzisher rivyere unter italyenisher okupatsye," _Yivo-bleter 37 (1953), 234-348; English translation: "Jewish Refugees on the French Riviera," _Yivo Annual of Social Science_8 (1953), 264-280. Diamant, Zaynvl. _Oyf ale vintn_. nyu-york: alveltlekhn yidishn kultur-kongres, 1957. Diamant, Zaynvl. "An orntlekh teyhoyz," in Pat, Yankev, Meylekh Ravitsh and Zaynvl Diamant, eds. _Almanakh yidish_, New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1961. 94-148. Ravitsh, Meylekh. "Zaynvl Diamant," _Mayn leksikon; yidishe shraybers, kinstlers, aktyorn, oykh klal-tuers in di amerikes un andere lender_. band IV, bukh 1. tel-oviv: velt-rat far yidish un yidisher kultur, 1980, pp. 177-178. "Zaynvl Diamant," _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_, New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1958, 2:485-488. ______________________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ 03.005 Leonard Prager, editor Subscribers to _Mendele_ (see below) automatically receive _The Mendele Review_. 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. 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