_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 06.003 31 March 2002 1) In Memoriam: Ted Gorelick [1936-2001] (ed.) 2) Publications Received (ed.): a) Reb Mortkhele's Motele Memoirs b) Shmuel Werses' _hakeytsa ami!_ c) _Jiddistik Mitteilungen_ No. 26 / November 2001 1)------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 March 2002 From: Leonard Prager Subject: In Memoriam -- Ted Gorelick (1936-2001) In Memoriam :Ted Gorelick (1937-2001) The death in mid-2001 of the translator Ted Gorelick provides a solemn occasion for sketching his services to Yiddish. His death went unnoticed by many in Haifa, where he lived and worked for the past two decades, and to the best of my knowledge no obituary of him appeared in any periodical or internet bulletin that circulates among the wider public interested in Yiddish. Ted Gorelik was born in 1936 in Tel-Aviv, then mandatory Palestine, but grew up in New York City. His father was from the Ukraine and his mother was from Lodz, Poland. His paternal grandfather's brother was the stage designer Mordecai Gorelik ( i.e. Mordecai was Ted's greatuncle). He came to Israel in the early 1970s and taught in the Art Department of the University of Haifa for five years. In his last years he was very isolated and worked intensively on his translations. He died on 30 June 2001. His papers contain translations of Olsvanger's _Royte pomerantsn_ and Mendele's _Dos kleyne mentshele_, neither of which he was able to publish. An art historian by training(1), Gorelick initially turned to translation simply to earn a livelihood. He translated Hebrew works for a number of lecturers and professors at Israeli universities(2), but his principal aim as a translator focused on Yiddish. He learned Yiddish in his childhood home in New York City, where his immigrant parents had settled. Gorelick, whose famous uncle Mordecai Gorelik (1900-1975) left a lasting mark on American stage design, had a powerful aesthetic ambition of his own: to translate Mendele Moykher-Sforim's _Fishke der krumer_ ('Fishke the Lame') into what he called 'demotic' English, the speech of the lower classes in 19th-century England who were contemporaneous with Mendele's fictional world. Saul Bellow is said to have admired the translation, which was published by a prestigious publisher and in a volume where an established translator, Hillel Hankin, is also represented.(3) Readers can now choose from three English _Fishke der krumer_ translations: Angelo Rapoport's (1928), Gerald Stillman's (1960) and Gorelick's (1996). Gorelick also translated a volume of Sholem-Aleykhem stories in a series sponsord by a respected university press(4). Those of us who have seen Gorelick's translations from Yiddish may or may not have approved of his translation strategy and his phrasal and lexical choices, but one cannot miss the impulse to freshness and originality that marks his efforts. We should look closely at his work. Rendering Sholem-Aleykhem in English is one of the most difficult tasks a translator could take upon himself. Endnotes 1) His 1960 Columbia University MA thesis, _The Well of Moses_, a study of the medieval sculptor Claus Slater (ca. 1345- ca. 1405), gives evidence of his ability. 2) His translations from Hebrew include: a. Rosenberg, Pnina. _53 stations of the Tokaido: Sekino Jun'ichiro : [exhibition], Summer 1988. b. Spitz, Drora. _Bodies in motion: photographs: Winter 1988. c. Rosenberg, Pnina. _Japanese modern graphics_, 1987: [exhibition catalogue], 1988. d. Muzeon Tiqotin Leommanut ... Surimono prints: [exhibition] : Haifa Municipality, the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, spring, 1989. e. Almogi, Yosef. _Total commitment_. 1982. f. Gutman, Yisrael. _Unequal victims: Poles and Jews during World War Two_ / by Yisrael Gutman, Shmuel Krakowski [translated from the Hebrew and Polish by Ted Gorelick and Witold Jedlicki], 1986. g. Hoz, Yael. _World papercuts: tradition, art, craft_/ [catalogue, Yael Hoz ; English editing, Ted Gorelick], 1986. h. Cohen, Asher. _Zionist youth movements during the Shoah_ / edited by Asher Cohen & Yehoyakim Cochavi, 1995. 3) Mendele Moykher Sforim, _Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler: Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third_ / S.Y. Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim); edited by Dan Miron and Ken Frieden; introduction by Dan Miron; translations by Ted Gorelick and Hillel Halkin. New York: Schocken Books, 1996 [Series Library of Yiddish classics]. 4) Sholem Aleichem. _Nineteen to the dozen: monologues and bits and bobs of other things_; translated by Ted Gorelick; edited by Ken Frieden. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998 [Series Judaic traditions in literature, music and art]. 2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 March 2002 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Publications Received (ed.): a) Reb Mortkhele's Motele Memoirs [Khayim Tshemerinski's _Ayarati Motele_] Khayim Tshemerinski's _Ayarati Motele_, Yerushalayim: Magnes, HaUniversita HaIvrit, tashsa"b [2002] [English t.p.: Hayyim Chemerinsky, _My Town Motele_, Introduction by David Assaf, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002.] ISBN 965-493-114-1 [MIVHAR: Studies and Sources in the History and Culture of East European Jewry / David Assaf, Editor / The Center for Research on the History and Culture of Polish Jews / The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.] Orders may be sent to Magnes Press, POB 39099, Jerusalem 91390. email: magnes@huji.ac.il. fax: 972-2-5633370. An almost forgotten figure in Yiddish letters, but in his own day a man of wide acquaintanceship with a reputation for scintillating conversation and broad Jewish and general knowledge, Khayim (Eliezer-Moyshe) Tshemerinski [Reb Mortkhele] (1862-1917) was a bilingual writer who mainly wrote in Yiddish, and a very good Yiddish at that. The _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_ four-and-a-half column entry by Yankev Birnboym (vol. 6, cols. 108-11 under "Mordkhele, R' " and spelled mem-reysh-daled-khof- yud-lamed-ayen) cites the high praise of a number of critics. Bal-makhshoves called him "der goen fun der yidisher shprakh" ['the genius of the Yiddish language']. Unfortunately, most of Reb Mortkhele's writings were published anonymously and those that indicate his authorship are scattered among periodicals All agree that Reb Mortkhele was versatile. He translated Victor Hugo and Stefan Zweig into Yiddish His plans for translating the entire Tanakh into Yiddish failed because of lack of financial support, but he did translate sections of the High Holiday makhzor that were published under a pseudonym in Vilna in 1913.. The children's journal he hoped to publish failed to materialize, but he did write "Shloyme hameylekh un der ashmoday" for children. Birnboym in his _Leksikon_ entry claims Reb Mortkhele translated the first volume of Bialik and Ravnitski's _Sefer agadot_ into Yiddish, but that his translation was not accepted by the editors. Birnboym's account is obviously incomplete since in _Di yidishe agodes_. (Nyu-York: Moyshe-Shmuel Shklarski, 1948, ershter band. [photographic issue of Berlin Moriah second edition of 1922]) there is a footnote to the Foreword which reads: "in der iberzetsung funem ershtn teyl hot genumen an onteyl oykh H[er] Kh. Tshemerinski, unter der redaktsyon fun di mekhabrim" ['also Mr. Khayim Tshemerinski participated in the translation of the first volume under the editorship of the authors (p. VII). Bialik and Ravnitski may have found Reb Mortkhele's renditions too colloquial or too innovative and edited his work heavily. They credited his participation while asserting that he worked under their supervision. Zalmen Reyzn praised Reb Mortkhele for his philological acumen, particularly his 1923 essay on Yiddish phonetics in Sh. Niger's _Pinkes_ (Vilna, 1923) and his clear expositions of Yiddish grammar for non-specialists. He was an accomplished satirist and his Yiddish adaptations of Kirov's fables were highly regarded. Shortly before his death, friends gathered together ten of these versified satirical fables. They were published under the title . _Mesholim_ ['Fables'] by Farlag Visnshaft in Yekaterinaslov (called Katerinaslov and later named Dniepropetrovsk) in 1919. (1) Reb Mortkhele was proud of his Yiddish biblical poem "Koyen un novi" ['Priest and Prophet'], which was to serve as an opera libretto, and which is apparently also quite rare.(2) Reb Mortkhele has now been reintroduced to modern readers _davke_ with a book he wrote in Hebrew and which he regarded as his crowning achievement. David Assaf, whose name will be familiar to _TMR_ readers as translator of Yekhezkl Kotik's _Memoirs_ into Hebrew (see TMR vol 3.007) has edited a new edition of _Ayarati Motele_ ['My Town Motele']. This memoir, as Assaf points out, is neither a satiric and derisive maskilic portrait or a nostalgic post-holocaust memorialistic work, Rather, it is a loving yet objective reminiscence of an isolated Belorussian shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century.(3) In 1917, on his deathbed and in great pain, lying on his back and using a pencil, Reb Mordkhele taxed his memory to recall his childhood milieu in Motol (known by Jews as Motele), the same town in which his relative and neighbor Chaim Weizmann, the first President of the State of Israel, was born.(4) He left a reportedly confused but completed manuscript, having mustered a concentration he could seldom enlist in his erratic and bohemian life. His friend, the editor and folklorist Alter Druyanov edited the ms.and we may assume that the text as we have it and for which Druyanov arranged publication in 1922 in some measure carries the imprint of this dedicated Hebraist's style.(5) Jacob Shatski regarded _Ayarati Motele_ as the finest of all Jewish shtetl memoirs and it is indeed noteworthy for its humor, style and descriptiveness. In 1924, a Yiddish translation by Mortkhe Lipson entitled _Mayn shtetl motele_ was published in installments in the New York _Yudishes tageblat_ from 17 February to June 1924. A second edition that appeared in Israel in 1951 claimed little attention amidst a plethora of _Yisker-bikher_ appearing at that time. Reissue of this work at this time in a richly introduced and annotated edition both enlarges our understanding of the East European shtetl and brings us into the company of a fascinating personality. Endnotes 1) According to David Assaf (who saw a copy at the Yivo), this 62-page booklet is "very rare." The University of Haifa copy, once the possession of the Haifa Yiddish author Sh. Leyb-Shimoni, may soon find itself classified among Rara as a result of Assaf's observation. Are there any other known copies? 2) Assaf (p. 15) writes that the text was published in Yekaterinaslov in 1919 or 1920. (3) Post-holocaust Motol is covered by a website [http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/motol/motol.html#TOC] and a memorial volume [_The Destruction Of Motol_ by A. L. Polick. Translated from the original Yiddish and originally edited by Shimon Yojok Edited by Dr. Dov Yarden. Published by the Former Residents Of Motol In Israel. Jerusalem 5716 (1956).Printed In Israel]. 4) Nowhere in Weizmann's writings is Reb Mortkhele mentioned and it is thought that this glaring omission is due to Reb Mortkhele's having been an avowed territorialist and not a Zionist. 5) The name Alter Druyanov will be unfamiliar to many TMR readers, but he is a figure of some importance. He played a significant part in the history of the Yishuv and a street in Tel Aviv is named after him. Folklore scholars will know his name. As a writer he shifted to Hebrew from Yiddish early in his adult life, but his famous three-volume _Book of Jokes and Wit_, though written in elegant Hebrew, preserves a great stock of folk humor that originated and was disseminated largely in Yiddish. Elisheva Schoenfeld spent a decade indexing this valuable work and her index is available on line at http://research.haifa.ac.il/~reference/druyanov. --------------------------- b) Shmuel Werses' _Hakeytsa ami!; sifrut hahaskala ba'eydan hamodernizatsiya_ Yerushalaim: Magnes/HaUniversita Ha Ivrit, 2001 [English t.p.: Shmuel Werses, _'Awake, My People'; Hebrew Literature in the Age of Modernization_, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, {2001}. Orders may be sent to Magnes Press, POB 39099, Jerusalem 91390. email: magnes@huji.ac.il. fax: 972-2- 5633370. The Hebrew University's veteran scholar of the bilingual literature of the Haskala period, Professor Shmuel Werses, has assembled thirteen of his carefully crafted essays in a collection focussed on the theme of modernization. Much of this weighty volume is devoted to subjects central to Yiddish literary history. Of the four essays grouped under the rubric 'Inter-language tensions' [HaMetakhim haBeyn-leshoniim], the three that deal with Yiddish directly are reprinted from _Khulyot_, Israel's Hebrew-language journal of Yiddish language, literature and folklore. -------------------------------- c) _Jiddistik Mitteilungen_ No. 26 / November 2001 The latest issue of _Jiddistik Mitteilungen_ contains a great deal of bibliographical and other information of interest to Yiddishists. In the lead essay, Hans Peter Althaus traces the inclusion of Yiddish words in German dictionaries and gives good grades to the famous _Sprach-Brockhaus_, the "Deutsches Bildwoerterbuch fuer Jedermann," an illustrated dictionary which has seen many editions and is a household word. Unlike other dictionaries, the Brockhaus was objective and fairly comprehensive in its treatment of Yiddish words. Rachel Heuberger describes the riches of the Frankfurt Municipal and University Library's Yiddish collection now digitalized and available to all on the internet. (see www.stub.jiddisch.uni-frankfurt.de). The English version of the introduction to this collection can be reached at www.literatur-des-judentums-de. We hope to return to this collection in future issues of the TMR to study individual texts which are so wonderfully accessible in this valuable collection. Roland Gruschka reports on the Fourth Symposium of Yiddish Studies in Germany held at the University of Trier from the 10th to the 12th of September, 2001 (dates spanning an infamous moment in modern history!) and communicates a sense of intellectual liveliness and professionalism that bodes well for academic work in the field of Yiddish in Western Europe. ---------------------------------------------------- End of _The Mendele Review_ 06.003 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. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele ****Getting back issues**** _The Mendele Review_ archives can be reached at: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele/tmrarc.htm