Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 15.025
September 6, 2005
1) grine bleter (Harriet Weinstein)
2) State of Yiddish (Stephen Jones)
3) State of Yiddish (Morrie Feller)
4) State of Yiddish (Yankev Berger)
5) State of Yiddish (Hugh Dernman)
6) Menke (Frank Handler)
1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 31, 2005
Subject: Re: grine bleter
[In reply to Pavel Greenberg's query 15.023:]
According to the information listed in Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish
Music Archive Catalogue, the author of "grine bleter" was Itzik Manger.
Moyshe Oysher was only the vocalist.
Harriet Weinstein
2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 31, 2005
Subject: Re: State of Yiddish
Excellent post. You are right on the mark. May I suggest follow-up posts
like this with your thoughts and observations. Maybe this will light a fire
and inspire those who can to teach those who seek knowledge.
Stephen Jones
3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: August 31, 2005
Subject: Re: The State of Yiddish
I have just read Noyekh Miller's post in Mendele 15.024, and I agree with
his comments. My big complaint with Aaron Lansky is that he has done
essentially nothing to create the readers who will read all the books which
he has collected. When I mentioned this to him, his answer was that they
have more important projects which they are working on. It might be
worthwhile to find a way to pressure the NYBC to create an online Yiddish
course which they could easily do. The one which is offered by the Florida
Atlantic University unfortunately does not have the attendance which I had
hoped it might generate.
Morrie Feller
4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 1, 2005
Subject: Re: The state of Yiddish
I concur with Noyekh Miller completely in his outlook.
Despite my passionate love for my own mameloshn, I fear the worst. That is
why I have set myself to translating Yizkor Bikher into English. I am
certain that within the next generational cycle, only those works that are
available in English will be accessible to the larger interested populace.
The original works, in Yiddish, will become the province of isolated cadres
of academic specialists who will become the acolytes ministering to the
archives of "saved" books a la Lansky.
It is of some interest to me that Khaver Z.S. Berger (no relation) notes
that :
Borough Park chasidim, while possessed of other talents, are not
generally qualified to teach Yiddish in the classrooms.
He touches on a more general problem that I first heard from Professors
William Shaffir of McMaster, and Anna Fishman Gonshor of McGill. Two year
ago, this month in Oxford, they presented the seemingly inexplicable finding
that among the Tosh Hasidim of Boisbrand Canada, the facility with Yiddish
seemed to be unusually poor.
What they did was reveal the reason why, when I was directed to engage these
very same -- very well-meaning -- people, to help accelerate my own work, I
found them unable to approach the task.
I have stated many times that I do not believe in a renaissance of the
Yiddish language. My perception is that the cultural and linguistic taproot
of Eastern European Jewry was successfully excised and cauterized by the
Holocaust. While a new shoot can emerge from the root of Jesse, it will
have a character quite different from the past, that it can only sense
dimly through history, and can no longer propagate the culture and language
of that past through its daily way of life.
Regards
Yankev Berger
5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 3, 2005
Subject: Re: State of Yiddish & Forverts
In Mendele 15.024:7 Noyekh, in a cogent, if not very sanguine consideration
of the contemporary readership for Yiddish literature in the original,
writes inter alia:
There was a review of Alexander Shpiglblat's latest novel, Krimeva (an
extraordinary and gripping story about Transylvanian Jews) in a recent
issue of Forverts. Tracking it down wasn't easy (Forverts doesn't
tell its readers where or how to obtain the books it reviews) and when
I succeeded I learned that all of 30 copies had been shipped to CYCO
in New York. Thirty copies!
While endorsing all Noyekh says, my own comment on this is perhaps marginal
and to some degree self-interested, but maybe worth raising nonetheless.
Not only do I from time to time plead with Mendelyaner (mostly in vain) to
provide full bibliographic details when announcing a book on Mendele, but I
have several times written to the editors of Forverts suggesting that they
would do well, when reviewing books, to give the full details, as is
standard practice in, say, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York
Review of Books or indeed virtually any paper or journal publishing
book-reviews. To date there has not only been no change in the editorial
policy of Forverts, but they have never troubled to reply. What is the
reason for this nonchalance? Do they really want to get Yiddish books read
or don't they? The current situation is bad enough, but can we afford to
see Yiddish books published semi-clandestinely with only the most
determined readers able to track them down?
p.s. the details of the book to which Noyekh refers are, so far as I have
been able to ascertain:
Shpiglblat, Aleksander, Krimeve: an altfrankishe mayse, Jerusalem: Zur-'Ot,
2005, ??pp. [ISBN: 965-7188-21-0], $??.
I have still not been able to discover either the number of pages or the
price.
Hugh Denman,
London/ Oxford
[Krimeva is available in the U.S. from CYCO Books, 25 E. 21 St., New York,
NY 10010. 233 pp. The price is $23 which includes shipping.]
6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: September 6, 2005
Subject: Re: _Menke_
As a long-time reader and admirer of Prof. Leonard Prager's work, and
especially his excellent book reviews in TMR, I hope that it is in order
that I write in reply to one review which seems to me deficient in both
factual and conceptual accuracy, and at times even fairness. I do not
believe that these possible deficiencies result from a lack of good will;
they seem to me to be more attributable to haste and in some cases, certain
prejudices common to yiddish literary studies today. On this last point,
there is an important debate that needs to be aired, and one which the
recently-published _Proletpen: America's Rebel Yiddish Poets_ (ed. A. Glazer
and D. Weintraub, Wisconsin 2005) will hopefully encourage.
I shall conclude with that larger point. But first I want to address a
number of specific claims in the review that do a grave injustice to the
life and work of the yiddish and English poet Menke Katz. The reader will
easily be able to discern where the disagreements are about fact, and
where they concern interpretation.
1. Prager writes:
"We are given numerous instances where the poet stood up to Party
browbeaters, but he never broke with them, never moved to the camp of the
'rekhte' (rightists}...."
This is a shocking inaccuracy which almost makes it look as if the reviewer
never got to the second half of the introduction! Menke Katz left the
linke ("leftists") in 1952 and soon thereafter severed all his ties with
the Frayhayt, never to return (after hearing no credible replies to the
question: "then where are those Soviet Yiddish writers, if they have not
been liquidated?"). in 1953, Menke started teaching for the Yiddish
schools of the Arbeter Ring (Workmen's Circle) or rekhte . Many hundreds
of Yiddish-lovers today remember him as a teacher of rare talent. He
first published in the Tog in 1953. In 1958, he was one of the
co-founders of the new Arbeter Ring (rekhte!) branch established to provide
a home for those who had left the linke after learning of the Soviet
atrocities of the early fifties. For me, one of the most poignant points
in the introduction to the book by the poet's son, is his own recollection
of how he had to beg his father to set up a one-time meeting with one old
linker (leftist), so he would know what a leftist N.Y. Yiddish writer looks
like (see _Menke_ cxvi-cxvii).
So, the long and short of it is, that Menke abandoned the linke
environment in the early 1950s and had zero to do with that environment for
the last forty years of his life; and, as we learn from _Menke_, he
spent much of the preceding two decades as rebel within the Linke
movement, who dared to challenge just about every literary orthodoxy of
the leftist movement, continuing to write on erotic, kabbalistic and
traditional Jewish themes in the face of editors' displeasure.
2. Prager entitles a section "Anti-Zionist Daubings" in which he disagrees
with the research of the poet's son, Dovid Katz, about the campaign
against Yiddish in Israel. As for Dovid Katz's views on that campaign and
the failure of literary history to deal with it honestly, I can only refer
the reader to the younger Katz's section on the subject in his _Words on
Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish_(N.Y. 2004), pp.310-323, which is
rich in documentation. There is vast evidence of the violent anti-Yiddish
campaign sanctioned by the highest authorities in pre-state Palestine and
early Israel. The language was snuffed out in a culturally ruthless
campaign, and researchers who have tried to tell the truth have not fared
well. Prof. Pilowski, whom Prager mentions, found his career going nowhere
after he began to work on the subject, and he soon left the field. Reading
Prager's review with its section on "Anti-Zionist Daubings", you would
never know that a big chunk of _Menke_ comprises the books _Midday_ (in
mitn tog) and _Safad_ (Tsfas) which are rich with Zionist poetry and
imagery! You would think that because he left Israel (where he twice tried
to settle) over the Yiddish issue, Menke Katz somehow became an "enemy of
Zionism." Let me therefore cite for the sake of example two short poems
from _Menke_ which do not find themselves among those reproduced by Prager:
"This Little Land / Great, O great is the land of my people./ The
tiniest path is endless as God.A sunrise is like the eternal Burning
Bush./ Great, O great is the little land of my people. / A first ray
is a light-giving prophet of long ago./ Every step is new, of
tomorrow's generations./ Greater than all lands is the little land of
my people./ The tiniest path is endless as God." (_Menke_, p. 700).
Another exanple:
"Joy/ He who never walked on the soil of my people/ Never had his
foot blessed with the joy of walking./ How much joy is in the simple
wonder of walking?/ O ask a star how many times the sun rose here,/
Ask a leaf how many Mays passed through here./ The light of the
Burning Bush never sets on your steps here./ No, he who never walked
on the soil of my people/ Never had his foot blessed with the joy of
walking./ "A step on the soil of my people is a step through
everywhere, / All of time's distances are as close as your own step./
O my poem, be like the lily of the valley./ Where, if not in the Song
of Songs, do eternal flowers grow? / A grain of dust in the valley
seeks his father mountain in the wind./ In the most ordinary day, God
celebrates endless holiday./ A step on the soil of my people is a step
through everywhere./ All of time's distances are as close as your own
step./" (_Menke_, p. 706).
Well, so much for Menke Katz's "Anti-Zionist Daubings!" The dead Yiddish
poet seems to have fallen victim to a bogus charge, because his son,
Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz, has dared to break the taboo about what really
happened to Yiddish in Israel in a different book...Prager's review of that
book was the place to pick those bones! Whatever the ins and outs, the
field of Yiddish studies really needs to get over the notion that someone
who researches the anti-Yiddish campaign in Israel is some kind of enemy
of the state of Israel. But to put the "curse" on his father is a bit too
much even for our "lively" field of Yiddish studies...
3. Prager writes "the poet[...] apppended [...] the deeply political and
subsequently emotive sovetishe." Thus Prager uses (abuses?) the poet's one
use of the word in a poetic career spanning some seventy years to give a
general (mis)impresssion. As Prager knows, that poem was written in late
1939, when just about every Jew from the Vilna region was (for a brief
time, alas) thrilled that the region was captured by the Soviet Union
instead of Nazi Germany which had already begun to put the Polish Jews
under its dominion into ghettos and prepare them for eventual
extermination. To take it out of that context for poets who never before
or after used such language, is dubious at best, especially when the same
poet's many dozens of Zionist poems are glossed over in silence to give
an impression that we are dealing with some kind of "commie", as the
American red-baiters used to put it in the McCarthy period and beyond.
4. Prager writes, yet again reviewing the son rather than the father:
"Dovid Katz develops the notion that allegiance to 'right' or 'left' in the
Yiddish-language world of New York's left-of-center Jewry in the first half
of the twentieth century was accidental and ideologically of little import.
He further draws this world as a genial debating society, an extended New
England Town Hall Meeting, as American as apple pie. He intimates that the
bogeyman of 'political correctness' prevents us from seeing the virtues of
the Frayhayt and the linke. This reader cannot agree that the latter were
some sort of debating society, or that they were notably 'American'".
And here I have to take exception. I was myself a sympathizer of the
American left for decades, and I would respectfully submit to Prof. Prager
that I am no less American than any other American. Yes, I fought racism
and inequality, wanted social justice, and hoped for a better world
altogether. I am shocked that a McCarthy spirit continues to misinform the
field of American Yiddish literary history at a time when any number of
studies are published without so much as a peep about Soviet editors and
writers who did collaborate with the Stalinist state, who did inform on
Yiddish writers to a totalitarian state (e.g. some of the collaborators in
Sovetish Heymland). It is a ship of fools that Soviet writers may be
studied with academic impunity, while touching the old American linke
remains taboo and gets you into trouble on the digital pages of the Mendele
Review.
The leftist Yiddish writers of America did not inform on anyone, imprison
anyone, curtail the political or human rights of anyone! Yes, Professor
Prager, they were every bit as American as other citizens of this country.
It is not the readers of Menke Katz's poetry who need to engage in any kind
of "apologia" as Prager dismisssively calls the two fine introductions to
the book. It is the professors of Yiddish who so often find that have to
engage in "apologia" when they find out that one of their heroes was, oops,
perish the word, a linker I just happened to come across an example
recently. Another major professor of Yiddish literature, in a generally
fine study of American Yiddish poet Yankev Glatshteyn, seems unable to
handle that his beloved poet published in the Frayhayt back in the 1920s,
and so he duly adds a footnote: "He did it for ecomomic reasons. In his
letter [...], where he asks that he be published in the Frayhayt, there is
not one iota of a hint about a possible programmatic affinity to this
newspaper." (Goldene Keyt 131, p. 171, no. 14).
In other words, if a great Yiddish poet who is part of the translated canon
did "sin" by publishing in the Frayhayt, it requires some implausible
excuse.
I recently browsed through some old issues of the Frayhayt from the first
week of April of 1928. In that week alone, the writers published in the
paper include Moyshe Nadir, Mani Leyb, Avrom Reyzen, and Morris Winchevsky.
Are we going to write them out of the canon, too, or explain that they
neded to make a living "and didn't mean it"? The fact is that nearly all
the great American Yiddish writers were at one time or another associated
with the linke. In his attempt to adduce evidence, Prager brings
quotations fom Irving Howe, neglecting to remind us that it was Howe
himself (with Eliezer Greenberg, an ex-linker). and others, who created
"our" canon with their English anthologies of the 1950s (coincidence,
coincidence: McCarthy-time) and beyond. According to Dovid Katz's
introduction to _Proletpen_,the criteria used for exclusion had everything
to do with when a writer crossed over from the linke to the rekhte, and
hopefully this whole issue can now be studied.
But it really is a great shame that a half century later, someone who left
in the early fifties gets the rap of "he never broke with them" in Prof.
Prager's review. Clearly, the history of Yiddish literature in America
has to get its act in order.
Frank Handler
7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: , 2005
8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: , 2005
9)----------------------------------------------------
Date: , 2005
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End of Mendele Vol. 15.025
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