The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 08.010 [Sequential No. 149]
Date: 29 October 2004
1) Editor's Note (L.P.)
a. Shalom Luria awarded the Mendele-Moykher-Sforim Prize 2004
b. Joseph Sherman's _Midstream_ essay on Isaac Bashevis-Singer
c. New stories on the Di velt fun yidish/The World of Yiddish website.
d. Full text access to _Khulyot_
e. Coming issue: Review of Dovid Katz's magisterial _Lithuanian
Jewish Culture_ (Vilna: Baltos Lankos, 2004, 398 pp)
2) Review of Dovid Katz's _Words on Fire_ (L.P.)
3) Review of _Polin_ vol. 16 (Carrie Friedman-Cohen)
4) Oct.-Nov. 2004 _Lebns-fragn_, Tel-Aviv (Yitskhok Luden)
1)-----------------------------------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Editor's Note
a. Dr. Shalom Luria, founding editor of _Khulyot_ , a Hebrew-language
annual based at the University of Haifa and that is devoted to the
study of Yiddish language and literature, will be awarded the 2004
Mendele-Moykher-Sforim Prize of the City of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa. The award
is for Luria's life work as a research scholar of Yiddish literature
and as initiator of significant publication projects in the field of
Yiddish studies. Dr. Luria is the son of the distinguished Yiddish
linguist Zelik Kalmanovitsh (1885-1944) and like his father an
accomplished translator. He has translated into Hebrew a number of his
father's works.
b. In this Yitskhok Bashevis [Isaac Bashevis Singer] (1904-1991)
centenary year, the journal _Midstream_ (well known to many TMR
readers) has published a wide-ranging and probative essay by our own
Joseph Sherman and has placed it on line. "Revaluating Jewish
Identity: A Centenary Tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer" can be reached
through the link: http://midstreamthf.com/current/feature.html.
c. Sara Blacher-Retter reads two more stories on the Di velt fun
yidish/The World of Yiddish website (http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il),
bringing to twenty the number of stories available on the site. The
two additions are Sholem Ash's "A dorf-tsadik" and Avrom Reyzn's "Der
yid vos hot khorev gemakht dem templ." The texts of these stories are
also accessible and the reader scrolls down while listening. The text
of Mendele Moykher-Sforim's "Mayn letste nesie" will be made
accessible in the near future. The Yiddish original and a Hebrew
translation by Shalom Luria may be found in _Khulyot_ vol. 4 (1997).
The audio version is in place.
d. The principal Israeli academic medium for writing on Yiddish
literature is the now eight-year old annual _Khulyot_ (_Ringen_
'Links'). Full-Text access to an increasing number of _Khulyot_ essays
is now possible by entering the "World of Yiddish"/"Di velt fun
yidish" website (http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il). Click on the essay title
in the Abstracts section of _Khulyot_. Additional essays will be
viewable in the near future.
e. In a coming issue: Review of Dovid Katz's magisterial _Lithuanian
Jewish Culture_ (Vilna: Baltos Lankos, 2004, 398pp). ISBN 9955 - 584
- 41 - 6. See the publisher's website for details of purchasing this
beautifully printed volume. For order form and price information, see:
www.blk.lt/en/lba/order_form.html
2)---------------------------------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Review of Dovid Katz's _Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story
of Yiddish_
The Story of Yiddish Retold
Dovid Katz, _Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish_. New
York: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-465-03728-3
Dovid Katz's meteoric career as Yiddish-scholar, -teacher, -publicist,
-author, and -activist has spread his name among Yiddish-lovers the
world over. His latest book, _Words on Fire_, will undoubtedly make
him known to wider circles. Not, be it pointed out, known as DAVID
Katz, but as DOVID Katz. That small syllabic alternation carries a
large symbolic weight, hinting at the author's particularistic vision,
a kind of "ecological Yiddishism" which challenges the menacing
gleichschaltung of globalism. A consistent and feisty advocate of
"Yiddish-in-Yiddish" within the academy, Katz has given us a work
which is both analytical and polemical. In total opposition to the
myriad voices eulogizing Yiddish and virtually burying it, Katz not
only pens a lively account of its thousand year-old existence, but
conjures a demographic argument that would seem to assure vigorous
survival for another millenium.
"It was time for a radically alternative view of Yiddish to be
presented in a book in English for a wider readership," a friend
advised. One radical feature of the 400-page book Katz has now written
is its effort to avoid monographic turgidity. For the sake of the
general reader, not a single footnote blocks the author's flow of
thought as he weaves a coherent overview of the Yiddish story. Nor is
there a bibliography -- the single reference tool is a copious 32-page
index of names and subjects. The many helpful illustrations are
adequately annotated, quotations are attributed to their sources and
when necessary references to particulars (persons, events, books,
etc.) are given in the running text. However, as one reads on and
gradually uncovers the absence of references to scores of individuals
who are the very foundation stones of Yiddish studies and Yiddish
creativity, one thinks of Dante's alleged practice of placing his
political enemies in Hell and his friends in Paradise. The great names
of Yiddish scholarship are missing from the Index because they are
missing from the book (though several names in the book are not in the
index!) That Dovid Katz is a passionate man with fierce likes and
dislikes may help explain the "Dantesque" quality of this highly
individual composition.
Musing on the phenomenon of a book-length study of such intricate and
multifarious subjects as Yiddish language and literature which
minimize the normal trappings of serious scholarship, there comes to
mind the feat of Erich Auerbach who wrote the seminal _Mimesis_ -- a
book without notes -- while in Turkey during World War Two. Auerbach
was far from libraries, and though in far less drastic circumstances
Katz too must have written much of his book in Vilna and in his Welsh
retreat, neither of which can rival Yivo or Oxford library
facilities. On the other hand there are writers who _desire_
difficulties: Robert Frost saw an analogy between the formal qualites
of verse and the net one requires in tennis. George Perec -- distant
relative of Y.-L. Perets -- of the Oulipo school of writers composed
an entire novel without the letter e and his translator in English
followed suit! Igor Stravinsky is quoted as saying: "The more
constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that
shackle the spirit."
_Words on Fire_ will sear the equanimity of many members of that
minuscule group we can call the academic Yiddishists (in which group I
would have to place myself). These critics will take offense at the
exclusion of such major poets as Yankev Glatshteyn -- arguably the
finest of all American Yiddish poets -- and Itsik Manger, the
balladist who rewrote the Bible in an inimitably charming satiric
vein. Nor would they grant that one can sketch Yiddish literary
history without recourse to the work of Yisroel Tsinberg, Dov Sadan,
Khone Shmeruk -- to name several prominent omissions. One can
nonetheless grant that the average reader is not likely to miss the
scholar's much-loved documentation. Katz has a lot to say and he often
does so in a brilliant manner, though not always stopping to give
evidence for his assertions -- the stuff of books-to-come?
Katz's Theses
Katz has been innovative in Yiddish linguistic research for decades;
in the ongoing debate on the origins of Yiddish his is a respected
voice. At the First International Conference on Research in Yiddish
Language and Literature at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew
Studies in August 1979, he challenged the "standard" text theory of
the origin of Hebrew and Aramaic materials in Yiddish with what he
called the "continual transmission theory," basing his position
largely on phonological grounds. Good classroom teacher that he is,
Katz repeats his theses again and again from different vantage points
and in varying contexts. His linguistic and socio-linguistic theses
posit: 1) present-day Yiddish is part of an ancient "Jewish language
chain"; 2) Jewish internal culture is trilingual -- Yiddish, Hebrew
and Aramaic; 3) there is no future for secular Yiddishism -- an
opinion which is widely held and which continues to enrage the small
bands of "yidishe yidn" who valiantly try to live in and through
Yiddish; 4) Yiddish will be spoken by millions of ultra-Orthodox Jews
a half-century hence -- a view that is not original to Katz but that
will now generate much discussion, cheering many Yiddish enthusiasists
and leaving others disconsolate.
The Jewish Language Chain
In the first of the many gripping mini-histories of individual words
that are dispersed throughout the volume, Katz traces _mazl_ from its
Hebrew beginnings through Jewish Aramaic and ending in Yiddish. "About
five thousand years of history lie behind this one Yiddish word." (p.
12) Though Yiddish is only a thousand years old, its pedigree can be
stretched back to the age of its semitic components and this
venerability presumably adds to its worth. Katz writes: "... the
Jewish language chain... originated ... with the consolidation of the
first Jewish fusion language Hebrew.... Over a thousand years later,..
. the Judean exiles in Babylonia created the second major Jewish
language, Jewish Aramaic, from the Hebrew (itself a fusion of
Canaanite with an older form of Aramaic) they brought with them and
the Babylonian Aramaic they found in their own home." (p. 15) Katz
livens linguistic history by lexical borrowings from astronomy:
"little bang" and "big bang." The meeting of Hebrew and Aramaic
constitutes the "litle bang," and their joint contact with medieval
urban German dialects is the major explosion resulting in the creation
of Yiddish, which itself divides into western and eastern branches,
each with its own regional varieties (Figure 1.3).
Katz may be regarded as a "revisionist" in his understanding of the
"big bang." Max Weinreich -- for whom Katz has the greatest respect
-- regarded Loter, the Rhineland, as the cradle of Yiddish. The
"revisionists" argue that Yiddish may indeed have first originated in
Loter, but its subsequent development occurred in a number of dialects
centered in Regensburg and Bavaria -- the Loter beginning proved a
dead end. This modification of Weinreichian theory is not considered
eccentric; Weinreich and Katz would agree that there is no Yiddish
dialect that corresponds in its major features to any one German
dialect.
The Internal Trilingualism of Ashkenaz
In addition to speaking a local German dialect, Ashkenazim, according
to Katz, spoke three Jewish languages: Yiddish (_loshn Ashkenaz_ ,
Hebrew (_loshn-koydesh_) and Aramaic (_targum-loshn_). Following
Weinreich, most writers in discussing internal bilingualism in
Ashkenaz mean Yiddish and _loshn-koydesh_, the latter referring to
Hebrew-Aramaic, to Hebrew and Aramaic conceived as one. Katz, however,
claims that _loshn-koydesh_ was the traditional name for Hebrew,
assigning Aramaic (_targum-loshn_) a total and individual self. (If
there is a misunderstanding, it is widespread, e.g. the first footnote
in Naomi Seidman's book on the "masculinity" of Hebrew and the
"femininity" of Yiddish, _A Marriage Made in Heaven_ , which Katz much
admires, reads: " Loshn-koydesh comprises not only the various strata
of Hebrew, including biblical and rabbinic, but also Aramaic, the
earlier Jewish vernacular in which the Talmud is composed.") Katz
assures us that "The general configuration is one of graceful
complementation between the three languages." (p. 46) A minority of a
minority commanded Aramaic for studying and writing talmudic and
kabbalistic literature; everyone spoke Yiddish -- but it was neither
"low" nor "high" in terms of prestige. Debate on the meaning of so
central a term as _loshn-koydesh_ can only be welcome.
It is no accident that Katz's chapter on Old Yiddish literature is the
shortest in the book. Here is a subject which is difficult to present
in a popular manner without being superficial. The Yiddish medieval
heritage was rediscoved at the beginning of the last century by
Eastern-European Yiddish scholars looking for creative continuity; it
is only now coming to the attention of a wider audience. Wisely Katz
concentrates on Elye Bokher's inimitable _Bove bukh_ ('Bovo of
Antona'), racily summarizing its plot and informing us that this
creation was the first to employ _ottava rima_ in a Germanic language
(which I learned about in a famous essay by Benjamin Harshav in the
now 40-year old and still worth reading festschrift for Max Weinreich
on his 70th birthday). Katz also discusses _Pariz un Vyene_, another
adaptation of an Italian romance, formerly thought to be by the
extraordinary Elye Bokher, but as the result of new discoveries now
thought by many students of Old Yiddish to be by a protege of the
master. Succinctness is surely a virtue, but Katz often moves too
swiftly for his readers. Thus we learn that "One of the most adored of
European works rendered in Old Yiddish was _King Arthur's Court_." But
why was it adored, how do we know it was adored and by whom and where
and when exactly was it adored and what do we mean by "adored", etc.?
There is a partial one-sentence answer: "The two central characters,
Gavein and his son Vidvilt (Widwilt) were as cherished for Yiddish
readers as they were for Germans and other Europeans." This chases us
around the block without revealing why they were cherished and by
which Yiddish readers. But the general reader may not require
lengthier explanations.
Katz is very gender conscious and he surveys the large subject of
Yiddish and women with empathy and with narrative skill. Shmuel
Niger's pioneering _Der pinkes_ (Vilna) essay of 1912 on the role of
women readers in the development of Yiddish literature goes
unmentioned, but Katz knows the research in this area and discusses
most of the important individual "books for women and simple men,"
buttressing his very readable account with basic bibliographical
notation. Far more than anyone before him, he carries the theme
of women's contributions into the field of Yiddish and Kabbalah, where
he makes a strong claim that will attract the attention of feminists
and would-be kabbalists alike: "The Yiddish works that brought
kabbalistic ideas to the wide readership of men and women played
an essential role not only in the dissemination of those kabbalistic
ideas, but also in a newly uninhibited transmission of classical
Jewish knowledge in the universal vernacular. Kabbalah became a
motivating factor in the enfranchisement of women and unlearned men."
(p. 121)
The core of Katz's book is two long chapters (6 and 7) which cover the
larger periods of Yiddish literary development. Pushed out of the
Germanic lands and welcomed by tolerant pagans in the East, Jews
developed a large measure of autonomy that enabled the Jewish polity
to thrive culturally for several centuries. The rise of hasidism is
reviewed by the author, who in hyperbolic manner, nominates Rabbi
Nakhman Braslaver's _Sipurey maasiyoys_ ('Stories') as "the first
actual literary masterpiece of East European Yiddish, perhaps of East
European Jewry altogether." We are not shown in what way the original
Yiddish oral version is so distinguished. The roots of modern Yiddish
literature lie in the clash between traditionalists and reformers and
Katz very competently surveys the German _haskala_ and its movement
eastward, relating linguistic phenomena to historical and social
changes. Dov-Ber Kerler's _Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish_
(Oxford 1999) is judged "definitive" in its demonstration of the way
many features of pre-maskilic eighteenth-century Yiddish approached
the new Eastern-European Yiddish literary standard.
Katz justly commends the innovative Mendel Lefin of Satanower, "a
master of style" who precipitated fiery debate on the very legitimacy
of Yiddish when he translated _Proverbs_ "into a rich, idiomatic,
local Galician-Ukrainian Yiddish, bringing into play the Hebrew and
Aramaic (Semitic) elements of the language as well as the Slavic
elements that had been been part of spoken Eastern European Yiddish
for centuries but had not been freely represented in written
language." (See Lefin's translation of _Koheles_ at http://yiddish.
haifa.ac.il). Katz writes that Perl "translated Fielding's _Tom Jones_
into Yiddish." Perl's "translation" -- the ms. is in the library of
the Hebrew University -- appears to be from a German adaptation of the
novel. Katz omits the title of Perl's famous anti-hasidic Hebrew
satire -- _Megale temirim_ 'Revealer of Secrets'; he might have
mentioned Dov Taylor's highly useful translation entitled _Joseph
Perl's "Revealer of Secrets"; The First Hebrew Novel_ (Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), sure to be of interest to students of
Yiddish.
In his sketch of modern Judaism's many faces with particular regard to
tradition and language-use, Katz shows a broad grasp of the Jewish
scene: "One major accomplishment of all the new German-Jewish
persuasions and their transplantation to other western countries, was
the rise of a Jewish metaculture in German and English and other
languages that enabled immersion in various aspects of the Jewish
heritage using the tools and institutional possibilities of the West."
(p.228) "A second major metaculture involved the arts." (p.228) Katz
has placed on opposite pages (Figures 7.7 and 7.8, pp.218-9) Yehuda
Pen's "Reading a Newspaper" and his "The Watchmaker." In the first we
are told that a revolutionary reads a secular organ, the St.
Petersburg _Der fraynd_, while in contrast "a traditional watchmaker"
reads the conservative daily Warsaw _Haynt_. I recall seeing
somewhere a fuller reading of the famous "The Watchmaker": The
subject is reading the last page of _Haynt_, which was always reserved
for sensational material: the clamoring (and possibly risque) _now_
clashes with the eternity of Time as imaged in all the clocks in the
picture. In his description of the growth of modern Yiddish culture,
Katz introduces an almost metaphysical concept: the "secular
outburst." (p.229) The agents of the cultural explosion he draws were
all in some way connected with tradition, no matter how far they had
personally abandoned it. Pen's watchmaker looks backwards and
forwards. (Reproduction in color on page 346 of _Lithuanian Jewish
Culture_ and in black and white at http://w3.vitebsk.by/vitebsk/pen/
pic/pic_08.jpg. )
Tirade is rare in Katz's generally well-balanced but by no means
aseptic discussion, yet he can sally forth with slashing
generalizations that one would like to refute or at least modify:
"Although pointing it out is not politically correct nowadays, the
State of Israel was built almost entirely by Yiddish-speaking East
European Jews who were able in their deepest soul to 'translate' the
erstwhile Jewish readiness to die for God and his Torah into a modern
kind of ultranationalism that entailed rejecting their mother tongue
and the culture of their parents, families, towns and civilization."
(p.236)
"The loathing of Yiddish among East European native-Yiddish speaking
Zionists in Palestine, who where actually speaking Hebrew, was
incalculably more bitter than anything seen in the Mendelsohnian
circle in late-eighteenth century Germany or their East European
followers in the 19th." (p. 238)
Katz's final view of Zionism is positive: "The rise, growth and
solidification of a revived Jewish state in its ancient homeland is
one of the major accomplishments in all of Jewish history, whatever
one's view of Jewish language and culture..." (p. 373), yet a certain
residual embitteredness occasionally rises to the surface: those
Zionists "created a kind of golem: a proud, new Jewish-derived people
who became _Israelis_, leaving their ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
Jewishness far behind. They would prove to themselves and the world
that the 'old Jew', whom they considered passive, hapless, effeminate,
who jabbered that ugly jargon, would be replaced in the ancient
homeland." (p. 238)
Katz contrasts "humanist" Yiddishism with "ultranationalist" Zionism,
ignoring the history of a movement saturated with utopianism, and
large sectors of which were dedicated to the creation of a model
society in Palestine, one based on ancient biblical and modern
socialist ideals of justice. Katz pits the Socialist Bund against the
Zionists as regards diaspora politics, but Zionists too fought
antisemitism, defended Jewish rights, seeing immigration as a gradual
process which did not relieve them of civic responsibilites in their
native lands.
It is true that in some homes in some shtetlekh, some servant girls
and others spoke some Yiddish, but there is no evidence that Yiddish
"was also understood by many non-Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern
Europe". (p. 243) Centuries ago as today, nothing has ever been as
sure a proof of a person's Jewishness as his ability to speak Yiddish.
(In America everybody "speaks Yiddish" -- e.g. the kabbala scholar
Madonna, Colin Powell, etc.).
There is no subject developed by Katz that will be as new to many
readers as his discussionn of ultraOrthodoxy. Most of us know little
about the Khasam Soyfer (Moyshe Shreiber, 1762-1839), author of "one
hundred books, all unpublished." It was Akiba-Joseph Shlezinger
(1837-1922) who published Shreiber's ethical will in Yiddish in 1864,
a "little book that 'codified' the question of Yiddish for Haredim for
all time to come, warning everyone, 'Be careful not to change your
name, language or clothing to those of the gentile, God forbid!'" (p.
252) Shlezinger described Yiddish as the language "unique" to Jews,
i.e. not known by Gentiles.
Katz sees Eastern-European Jewish cultural autonomy as successful --
despite the political and socio-economic oppression of Jews in every
Eastern-European country in every period including brief ones of
relative communal independence. He has made a major effort to
reconcile his own liberal views with the irrefutably obscurantist
stance of the ultra-Orthodox, candidly acknowledging their theological
chauvinism (belief in innate ethical superiority to Gentiles) and
discovering intellectual flexibility in their talmudic study (though
their fundamental assumptions are unshakeable); morevoer, he sees in
their thriving Yiddish periodicals promise of a literary flowering. He
is justly incensed at the brutal manner in which Hebraists attacked
Yiddish cultural expression in the Yishuv and in the early years of
the State of Israel and of the continuing -- if lessening --
opposition to Yiddish in Israeli society. He sees modern Israeli
Hebrew as "Israeli" -- as distinct from the language of the Bible.
This "Israeli" is a largely artificial creation with European-Yiddish
syntax and Semitic word stock -- a view elaborated in the writings of
the young Israeli linguist Ghilad Zuckermann. Katz sees Hasidic
Yiddish-speaking communities living in and outside of the Jewish
state, fulfilling a modern ecological _mitsva_ of being different and
preserving age-old differences. These communities alone can assure the
survival of Yiddish since they alone preserve an internal trilingual
culture.
_Words of Fire_ joins a growing body of books which attempt to
describe some facet of Yiddish language or literature in English for
the general reader. Maurice Samuel's _In Praise of Yiddish_
(mentioned by Katz favorably) is still a valuable and engaging work;
a recent addition to this literature is Miriam Weinstein's popular
and readable _Yiddish_ (2001). Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_ will
continue to be a litmus paper dividing the "non-compromisers" from
the "accomodationists" (Katz praises Rosten whereas in my club he is
the acme of vulgarity and firmly proscribed.) Katz's book, powered by
large ideas and drawing upon a lifetime of wide reading in the
scholarly literature of Yiddish, is unlike any of these popular works
and is worth reading by footnote-loving scholars as well as by laymen.
Many of us will want to say to Katz (in "Israeli"!): "_kol hakavod_"
and then, deep into the night, to argue with him in the glow of his
_Words on Fire_...
3)----------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Carrie Friedman-Cohen
Subject: Review of _Polin_, vol. 16, ed. Michael C. Steinlauf and
Antony Polonsky
_Polin_, vol. 16
_Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry_ has contributed much to the study of
Polish Jewry (including the importance of Yiddish scholarship and its
sources). The present review highlights specific articles in vol. 16,
a volume which centers on the popular culture of Polish Jewry.
The "Polin" Series, first published by Blackwell for the Institute for
Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford, and since 1994 by The Littman Library
of Jewish Civilization (vol. 8 onward) has become an authoritative
source on Polish Jewry. Each volume from the second onward devotes an
entire section to a major topic: the history of the Jews in a specific
city (vol. 3 "Jews in Warsaw"; vol. 6 "Jews in Lodz 1820-1939") or
region (vol. 12 "Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians,
1772-1918";vol. 14 "Jews in the Polish Borderlands"), or thematic
subject (vol. 5 "Zionism in Poland"; vol. 9 "Poles, Jews, Socialists:
The Failure of an Ideal"). Specific historical periods are also
examined (vol. 2 "Jews and the Emergence of an Independent Polish
State"; vol. 7 "Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw"; vol. 8 "Jews in
Independent Poland 1918-1939"; vol. 10 "Jews in the Early Modern
Period"). The journal publishes documents, interviews, bibliographical
essays, reviews of English, Polish, German, French, and Hebrew books,
letters to the editor, obituaries, conference and symposia reports,
notices of new catalogues, exchanges and more. The trilingual culture
(Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew) of Polish Jewry is presented in _Polin_
to the international reader in English, a tremendous feat in itself.
_Polin_ is the indispensable international scholars' forum in
Polish-Jewish studies.
With its nineteen essays on the subject, Volume 16 is a cornucopia of
research on Jewish popular culture in Poland; six additional studies
examine the "afterlife" of this culture. Many of the essays deal with
popular theatre and music in Poland. Ariela Krasney discusses the role
of the _batkhn_ (< Hebrew _badkhan_), the traditional Jewish
entertainer, his techniques of expression and the process through
which his work moved from oral to written form. Yakov Mazor examines
the post-Holocaust renewal of the _batkhn_ tradition in Hasidic
communities in the USA, Israel and Europe, its socio-cultural,
historical, textual and musical contexts. Walter Zeev Feldman, on the
basis of a series of interviews he conducted with survivors, expands
the field of study of the "klezmer" performer (the East-European
Jewish professional instrumentalist) and his music which until today
has focused almost exclusively on the eastern Ukraine. He explores the
"klezmer" life in eastern Galicia and the characteristics which
distinguish it from klezmer performances of eastern Ukraine and other
territories.
Michael Aylward presents a "progress report" of his work on a
discography of commercial recordings of Jewish music in Europe, from
the first Jewish recordings in Poland (a set of cantorial pieces sung
by the well known cantor Gershon Sirota in Warsaw), to its decline in
the interwar years. Two tables illustrate the current status of the
discography (which increases in volume at an amazing pace as "new"
sources are discovered). The first table gives a breakdown of
recordings by record company and style (including cantorial, synagogue
choral, theatrical,orchestral and the "spoken word"), while the second
table gives locations (Bucharest, Budapest, Czernowitz, Lemberg,
London, Moscow, Vienna, and Warsaw). On the basis of these findings at
the time of writing Aylward concludes that prior to the first World
War the Jewish record industry was mainly centered in Poland, while
the chief type of music recorded was the Yiddish song (theater or
other).
Natan Gross discusses Mordechai Gebirtig's folk songs, which were
influenced both by popular cabaret and Jewish folklore. Gross
reminisces about the life of Gebirtig and about performances of his
sentimental yet socially conscious songs in the interwar period. Bret
Werb and Barbara Milewski discuss repertoires of songs created by
Polish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, the most common of which
were parodies of pre-war songs. They examine the parody song
"Heil Sachsenhausen" and the song "Madagascar" (itself a satirical
representation of the Jewish condition in the interwar years) as
reflecting camp life, condemnation of Nazi policy, as well as
ambivalent relations between Jews and Poles before and during the
Holocaust.
Alex Lubet examines "Yiddish Worldbeat," post-modern secular Yiddish
music. With tongue-in-cheek subtitles ("Beyond Klezmer - Dos Lebn in
Amerike", "Like a Rolling Shteyn", "With a Little Help From My
Fremde"), he discusses American musical influences on Wolf Krakowski's
unique Yiddish rock album "Transmigrations," influences which include
1960s counter-culture rock, country, reggae and gospel music, as well
as the "Jewishness" of the lyrics ("Shabes Shabes," "Zol Shoyn Kumen
Di Geule"). Michael C. Steinlauf surveys Yiddish theater in Poland
from its pre-modern origins to its nineteenth-century secular
contexts. He focuses on Avrom Goldfaden's professional theater from
which all subsequent Yiddish theater is descended, including the
Polish language Jewish theater. He discusses the "Dybbukiada"
phenomenon, which though rooted in folklore and the supernatural
reflected the cultural and national identity of Polish Jewry.
The interwar period was one of permanent economic crisis affecting
every aspect of Jewish popular culture reviewed in this volume, yet
the art theatres (VIKT - Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater, VNIT - Warsaw
Yiddish Art Theater and the Yung Teater) maintained a high level.
Steinlauf also points briefly to efforts to stage performances in the
Warsaw ghetto and the futile attempts to revive Jewish theater in
post-Holocaust Poland.
Steinlauf in his introduction to Volume 16 sees Jewish engagement with
modernity in Poland as a determinant in the making of popular Jewish
culture. He writes: ".as the Jews move out of small town communities
and conceptions into the tumult of urban life, a Jewish mass culture
resulted that shaped Jewish life in Poland until its end. This culture
was constructed above all around the possibilities of Yiddish, the
vernacular language of Polish Jews." Volume 16 richly reflects the
connection between East-European Jewish history and literature, the
vast majority of which was created in Yiddish. The late Khone Shmeruk,
whose mark can be felt throughout _Polin_, stressed the
interdependence between historical and literary-cultural research when
studying Polish Jewry.
Pre-Holocaust cultural creativity in Jewish Poland overflows in the
Yiddish periodical press, a major subject in Volume 16. Joshua Shanes
examines the connection between nascent Jewish nationalism and the
Yiddish press in the early 1890s in Galicia. This new type of Yiddish
literature edited by Zionists ironically nurtured a Jewish national
consciousness among traditionalist Jews, even drawing them into
political campaigns. One campaign boycotted _etrogim_ from Greece due
to anti-Semitic attacks there and urged purchasing them from
Palestine. This not only drew orthodox Jews into a political campaign,
it earned them the added _mitsva_ of using an _etrog_ from Erets
Yisroel.
Natan Cohen traces the history of the Yiddish and Polish tabloid
(_shund_ 'cheap') press, offering many examples of its major types and
contents. Almost every one of the major Yiddish dailies (e.g. _Unzer
Ekspres_, _Moment_) not only published _shund_ literature - usually
serialized sensationalist novels - along with highbrow literary and
newsworthy articles, but also published extra editions, evening
papers, or serialized novels in pamphlet form to boost sales in the
fierce competition to attract readers. The struggle against the
Yiddish tabloid press centered in heated arguments in the Yiddish Pen
Club and the Jewish Writers' and Journalists' Union, but even the
most respected authors hid behind pen names and wrote for the _shund_
papers.
Ellen Kellman examines the history of Yiddish reading, focusing on the
development of public libraries, reading networks and Yiddish
publishing houses. Lending libraries (which usually included reading
rooms) were for the most part politically aligned and were sustained
by the rapid growth of publishing firms and donations of books from
America. The Kultur Lige ('League for Culture') stood at the forefront
of Yiddish publishing in Poland. In 1921, its first year, it published
70 books, and a year later it revived its bimonthly journal
_Bikher-velt_ ('Book World'). An important source for Kellman's essay,
this periodical outlines the problems of the Yiddish book market and
the Yiddish libraries in the 1920s. Outmoded methods of issuing
Yiddish books, their high cost, linguistic assimilation to Polish,
attraction to _shund_ literature and the dearth of trained librarians
led to efforts by politically aligned activists of Poalei Zion Left
and the Bund to improve Yiddish libraries, attempts continued into the
period of Nazi occupation. Based on diaries and memoirs, research on
Jewish cultural activity during the Holocaust period in terms of
libraries and reading public helps us to understand this dark period
of Jewish life.
Edward Portnoy's study of cartoons in the Yiddish satirical press
illuminates the contemporary cultural landscape of Polish Jewry. These
cartoons often revolve around the major Jewish holidays, when most of
the satirical publications appeared. Hillel Zeitlin, a public figure
and publicist who moved from _Haynt_ to _Moment_, and Shmuel Yatskan,
the editor of _Haynt_, are subjects of one cartoon reflecting Yiddish
press rivalry in the interwar years. Yatskan performs the pre-Yom
Kippur _shlogn kapores_ ritual, swinging a rooster over his head to
transfer his sins to the rooster (which is then given as charity to
the poor to be eaten). The rooster here is Zeitlin, who defecates on
Yatskan while being twirled in the air. The caption to the cartoon
reads: "Did you ever see such a rooster? I tried to _shlog kapores_
with him and he goes and pulls this trick on me." These cartoons
(often crudely) show how traditional customs and folklore were
appropriated for social commentary.
We can view the titles and names of editors of the first twenty
volumes of _Polin_ at the internet site:
http://www.littman.co.uk/polin/.
Carrie Friedman-Cohen
Rothberg School for International Students
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
4)---------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Yitskhok Luden
Subject: Sept.-Oct. 2004 Issue of _Lebns-fragn_ (Tel-Aviv)
Der nayer numer "Lebns-fragn" far September-Oktober 2004 iz dershinen
in Tel-Aviv. In dem numer: "Der nayer tsikl fun teror un farnikhtung";
"Der general-shtrayk un zayn oysgang"; "Fun khoydesh tsu khoydesh" --
aktualyes; "Der farzorger fun melukhishe postns"; "Lodzh un ir
yidisher zikorn" fun Yoram Kaniuk; "Dos lebn un umkum fun Abrasha
Blum" fun Luba Bielitska-Blum un zeyer tokhter Aviva in Yisroel; "60
yor nokhn poylishn oyfshtand in Varshe"; "Der troyeriker goyrl fun
Birobidzhan"; "Vos andere shraybn"; Musye Landoys bukh vegn shrayber
un vegn Vilne. "Der yidisher litseum in Vilne; Di yidishe Sholen
Aleykhem shul in Melbourne un azoy vayter....
Der yerlekher abonament (6 numern) batreft: Amerike - tsofn un dorem
...30 $ US; Europe ... 25 ?; Australye ... 30 $ US; Dorem-Afrike
... 25 $ US.
Tsu abonirn un bashteln: "LEBNS-FRAGN" c/o BRITH AVODA -- ARBETER-RING
48 KALISHER STREET, TEL-AVIV 65165, ISRAEL
TEL / FAX: 972 3 517 6764.
--------------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review Vol. 08.010
Editor, Leonard Prager
Associate Editor, Joseph Sherman
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The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 08.010 [Sequential No. 149]
Date: 29 October 2004
1) Editor's Note (L.P.)
a. Shalom Luria awarded the Mendele-Moykher-Sforim Prize 2004
b. Joseph Sherman's _Midstream_ essay on Isaac Bashevis-Singer
c. New stories on the Di velt fun yidish/The World of Yiddish website.
d. Full text access to _Khulyot_
e. Coming issue: Review of Dovid Katz's magisterial _Lithuanian
Jewish Culture_ (Vilna: Baltos Lankos, 2004, 398 pp)
2) Review of Dovid Katz's _Words on Fire_ (L.P.)
3) Review of _Polin_ vol. 16 (Carrie Friedman-Cohen)
4) Oct.-Nov. 2004 _Lebns-fragn_, Tel-Aviv (Yitskhok Luden)
1)-----------------------------------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Editor's Note
a. Dr. Shalom Luria, founding editor of _Khulyot_ , a Hebrew-language
annual based at the University of Haifa and that is devoted to the
study of Yiddish language and literature, will be awarded the 2004
Mendele-Moykher-Sforim Prize of the City of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa. The award
is for Luria's life work as a research scholar of Yiddish literature
and as initiator of significant publication projects in the field of
Yiddish studies. Dr. Luria is the son of the distinguished Yiddish
linguist Zelik Kalmanovitsh (1885-1944) and like his father an
accomplished translator. He has translated into Hebrew a number of his
father's works.
b. In this Yitskhok Bashevis [Isaac Bashevis Singer] (1904-1991)
centenary year, the journal _Midstream_ (well known to many TMR
readers) has published a wide-ranging and probative essay by our own
Joseph Sherman and has placed it on line. "Revaluating Jewish
Identity: A Centenary Tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer" can be reached
through the link: http://midstreamthf.com/current/feature.html.
c. Sara Blacher-Retter reads two more stories on the Di velt fun
yidish/The World of Yiddish website (http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il),
bringing to twenty the number of stories available on the site. The
two additions are Sholem Ash's "A dorf-tsadik" and Avrom Reyzn's "Der
yid vos hot khorev gemakht dem templ." The texts of these stories are
also accessible and the reader scrolls down while listening. The text
of Mendele Moykher-Sforim's "Mayn letste nesie" will be made
accessible in the near future. The Yiddish original and a Hebrew
translation by Shalom Luria may be found in _Khulyot_ vol. 4 (1997).
The audio version is in place.
d. The principal Israeli academic medium for writing on Yiddish
literature is the now eight-year old annual _Khulyot_ (_Ringen_
'Links'). Full-Text access to an increasing number of _Khulyot_ essays
is now possible by entering the "World of Yiddish"/"Di velt fun
yidish" website (http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il). Click on the essay title
in the Abstracts section of _Khulyot_. Additional essays will be
viewable in the near future.
e. In a coming issue: Review of Dovid Katz's magisterial _Lithuanian
Jewish Culture_ (Vilna: Baltos Lankos, 2004, 398pp). ISBN 9955 - 584
- 41 - 6. See the publisher's website for details of purchasing this
beautifully printed volume. For order form and price information, see:
www.blk.lt/en/lba/order_form.html
2)---------------------------------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Review of Dovid Katz's _Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story
of Yiddish_
The Story of Yiddish Retold
Dovid Katz, _Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish_. New
York: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-465-03728-3
Dovid Katz's meteoric career as Yiddish-scholar, -teacher, -publicist,
-author, and -activist has spread his name among Yiddish-lovers the
world over. His latest book, _Words on Fire_, will undoubtedly make
him known to wider circles. Not, be it pointed out, known as DAVID
Katz, but as DOVID Katz. That small syllabic alternation carries a
large symbolic weight, hinting at the author's particularistic vision,
a kind of "ecological Yiddishism" which challenges the menacing
gleichschaltung of globalism. A consistent and feisty advocate of
"Yiddish-in-Yiddish" within the academy, Katz has given us a work
which is both analytical and polemical. In total opposition to the
myriad voices eulogizing Yiddish and virtually burying it, Katz not
only pens a lively account of its thousand year-old existence, but
conjures a demographic argument that would seem to assure vigorous
survival for another millenium.
"It was time for a radically alternative view of Yiddish to be
presented in a book in English for a wider readership," a friend
advised. One radical feature of the 400-page book Katz has now written
is its effort to avoid monographic turgidity. For the sake of the
general reader, not a single footnote blocks the author's flow of
thought as he weaves a coherent overview of the Yiddish story. Nor is
there a bibliography -- the single reference tool is a copious 32-page
index of names and subjects. The many helpful illustrations are
adequately annotated, quotations are attributed to their sources and
when necessary references to particulars (persons, events, books,
etc.) are given in the running text. However, as one reads on and
gradually uncovers the absence of references to scores of individuals
who are the very foundation stones of Yiddish studies and Yiddish
creativity, one thinks of Dante's alleged practice of placing his
political enemies in Hell and his friends in Paradise. The great names
of Yiddish scholarship are missing from the Index because they are
missing from the book (though several names in the book are not in the
index!) That Dovid Katz is a passionate man with fierce likes and
dislikes may help explain the "Dantesque" quality of this highly
individual composition.
Musing on the phenomenon of a book-length study of such intricate and
multifarious subjects as Yiddish language and literature which
minimize the normal trappings of serious scholarship, there comes to
mind the feat of Erich Auerbach who wrote the seminal _Mimesis_ -- a
book without notes -- while in Turkey during World War Two. Auerbach
was far from libraries, and though in far less drastic circumstances
Katz too must have written much of his book in Vilna and in his Welsh
retreat, neither of which can rival Yivo or Oxford library
facilities. On the other hand there are writers who _desire_
difficulties: Robert Frost saw an analogy between the formal qualites
of verse and the net one requires in tennis. George Perec -- distant
relative of Y.-L. Perets -- of the Oulipo school of writers composed
an entire novel without the letter e and his translator in English
followed suit! Igor Stravinsky is quoted as saying: "The more
constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that
shackle the spirit."
_Words on Fire_ will sear the equanimity of many members of that
miniscule group we can call the academic Yiddishists (in which group I
would have to place myself). These critics will take offense at the
exclusion of such major poets as Yankev Glatshteyn -- arguably the
finest of all American Yiddish poets -- and Itsik Manger, the
balladist who rewrote the Bible in an inimitably charming satiric
vein. Nor would they grant that one can sketch Yiddish literary
history without recourse to the work of Yisroel Tsinberg, Dov Sadan,
Khone Shmeruk -- to name several prominent omissions. One can
nonetheless grant that the average reader is not likely to miss the
scholar's much-loved documentation. Katz has a lot to say and he often
does so in a brilliant manner, though not always stopping to give
evidence for his assertions -- the stuff of books-to-come?
Katz's Theses
Katz has been innovative in Yiddish linguistic research for decades;
in the ongoing debate on the origins of Yiddish his is a respected
voice. At the First International Conference on Research in Yiddish
Language and Literature at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew
Studies in August 1979, he challenged the "standard" text theory of
the origin of Hebrew and Aramaic materials in Yiddish with what he
called the "continual transmission theory," basing his position
largely on phonological grounds. Good classroom teacher that he is,
Katz repeats his theses again and again from different vantage points
and in varying contexts. His linguistic and socio-linguistic theses
posit: 1) present-day Yiddish is part of an ancient "Jewish language
chain"; 2) Jewish internal culture is trilingual -- Yiddish, Hebrew
and Aramaic; 3) there is no future for secular Yiddishism -- an
opinion which is widely held and which continues to enrage the small
bands of "yidishe yidn" who valiantly try to live in and through
Yiddish; 4) Yiddish will be spoken by millions of ultra-Orthodox Jews
a half-century hence -- a view that is not original to Katz but that
will now generate much discussion, cheering many Yiddish enthusiasists
and leaving others disconsolate.
The Jewish Language Chain
In the first of the many gripping mini-histories of individual words
that are dispersed throughout the volume, Katz traces _mazl_ from its
Hebrew beginnings through Jewish Aramaic and ending in Yiddish. "About
five thousand years of history lie behind this one Yiddish word." (p.
12) Though Yiddish is only a thousand years old, its pedigree can be
stretched back to the age of its semitic components and this
venerability presumably adds to its worth. Katz writes: "... the
Jewish language chain... originated ... with the consolidation of the
first Jewish fusion language Hebrew.... Over a thousand years later,..
. the Judean exiles in Babylonia created the second major Jewish
language, Jewish Aramaic, from the Hebrew (itself a fusion of
Canaanite with an older form of Aramaic) they brought with them and
the Babylonian Aramaic they found in their own home." (p. 15) Katz
livens linguistic history by lexical borrowings from astronomy:
"little bang" and "big bang." The meeting of Hebrew and Aramaic
constitutes the "litle bang," and their joint contact with medieval
urban German dialects is the major explosion resulting in the creation
of Yiddish, which itself divides into western and eastern branches,
each with its own regional varieties (Figure 1.3).
Katz may be regarded as a "revisionist" in his understanding of the
"big bang." Max Weinreich -- for whom Katz has the greatest respect
-- regarded Loter, the Rhineland, as the cradle of Yiddish. The
"revisionists" argue that Yiddish may indeed have first originated in
Loter, but its subsequent development occurred in a number of dialects
centered in Regensburg and Bavaria -- the Loter beginning proved a
dead end. This modification of Weinreichian theory is not considered
eccentric; Weinreich and Katz would agree that there is no Yiddish
dialect that corresponds in its major features to any one German
dialect.
The Internal Trilingualism of Ashkenaz
In addition to speaking a local German dialect, Ashkenazim, according
to Katz, spoke three Jewish languages: Yiddish (_loshn Ashkenaz_ ,
Hebrew (_loshn-koydesh_) and Aramaic (_targum-loshn_). Following
Weinreich, most writers in discussing internal bilingualism in
Ashkenaz mean Yiddish and _loshn-koydesh_, the latter referring to
Hebrew-Aramaic, to Hebrew and Aramaic conceived as one. Katz, however,
claims that _loshn-koydesh_ was the traditional name for Hebrew,
assigning Aramaic (_targum-loshn_) a total and individual self. (If
there is a misunderstanding, it is widespread, e.g. the first footnote
in Naomi Seidman's book on the "masculinity" of Hebrew and the
"femininity" of Yiddish, _A Marriage Made in Heaven_ , which Katz much
admires, reads: " Loshn-koydesh comprises not only the various strata
of Hebrew, including biblical and rabbinic, but also Aramaic, the
earlier Jewish vernacular in which the Talmud is composed.") Katz
assures us that "The general configuration is one of graceful
complementation between the three languages." (p. 46) A minority of a
minority commanded Aramaic for studying and writing talmudic and
kabbalistic literature; everyone spoke Yiddish -- but it was neither
"low" nor "high" in terms of prestige. Debate on the meaning of so
central a term as _loshn-koydesh_ can only be welcome.
It is no accident that Katz's chapter on Old Yiddish literature is the
shortest in the book. Here is a subject which is difficult to present
in a popular manner without being superficial. The Yiddish medieval
heritage was rediscoved at the beginning of the last century by
Eastern-European Yiddish scholars looking for creative continuity; it
is only now coming to the attention of a wider audience. Wisely Katz
concentrates on Elye Bokher's inimitable _Bove bukh_ ('Bovo of
Antona'), racily summarizing its plot and informing us that this
creation was the first to employ _ottava rima_ in a Germanic language
(which I learned about in a famous essay by Benjamin Harshav in the
now 40-year old and still worth reading festschrift for Max Weinreich
on his 70th birthday). Katz also discusses _Pariz un Vyene_, another
adaptation of an Italian romance, formerly thought to be by the
extraordinary Elye Bokher, but as the result of new discoveries now
thought by many students of Old Yiddish to be by a protege of the
master. Succinctness is surely a virtue, but Katz often moves too
swiftly for his readers. Thus we learn that "One of the most adored of
European works rendered in Old Yiddish was _King Arthur's Court_." But
why was it adored, how do we know it was adored and by whom and where
and when exactly was it adored and what do we mean by "adored", etc.?
There is a partial one-sentence answer: "The two central characters,
Gavein and his son Vidvilt (Widwilt) were as cherished for Yiddish
readers as they were for Germans and other Europeans." This chases us
around the block without revealing why they were cherished and by
which Yiddish readers. But the general reader may not require
lengthier explanations.
Katz is very gender conscious and he surveys the large subject of
Yiddish and women with empathy and with narrative skill. Shmuel
Niger's pioneering _Der pinkes_ (Vilna) essay of 1912 on the role of
women readers in the development of Yiddish literature goes
unmentioned, but Katz knows the research in this area and discusses
most of the important individual "books for women and simple men,"
buttressing his very readable account with basic bibliographical
notation. Far more than anyone before him, he carries the theme
of women's contributions into the field of Yiddish and Kabbalah, where
he makes a strong claim that will attract the attention of feminists
and would-be kabbalists alike: "The Yiddish works that brought
kabbalistic ideas to the wide readership of men and women played
an essential role not only in the dissemination of those kabbalistic
ideas, but also in a newly uninhibited transmission of classical
Jewish knowledge in the universal vernacular. Kabbalah became a
motivating factor in the enfranchisement of women and unlearned men."
(p. 121)
The core of Katz's book is two long chapters (6 and 7) which cover the
larger periods of Yiddish literary development. Pushed out of the
Germanic lands and welcomed by tolerant pagans in the East, Jews
developed a large measure of autonomy that enabled the Jewish polity
to thrive culturally for several centuries. The rise of hasidism is
reviewed by the author, who in hyperbolic manner, nominates Rabbi
Nakhman Braslaver's _Sipurey maasiyoys_ ('Stories') as "the first
actual literary masterpiece of East European Yiddish, perhaps of East
European Jewry altogether." We are not shown in what way the original
Yiddish oral version is so distinguished. The roots of modern Yiddish
literature lie in the clash between traditionalists and reformers and
Katz very competently surveys the German _haskala_ and its movement
eastward, relating linguistic phenomena to historical and social
changes. Dov-Ber Kerler's _Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish_
(Oxford 1999) is judged "definitive" in its demonstration of the way
many features of pre-maskilic eighteenth-century Yiddish approached
the new Eastern-European Yiddish literary standard.
Katz justly commends the innovative Mendel Lefin of Satanower, "a
master of style" who precipitated fiery debate on the very legitimacy
of Yiddish when he translated _Proverbs_ "into a rich, idiomatic,
local Galician-Ukrainian Yiddish, bringing into play the Hebrew and
Aramaic (Semitic) elements of the language as well as the Slavic
elements that had been been part of spoken Eastern European Yiddish
for centuries but had not been freely represented in written
language." (See Lefin's translation of _Koheles_ at http://yiddish.
haifa.ac.il). Katz writes that Perl "translated Fielding's _Tom Jones_
into Yiddish." Perl's "translation" -- the ms. is in the library of
the Hebrew University -- appears to be from a German adaptation of the
novel. Katz omits the title of Perl's famous anti-hasidic Hebrew
satire -- _Megale temirim_ 'Revealer of Secrets'; he might have
mentioned Dov Taylor's highly useful translation entitled _Joseph
Perl's "Revealer of Secrets"; The First Hebrew Novel_ (Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), sure to be of interest to students of
Yiddish.
In his sketch of modern Judaism's many faces with particular regard to
tradition and language-use, Katz shows a broad grasp of the Jewish
scene: "One major accomplishment of all the new German-Jewish
persuasions and their transplantation to other western countries, was
the rise of a Jewish metaculture in German and English and other
languages that enabled immersion in various aspects of the Jewish
heritage using the tools and institutional possibilities of the West."
(p.228) "A second major metaculture involved the arts." (p.228) Katz
has placed on opposite pages (Figures 7.7 and 7.8, pp.218-9) Yehuda
Pen's "Reading a Newspaper" and his "The Watchmaker." In the first we
are told that a revolutionary reads a secular organ, the St.
Petersburg _Der fraynd_, while in contrast "a traditional watchmaker"
reads the conservative daily Warsaw _Haynt_. I recall seeing
somewhere a fuller reading of the famous "The Watchmaker": The
subject is reading the last page of _Haynt_, which was always reserved
for sensational material: the clamoring (and possibly risque) _now_
clashes with the eternity of Time as imaged in all the clocks in the
picture. In his description of the growth of modern Yiddish culture,
Katz introduces an almost metaphysical concept: the "secular
outburst." (p.229) The agents of the cultural explosion he draws were
all in some way connected with tradition, no matter how far they had
personally abandoned it. Pen's watchmaker looks backwards and
forwards. (Reproduction in color on page 346 of _Lithuanian Jewish
Culture_ and in black and white at http://w3.vitebsk.by/vitebsk/pen/
pic/pic_08.jpg. )
Tirade is rare in Katz's generally well-balanced but by no means
aseptic discussion, yet he can sally forth with slashing
generalizations that one would like to refute or at least modify:
"Although pointing it out is not politically correct nowadays, the
State of Israel was built almost entirely by Yiddish-speaking East
European Jews who were able in their deepest soul to 'translate' the
erstwhile Jewish readiness to die for God and his Torah into a modern
kind of ultranationalism that entailed rejecting their mother tongue
and the culture of their parents, families, towns and civilization."
(p.236)
"The loathing of Yiddish among East European native-Yiddish speaking
Zionists in Palestine, who where actually speaking Hebrew, was
incalculably more bitter than anything seen in the Mendelsohnian
circle in late-eighteenth century Germany or their East European
followers in the 19th." (p. 238)
Katz's final view of Zionism is positive: "The rise, growth and
solidification of a revived Jewish state in its ancient homeland is
one of the major accomplishments in all of Jewish history, whatever
one's view of Jewish language and culture..." (p. 373), yet a certain
residual embitteredness occasionally rises to the surface: those
Zionists "created a kind of golem: a proud, new Jewish-derived people
who became _Israelis_, leaving their ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
Jewishness far behind. They would prove to themselves and the world
that the 'old Jew', whom they considered passive, hapless, effeminate,
who jabbered that ugly jargon, would be replaced in the ancient
homeland." (p. 238)
Katz contrasts "humanist" Yiddishism with "ultranationalist" Zionism,
ignoring the history of a movement saturated with utopianism, and
large sectors of which were dedicated to the creation of a model
society in Palestine, one based on ancient biblical and modern
socialist ideals of justice. Katz pits the Socialist Bund against the
Zionists as regards diaspora politics, but Zionists too fought
antisemitism, defended Jewish rights, seeing immigration as a gradual
process which did not relieve them of civic responsibilites in their
native lands.
It is true that in some homes in some shtetlekh, some servant girls
and others spoke some Yiddish, but there is no evidence that Yiddish
"was also understood by many non-Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern
Europe". (p. 243) Centuries ago as today, nothing has ever been as
sure a proof of a person's Jewishness as his ability to speak Yiddish.
(In America everybody "speaks Yiddish" -- e.g. the kabbala scholar
Madonna, Colin Powell, etc.).
There is no subject developed by Katz that will be as new to many
readers as his discussionn of ultraOrthodoxy. Most of us know little
about the Khasam Soyfer (Moyshe Shreiber, 1762-1839), author of "one
hundred books, all unpublished." It was Akiba-Joseph Shlezinger
(1837-1922) who published Shreiber's ethical will in Yiddish in 1864,
a "little book that 'codified' the question of Yiddish for Haredim for
all time to come, warning everyone, 'Be careful not to change your
name, language or clothing to those of the gentile, God forbid!'" (p.
252) Shlezinger described Yiddish as the language "unique" to Jews,
i.e. not known by Gentiles.
Katz sees Eastern-European Jewish cultural autonomy as successful --
despite the political and socio-economic oppression of Jews in every
Eastern-European country in every period including brief ones of
relative communal independence. He has made a major effort to
reconcile his own liberal views with the irrefutably obscurantist
stance of the ultra-Orthodox, candidly acknowledging their theological
chauvinism (belief in innate ethical superiority to Gentiles) and
discovering intellectual flexibility in their talmudic study (though
their fundamental assumptions are unshakeable); morevoer, he sees in
their thriving Yiddish periodicals promise of a literary flowering. He
is justly incensed at the brutal manner in which Hebraists attacked
Yiddish cultural expression in the Yishuv and in the early years of
the State of Israel and of the continuing -- if lessening --
opposition to Yiddish in Israeli society. He sees modern Israeli
Hebrew as "Israeli" -- as distinct from the language of the Bible.
This "Israeli" is a largely artificial creation with European-Yiddish
syntax and Semitic word stock -- a view elaborated in the writings of
the young Israeli linguist Ghilad Zuckermann. Katz sees Hasidic
Yiddish-speaking communities living in and outside of the Jewish
state, fulfilling a modern ecological _mitsva_ of being different and
preserving age-old differences. These communities alone can assure the
survival of Yiddish since they alone preserve an internal trilingual
culture.
_Words of Fire_ joins a growing body of books which attempt to
describe some facet of Yiddish language or literature in English for
the general reader. Maurice Samuel's _In Praise of Yiddish_
(mentioned by Katz favorably) is still a valuable and engaging work;
a recent addition to this literature is Miriam Weinstein's popular
and readable _Yiddish_ (2001). Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_ will
continue to be a litmus paper dividing the "non-compromisers" from
the "accomodationists" (Katz praises Rosten whereas in my club he is
the acme of vulgarity and firmly proscribed.) Katz's book, powered by
large ideas and drawing upon a lifetime of wide reading in the
scholarly literature of Yiddish, is unlike any of these popular works
and is worth reading by footnote-loving scholars as well as by laymen.
Many of us will want to say to Katz (in "Israeli"!): "_kol hakavod_"
and then, deep into the night, to argue with him in the glow of his
_Words on Fire_...
3)----------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Carrie Friedman-Cohen
Subject: Review of _Polin_, vol. 16, ed. Michael C. Steinlauf and
Antony Polonsky
_Polin_, vol. 16
_Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry_ has contributed much to the study of
Polish Jewry (including the importance of Yiddish scholarship and its
sources). The present review highlights specific articles in vol. 16,
a volume which centers on the popular culture of Polish Jewry.
The "Polin" Series, first published by Blackwell for the Institute for
Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford, and since 1994 by The Littman Library
of Jewish Civilization (vol. 8 onward) has become an authoritative
source on Polish Jewry. Each volume from the second onward devotes an
entire section to a major topic: the history of the Jews in a specific
city (vol. 3 ?Jews in Warsaw?; vol. 6 ?Jews in Lodz 1820-1939") or
region (vol. 12 ?Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians,
1772-1918?;vol. 14 ?Jews in the Polish Borderlands?), or thematic
subject (vol. 5 ?Zionism in Poland?; vol. 9 ?Poles, Jews, Socialists:
The Failure of an Ideal?). Specific historical periods are also
examined (vol. 2 ?Jews and the Emergence of an Independent Polish
State?; vol. 7 "Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw"; vol. 8 ?Jews in
Independent Poland 1918-1939?; vol. 10 ?Jews in the Early Modern
Period?). The journal publishes documents, interviews, bibliographical
essays, reviews of English, Polish, German, French, and Hebrew books,
letters to the editor, obituaries, conference and symposia reports,
notices of new catalogues, exchanges and more. The trilingual culture
(Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew) of Polish Jewry is presented in _Polin_
to the international reader in English, a tremendous feat in itself.
_Polin_ is the indispensable international scholars' forum in
Polish-Jewish studies.
With its nineteen essays on the subject, Volume 16 is a cornucopia of
research on Jewish popular culture in Poland; six additional studies
examine the "afterlife" of this culture. Many of the essays deal with
popular theatre and music in Poland. Ariela Krasney discusses the role
of the _batkhn_ (< Hebrew _badkhan_), the traditional Jewish
entertainer, his techniques of expression and the process through
which his work moved from oral to written form. Yakov Mazor examines
the post-Holocaust renewal of the _batkhn_ tradition in Hasidic
communities in the USA, Israel and Europe, its socio-cultural,
historical, textual and musical contexts. Walter Zeev Feldman, on the
basis of a series of interviews he conducted with survivors, expands
the field of study of the "klezmer" performer (the East-European
Jewish professional instrumentalist) and his music which until today
has focused almost exclusively on the eastern Ukraine. He explores the
"klezmer" life in eastern Galicia and the characteristics which
distinguish it from klezmer performances of eastern Ukraine and other
territories.
Michael Aylward presents a ?progress report? of his work on a
discography of commercial recordings of Jewish music in Europe, from
the first Jewish recordings in Poland (a set of cantorial pieces sung
by the well known cantor Gershon Sirota in Warsaw), to its decline in
the interwar years. Two tables illustrate the current status of the
discography (which increases in volume at an amazing pace as "new"
sources are discovered). The first table gives a breakdown of
recordings by record company and style (including cantorial, synagogue
choral, theatrical,orchestral and the ?spoken word?), while the second
table gives locations (Bucharest, Budapest, Czernowitz, Lemberg,
London, Moscow, Vienna, and Warsaw). On the basis of these findings at
the time of writing Aylward concludes that prior to the first World
War the Jewish record industry was mainly centered in Poland, while
the chief type of music recorded was the Yiddish song (theater or
other).
Natan Gross discusses Mordechai Gebirtig?s folk songs, which were
influenced both by popular cabaret and Jewish folklore. Gross
reminisces about the life of Gebirtig and about performances of his
sentimental yet socially conscious songs in the interwar period. Bret
Werb and Barbara Milewski discuss repertoires of songs created by
Polish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, the most common of which
were parodies of pre-war songs. They examine the parody song
?Heil Sachsenhausen? and the song ?Madagascar? (itself a satirical
representation of the Jewish condition in the interwar years) as
reflecting camp life, condemnation of Nazi policy, as well as
ambivalent relations between Jews and Poles before and during the
Holocaust.
Alex Lubet examines ?Yiddish Worldbeat,? post-modern secular Yiddish
music. With tongue-in-cheek subtitles (?Beyond Klezmer - Dos Lebn in
Amerike?, ?Like a Rolling Shteyn?, ?With a Little Help From My
Fremde?), he discusses American musical influences on Wolf Krakowski's
unique Yiddish rock album ?Transmigrations,? influences which include
1960s counter-culture rock, country, reggae and gospel music, as well
as the ?Jewishness? of the lyrics (?Shabes Shabes,? ?Zol Shoyn Kumen
Di Geule"). Michael C. Steinlauf surveys Yiddish theater in Poland
from its pre-modern origins to its nineteenth-century secular
contexts. He focuses on Avrom Goldfaden?s professional theater from
which all subsequent Yiddish theater is descended, including the
Polish language Jewish theater. He discusses the ?Dybbukiada?
phenomenon, which though rooted in folklore and the supernatural
reflected the cultural and national identity of Polish Jewry.
The interwar period was one of permanent economic crisis affecting
every aspect of Jewish popular culture reviewed in this volume, yet
the art theatres (VIKT ? Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater, VNIT ? Warsaw
Yiddish Art Theater and the Yung Teater) maintained a high level.
Steinlauf also points briefly to efforts to stage performances in the
Warsaw ghetto and the futile attempts to revive Jewish theater in
post-Holocaust Poland.
Steinlauf in his introduction to Volume 16 sees Jewish engagement with
modernity in Poland as a determinant in the making of popular Jewish
culture. He writes: ??as the Jews move out of small town communities
and conceptions into the tumult of urban life, a Jewish mass culture
resulted that shaped Jewish life in Poland until its end. This culture
was constructed above all around the possibilities of Yiddish, the
vernacular language of Polish Jews.? Volume 16 richly reflects the
connection between East-European Jewish history and literature, the
vast majority of which was created in Yiddish. The late Khone Shmeruk,
whose mark can be felt throughout _Polin_, stressed the
interdependence between historical and literary-cultural research when
studying Polish Jewry.
Pre-Holocaust cultural creativity in Jewish Poland overflows in the
Yiddish periodical press, a major subject in Volume 16. Joshua Shanes
examines the connection between nascent Jewish nationalism and the
Yiddish press in the early 1890s in Galicia. This new type of Yiddish
literature edited by Zionists ironically nurtured a Jewish national
consciousness among traditionalist Jews, even drawing them into
political campaigns. One campaign boycotted _etrogim_ from Greece due
to anti-Semitic attacks there and urged purchasing them from
Palestine. This not only drew orthodox Jews into a political campaign,
it earned them the added _mitsva_ of using an _etrog_ from Erets
Yisroel.
Natan Cohen traces the history of the Yiddish and Polish tabloid
(_shund_ 'cheap') press, offering many examples of its major types and
contents. Almost every one of the major Yiddish dailies (e.g. _Unzer
Ekspres_, _Moment_) not only published _shund_ literature ? usually
serialized sensationalist novels ? along with highbrow literary and
newsworthy articles, but also published extra editions, evening
papers, or serialized novels in pamphlet form to boost sales in the
fierce competition to attract readers. The struggle against the
Yiddish tabloid press centered in heated arguments in the Yiddish Pen
Club and the Jewish Writers' and Journalists' Union, but even the
most respected authors hid behind pen names and wrote for the _shund_
papers.
Ellen Kellman examines the history of Yiddish reading, focusing on the
development of public libraries, reading networks and Yiddish
publishing houses. Lending libraries (which usually included reading
rooms) were for the most part politically aligned and were sustained
by the rapid growth of publishing firms and donations of books from
America. The Kultur Lige ('League for Culture') stood at the forefront
of Yiddish publishing in Poland. In 1921, its first year, it published
70 books, and a year later it revived its bimonthly journal
_Bikher-velt_ ('Book World'). An important source for Kellman?s essay,
this periodical outlines the problems of the Yiddish book market and
the Yiddish libraries in the 1920s. Outmoded methods of issuing
Yiddish books, their high cost, linguistic assimilation to Polish,
attraction to _shund_ literature and the dearth of trained librarians
led to efforts by politically aligned activists of Poalei Zion Left
and the Bund to improve Yiddish libraries, attempts continued into the
period of Nazi occupation. Based on diaries and memoirs, research on
Jewish cultural activity during the Holocaust period in terms of
libraries and reading public helps us to understand this dark period
of Jewish life.
Edward Portnoy's study of cartoons in the Yiddish satirical press
illuminates the contemporary cultural landscape of Polish Jewry. These
cartoons often revolve around the major Jewish holidays, when most of
the satirical publications appeared. Hillel Zeitlin, a public figure
and publicist who moved from _Haynt_ to _Moment_, and Shmuel Yatskan,
the editor of _Haynt_, are subjects of one cartoon reflecting Yiddish
press rivalry in the interwar years. Yatskan performs the pre-Yom
Kippur _shlogn kapores_ ritual, swinging a rooster over his head to
transfer his sins to the rooster (which is then given as charity to
the poor to be eaten). The rooster here is Zeitlin, who defecates on
Yatskan while being twirled in the air. The caption to the cartoon
reads: "Did you ever see such a rooster? I tried to _shlog kapores_
with him and he goes and pulls this trick on me." These cartoons
(often crudely) show how traditional customs and folklore were
appropriated for social commentary.
We can view the titles and names of editors of the first twenty
volumes of _Polin_ at the internet site:
http://www.littman.co.uk/polin/.
Carrie Friedman-Cohen
Rothberg School for International Students
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
4)---------------------------
Date: 29 October 2004
From: Yitskhok Luden
Subject: Sept.-Oct. 2004 Issue of _Lebns-fragn_ (Tel-Aviv)
Der nayer numer "Lebns-fragn" far September-Oktober 2004 iz dershinen
in Tel-Aviv. In dem numer: "Der nayer tsikl fun teror un farnikhtung";
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aktualyes; "Der farzorger fun melukhishe postns"; "Lodzh un ir
yidisher zikorn" fun Yoram Kaniuk; "Dos lebn un umkum fun Abrasha
Blum" fun Luba Bielitska-Blum un zeyer tokhter Aviva in Yisroel; "60
yor nokhn poylishn oyfshtand in Varshe"; "Der troyeriker goyrl fun
Birobidzhan"; "Vos andere shraybn"; Musye Landoys bukh vegn shrayber
un vegn Vilne. "Der yidisher litseum in Vilne; Di yidishe Sholen
Aleykhem shul in Melbourne un azoy vayter....
Der yerlekher abonament (6 numern) batreft: Amerike - tsofn un dorem
...30 $ US; Europe ... 25 ?; Australye ... 30 $ US; Dorem-Afrike
... 25 $ US.
Tsu abonirn un bashteln: "LEBNS-FRAGN" c/o BRITH AVODA -- ARBETER-RING
48 KALISHER STREET, TEL-AVIV 65165, ISRAEL
TEL / FAX: 972 3 517 6764.
--------------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review Vol. 08.010
Editor, Leonard Prager
Associate Editor, Joseph Sherman
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