PaknTreger
The Magazine of the Yiddish Book Center
Spring 2010 | 5770 Number 61
r gd g r y - i e T P
Samuel Bak’s paintings Talking like Jews Farewell to Sutzkever Discoveries!
Pakn Treger The original pakn tregers traveled from shtetl to shtetl in Eastern Europe bringing books and news of the outside world. Today, Pakn Treger carries on that tradition as the magazine of the Yiddish Book Center.
Visit the Yiddish Book Center! VISITORS CENTER HOURS Monday through Friday: 10–4; Sunday: 11–4. Closed Shabbos (Saturday) and major legal & Jewish holidays.
BY PLANE Frequent connections can be made to Bradley International Airport – serving Hartford/ Springfield – 45 minutes from Amherst.
HOW TO FIND US The Yiddish Book Center is located on the campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, 19 miles north of the intersection of I-90 and I-91.
BY TRAIN Amtrak’s Springfield, MA, station is 30 minutes from Amherst.
BY CAR Take I-91 (91N exit 19; 91S exit 20) to Route 9 East. Cross the Connecticut River bridge in the right lane. Follow sign “To 47 south, South Hadley, Hampshire College,” and bear right just before the Getty Gas Station. Turn right at stop sign. Drive 1.6 miles to blue sign, “National Yiddish Book Center.” Turn left after sign onto Bay Road. Continue another 2.5 miles and turn left at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. At stop sign turn right onto the Hampshire College campus; look for the Book Center on your right.
LOCAL DIRECTIONS From junction of Routes 9 and 116 in Amherst, drive south for 3 miles on Route 116. Turn into entrance of Hampshire College. IF YOU GET FARBLONDZSHET Our staff members are friendly and eager to help. Just phone us at 413 256-4900. YIDDISH BOOK CENTER Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Building 1021 West Street Amherst, Massachusetts 01002 phone 413 256-4900 fax 413 256-4700 www.yiddishbookcenter.org
On the cover: Painter Samuel Bak in his studio. See page 22. See page 6 for our calendar of events.
spring
2010
Here: Leye Carrey and the cast of Radio Days. See page 38.
PaknTreger r gd g r y - i e T P
T h e M a g a z in e o f t h e Y id di s h B o o k C e n t e r
Spring 2010 | 5770 Number 61
FE ATURES 18
INTIMATE ARGOT by Catherine Madsen What we say, and what we think about it
22
BEYOND TIME: THE PAINTINGS OF SAMUEL BAK by Elizabeth Pols Out of the Vilna ghetto to a world of color and form
34
LAST STAR IN THE NIGHT by Catherine Madsen In memory of Abraham Sutzkever, 1913–2010
36
THE DISCOVERY PROJECT by Hankus Netsky Sonia’s suitcase and other tales
TRANSL ATION 42
THE END OF EVERYTHING by David Bergelson, translated by Joseph Sherman The definitive rendering of a Yiddish masterpiece
DEPARTMENTS 3
A BINTL BRIEF Letters from our friends
4
LET’S LEARN YIDDISH by Itzik Gottesman
8
BAYM TSENTER Book Center News
51
OUTWITTING HISTORY
FromtheEditor ahyc˙ra o˙c
rgdgry-ieTP
Pakn Treger
Spring 2010 | 5770 Number 61
D
ear Reader,
staff
A poet and a painter working out of the heart of history are featured in this issue of Pakn Treger. We pay tribute to the late Abraham Sutzkever, who passed away in January at the age of 96, and to his lifelong friend Samuel Bak, who vigorously paints today in his studio near Boston, MA. While saying farewell to one, we take a close look at the continuing achievements of his younger friend. Not only art but the scientific method appears in the magazine this spring. Catherine Madsen reports on an unusual online survey that quantifies the influence of languages other than English on the speech of American Jews, and reaches some startling conclusions. In another quest for facts, ethnomusicologist Hankus Netsky and his cohorts, many of them former Book Center interns like Sara Israel, are recording stories of little-known cultural figures. One, Sonia Victor, was, like Sutzkever and Bak, a native of Vilna, Lithuania, though her life took a noticeably different direction. A bilingual excerpt from The End of Everything (Nokh alemen) by David Bergelson illuminates the erudition of not only the writer but of our late friend Joseph Sherman (1944–2009). Dr. Sherman’s definitive translation restores the book to its place as one of the great novels of the twentieth century, and Bergelson’s masterpiece. The volume is the seventh in the New Yiddish Library series, published by Yale University Press through a partnership between the Yiddish Book Center and the Fund for Translation of Jewish Literature. Your reading needn’t end at the final page of this Pakn Treger. For interviews, reviews, and plenty of opinions, go to our new website, yiddishbookcenter.org, and follow the trail of the articles and news in this issue. As always, please tell us what you think by writing to Bintl Brief. Enjoy reading.
Editor Nancy Sherman Contributing Editors Terry Y. Allen Catherine Madsen Art Directors Elizabeth Pols Betsey Wolfson
board of directors Michael G. Reiff, Chairman Eugene Driker, Vice-chair Jeremy Dauber Penina Migdal Glazer Zachary Gozali Janet Hadda Lee Hutt Lawrence Kaplen Sharon Karmazin Lori Lober Lief D. Rosenblatt* Ruth Stark David Steiner Kenneth Turan Walt Winshall *Chairman Emeritus
Support for Pakn Treger comes from: The Kaplen Fund for Pakn Treger The Joseph and Marion Brechner Fund for Jewish Cultural Reporting The David Berg Foundation Charles Corfield
Pakn Treger is published by the Yiddish Book Center Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building 1021 West Street Amherst, MA 01002-3375 phone: 413 256-4900 e-mail: PT2010 @ bikher.org Membership subscriptions are available for $36.
Nancy Sherman
Publisher Aaron Lansky
spring
2010
ABintlBrief uuhrc kybhc T
I THOUGHT I FORGOT I am always happy to see a new issue of Pakn Treger; however, my first priority is reading the YiddishEnglish texts as it enables me to test my Yiddish knowledge and enhance it. My Yiddish was acquired through listening to my parents speak it at home between themselves and with r gd g r y - i e T P their Ashkenazi friends and neighbors. Both came to then-Palestine in the early 1920s, the Third Aliyah, and were most comfortable to continue communicating via their mame loshn, but didn’t say a word of Yiddish to their Sabra children, with whom they spoke only Hebrew. Still, hearing Yiddish all my childhood and my youth, I managed to figure out what words mean, so I acquired a basic knowledge of this beautiful language on which I look with nostalgia. Being able to have the English translation in front of me enables me to test my knowledge, enhance it, and remind me of words I thought I forgot. Rochl (Rachel) Kapen West Bloomfield, MI
PaknTreger
SECOND PLACE It is nice to hear that Ben Gailing holds the record for the longest-running radio show, but the runner-up, Oscar Brand, is oykh a yid. His father was a Yiddish speaker in Canada, he knows some Yiddish, and he has a cassette tape with many Yiddish songs, called Welcome to America. So Brand is also someone who has contributed to American Yiddish culture. Bennett Muraskin Morris Plains, NJ
NEVER TOO LATE I was glad to see the Shea Tenenbaum bilingual text in the fall Pakn Treger. I used to correspond with him and received many of his books. He was not enough appreciated in the New York literary establishment. Thus you did a mitzvah with this publication. Simcha Simchovitch Toronto, Canada MISSISSIPPI MYSTERY I read Esther Schor’s “Esperanto” with pleasure and great interest and was particularly attracted by Zamenhof’s proposal for a Jewish homeland on the banks of the Mississippi River. I was born in 1923 in Louisville, KY. However, my oldest brother was born in 1908 in Mississippi; unfortunately, I do not know how long my parents and uncles and aunts lived in Mississippi prior to 1908. For many years I have wondered why my parents and my mother’s siblings chose Mississippi for a home in the United States. Now I may have an answer based on the following points in the article: – In 1907 Zamenhof told the Jewish Chronicle that the location of his Jewish Homeland proposal was to be “the banks of the Mississippi River”; – My father and mother were born in Bialystok, in 1881 and 1887, the same birthplace as Zamenhof. Thus, my grandparents and their children were exposed to his teachings; – In 1882 Zamenhof published a Zionist article stating that the Jewish homeland should not be Palestine. Benjamin M. Kaplan, MD Wilmette, IL CORRECTIONS In the obituary on page 3 of Pakn Treger 60, the memorial phrase should have read: zeykher-tsadik-livrokhe. In the article on page 29, the song title Koved es avikha should have read: Kabed es ovikho.
pakn treger
Let’sLearnYiddish ahsHh igbrgk rhn†k
BY ITZIK GOTTESMAN
kzskgvyhur x†s Dos roytheldzl (Little red-throat) The Robin !kzskgvyhur T igzgd yb˙v c†v lht wkyhd :kargv Hershl: Gitl, ikh hob haynt gezen a roytheldzl!
CONJUNCTIONS In order to form longer sentences, you need to use conjunctions. In the above dialogue we read:
Hershl: Gitl, today I saw a robin!
wignuegd zht dbhk hrp rgs zT winhx T zht x†s :k yhd ///zT inhx T zht x†s /srg'rs ;hut hhba †s l†b zht'x way†f Dos iz a simen, az… (this is a sign that…) Gitl: Dos iz a simen, az der friling iz gekumen, khotsh, vayl (because) k ˙u u s’iz [es iz] nokh do shney af dr’erd [der erd]. a y†f khotsh (though) Gitl: This a sign that spring has arrived, though there is still snow on the ground.
are also conjunctions. Practice forming sentences with these conjunctions:
?lgkzskgvyhur ixg x†uu :kargv c hut Hershl: Vos esn roytheldzlekh? i guu Hershl: What do robins eat? ,gc /xgeuaz wogrguu wxgsdTh :kyhd r gc† Gitl: Yagdes, verem, zhukes. r gs† Gitl: Berries, worms, bugs.
ogs xhut ighhrs hhz iguu chk c†v lht !gp :kargv /ogrguu hs ifuz um P†e Hershl: Fe! Ikh hob lib ven zey dreyen oys dem kop tsu zukhn di verem. Hershl: Yuk! I like when they turn their heads to look for worms.
/rghht g†kc grghhz chk c†v lht iut :kyhd
oyb
if
ven
when
beys
while
ober
but/however
oder
or
Following these conjunctions you can add an independent clause.
/iyr†d iht ygcrT lht ,gc igdbhz kdhhp hs Di feygl zingen beys ikh arbet in gortn. The birds sing while I work in the garden. SOME BIRD EXPRESSIONS:
/lgkhnkdhup ihhe ignueTc yahb yr†s y†v rg
Gitl: Un ikh hob lib zeyere bloe eyer.
Er hot dort nisht bakumen keyn foyglmilekh.
Gitl: And I like their blue eggs.
He did not have any wonderful luxuries [bird‘s milk] there.
um rgybhuu igHkp kdhhp x†uu rTp yxhhuu us :kargv ?iyTya-ours hs Hershl: Du veyst far vos feygl flien vinter tsu di dorem-shtatn?
/ehskdhup huzT yahb oht yhhd xg Es geyt im nisht azoy foygldik. It‘s not going so well for him.
Hershl: Do you know why birds fly to the southern states in winter?
!xup um ihhd um y˙uu um zht'x k˙uu :kyhd Gitl: Vayl s’iz tsu vayt tsu geyn tsu fus!
lhut xg yz†k wlrus yhkp gkgdhhp T zT ukhpT /krgsgp T Afile, az a feygele flit durkh, lozt es oykh a federl. Even when a bird flies by, it leaves a feather. [Even from a small thing, a great thing could develop.]
Gitl: Because it’s too far too walk!
A CHILDREN‘S RHYME
whP-hP-hP wgkgdhhp wgkgdhhp /hv †yahb ?gyTy rgs zht Uuu /hrp rgs iht idr†n ?ignue rg yguu iguu /rhc gkgxgp T ?igdbgrc rg yguu x†uu /rhy rgs rgybhv ?ikgya x†s rg yguu Uuu /rhs yhn lht ?igebhry xg yguu rguu
Feygele, feygele, pi-pi-pi,
Birdie, birdie, pi-pi-pi,
Vu iz der tate? Nishto hi.
Where is your daddy? He’s not here.
Ven vet er kumen? Morgn in der fri.
When will he come? Tomorrow morning.
Vos vet er brengen? A fesele bir.
What will he bring? A barrel of beer.
Vu vet er dos shteln? Hinter der tir.
Where will he put it? Behind the door.
Ver vet es trinken? Ikh mit dir.
Who will drink it? Me and you.
Itzik Gottesman is the associate editor of the Yiddish Forverts.
spring
2010
GREAT JEWISH BOOKS
– Books on sale at the Yiddish Book Center –
From the NEW YIDDISH LIBRARY The End of Everything . David Bergelson. Translated by Joseph Sherman. Originally published in 1913, The End of Everything depicts the lives of upwardly mobile, nouveaux-riches Jews in the waning years of the Russian Empire. In a unique prose style, Bergelson reduces language to its bare essentials, punctuated by silences that heighten the sense of alienation in the story. $18.00; paperback. For more translations from the New Yiddish Library, go to www.yiddishbookcenter.org//node/172.
FOR CHILDREN Lost . Jacqueline Davies. Essie can tell from the moment she lays eyes on Harriet: this is a woman who has taken a wrong turn in life. Why else would an educated, well-dressed girl end up at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? A powerful novel about friendship, loss, and resiliency set against the backdrop of New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1900s. Ages 12+. $16.99; hardcover. Songs from the Garden of Eden: Jewish Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes. Songs collected by Nathalie Soussana. These nursery rhymes, lullabies, and songs represent diverse Jewish musical experiences, with selections in Hebrew, Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Arabic. The 52-page booklet includes English translations and transliterations. Ages 4–8. $16.95; hardcover book and CD.
NEW RELEASES
ON COMPACT DISC
Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-Sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions. From 1912 to 1914, S. An-Sky and photographer Solomon Iudovin documented daily Jewish life in pre-revolutionary Russia’s Pale of Settlement. Now English readers get their first look at over 170 photographs providing visual texture that rarely appears in written sources. $39.95; hardcover.
Cantors, Klezmorim and Crooners 1905–1953: Classic Yiddish 78s from the Mayrent Collection. Annotations by Henry “Hank” Sapoznik. Gleaned from the nearly 9,000 Yiddish 78s in the collection of Sherry Mayrent, this anthology presents a sweeping soundscape of Yiddish music from the late 19th century to the 1950s, with 73 tracks of cantorials, klezmer dance tunes, vaudeville skits, and Yiddish theater songs. $36.00; 3-CD boxed set with 72-page illustrated booklet.
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. Francine Prose. With the understanding of one writer for another, Prose argues that the diary of Anne Frank is as much a deliberate work of art as it is a historical record, noting its literary merits and investigating the diary’s unique afterlife as one of the world’s most read – and banned – books. $24.95; hardcover.
Music for the Traditional Jewish Wedding . Dave Tarras with Samuel Beckerman and Irving Graetz. Legendary klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras (1897–1989), joined by Sam Beckerman on accordion and Irving Graetz on drums, performs Jewish wedding music from his native region in Ukraine. $17.00; CD with 24-page booklet. Saints and Tzadiks: Songs from the Yiddish and Irish Traditions. Susan McKeown and Lorin Sklamberg, 2006 Grammy Award winners for the Klezmatics’ Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, explore connections between Yiddish and Irish music. $18.00; CD.
order anytime at: W W W . G R E AT J E W I S H B O O K S . C O M These and thousands of other books, CDs, DVDs, and gifts are available to members of the Book Center at a 10% discount off list prices. (Shipping charges additional.) Special online-only sales are posted every month. To speak with one of our booksellers, call 800-783-9272 from 11 am to 4 pm Eastern Time.
calendar of events may Sunday, May 16 n 2 pm n author ’ s talk n Jayne Cohen – Essen! Jews and Food in America Jayne Cohen, author of Jewish Holiday Cooking: A Food Lover’s Treasury of Classics and Improvisations, a 2009 James Beard finalist in the International Books Category, explores Jewish food through the prism of Ashkenazi culture in conjunction with the new exhibit “Essen! Jews and Food in America.” $5. Sunday, May 23 n
n
2 pm
helen and irving sunshine memorial concert
The Redele Band This all-star international band presents soulful, original compositions and improvisations as well as Jewish and Gypsy songs. Musicians include Jake Shulman-Ment, violin, vocals; Benjy Fox-Rosen, bass, vocals; Ben Holmes, trumpet; Art Bailey, accordion; and Pete Rushefsky, tsimbl. $10. n
june
J uly 11–15, 2010 S u nday, J u ly 11 2 pm n film Sweatshop Cinderella: The Life of Anzia Yezierska Historian and filmmaker Suzanne Wasserman presents her new documentary on the life and work of author Anzia Yezierska. Reservations suggested. $8. n n
M o nday, J u ly 12 10 am n film n Hungry Hearts Based on a short story by Anzia Yezierska, Hungry Hearts tells of the Levin family’s difficult transition from Eastern Europe to New York City’s Lower East Side. Restored by the National Center for Jewish Film. $5. n
3 pm n gallery talk n Rabbi Michael Strassfeld – Essen! Jews and Food in America Rabbi Strassfeld, co-editor of The Jewish Catalogs, explores his collection of Jewish food signs, menus, advertisements, and packaging, all on exhibit in the Brechner Gallery. $5. n
Sunday, June 6 n 2 pm n musical theater n A Check-Room Romance by Ben Katchor and Mark Mulcahy One man’s casual obsession with the architecture and culture of coat check-rooms is explored in this new graphic musical tragicomedy, performed in concert to a projected backdrop of Katchor’s evocative illustrations with music by Mark Mulcahy. Reservations suggested. $18. Sunday, June 13 n 2 pm n author ’ s talk n Matthew Goodman – The Social History of Jewish Food Food writer Matthew Goodman explores the influence of geography and immigration on Jewish food and other ethnic dishes such as fish-and-chips and eggplant parmigiana. $6. Sunday, June 20 n 2 pm n concert n Sarah Gordon and Yiddish Princess Unplugged! This young New York City band with a repertoire of traditional Yiddish songs and new compositions features Sarah Gordon, Michael Winograd, Yoshie Fruchter, Avi Fox-Rosen, Ari Folman-Cohen, and Chris Berry. Reservations suggested. $10.
For more information or to order tickets, please visit
www.yiddishbookcenter.org/calendar
spring
2010
8 pm n concert “Branches” – Klezmer and Beyond This ensemble, founded by klezmer revivalist and composer Hankus Netsky, performs music drawn from klezmer, Yiddish theater, and cantorial traditions, along with new compositions and improvisations based on Yiddish poetry and other sources. Reservations suggested. $18. n n
Tu e s day, J u ly 13 n 10 am n workshop n The New Memoirs – It’s Your Story This workshop focuses on writing and organizing a personal memoir. Led by Kitty Axelson, president of Modern Memoirs Inc. and founder of the Association of Personal Historians. Preregistration suggested. $5. 3 pm n author ’ s talk n David Shneer – In Front of the Iron Curtain: Yiddish in East Germany Professor Shneer’s newest project examines the stories of Lin Jaldati, Jalda Rebling, and a family of Dutch Jewish socialist Holocaust survivors who were invited by the East German government to build Yiddish culture in the new Communist utopia. $5. n
8 pm n theater n The Firebird Based on Marc Chagall’s classic Russian tale of the firebird, Double Edge Theater transports the audience into the imagination of the famous painter. Reservations suggested. $18. n
W e d ne s day, J u ly 14 10 am n films n California Shmeer and Gefilte Fish California Shmeer (25 min.) Jewish food plays a central role in the American culinary experience, and there is no better example of this than the bagel and shmeer. In Gefilte Fish (15 min.) filmmaker Karen Silverstein captures three generations of women making gefilte fish. $5. n
3 pm n film n Tevye Maurice Schwartz’s 1939 adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem story of Tevye the Dairyman. (96 min., B&W; Yiddish w/ new English subtitles.) $5. n
8 pm n films Paint What You Remember and The Peretzniks Filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg presents two different perspectives about Jewish Poland. The Peretzniks (52 min.) tells the story of a Jewish school in Lodz that was closed in 1968. In Paint What You Remember (30 min.), Mayer Kirshenblatt recalls his childhood in prewar Apt, Poland, in conjunction with the exhibit “They Called Me Mayer July.” A discussion follows the screenings. Reservations suggested. $10. n n
Th u r s day, J u ly 15 10 am n workshop Preserve Your Memories Workshop This workshop will show you how to archive letters, postcards, and photographs. Led by Barbara Blumenthal, Rare Book Specialist at the Smith College Library. Preregistration suggested. $5. n n
3 pm n workshop Translate Your Memories Workshop Find out what your family letter, postcard, journal, or recipe says in Yiddish. Our Yiddish translators will open the door to your family history. Preregistration suggested. $5. n n
8 pm n lazarus family concert The Klezmer Shul – Veretski Pass This instrumental suite transmits the emotional power of synagogue singing without the use of words, incorporating elements of jazz, avant-garde, classical, klezmer, and folk music. Stu Brotman, Cookie Segelstein, and Joshua Horowitz have toured North America and Europe with their blend of traditional and new klezmer music. Reservations suggested. $18. n n
july Sunday, July 18 n 2 pm n concert n The Golden Age of Yiddish American Music: Celebrating Seymour Rexite Singer, actor, and cultural innovator Mitch Smolkin, accompanied by pianist and composer Nina Shapilsky, performs the repertoire of the 1930s King of Yiddish Radio, Seymour Rexite. Reservations suggested. $10.
august Sunday, August 8 n 2 pm n concert n Music of David Botwinik Tenor Richard Lenatsky performs the music of Vilna-born composer David Botwinik and songs by Mordechai Gebirtig as made popular by Sidor Belarsky, accompanied by Alexander Botwinik on piano and members of the Western Massachusetts klezmer band “Hu Tsa Tsa.” $8. Sunday, August 22 n 2 pm n film n The Cafeteria Based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, this moving film portrays Jewish refugees trying to escape their past in postwar New York City. (85 min.; B&W) $6.
The Other Europeans Band Wednesday, Aug. 25 n 8 pm n lecture / workshop n $10. This presentation will take you on a fascinating journey with live music, a film of the band’s research trip to North Moldova, comparisons of klezmer and lautari (Roma) repertoire and style, and musical fireworks. n
Thursday, Aug. 26 n 8 pm n concert n Reservations suggested. $18. Throughout the 19th- until the mid-20th century, klezmer and lautari musicians formed a musical and social community in the towns of present-day Republic of Moldova, until they were separated by the Holocaust, immigration, and assimilation. In 2007, Alan Bern (of Brave Old World) created a project to research and revive the long-forgotten klezmer/lautari musical synthesis. The Other Europeans’ 14 worldclass musicians form one of the most vibrant musical ensembles of any kind in the world today. The Other Europeans 2010 North American tour is made possible through the collaboration of the Ashkenaz Festival (Toronto) and KlezKanada (Montreal), and by the generous support of Herschel Segal and David Sela.
pakn treger
BaymTsenter
rgybgm o˙c News from the Yiddish Book Center
A
very enthusiastic group of Five College students participated in the 2010 January Term Yiddish Intensive
at the Book Center and for three weeks pursued daily studies in Yiddish language and culture. The curriculum included Elementary Yiddish, taught by Ellen Kellman of Brandeis University; a Yiddish culture colloquium taught by Justin Cammy of Smith College, Rachel Rubinstein of Hampshire College, and Hankus Netsky of the New England Conservatory of Music; and a hands-on “micro-internship” with Aaron Lansky and Catherine Madsen. Students agreed that the lively course components provided a meaningful introduction to the riches of Yiddish culture, essential for Jewish studies majors and relevant to those pursuing a wide range of other disciplines. This year for the first time January Term students were eligible to apply to become Jewish Cultural Fellows, who design and produce Yiddish programming on their own college and university campuses for a semester. In spring 2010, our Five College participants will be presenting dance workshops, film series, singing groups, challah baking, and other programs for their peers at Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges.
yiddishbookcenter.org More about the Book Center’s educational programs
spring
2010
I
n just a few weeks we’ll welcome the Steiner Summer Program’s class of 2010: 18 students from the U.S. and around the world
who will spend seven weeks at the Book Center in an intensive program of Yiddish language instruction, cultural and historical
Photos by Ben Barnhart
studies, and learning experiences ranging from a New York City field trip to organizing Yiddish books on the shelves of our repository. Our 2010 interns and their generous sponsors are: MARCY BLATTNER, Northwestern University Jack and Bernice Hoffinger DIANA CLARKE, Columbia University The Goldie D. Ivener Charitable Trust ANA COTTLE, University of California Berkeley The Strear Family Foundation BENJAMIN EPSTEIN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Sarah Heller Internship NORA FEINSTEIN, Barnard College and Jewish Theological Seminary, The Sam Kellerman Internship JOSHUA FRIEDMAN, University of Michigan 18 Pomegranates Foundation JARED GIMBEL, Wesleyan University The Rona Moscow Internship ARI GREENBERG, Ohio State University The Neil Zagorin Internship CHRISTINE GUTMAN, University of Massachusetts Amherst Harvey and Constance Krueger JONATHAN HACK, Jewish Theological Seminary Lew and Rita Gordonson KATHERINE HASSAN, University of California Los Angeles Ruth Felmus CLARE JAQUITH, University of Maine Orono The Keller-Shatanoff Foundation – The Joseph and Betty Keller Endowed Internship Fund HADAS MARGULIES, Barnard College The Karma Foundation EMMA MORGENSTERN, University of Pennsylvania Charles Corfield JESSICA PARKER, Queens University David and Sylvia Steiner MADALENA PROVO, Barnard College The Ira A. Roschelle, MD, Family Foundation KATHERINE RAICHLEN, University of Virginia The Klarman Family Foundation LIORA SANTOPINTO, McGill University The Morris and Beverly Baker Foundation Visiting Scholars Sponsors: Rubens Family Foundation, Dr. Earle R. and Carol Halsband, Solomon and Irene Lober, Joan Ress Reeves / Ress Family Foundation
BaymTsenter The New Journalism
I
SAAC BLEAMAN, a 2009 Steiner Summer Intern and a senior at Stanford University, published his first article in Yiddish in the March 4, 2010 Forverts. His report on the Yiddish Culture Festival in Palo Alto, CA, was the lead article in the newspaper’s Kunst un Kultur section. Pakn Treger was happy to remind Isaac that Isaac Bashevis Singer got his start in just this publication!
Gib a kuk – Take a look!
O
ur long-awaited, all-new website is up and running at yiddishbookcenter.org. Re-designed from the ground up, the new site will bring the Center’s unique resources to friends and members
around the world. Highlights include: the full texts, page by page, of 11,000 books in our Digital Yiddish Library; a media gallery featuring slide shows and recordings of courses, concerts, and programs; the latest dispatches from the frontline of book rescue; online exhibits like our ethnographic Discovery Project; and expanded versions of publications such as Pakn Treger and The Jewish Reader, our monthly book guide. Soon you’ll
see postings of fascinating oral history interviews being conducted right now, as well as interactive features to satisfy the biggest cyber appetites. The new website was developed by EchoDitto, an online communications firm with offices in Washington, DC, and Boston, who partnered with Biro Creative, a design agency from Vancouver, Canada. Gib a kuk and let us know what you think!
spring
2010
O
ur favorite movie critic Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times, NPR’s Morning Edition) showed up
at the Book Center last month to run a lively program of his own design.
Is Seeing Believing?
“Letting Jews Be Jews” bypassed box office returns and popular reactions to explore the ways in which Jews have been portrayed in cinema – from early silent films and classic Yiddish tear-jerkers to the Coen Brothers’ latest weird and wacky imagining. Participants screened films and debated the relative merits of eras and auteurs, only to agree at the end that Jews are about as hard to capture definitively on film as they
Late Marriage
The Producers
are everywhere else. Here is Turan’s
In this traditional family, the son must
A wacky theater producer and a naive
personal list of his favorite ten Jewish
choose between familial respect and
accountant conspire to scam money
films from Europe, South America,
his secret love. Directed by Dover
out of their investors with what they
Israel, and, of course, Hollywood.
Koshashvili, Israel, 2001.
believe will be a sure flop: the musical
The Dybbuk
Liberty Heights
Ill-fated pledges, unfulfilled passions,
Funny and dramatic, this film about a
and untimely deaths ensnare two
Jewish family in mid-1950s America
Shoah
families in a tragic labyrinth of spiritual
examines race, class, and religious
This 9-1/2-hour documentary consists
possession in this classic Yiddish film
distinctions. Directed by Barry Levinson,
of powerful interviews with Holocaust
based on the play by S. An-sky. Directed
USA, 1999.
survivors, witnesses, and former Nazi
Springtime for Hitler. Directed by Mel
by Michal Waszynski, Poland, 1937.
Brooks, USA, 1968.
soldiers. Directed by Claude Lanzmann, Lost Embrace
USA, 1985.
Enemies: A Love Story
A young Argentinean man searches for
Based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis
his identity through family, geography,
Tevye
Singer, the film follows the double lives
and history in this exploration of self
This adaptation of the Sholem Aleichem
of Holocaust survivors who question a
and community. Directed by Daniel
story centers on Tevye the Dairyman’s
God who could let the Holocaust occur.
Burman, Argentina, 2004.
daughter, who falls in love with the son
Directed by Paul Mazursky, USA, 1989.
of a Ukrainian peasant. Directed by Pass the Gravy
Hester Street
In this hilarious silent film
Depicting New York’s Lower East Side
short starring Max Davidson,
at the turn of the century, this charming
neighbors argue over their
period piece focuses on the challenges
pet chickens and their
of leaving the old country behind and
enamored children.
coming to terms with a new life. Directed
Directed by Fred Guiol and
by Joan Micklin Silver, USA, 1975.
Leo McCarey, USA, 1928.
Maurice Schwartz, USA, 1939.
yiddishbookcenter.org Tell us about your favorite Jewish films!
pakn treger
BaymTsenter
Our W zamlers deliver!
ho knew that a Yiddish book was published in Aaron Lansky’s New England birthplace? Last fall two visitors brought a box of books from the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, now the home of Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality; some of the books (they weren’t sure which) had belonged to Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement. One volume was Rebecca Shuster’s Poemen, lider un kapitlekh veltlikhe beshraybung (Poems, Songs, and Chapters of Worldly Description), published in 1944 in New Bedford, MA, ten years before Lansky’s birth. We also received a Japanese-English-Yiddish phrase book, published in Tokyo in 1995 by Kazuo Ueda with the help of Troim Katz Handler. Idisshugo Kaiwa Renshuu-choo / Shmuesn yapanish-english-yidish includes phrases for travel, shopping, ordering food, and finding one’s way around Japan. Phrases are printed in four columns: Japanese, English, Yiddish, and transliterated Yiddish, so the intention is clearly to teach Yiddish to Japanese speakers rather than the other way around. The Yiddish Book Center has spent decades saving Jewish books from extinction, so when arson struck a historic synagogue in Crete, we sprang into action. Following the destruction of 2,500 rare Jewish books and manuscripts in two fires this winter, we emailed our members to ask for help in restoring the precious contents of the library. Sixteen thousand members received the message and many forwarded it to other concerned bibliophiles, asking for donations of books. The Center coordinates the distribution via its website, where it has posted a listing of the specific books needed by the synagogue. The response has been remarkable: we’ve received hundreds of emails offering support, comments, and suggestions, and books are already arriving at the library. The 600-yearold Etz Hayyim synagogue is the only surviving Jewish building on the island of Crete, the sole monument to 2,300 years of Jewish life.
yiddishbookcenter.org/Crete Donate books!
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Romania, Romania
R
omania was one of the first countries to recognize Israel when it declared its independence in May
1948, and diplomatic relations were established that same year. Cultural and historical ties continue to bind the two countries. In 2008, to mark 60 years of cooperation, the Romfilatelia and the Postal Administration of Israel jointly issued a stamp in honor of Avrom Goldfaden, founder of the world’s first Yiddish theater in Iasi, Romania.
yiddishbookcenter.org Joel Berkowitz on Avrom Goldfaden in Pakn Treger 44.
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BaymTsenter
Undzere Mentshn: A Sense of Adventure
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2010
Photo by Ben Barnhart
T
he job posting appeared last April. For the first time, the Yiddish Book Center was recruiting recent college graduates to be full-time graduate fellows for an academic year. Preferred qualifications were specialized (a “B.A. in Jewish Studies or equivalent; working knowledge of Yiddish”) and a bit eye-catching (“flexibility, good nature, and a spirit of adventure”). Mentored by senior Book Center staff, the successful candidates would be working on core projects in bibliography, exhibit preparation, ethnography, and website development. By September, Jessica Antoline and Christa Whitney, the first two fellows, were on board; in December, they were joined by the third, Malena Chinski. Energetic young pioneers in what is to be a permanent, expanding annual program, they bring to the Book Center an impressive range of competencies. In other settings, they have taught, mentored, designed courses, done research, organized museum exhibitions, directed arts projects. Their computer skills are first-rate. As for their language skills, besides Yiddish and English, they bring collectively to the table Hebrew, Spanish, French, Czech, Polish, Russian, German, Latin, and Ancient Greek. In midwinter, after they had been on the job for a number of months, the fellows took an hour to chat with Pakn Treger about their varied work experiences to date. What had they been up to since they arrived? “We do many different things, all related,” said Antoline. “Didn’t the job description say something about how it helps to have a sense of adventure? This is an exciting place to work. Things happen fast here, and sometimes only because of superhuman effort.” The three fellows smiled at each other, as if recalling some particularly memorable feats. Clearly, they are up to any and all challenges. Of the three, Christa Whitney has probably had the most varied assignments. A May 2009 graduate of Smith College, she plunged into the fall semester as a teaching assistant for an online Yiddish course enrolling 18 students. Working with Yiddish scholar Yuri Vedenyapin, Whitney’s tasks were chiefly to collaborate on the creation of course material, to communicate with the students, and then to upload the software for the course. Computer specialists at the University of Massachusetts initially provided her with training; then Whitney was on her own. After the course finished, Whitney spent the month of December doing research for a special feature of the Book Center’s new permanent exhibition: a ten-minute multimedia production that will examine a century of diverse representations of the Jewish American home. Text was needed, so Whitney pored through literature, primers, even audio recordings for usable quotations. In this she was mentored by the Book Center’s bibliographer, Catherine Madsen, and program director Nora Gerard. Another focus for her, along with Antoline and Chinski, has been the launch of an ambitious oral history project. This will entail collecting Jewish life stories, including those of visitors to the Book Center. The endeavor’s site will be the new Karmazin Recording Studio, a state-of-the-art facility in the Kaplen Family Building, which opened in May 2009. All the while Whitney has been giving visitor tours at the Center, including a one-time tour she specially designed for a course on Jewish Berlin taught by Professor Jonathan Skolnik of the University of Massachusetts. Whitney majored in comparative literature, with a special focus on Jewish literature and a minor in dance at Smith. She is the only graduate fellow who had participated in a Book Center program prior to this academic year. As a 2007 Steiner Summer Intern she did accelerated work in Yiddish language and culture, as well as archival work. “I was in the loop, and becoming a fellow was ideal for me,” she said. The fellowship was ideal also for Jessica Antoline, who last year earned a dual master’s degree from Tufts University in Modern European History and Museum Studies. For the past several months, the
Left to right: Jessica Antoline, Malena Chinski, and Christa Whitney.
ďœąďœľ
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BaymTsenter focus of Antoline’s efforts has been the creation of the Book Center’s new 10,000-square-foot permanent exhibition on literature, funded through a grant from the David Berg Foundation. Its working title is “A Walking Tour of Yiddish Books.” A reconfiguration of all the Book Center’s exhibitions is in progress, Antoline said, and the key idea for the “Walking Tour” is to bring visitors to the shelves – to a hands-on experience with books that most will not be able to read. There will be displays within the shelves, designed in such a way that visitors will be able to choose among themes that most appeal to them – themes like theater or classic novels. Collaborating with scholars around the world, with museum designers, and with Book Center staff, including Whitney and Chinski, Antoline is moving steadily forward with “Walking Tour.” She is collecting book-related artifacts and has already begun to draft text. “A permanent exhibition takes years to build,” she said. Antoline envisions her future somewhere in the broad field of cultural education. The fellows, who report to President Aaron Lansky and to Amy Leos-Urbel, the Book Center’s new director of educational programs, are keenly aware that they enjoy a rare bundle of opportunities. “Aaron gives us a lot of responsibility,” Antoline reflected. “It’s fantastic in a just-out-of-school job to be able to use our own skills.” Malena Chinski, too, is surely using her skills to the fullest. The native Argentinean has studied ten languages and is fluent in several. At the Book Center, her major task is to open boxes that contain rare
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2010
Yiddish books. Besides the boxes of rare books, there are also “random boxes,” orphan stashes left in corners of offices in the Book Center, their provenance possibly never known. Each box must be examined carefully, its contents scanned, cataloged, and shelved. “I do a lot of sorting and putting things into plastic bags,” Chinski said, plastic being the preferred medium for preserving delicate, fraying pages and any small objects long ago secreted between them. It was in Israel last summer that Chinski learned about the fellows program. She was participating in a Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University. Professor Justin Cammy of Smith College, who was teaching her class, encouraged her to apply to the Book Center. Although Chinski was already committed to begin work on a Ph.D. at the Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento in Buenos Aires this spring, the Book Center “was very flexible about the amount of time I could be here,” she said. Her training is in classical philosophy and she holds an M.A. in cultural diversity from the University of Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires. At the IWO organization in Buenos Aires, Chinski has volunteered her talents, working in radio broadcasting and for the library’s journal. Not long ago, she was a speaker at dedication ceremonies for the new IWO building that will rise to replace the Jewish Community Center that was bombed in 1994, killing 85 people. “Holocaust memory has not been studied much in Argentina, as it has in the United States,” she said. “I want to be active in cultural education.” She foresees a career in academia, which will probably include some aspect of Yiddish studies. At the Book Center, study of Yiddish language and culture is built into the fabric of the fellowship program. Catherine Madsen, who is familiar with every title in the collection, mentors the fellows in their hands-on work with the books. Aaron Lansky oversees the academic component of the fellowship program, meeting weekly with the fellows for a reading seminar. Together Lansky, Madsen, and the fellows are reading The Brothers Ashkenazi by I. J. Singer – in the original Yiddish, of course. First published in 1935, the historical novel is set in Lodz and is considered one of the seminal works of modern Yiddish literature. Another component of their education is auditing one relevant Five College class. Every Tuesday afternoon Antoline sits in on Professor James Young’s class, “The Literary and Visual Culture of Catastrophe,” at the University of Massachusetts. On Wednesday evenings, Chinski and Whitney audit Justin Cammy’s course, “Yiddish Literature and Culture,” offered in English at Smith College. Both as auditors and through their work creating tours for visiting classes, the fellows are forging strong connections with Five College faculty and students. These connections, in Antoline’s view, “are long overdue. Most Five College undergraduates don’t even know the Book Center exists,” she said. A more dedicated and effective set of ambassadors is hard to imagine. Antoline, Chinski, and Whitney have already taken part in several in-depth meetings about their experiences, offering advice and suggestions that will benefit their successors. If all goes according to plan, said Leos-Urbel, the Book Center will be welcoming six new graduate fellows in September. The large number and high quality of applicants has been “a little overwhelming,” she confessed. “But of course it’s a nice problem to have.” u
Besides Yiddish and English, they bring
collectively to the table
Hebrew, Spanish, French, Czech, Polish, Russian, German, Latin, and
Photo by Ben Barnhart
Ancient Greek.
Terry Y. Allen is a contributing editor to Pakn Treger.
pakn treger
by
Catherine Madsen
INTIMATE
ARGOT American Jewish Speech Patterns
W
hich generation of Jews is more likely to shep nakhes? How likely is a Jew of any generation to name a baby Mary? And is Mary pronounced the same as “merry,” except in New York? In search of American Jewish speech patterns, Sarah Bunin Benor and Steven M. Cohen, social science researchers at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, sent a questionnaire into cyberspace. It went, in social-networking slang, viral: they got over 40,000 responses. After narrowing the sample to native speakers of English who grew up and currently live in the U. S., Benor and Cohen analyzed about
Nu?
Older Jews use more Yiddish words – heymish (homey), makher (mover and shaker), nakhes (vicarious pride), bashert (destined mate) – as well as the all-purpose interrogative nu?
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three-quarters of the responses and wrote up their preliminary results in a paper titled “Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity.” Benor and Cohen caution that their sample was “not at all random.” More women than men responded, and Jews with strong social and/or religious engagement outnumbered the disengaged and disaffected. The nonJewish respondents – nearly 5,000 – were mostly invited to participate by Jewish friends. Still, interesting patterns emerged, reflecting the way language use spreads in and around the Jewish world, and those patterns may have implications for people outside the sample. It was no surprise to find that different generations have different levels of exposure to Yiddish and modern Israeli Hebrew. Ninety percent of the Jewish respondents had Yiddish somewhere in their background, but seldom recently. Thus, older Jews use more Yiddish words – heymish (homey), makher (mover and shaker), nakhes (vicarious pride), bashert (destined mate) – as well as the all-purpose interrogative nu?, which may yet make a comeback thanks to the ubiquitous Michael Wex, author of Just Say Nu. Younger Jews, especially those who have spent time in Israel, are more likely to use modern Hebrew words: yofi (nice), balagan (mess), yallah (let’s go). However, younger Jews who are religiously involved, even when they don’t shep nakhes or find their bashert like their grandparents, do daven (pray) and go to shul (synagogue). Interestingly, younger Jews even from Sephardic and other non-Yiddish-speaking backgrounds are using some Yiddish terms to conduct their religious lives. The intensely social aspect of religious practice naturally gives rise to catchy in-group usages. In addition to Yiddish terms for ritual practice – to say the grace after meals is to bentsh, to chant from the Torah is to leyn – religiously engaged Jews are more likely to use nonreligious Hebrew/Yiddish terms as well: tachlis for “practicalities,” davka for “specifically.” Then there are the phrases that really separate the
sheep from the goats: khas v’shalom (which means roughly “God forbid”), kal vakhomer (a Talmudic formula meaning “how much more so”), and the ultimate verbal wink-wink-nudge-nudge, hameyvin yavin: “the cognoscenti will understand,” a phrase used by only 24 percent of observant Jews and a vanishing two percent of other Jews. Yiddish grammar also sneaks into English. Orthodox Jews retain a distinct set of Yiddish constructions: “She’s coming to us/staying by us,” “She has what to say,” “What do we learn out from this?” These phrases are actually more commonly used by younger Orthodox
balagan
Younger Jews who have spent time in Israel are more likely to use modern Hebrew words: yofi (nice), balagan (mess), yallah (let’s go). Jews than by their parents and grandparents: they create a cultural bond from what was originally a literal translation, by people who didn’t speak English well, of the Yiddish tsu undz, bay undz, vos tsu zogn, oyslernen. Honor thy father and thy mother, including their grammatical quirks: this is the intimate argot of community life. Benor and Cohen were also curious about kinship terms. They found a number of variations: the terms Mother and Father, Mama and Papa, are more often used by non-Jews; Mom and Mommy are more Jewish, and Ima and Abba are more Orthodox (and/or more associated with time spent in Israel). Interestingly, Mame and Tate, the Yiddish terms, didn’t make the list. They are still used in Hasidic communities, and by especially resolute secular Yiddishists. Baby-naming is an intense and highly complex identity
pakn treger
shmatte marker: nothing exposes our aspirations and loyalties like the names we give the next generation. Benor and Cohen developed eight “clusters” of names for respondents to rate (see chart). The biblical Joshua and Jacob clusters are widely popular across the Jewish population, and to a lesser extent among non-Jews. Observant families with strong ties to Israel tend to prefer the Ezra and Matan clusters, whereas the more secular and
less to say, the Christopher cluster, fairly popular with non-Jewish respondents, is at the bottom of the list for Jewish respondents. So are you pushy, or ever accused of it? Forty-seven percent of Jews and 36 percent of non-Jews reported having been told their style of speech was too aggressive. These percentages may be interpreted in various ways, and it’s unclear whether they represent stable numbers
Baby Names and Kinship Terms
assimilated prefer the Alex cluster. Modern Orthodox parents often translate the Yiddish names of earlier generations into Hebrew: Goldie becomes Zahava, Gitl becomes Tova. Hasidic communities are more likely to preserve Yiddish forms like those in the Moyshe cluster. Trendy non-Jewish names like those in the Tyler cluster are somewhat less trendy among Jews. Probably need-
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or a rising or falling trend. Is the “more aggressive discourse style” associated with New York Jews gradually toning itself down – becoming acculturated, in response to what John Murray Cuddihy called (sympathetically) “the ordeal of civility”? Or are New York non-Jews picking up the aggressive style? Do ethnic and regional differences among non-Jews create further distinctions within the
shmooze
aggressive 36 percent and the polite 64 percent? Are Jews from New York more aggressive than those from, say, Minnesota or Seattle? Inquiring minds want to know. Among non-Jewish respondents to the survey, the strongest predictors for the use of Jewish expressions and turns of phrase were having Jewish friends or colleagues, having worked in a Jewish organization, or having been in a longterm relationship with a Jew. Some Yiddish words and phrases retain Jewish associations: “mazel tov,” “mentsh,” “I don’t know from that.” Others have simply crossed over to American English. These include “enough already” (a direct translation of genug shoyn); the mocking construction “money, shmoney,” “fancy-shmancy”; “klutz” for a clumsy person; and the slightly cynical “shpiel” for a speech or pitch. “Shmooze” is also generally used in English with a cynical edge, to mean “chat up” or “network,” whereas in Yiddish it simply means “converse” (a meaning retained among older and/or more Jewishly connected Jews). In fact it might – Benor and Cohen don’t attempt this, but it might – be possible to construct a working theory that Yiddish words in English combine communal intimacy with alienation in a particularly captivating way. The alienation might account for a curious finding: non-Jews who identified as gay/lesbian or bisexual were more likely than heterosexual non-Jews to use Yiddish words. Even when the data were adjusted for those who had lived in New York or had Jewish friends, the pattern held true. What’s with this? Benor and Cohen’s best guess is camp: the “element of theatricality or stylization” in gay male culture, which derives some of its
“Shmooze” is generally used in English
with a cynical edge, to mean “chat up” or “network,” whereas in Yiddish it simply means “converse.”
kick from the influence of Joan Rivers and other Jewish celebrities. No doubt camp is a factor – and one would give something to know whether the word shmatte (“dress,” literally “rag”) was in the questionnaire – but the detached irreverence of one outsider group can attract another just because it’s irreverent; you don’t have to watch Joan Rivers to see the appeal. One question Benor and Cohen seem to have missed is, “Are you now or have you ever been a MAD magazine reader?” Generations of non-Jewish kids learned the words shlep, shmendrik, and fershlugginer (not to mention a Polish word, potrzebie) from the same pages as “What, me worry?” Alfred E. Neuman may have secured more understanding between Jews and nonJews than any amount of interfaith dialogue. This is material for future iterations of the questionnaire, if Benor and Cohen have more in mind. As is another minor but burning question: is “marry” pronounced the same as “Mary” and “merry”? u
fershlugginer
pakn treger
Beyond Time The Paintings of Samuel Bak by Elizabeth Pols
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T
he battered snapshot is vintage 1940s. An intense young man with wild hair
and spectacles stares straight at us. On his knee sits a young boy wearing overalls and a shy, sweet smile. They are the poet Avrom Sutzkever and the painter Samuel Bak. More than a half-century after the photographer captured that moment, Sutzkever would write, “The painter Samuel Bak is baked into my heart. – Iz mir der moler Shmuel Bak azoy ayngebakn in hartsn.…” The phrase goes beyond sentiment or affection or even the kind of admiration a poet might have for a painter. To understand the relationship,
you have to go back in time and in place, to Vilna, to the ghetto, to 1942, when nine-year-old Samuel Bak first met the great Yiddish poets Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski. There, a connection of such intensity between artists not only made sense, it was essential to survival. From the moment of their meeting, Sutzkever claimed the painter as “my ghetto brother.” He and Kaczerginski recognized Bak as a child prodigy, mentored him, and organized his first public exhibition – in that ghetto. The three were among the few to survive the Nazis’ destruction of their city, and their lives would continue to intersect for decades to come. Just after liberation, as he and his mother were fleeing Vilna for Lodz, Poland – taking only what they could carry – the boy Bak entrusted many of his paintings and drawings to the safekeeping of the two poets. When Bak and Sutzkever both resettled in Tel Aviv in 1948, their friendship was renewed and grew. Sutzkever wrote about Bak’s painting and translated and published an early autobiography of Bak’s in his magazine Di goldene keyt. He also addressed several poems to Bak’s mother. In “Gehernter Moyshe,” he asked,”Where did your son find the clay to do this Moses?” The woman – Bak’s mother – answered, “In the graves of the Jews.” That Sutzkever, 96, should have died only days before Pakn Treger met with Bak in his Massachusetts studio made for a bittersweet segue into our conversation. Bak recalled that Sutzkever, in 1948, had donated a number of his friend’s preserved early paintings to the New York YIVO. The painter remembered that Sutzkever “once gave me as a gift … a manuscript of all the poems that he wrote under the German occupation in the ghetto.… He had such a beautiful handwriting.” Bak, in turn, donated the manuscript to YIVO in 2005, on the occasion of receiving the organization’s Vilna Award for Distinguished Achievement. Perhaps the most poignant exchange, though, occurred much earlier, in 1942, when Sutzkever and Kaczerginski gave Bak the Vilna Pinkas, the town’s 19th-century record book. While they hoped that Bak might survive and preserve for the future this tangible chronicle of their city’s history, their immediate motive was to supply the budding artist with drawing paper: the old Pinkas still had many blank and usable pages. Over the next year Bak filled the book with such vigorous drawings as the Moses (right). When the Nazis liquidated the ghetto in September of 1943, Bak hid the Pinkas under his coat as he and his mother were loaded onto a truck for the HKP labor camp. The Pinkas was his constant companion until the following March, when the children’s aktion forced the hasty and daring escape, engineered by his
Clockwise from left, Above: Self portrait, 1946 To the Memory of R.K., 38 x 31 cm, watercolor 1968; Avrom Sutzkever and Below: drawing of Self Moses SamuelaBak, 1944; in the Pinkas, 1942 portrait, 1946; Moses, 1942 Opposite: Sam Bak in his studio, 2010
father, of Bak and his mother. During the escape the boy was hidden in a sack and lowered from a window. The Pinkas and his father were left behind.
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Photo by Ben Barnhart
P
ainted in Words, Samuel Bak’s memoir, tells what became of that boy, his family, and the Pinkas. In his foreword to the book, Israeli writer Amos Oz calls Bak one of the great painters of the twentieth century. Painted in Words, he says, “is unique. Despite being suffused with a sense of loss, horror, degradation, and death, it is ultimately a sanguine, funny book, full of the love of life, rocking with an almost cathartic joy.” Published in 2001, the memoir charts Bak’s peripatetic life from his 1933 birth, through the war in Vilna, and throughout the next 50 years. Uprooted, painting incessantly, living on three continents, Bak returned to Vilna, finally, in 2001 for a long-anticipated emotional visit. “I am a perfect wandering Jew, who always carries with him his roots, travels always with books that break his back, and has all those languages [he speaks seven], and none of them perfectly well. Impossible!” says Bak from his comfortable home near Boston, where he and his wife, Josée, have spent the last 16 years – the longest either of them has been in one place. He began life as the adored only child of ambitious parents who recognized and nurtured his artistic talent from his earliest childhood. Bak’s photographic memory enables him to evoke those idyllic prewar years with cinematic clarity – just as he does the horrors that came after. His extended family and friends – especially his grandparents – are finely and lovingly depicted in Painted in Words, so much so that when they are killed in the woods of Ponary their loss became personal to this reader, 70 years after the fact. “This is what made me who I am. This is why I never really think, ‘What am I going to paint now?’” says Bak about his life and the way it informs his work. “My idea is to let out this thing – which is the self – that wells up in me. Because I had those parents, I had those grandparents, I had that war.…This is one of the reasons why I thought that it was very important to write this book because it gives, I think, the best key to what I am trying to paint.” Bak characterizes his painting as “speaking about the unspeakable,” and he identifies the late 1960s as the moment when he found his voice. The evolution of that voice involved an educational as well as an emotional odyssey. In post-liberation Vilna, Bak’s mother located the perfect first teacher for her son: the academician Professor Serafinovicz, who cultivated the boy’s natural draftsmanship by having him draw from the broken plaster casts she herself had dug from the ruins of the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. In Lodz he studied with an impressionist; in Munich, a constructivist; in Jerusalem, an expresThe Ghetto, 1976 sionist; and in Paris, a “post-neo-classical cubist.” Bak catalogs these teachers with affection and respect but still describes himself as self-taught. “When I started painting with one artist, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, each one was telling me a very different story. So, it kind of cemented in me the sense that there is not such a thing as an absolute idea which is right.” Bak soaked up most of his knowledge about art in museums rather than classrooms. To go “from a Picasso to a Piero della Francesca and from there to a Bonnard and bring out all these connections which exist between them: this was my real learning.” He spent 1956 to 1966 in Paris and Rome where “there was an incredible freedom, you could do practically anything. But not tell stories in paintings, and not do anything which might be considered theatrical.” He did very well in that world of abstract art, establishing a name for himself and selling his work. In 1966, by then married and a father, Bak moved his growing family back to Tel Aviv. He also began to move his work in a radically new direction. Unexpectedly, a curator from the museum in Vilna (now Vilnius) contacted Bak with the news that the Pinkas had survived and might be available for him to borrow for retrospective shows. Those hopes were soon dashed by the start of the Six Day War and the consequent break in diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel. But the thought of the Pinkas’s survival unleashed a flood of memories just as time and distance from the Shoah were giving Bak the courage to face his past. That courage, together with his consummate technical skills and rebellious nature, compelled Bak to break with the reigning art establishment and make paintings that were not only narratives, but took as their subject the trauma of his dramatic survival.
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“When you have a taboo in art it’s always interesting to break it. So I chose a kind of painting that creates an illusion of a space, which is like scenery for the story I expect the one who looks at the painting to write from the clues that I am giving. The stories can evolve in many different directions. So, it’s like life.” To speak about the unspeakable, to tell those stories without making people shudder and turn away, Bak turned to the pictorial language of realism – both that of the Great Masters and of the surrealists – “because it helps me to hide much better what the paintings want to reveal.… I make the unspeakable look as if it happened in the 18th century. Or beyond time.” And maybe beyond place. In Stone Age (1968), a painting within a painting, we are poised between cataclysmic events. The ruined house and its torn trompe l’oeil canvas are testaments to recent devastation. It, and we, are set in a beautiful but claustrophobic landscape where at any moment the boulderlike clouds might crush us, might raze our improbably balanced little home. What is this unstable world, where a stony sky mirrors a stony ground; are we in a strange asteroid belt? In this ambiguous and threatening landscape we have no guide but the questioning artist, whose presence is implied by the inner canvas. In To the Memory of R. K. (1968) Bak marks the dead center of the composition with a bullet hole, one of three that shatter the colossal stone egg cup occupying the foreground of another exquisitely rendered but hostile landscape. Something awful has happened. There’s a more subtle, hallucinogenic air to In the Park: in the foreground of a gorgeously realized and glowing landscape (think Giorgione, think Titian) sits the stillest of still-lifes: a white teapot, a bowl and spoon, an empty eggshell, and cup. They are all of marble, all ancient, all enormous, all cracked. Has a powerful quake shattered a bizarre domestic monument? Is that really stone? And is that teapot really so monumental or has the painter toyed with our sense of scale by thrusting it so far into the foreground? Such questions typically have been answered with labels: for the last 40 years the words “Samuel Bak” and “surrealism” appear often in the same sentence. Even as Pakn Treger goes to press, a March 15 issue of Newsweek features an article by Cynthia Ozick about the authenticity of Holocaust-related art in which she Stone Age, 1968 lauds “Bak’s astounding visionary surrealism.” But Bak makes a distinction between surrealism and what he does, which is to use the devices of surrealism. “It’s not a very precise thing, and I don’t mind if people call my work surrealist. All I can say is that surrealism usually deals much more with the subconscious; while I am dealing with things that come to the level of my consciousness. I’m using symbols and metaphors that represent a reality which is a little shifted….” Painted in Words tells us, in fact, that the battered crockery and unyielding spoon are more literal than imagined. In the Vilna ghetto, the young Bak was taken to meet an important artist, someone Sutzkever thought could be the right tutor for him. But the artist had just been arrested, leaving behind in his room only his unfinished drawing “in black and white, composed on two or more sheets of paper. The surface was held together by thumb-tacks.… Only the perfectly immaculate white cup comfortably centered on its saucer and the erect handle of the spoon radiated
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something of a serene assurance, as if they were the ghostly signs of an impossible dream. With all my being I tried to absorb this mesmerizing image.” That powerful image, which Bak first painted over 40 years ago and appears today in works like Where It Ends II (from the “Return to Vilna” series) is just one example of Bak’s slightly shifted realities. Most of Bak’s important images – angels with broken wings; monolithic chess sets; clocks without hands; jerryrigged mechanical birds; colossal keys; Hebrew letters and the Tablets of the Law; people who are part human, part prosthetic, part sculpture (echoes of the salvaged plaster casts of Professor Serafinovicz); the architectural stacks of books; strange and lovely pears – are rooted in his life’s experiences. In his paintings they are brought to the level of icons, both real and symbolic. Art itself is a principal element in Bak’s work. Incarnations of the unfinished drawing by that vanished ghetto artist still inhabit his paintings. Countless trompe l’oeil canvases offer fully realized paintings within paintings, confounding our distinctions between the real and the visionary. Sometimes the paintings are finished but battered and eloquent, and sometimes they are as yet unpainted, invoking an absent or mute artist, or an artist from the future. What is the role of the artist: recorder of events, interpreter of events, manipulator of events? “All of that,” Bak says. “When you do the kind of painting that I do, it must get away from that In the Park, 1968 one meaning. Can this thing have two meanings, three meanings? Then it’s okay. Then it can be used. But if it is something that only means one thing, then I better keep it away.” The self-referential canvases within his paintings also reflect his sense of humor, which leans toward the ironic. “Irony is the most important tool in art; in literature, certainly; in story-telling, certainly. Where would Kafka be without irony? Irony is this possibility of taking a distance from things. And you need a distance to put the thing into a context.” Bak likes also the challenge of taking a stereotype and transforming it into a mythology. “What could be more banal than a woman who sleeps with another man? But when it becomes Anna Karenina, you don’t say this story doesn’t interest me. Or a poor student who kills an old lady for money? Crime and Punishment. All this mythology is always on of the border of banality. It’s kind of tricky….” The proof that Bak is the master of such tricky territory is the paintings he bases on appropriations of familiar works like Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man. In Creation of War Time II (from the series “In a Different Light”), Bak boldly appropriates from both Michelangelo and the 20th-century surrealist Rene Magritte. He takes the charged gesture between the hand of God and the hand of man – the one we recognize not only from the Sistine Chapel but from refrigerator magnets and silly birthday cards – and uses it to question the power, nature, and very existence of God. Here, Bak represents God as the negative space in a blasted brick wall (an allusion to Magritte’s transparent bird) but the reference to Michelangelo is unmistakable even in simple silhouette. Only God’s pointing hand occupies positive space, as a Where It Ends II, 2002–2004
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plaque secured to the brick wall by a nail. Adam mimics the Michelangelo pose, but he has an inmate’s shaved head and wears prison garb and an expression of exhaustion and futility. He reclines, inexplicably, on a purple cloth – the perfect discordant note – in the rubble of a collapsed house, unexploded bombs, and a blank canvas. No brave new world, this. When, in Adam with his own Image, Bak substitutes an upside-down canvas of Adam’s own hand for the figure of God, he surely begs the question: Is God merely an invention of needy man? Another series based on an appropriated image is “Icon of Loss,” in which Bak works with the notorious Nazi photograph known as the “Warsaw Boy.” It’s a departure for Bak, and in it he takes an enormous risk. Though the Holocaust has long been his subject, his use of specific imagery has been discreet. Now, prompted by distress that a powerful iconic image has been reduced to a cliché, Bak openly adopts the Warsaw Boy – a boy who might have been Bak himself in “the same cap, same outgrown coat, same short pants” or his murdered best friend Samek. In a challenging and inventive series of some 75 paintings, Bak restores the authenticity of the original image while reaching new levels of meaning. Like Michelangelo’s Adam or Dürer’s angel, Bak’s Warsaw Boy is instantly recognizable, whether he appears as a suggestive patched shape in a distressed brick wall, as vandalized statuary, as the side of a mountain, or as a flesh-and-blood child who confronts us with hands still bleeding from a crucifixion. Many times the boy takes the form of a flat scrap-wood construction, which like a macabre scarecrow or primitive effigy intensifies his vulnerability and dignity. When Bak masses these constructions to fill the entire picture plane, as in Collective I and II, they have the power of a demonstrating and accusatory mob. Bak says he sometimes feels he would like to paint “one million of these Warsaw boys, for the number of children who were murdered”; but the cumulative effect of these 75 paintings brings him closer than the actual number suggests.
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When asked about the sources of his prolific output, Bak blames his own curiosity. He typically begins to explore one idea, which invariably leads to another idea, “because every painting is like a Russian Babushka. You open it and there’s another Babushka inside.… I have now in my studio about three or four different series. One I am working on is Adam and Eve… I’m thinking continuously about that story.… God, if he was intelligent (and I’m not sure he is), created them in order to break the Law. Once you start to think about that, then Adam and Eve in paradise don’t interest me – what becomes interesting is that Adam and Eve survived the Holocaust…. they have lost paradise and become Everyman, Everywoman. It becomes a subject which is very encompassing. So you cannot solve it with one painting or two paintings. I mean, I can paint Adam and Eve for the rest of my life!… At a certain point you have to finish with them.”
B
ak rises early every day and paints “as if it was the last day.” He exhibits at a marathon pace, commemorating his 75th year in 2008 with a show of the 75 “Icon of Loss” paintings at the Pucker Gallery, on Newbury Street in Boston. This spring, “Figuring Figures,” a show of Bak’s newest work which deals with the subject of displaced persons opens at Pucker. At any given time he may work on as many as 120 paintings at once. He acknowledges his huge production with an understated “I keep very busy,” but notes “it’s only ten percent of what is in my head!” While there is real urgency, even compulsion, in his need to paint, in his need to tell the stories that he does, he maintains there’s nothing “more joyous than the hours that I spend in the studio. Had I the possibility to paint 48 hours of every 24, I would do it.”
Above, clockwise from top, Pyramid, 1994; In the Footsteps, 1997; Still Life with Melencolia, 1984 Opposite page, Creation of War Time II, 1999
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In this, you hear an echo of his young self. Woven through the deprivations and losses of Bak’s war years are accounts of rescues and acts of kindness that provide a telling detail: where most of us would remember rescuers for their gifts of food or a warm bed, Bak’s life-and-death comforts are paper and pencils. A sign painter in the labor camp recognized the boy genius and offered him cardboard and paper: “How did you know I needed them?” Bak asked. “I saw the way you looked at them.” Sister Maria, a nun who hid Bak and his mother in the months after their escape from the labor camp, is remembered by Bak as someone who “supplied me with paper, colored pencils, and old and worn children’s books.…I drew and drew and drew.” Today Sam Bak’s studio is well stocked, serene, and orderly, with pleasant light bathing the clean white walls and the honey-colored wood floors. A nearly finished painting from the Adam and Eve series rests on the big easel in the center of the room, while a few others from the series, slightly less developed, wait propped against a nearby table. His paints are within easy reach on an
Clockwise from above, The Nature of Roots, 1999; Walled In, 2008; Children’s Corner, 1997
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industrial wheeled cart and brush-filled buckets line the top of a bookcase filled with CDs (Bak listens to audio books as he works). In a handy side room dozens of works-in-progress are stacked neatly according to size and shape, and elsewhere are pristine canvases ready to receive the paintings “queuing up” in his mind. Conspicuously absent, though, is the sprawl of open reference books, source photos, and rough sketches that clutter the studios of most figurative painters. The drawings that appear to be studies for finished paintings were actually composed after the fact, in what he calls the “portrait of a painting that I painted” – a more concise version of the expanded idea. Bak does any sketching for a painting directly on the canvas, in the form of underpainting that is then covered over by the finished work. Also missing are props for still lifes, models, or careful arrangements of drapery – all of which are staples of Bak’s compositions. They, too, are in his mind. “These are somehow things that pass from your brain into your fingers.” That direct path from his mind’s eye to the canvas is critical to his process: “What I am interested in is to get the image as powerfully as it is in my capacity,” says Bak. “The idea is an abstract thing: it has the speed of thought, which is still faster than the speed of light, I think.” He dedicates 99 percent of his time to the actual execution of the painting, a process that owes much to his photographic memory and extraordinary draftsmanship, but also to his sensitivity to the resonant rhythms and patterns of the world. Bak is a man who notices and absorbs things deeply and offers them back, transformed. Much of his work’s transformative power has to do with its sheer beauty. The worlds he paints for us are full of chaos and questions, but in the calculated decision to make this difficult artistic journey, he invites us along. “I’m fishing in my art. I’m trying to aesthetically seduce people so that they will look into these things, because what I’m going to tell them is maybe not very pleasant. But I want still to speak because I’m very talkative!” Bak pushes each painting – he claims they all start as “messes”– until every detail contributes to the visual harmony that ultimately defines beauty. But form always follows function: the fierce intelligence of his work never succumbs to mere cleverness, and its beauty can be terrible. “The painting has its own needs and tells me what to do.… I very often try to make a certain dissonance by using too harsh colors, maybe a very harsh blue, saying ‘Look!’ so that this fairyland beauty is speaking of something very different.” He no longer needs to prove that he can paint as meticulously as the Dutch masters, so some of his more recent surfaces have more vigor and texture and a little less polish.
Beyond the unspeakable
“T
hey came from Taiwan, from China, from Japan, from far away, and they told me, ‘But you are telling our stories!’ This was
one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard.” Samuel Bak is beaming as he describes the reaction of college students to his 2009 exhibition and keynote speech at Drew University. Their enthusiasm is typical of student responses to his work. For Bak, it’s more proof that it’s “only when you write about your own shtetl that you can become universal. If you do it well.” Finding his most receptive audiences in young people who know little about the Holocaust bears out the painter’s assertion “that actually what I am speaking about is the human condition; the Holocaust is only this very specific laboratory in which human behavior has shown its capacity for extremes…. When students say, ‘You are telling us our story,’ it means, ‘We are part of that human condition.’ And then they start to speak about what man is capable of doing, what should be done about it, and about the world we live in.” The dialogue inspired by Bak’s work isn’t limited to college students, but includes those in high school and even younger. This kind of engagement by students has prompted Bak and Pucker Gallery to donate a collection of 20 paintings (including Unexpected Visitors, 2000, above), to Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit organization that helps teachers in countries around the world lead students in a critical examination of history, especially of genocide and mass violence. Images of Bak’s paintings are being used in the organization’s educational materials to illustrate the emotional experiences of Holocaust survivors and to explore the ways in which art can explain historical moments. The originals in the painter’s collection will be exhibited at school and college galleries nationwide.
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When Bak says, “Every work of art is always a kind of testimony against the artist,” he means that no painting of his is ever as good as he would like it to be. To this day, he feels he “could a little improve it here, could improve it there” and he doesn’t have the same feeling of sureness that he had all those years ago as a child prodigy drawing in the blank pages of the Pinkas.
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The Pinkas has served as a kind of poignant punctuation in his life. After the tantalizing dis- Clockwise from top left, appointment of 1967, the Pinkas resurfaced in 2000. Rimantas Stankevicius, a representative of Po-ner II, 2002–2006; Sefarim Bet, 2001; From the now-independent Lithuanian government, contacted Bak with the news that the Pinkas was the Other Side of the World, being exhibited in the Jewish Museum in Vilnius “in a huge glass box, like a sacred object,” with 2001; Ponary II, 2002–2006 enlargements of Bak’s drawings hanging on the surrounding walls. This was the beginning of a reconnection to his native city that led to a retrospective show in Vilna and his first hesitant visit to his birthplace in 2001. The visit unleashed what even the prolific Bak calls “a frenzy” of painting, the fruit of which was the 2007 “Return to Vilna” show at Pucker Gallery. These paintings – more than 100 – poured out like automatic writing, as if transmitted by a higher power. A cortege of new imagery appears. There are the forsaken pillows and teddy bears of childhood. There are stacked books like those behind which Bak and his mother hid. There are strewn books suggesting a scattered culture. There are trees bearing books instead of fruit. And there are herds of airborne and rootless trees, as though a horrified nature had uprooted the complicit Ponary forest. Finally, in what the writer Lawrence Langer refers to as Bak’s “battle to convert inner pain into a serene visual homage,” there are both somber memorials to each member of his lost family and the brighter tribute paintings he calls their mementos. Painting like a man possessed – “only that here you are possessed by your own self ” – Bak produced a potent series that binds the long-ago child prodigy to the prodigious Samuel Bak of the present. u Elizabeth Pols is art director of Pakn Treger and a painter.
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L
ast Star in the Night
Poetry A dark violet plum, the last one on the tree, thin-skinned and delicate as the pupil of an eye, that in the dew at night blots out love, visions, shivering, and then at the morning star the dew grows weightless: That is poetry. Touch it so lightly that you don’t leave a fingerprint.
ghzg†P ohukp gygk†hp kebuy T wohuc iphut gymgk hs wkPTmrTuua T huu yrTm iut ehsky˙v-ihs ia†kgd huy iht yfTb ˙c y†v x†uu wkPTm wdbugz wgchk huy rgs zht irgya-idr†n iyhn iut – rgdbhrd ir†uugd huzT i† hz rhr /ghzg†P zht x†s /rgdbhp hs iup inhx ihhe igz yhb k†z ign
“Poetry,” translated by Chana Bloch in The Penguin Anthology of Modern Yiddish Verse. “Who Will Last?,” translated by Richard J. Fein in With Everything We’ve Got: A Personal Anthology of Yiddish Poetry. Photo used by permission of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
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Abraham Sutzkever, 1913-2010
by Catherine Madsen
I
n conventional Jewish terms, Abraham Sutzkever, who died January 20 at age 96, was a man of contradictions. His early childhood in Siberia – what he called his “blond beginning” – gave him a keen responsiveness to ice and light and stars and flowers that critics have considered pagan. His early reputation as an apolitical lyric poet in Vilna would not seem to predict a risk-taker and a rescuer. But when the war came to Vilna, the “Ariel of Yiddish literature” – his nickname, from the “airy spirit” of Shakespeare’s Tempest – became Ari-el, the Lion of God. He smuggled rare books and documents out of the YIVO archive and weapons into the Vilna ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he escaped with his wife to the partisans in the forest. Airlifted to Moscow, he reported on the genocide in progress and later testified at the Nuremberg trials. After the war he returned to Vilna, dug up the hidden books and papers, and arranged for their smuggling to New York. He settled in Tel Aviv and founded the journal Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain), publishing Yiddish literature in the heart of modern Hebrew culture. Sutzkever saw no conflict between the love of art and nature and an absolute commitment to the Jewish people. He continued to write his elegant and exacting poems throughout the war years. He composed with a strict eye to form: the “Angel of Poetry,” he imagined, would guard his life only if he wrote poems worthy of protection. His task, as poet and hero, was to save the fragments of culture, language, and experience: he worked, in Ruth Wisse’s words, “to make each fragment yield the sensation of the whole.” “It seems rather mischievous,” says Wisse of the poem “Who will last?,” “to locate permanence in wind and foam; and the second stanza, reducing poetry to a language of grass and flowers, takes us all the way back to a prehistoric landscape and forces us to confront the possibility of having to begin there again.” But this is what a poet with a Siberian childhood knows: that the prehistoric is not so remote as civilization imagines, and is regenerative. The least blade of grass reconstitutes a landscape, even in the horror and misery of the Vilna ghetto. Sutzkever’s finely crafted lyricism was not escapism but resistance. In his work, nature and art joined forces to sustain the Jewish soul against the annihilating powers of a cruel enemy. His metaphor of the “fiddle rose” imagines a fiddle – his father’s instrument – growing and blossoming from the grave, playing its own music. u
Who will last, what will last? A wind will last. The blind will die, their blindness last. The ocean’s raveled foam will last. A cloud snagged by a tree will last.
wybhuu T yguu ic˙kc ?ic˙kc yguu x†uu wic˙kc yguu rguu /ysbhuuarTp x†uu isbhkc ogbup yhhesbhkc hs yguu ic˙kc wohua krhba T :oh ogbup inhx T yguu ic˙kc /ohuc T ;hut ygPgayrTp ksbek†uu T yguu ic˙kc
Who will last, what will last? A syllable will last, as Creation seeds again and lasts. For its own sake, a fiddle rose will last. Seven blades of grass that know the rose will last.
w;Try T yguu ic˙kc ?ic˙kc yguu xTuu wic˙kc yguu rguu /;TaTc i˙z rgshuu iz†rdumxhurT ehs,hatrc wihhkT lhz suçFk zhurkshp T yguu ic˙kc /ihhyarTp hz ikguu iz†rd hs iup iz†rd ichz
Longer than all the northern stars will last the star that falls in a tear will last. In the jug, a drop of wine will last. Who will last, what will last? God will last.
wrgvT zhc iupm iup azT irgya gkT iup rgn /rgry gnTx iht ykTp rg x†uu irgya rgs yguu ic˙kc /dure i˙z iht ic˙kc lhut i˙uu iP†ry T yguu ehsbgya ?dubgd yhb rhs zht wic˙kc yguu y†d wic˙kc yguu rguu
Isn’t that enough for you?
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“Don’t be blunt!”
O
Opening Sonia’s Suitcase
The handbag of writer Sonia Victor, containing Yiddish poetry, proverbs, recipes, and songs, donated by her son Arthur.
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ne day last summer, longtime member Arthur Victor from Albany, NY, showed up at the Yiddish Book Center with a large battered suitcase filled with – well, he wasn’t entirely sure. “My mother was a Yiddish poet, and everything she ever wrote is in here,” he said, “but I don’t really know Yiddish.” When 2009 Steiner Summer Yiddish Program intern Sara Israel started looking for an oral history project, the match was made. “I did two interviews with Arthur, and I started to look through the suitcase with the help of Yuri Vedenyapin, our Yiddish teacher,” Sara Israel said. “I went in as a reporter for the Discovery Project, trying to learn about Sonia Victor as a cultural figure. But as soon as I spoke to Arthur, I heard an entirely different story: about Sonia as a mother. I started to look into the suitcase and saw a sad, struggling, opinionated woman with a sense of humor and all kinds of thoughts about the world.” Sonia Victor was born in Vilna around the turn of the twentieth century. Descended from a family that included many generations of rabbis, she spent her early years taking in Yiddish folklore and literature. She immigrated to New York just before World War I, after losing her mother to cancer and seeing her father remarry. Sonia became a seamstress and later a union representative in a sweatshop, where she met her husband Benjamin, a tailor. They moved to Scranton, PA, where Sonia got a job as secretary of the local Workmen’s Circle chapter, raised several children, and became as much of a Yiddish activist as one could become in northeastern Pennsylvania. She began to write in Yiddish and supplemented her Workmen’s Circle income by performing as a Yiddish folksinger and orator. Later, she moved to
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The Discovery Project
Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn, NY, where she became a regular contributor to Chana Mlotek’s column in the Yiddish Forverts, “Pearls of Yiddish Culture.” “She was a great source,” Mlotek related. “People would write in asking about songs or poems, and she would send all kinds of information.” Sonia also wrote an entry about the history of her family in the Yizkor Book of Ilya, Lithuania (yizkor books are commemorative volumes telling the stories of communities destroyed in the Holocaust). Sonia Victor passed away in the late 1990s. So, as my grandmother would ask, What was in the suitcase already? Some wonderful original songs, including four collaborations with Henekh Kon, composer of music for the original cinematic version of The Dybbuk; several articles about one of Sonia’s uncles, a kabala scholar and mystic who traveled around the world searching for the lost tribes (and reportedly found one in India!); a scratchy 78 RPM recording of Sonia passionately reading one of her poems; family photos of men with gray beards and women with dark braids; two actual long dark braids (but no beards); scribbled commentaries on various works of Yiddish literature; recipes, including several utilizing the hooves of cows; a few intriguing folk remedies; and hundreds of poems. “There were nostalgic poems about her father blessing the candles on Friday night, poems about her grandmother, poems about work and marriage,” said Sara Israel. Inside a leather purse “was a note reminding her how wonderful it is to be alive, and a list of don’ts, like don’t be blunt, afraid, arrogant, and so on. And then there’s this part where, for a couple of pages, she alternates between writing a prayer and a ‘chuckle.’ “When you study cultural figures, famous or relatively unknown, you’ve got to also know the context of their lives,” said Israel, now a sophomore at McGill. “We can’t really understand one part of Sonia without understanding the other parts. The things she writes about being sad are easier to understand once we’ve learned that she had an unhappy marriage and difficult children, that she was sick, and that a lot of her family died in the Holocaust.” Yes: it is partly a sad story. But I found it an inspiration to watch the magical intergenerational bonding between Sara Israel, a young Yiddish student, and a voice out of Yiddish history. — Hankus Netsky
Boston’s Yiddish Diva
I
first heard Leye Carrey sing at a Circle Lodge, Workmen’s Circle’s adult summer camp near Hopewell Junction, NY. Hers was a voice and interpretative style from another era, eerily reminiscent of Isa Kremer, perhaps the greatest Yiddish diva of all time, who had been one of Leye’s admirers. Born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, in 1907, into a family who loved to entertain, Carrey and her mother Freydl, also a Yiddish folksinger with a prodigious repertoire, joined her father Shloyme in Boston’s West End when she was five years old. She made her stage debut at a young age with a Yiddish touring company featuring the likes of the great matinee idol Michal Michalesko, performing Goldfaden’s “Heyse bapkelekh” (“Hot Babkas”) while dressed as a boy. Soon she began appearing at Boston’s Grand Opera House, Shawmut Theater, and Franklin Park Theater, and toured all over New
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Radio Days cast: (front from left) William Magerman, Seth Green, and Leah (Leye) Carrey; (rear from left) Michael Tucker, Julie Kavner, Dianne Wiest, Joy Newman, Renée Lippin, and Josh Mostel.
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The Discovery Project
England and in the Catskills performing Yiddish folk, art and theater songs, often accompanied by the gifted pianist and composer Reuben Osofsky. Leye Carrey became a regular on Boston Jewish radio for over 25 years, using her maiden name, Leyke Post, and collaborating closely with legendary hosts Isadore Katz, Samuel Fisher, and Ben Gailing. She frequently entertained at local events and was a featured performer at the Workmen’s Circle Camp in Framingham, MA, where she performed with the world’s top Yiddish singers and entertainers, including Menashe Oppenheim, Sholem Tanyen of the Vilner Trupe, and the aforementioned Isa Kremer. Carrey’s sons David and Henry both followed in her footsteps, learning and performing Yiddish repertoire, and David became a major star in New York’s Yiddish theater revival of the 1970s and 1980s (until his untimely death in 1985). Leye moved to New York in 1978, immediately gaining recognition on WEVD radio, in numerous off-Broadway productions, and as Woody Allen’s grandmother in the film Radio Days. In her later years, her son Henry regularly brought her to Circle Lodge and Klezkamp, where she charmed a new generation with her rich and imaginative performances of obscure and forgotten repertoire. She died in 2004 at the age of 97. Recently I became aware that some of Leye Carrey’s radio performances have survived, thanks to the efforts of her son Henry and Yiddish music activist Hank Sapoznik. Experience the joy of Yiddish folksong – as it’s meant to be sung – by going to the Book Center’s website at yiddishbookcenter.org and listening in. — Hankus Netsky
Line by Line
B
oston’s last European-born klezmer (originally, a Jewish wedding musician), Carl Frydman, died in 1979. Shortly afterward his wife, Yiddish vocalist Sally Frydman, phoned me to see if I might be interested in taking a look at the sheet music he left behind. Here was the deal: for $40 and whatever amount of additional money I could rustle up trying to sell her late husband’s clothes, I would be given the privilege of selecting and keeping as little or as much of his music as I wanted. Going through the collection, I found an extraordinary artifact, a handwritten book of Yiddish folk poetry entitled Yosif Frydman, Badkhn. Modern recordings of badkhones are mostly predictable parodies of Jewish wedding entertainers singing provocative verses to would-be brides who suddenly become unable to restrain their sobbing. I knew that actual badkhonim were usually traditionally educated rabbinical school dropouts who knew Torah, Mishna, and Gemora and could, in an instant, turn the texts backward and upside down so that other Jews would have something to laugh at. I had grown up hearing that my great-grandfather on my mother’s father’s side had earned a living in his younger years entertaining in such a manner at weddings, but no trace of his work remained. Now, here I was holding a book of actual badkhones. The only problem was that there was no way I could possibly read the dense Yiddish script. I decided to make a copy of the manuscript, in case I might ever know enough Yiddish to attempt it. I brought back the original to Sally. Years later I learned that Sally had given it to her son; one day when his basement flooded, that was the end of the badkhones book. Until last summer. Preparing for my week of teaching in the Steiner Summer Internship program, I stumbled upon the faded copy I had made years ago, and decided to bring it to Amherst, just in case. In walked intern Josh Schwartz, a graduate student from NYU, looking for something challenging, “preferably in handwritten Yiddish script.” Soon, Josh was sitting with Yiddish instructor Yuri Vedenyapin, transcribing and translating my faded Xerox of the 58-page book, line by line. We called on David Freedman, Carl’s brother, in Framingham, MA, and learned that his father Yosif was born in 1887 in a suburb of Krakow, Poland (in Jewish geographical terms, western Galitsye). The elder Frydman spent much of his adult life in the smaller town of Chmielnick, where he worked as a tailor and, on many special occasions, as a badkhn under the stage-name Yosl Marshalik. His son Carl often accompanied him. Fleeing pogroms and anti-Semitism, Yosif immigrated to Boston in 1927, bringing several of his children. But America of the late 1920s had no use for badkhonim. Changing his name to Joseph Freedman, he worked exclusively as a tailor until his death in 1952. The only trace of Yosif Frydman’s career as a folk poet was the manuscript that he seems to have completed in 1925, back in Chmielnick. That manuscript has been brought back to life under the auspices of the Discovery Project. — Hankus Netsky, with Joshua Schwartz
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Therefore, have this in mind, that I will go along with you. Understand that I require expenditures [to get there], so you should keep me in mind. In the meantime, I need to make some money, if I want to go to Eretz Yisroel. You already know what I desire [from you], no? Oh! How I will work myself hard the entire way, I will rhyme and sing. You will be entertained, and you will have things to tell [your friends] these wonders without limit. But have this in mind: until I arrive there, my pocket is still empty. Thus, remember and get your money in order before I go to Eretz Yisroel.
k t r å h -. r t i u r Fz c x † s i c† v r h t y k † z r g ch r g s `i r†p l h u t k h u u i h h k T r h t zT i h h y a r Tp x†s r h t yk †z `,u t m u v ;h u t ;r Ts l h t zT `i gbh z i u t i c†v l h n r h t yk †z r g ch r g s i gb h s r T p x g p g k ˙ u u r g s k † z l h t /i h hd k t r å h -.r t i h h e k h u u l h t ?x † u u i h u a r h t y x h h u u d b Tk r T p l h t x † u u i gd b h u u m l ˙ t r T p l h n k g u u l h t h u t `i gd bh z i u t id†z d g u u i mb Td T !i k ˙ u u l h u t y g u u r h t i k ˙m r Tp u m i c†v y g u u r h t `k †m T i† r g sbu u u h s i h v T o u e l h t z h c `i h z i h t y†v r†b – k †d l†b aT y r g s k ˙u u r g s z h t wy h h r d s k gd yf Tn i u t :y h h y a r Tp r g cg r g s /k t r å h -.r t i h h e h hd l h t r g s h h t
The Frydman family in Chmielnick, Poland, ca. 1910. Yosif Frydman is on right in the back (with cap). David Frydman (his father) is seated in the center. A very young Carl Frydman is in the front, third from left. Left, The Frydman family re-united in Boston, 1934. Carl Frydman is at right and Joseph is second from right in the hat. The photo also features Joseph’s wife, two daughters, and his other son, David.
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The Discovery Project
Eretz Yisroel
Translation db umgzrgcht
The End of Everything by David Bergelson Translated and with an introduction by Joseph Sherman
Three years ago Pakn Treger published an excerpt from confined in the Pale of Settlement by the repressions of Joseph Sherman’s translation of David Bergelson’s the present one; inclined toward secularity, they could novel Nokh alemen (“When All Is Said and Done,” Pakn not escape a Jewish identity whose significance was Treger #54). The translation has now been published in unclear. As their way of life unraveled, they faced a full by Yale University Press in our New Yiddish Library vague, perplexing, and financially unstable future. series, under the title The End of Everything. Sadly, Bergelson’s stylistic approach to this situation is Professor Sherman died shortly after altogether new in Yiddish literature. correcting the proofs and did not Its indirect tone and even its see the book in print. His magisterial punctuation seem dissociated from translation sets Bergelson’s book in the events it describes. It is austerely its rightful place as one of the great different from the chatty Sholem novels of the 20th century. Aleichem stories that the Yiddish The End of Everything is a striking reading public was used to. In the portrait of an only child who cannot last years of Sholem Aleichem’s take hold of her life. The beautiful and career, Bergelson addressed the refined Mirel Hurvits keeps a distance older writer’s themes without laughter from the events that surround her, and without hope. from the succession of smitten young Bergelson was not yet 30 when men who pursue her, and ultimately he published Nokh alemen. It is from her own marriage. She cannot easy to see how a disillusioned David Bergelson quite believe that anything will ever young modernist might become happen to her, nor can she enter fully into another attracted to the vivid certainties of Soviet Russia, which person’s feelings. She has no career or study plans and promised Yiddish literati an honored cultural position. thinks of marriage only with ennui. In a rare moment But Bergelson became trapped in the future of another of pity for her father who is ill and in financial ruin, she illusion. The Soviet system soon required its writers and consents to marry the pleasant, uncomplicated, and artists to reinforce the strenuously upbeat message of wealthy Shmulik Zaydenovski. But even at the betrothal socialist realism. Bergelson, the elegist of the shtetl, party, shown in this excerpt, her detachment and worked conscientiously at this compromise and even despair are evident. lived well on it for a number of years. But the system Mirel’s alienation represents the plight of an entire was insatiable, and inclined to discover treason even generation of sophisticated shtetl bourgeoisie in preamong those who had entrusted their lives and careers revolutionary Russia – though Bergelson is too subtle to it. On his 68th birthday, August 12, 1952, Bergelson to say so outright, or else to his earliest readers it did was murdered, on Stalin’s orders, along with 12 other not need saying. These Jews, educated and Russified Soviet Jewish writers. thanks to the reforms of the previous tsar, remained — Catherine Madsen
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igb˙z isHh ohbhbn ickTvrgsb† iT iut ///vsugx rgs um yxhhv kx†h-çegh wrg y†v wiTrTp vsugx rgs ˙c ehsbgya xhut yc†rd !i˙uu :i†ygd guugsbTn†e T skTc o≤xv-in wxg wr†h ogs l†b ic†rdrTp rgkge iht i˙uu ogs y†v rg) !i˙uu ihua lhz ign ige wub (ir†uugd ir†cgd zht ehktuna x†uu "///ikgyarTp rgs ;hut x†uu wluc iybpggd o˙c wrgy˙uu kxhc T rgehxeUuuebTka rgs zht wgrgazTyg-rgfhc rgbhhke rhxTe ogs çruen iyhn i,j rgehr†h-ehmbTuum iut rhp hhuum xrhxTe irTp .rt-lrs yTvgd y†v rg /igbTyagd wignuegdb† cuya iht hhz um igb˙z x†uu wlgkuuhrc-vmhkn kue iphut rTprgs oht iut khFån T rTp ybfgrgd oht /ogv-sjt xbhuzT zhtwx rguu irgv yz†kgd wr†h .bTd T id˙uuaP† l˙t ige rg ?yhhyarTp rht" "/ogv-sjt iut gfgkyhur-sb†kc gdbuh T r†d l†b yTvgd y†v rg ehsbkgpxhut wy†v ksrgc hs /ksrgc gbgr†agdnurT ahrp iut ix†dgdphubum r†vP†e gbgyTa hs yhn lhz wirghut hs iut /vgumr gf˙kd dbgrya T huu wohbP ourT idhumgd lhz iut iehxeUuu-kyhn i˙z um iguugd lgkbg erTya rg zht l†s irgybun ehsuugrhr ogs y† um wrgy†p iehypgre yeTPgd rgmrTuua erTya rgaPhv rgs yhn wygburc iehr†h-kyhn eTk yhn huu wgahrp hs yhn iut sr†c rgyrhrgd yahb iut i≤ujn rgfgkhhrp rgs y† /idhut gmrTuua wgyrhnagdP† igebhry hhy o˙c ivhksd 'r ehmrTvyhhrc iut ip† y†v iut yauegm yahb rgHa ˙crgs oht yhn lhz wignubgdnurT i ˙z y h n l g k h h r p h u zT i u t o g m u k P h u zT r T p r g s r a p t i h u a :igHragdrgchrT igkgyhd um ohyayxurc rgehypTz wiyr†y xegz TrTx ieueb† yguu rht !gy,b≤ujn" "/yfTrcgd irhp um l˙t ic†v rhn wvb≤n T /igbuuTs ihhd yhhrdgd lhz y†v'n gechk ixgzgd k˙uurgs ihua zht xgy,b≤ujn hs icgk gbgsHh T wyxTd rht wrgrht rgdhuua rgs yhn ihmhcr hs gyargs†p gbgkTpgdxhurT dbuh yhn wohbP iyuaP T yhn y†v gbgsHh hs /P†e iphut kfhy ogbgs˙z T yhn iut ihhm iut wi†yumbhvT ybgvfhe gyeTvgm hs ihvUuu yxUuugd yhb x†uu wrgdbhpybTv ic†rd ogs iykTvTcxhut yk†uugd y†v yahbdhuy T rgyxegz T dbTk ir†h ihua rht ˙c zht oht iup knvrçT ihua lhz y†v i≤ujn icgk †s iut /ixeTuugdxhut y†v rg /vtP gykz˙rdgd T yhhrsgd ehskfhhna çr rgs .rTuua T ,ca yd†ry i≤ujn rgs x†uu yTvgd vtbv x†uu ogs iup iut wyusrux iymrherTp x†uuyg wogbgs˙z wiTrTp isHh gnurp ahy˙k kkfc l†b igb˙z ykguu rgs ;hut gehy˙z T khya iut ehsuugnga huzT lhut rTprgs y†v iut :yd†zgdxhurT vrçx -çegh 'r zT ikguu ohkkP,n hs o≤xv-in ikguu zhuke iht" igebgsgd hhz ///igebga vkhp≤ T sung irTp hhz k†z kx†h
i†xkgdrgc sus igngkT l†b IX.
gehr†h-kyhn hs wd†y ˙c ehy˙rp ignuegdb† igb˙z hhz y†yar†p eg ikhya ogbht igbhuuu x†uu wrgyun-iut-rgy†p yfTrcgd iut wi,j ogs wsbhe iyxykg iyhn wlrF iy˙uu iup kfhhna ogbgzhuugdxhurT ckTv iahy˙k T lhz yhn hhz ic†v -i,j rgehr†h-ichz T yhn yhhebshrpum rgyxehbhhuugbht iup TzT ogs l†b zht kfhhna rgs /"gebhzhn" T wkrgyxguua ;hut ukhpT izhuuTc †s lhz y†v rg `ir†uugd rgahrgrhprTp rTp yfTngd hhz wisHhy†ya gsngrp skhuu iup rgnhbP hs ickgz ogs iut ogbhht igdbUuumgd hhz iut gyud-gyud gfkgzT :i†yphut kfå ic†v hhz zT ///chk r†d lhz ic†v wihhkT ohb≤ujn hs whhz zT" ikgpgd iut yguugeTnuaygd grgdgsTx iht k†n T r†d l†b "/vkF-i,j hs huu wrgxgc iyhhuum ogs rgbhht ouhv-sg l†b lhz yp† um wgxhurd T huu wy†v gkgshhn gehr†h-ichz hs iut kebgc xrgyun rgs ;hut khp um lhz iut iyhcgd lgkshhke hs wykhhmrgs ic†v gnTn-gyTy x†uu wk†n xgsgh ygPTrsgd iykT iT yhn xTke iyhhuum i†dTuu iht lhz y†v hz huzT huu /yvbgygdxhut kTrgbgd wykhhmrgs rht idguu gy,b≤ujn hs y†v wgrgykg hs" iut yahb y˙m ihhe y†v hz `ghzTbnhd hs r†h xehyb˙v yehsbg `ignubgdyhn ign y†v wgyxbgke hs whz iut /igbrgk ;rTsTc "/ighkuv kxhc T l†b hz k†z hz y†v wi˙rT knhbP iht sbhe ogs ehsbeueb˙rT iut huu wsbhuuagd huzT idhut gmrTuua gbhhke hs yhn ykebhpgd iphut saj ixuthn T ipr†uugd wkdhupyfTb rgehyfhzmrue T -,gac hz y†v iut wkzgb xsbhe o˙c x†uu wkybhP imrTuua :ydgrpgd kue ifgkehrgzhhv rht ;hut vågn ihua hz yx†v ?vkF hs wxgPg rhs hz ykgpgd huu wub" "?igzgd y†v iut rht idgeT ixgzgd ehsbd˙uua ahy˙k zht gkgyhd :yeuegdb† hz yTn T y†v wgbgsHh gshn x†uuyg iut grTs T wgfhuv T wogbhhke T wohbP-gy,hcv-kgc ifgkdbgk iut ikgebuy iut ybgv gxhurd lgkbhhuugdnut yhn jun iPngy erTya ogbgyTa rht ;hut x†uu wgekhPa-vaurh gaPhv hs /xhp ihhkT hz r†b wgbgybThkhrc T wgrg˙y T wohbP T wzht wehrTP khp um rTprgs ykfhhna wisgr um x†uu idguu yahb y†v k†n gkT i† ychhv iut yhhebshrpum rgyxehbhhuugbht iup :chhvb† iup r†d-r†d ikhhmrgs ohruP yebuP ignuegdb† zht oTrdgkgy hs zT iut wub"
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CHAPTER 9 Together with the bridegroom, their eldest child, they arrived on Friday afternoon, the middle-aged parents who lived at the quiet end of a suburb in the distant metropolis, bringing with them a refined, barely concealed smile of inward self-satisfaction and the bridegroom’s seven-yearold little sister, their late-born youngest daughter. This smile later became seductive: it appeared even on the faces of total strangers from the town, making the Zaydenovskis appear deeply good-natured, and compelling everyone to reach the same conclusion: —These people, these prospective in-laws, loved each other very much…. Years before they’d even made pilgrimages to Sadagura together, and to this very day they loved each other even more than the newly betrothed couple. Like an adult, the seven-year-old little girl changed her dresses far too frequently, and clambered onto her mother’s chair too often every time her parents told the story of how she’d contradicted an elderly general in the secondclass railway carriage they’d occupied. —Since her older daughter – the mother-in-law-to-be related – was completing her schooling at the gymnasium this year, she was obliged to study and had no time to spare, but they’d brought this one, their youngest, so she could enjoy herself a little. Looking deeply into the child’s face, her mother blinked her little black eyes rapidly like some short-sighted night bird and, peering with menacing suspicion at a black spot on the child’s nose, demanded in her hoarse voice: —How d’you like the bride? Have you seen her yet? Sitting in polite silence opposite, Gitele scrutinized her: She was a tall, scrawny, somewhat worn woman with a dull, saturnine complexion on the elongated face of a well-to-do bourgeoise, a small, very dull mind, and extraordinarily big hands and feet. The huge heirloom hairpin in her chestnut-colored horsehair wig bore a diamond and was evidently valuable, but since she herself had no conversation, she went on smiling excessively in self-satisfaction and began the same account from the very beginning every time: —Well, as soon as the telegram arrived, just as the Purim feast was about to begin, in fact…and as always there were some fifteen people at our feast…well then he, Yankev-Yosl that is, gave the instruction immediately, of course: Wine! Bring up the wine! (He’d laid down wine in the cellar in the very year Shmulik was born.) Well, you can imagine…. A little farther away, at an open volume that lay on
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the little bookshelf, stood the slim, twenty-four-year-old bridegroom in company with the family’s intimate, the bookkeeper. He was in awe of the florid Hebrew style of the bookkeeper’s two letters which had reached him at home, regarded him as a maskil and therefore spoke loudly about Ahad Ha’am to show that he too was an educated man: —Do you understand? Ahad Ha’am is quite capable of publishing nothing for a whole year. He wore a still-youthful reddish-blond beard, which, freshly trimmed and bypassing his ears, merged with the chestnut-brown hair on his head and stretched round his face like a taut leather strap. Yet he closely resembled his thickset, powerful father, that brisk, cheerful, dark individual of medium height and middle age with his huge, intensely black untrimmed beard and sharp, lacquer-black eyes. When tea was served, this cheerful soon-to-be relative by marriage openly and generously embraced Reb Gedalye, barely restrained himself from kissing him, and perhaps compensated for this by abruptly bellowing across to Gitele in his rich baritone: —My dear mother of the bride! You’ll soon see the quality of the six sponge cakes we’ve brought you for the party. Preparations for attending evening prayers to welcome the Sabbath were made. By now, meanwhile, seated between the mothers of the bridal couple was Libke the rabbi’s wife with her visiting mother-in-law, a woman with a homely face who’d lost her front teeth in early youth and wore a silk kerchief on her head. This woman was at a loss about what to do with her rough, work-worn hands, and was anxious to hide one of her thumbs which had for many years a useless sixth finger growing from it. Next to the groom’s father, Avreml the rabbi was smiling and twisting one of his curly earlocks. He took pleasure from the fact that in honor of the Sabbath the groom’s father wore a black silk surtout, albeit somewhat shortened, and from the fact that well-to-do observant Jews were still to be found in the world. In consequence, he shyly and quietly expressed an opinion in passing: —In the study-house, the worshipers would almost certainly desire Reb Yankev-Yosl to favor them by leading the prayers…. They almost certainly still vividly recalled the way he’d led the prayers during the High Holy Days in Sadagura. And smoking the last cigarette of Friday afternoon, the worldly relative-to-be assumed an expression of seeming reluctance: —Who? Was he to lead the congregation in prayer? God forbid!
-,ca grghhz iup lgkngkp hs wgyrhnagdnurT ohhk yhn w,ukF wlgkshhn hhuum /izhuuTc ypuk rgygPa rgs yfhk wignuegd yxTd um vbfa rgs gyrçj rghhz um iyr†s igb˙z igkrhn whhz iut rgymbgp ihn TzT icgk ˙rs gkT igbTyagd ohbP iht iehktuna igz yk†uugd wyeuegdf†b wi,j iyhn iht ehkgpum zht x†uu kc˙uu gdbuh T iut /ybgegd yahb iut iyhn P† lhz ykgya krhn huu igzgd y†v igbTyagd ixhurs cuya xgxhePhk iup rhy rgyrhnarTp ehnhhk rgs rTp i,j :i† oht yz˙uu iut `sb˙rp-rgyud rgybg†b T r†d rgrht ybhuuu †s y†" iT rghhz zht rg r†b /ybgsuyx T zht iut xhePhk yxhhv rg "/xup T ;hut kxhc T yebhv iut rgngr† r
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zT ir†uugd r†uugd y†ya iht ign zht hrp rgs iht ,ca ihua zht ;xun um /sung irTp igbuuTs yguu i≤ujn xvhksd 'r oh≤c-hkgc hs yhn yeTPgd kup iguugd zhuke rgbgyTxT hs rgahf†kn-kgc wrgxhurd rgs iup iut oharsn-h≤c gshhc iup lgkgnTP yehsbgrTp wi≤ujn rgs wrg huu ehsbrgv /kua oum rgcht lgkgnTP huzT lhut yhhd iut lrca-hn ihht .hPa hs ;hut ,urua gyargybhv hs iht ign zht wiyhhuum yahb lhhv-r†ngnkT iup igzgdxhurT wigbTyagd rgdbhp yfTrygd iut vryg rgbgsk†d ihhz iup .hPa ogs huu rgn iht iyr†s :rhçd iehr†h-kyhn iehygyaxhurd ogs woht idguu yhn vrua ihht iht wi,j rgs wrgb˙z iuz rgs zht ybTuu-jrzhn wgerTya T yTvgd y†v ihhkT rg iut wigbTyagd ivhksd 'r :ybuuTsgd y†v iut ohya gngbgdb† "/ybuuTsgd rg y†v ohbzj gxhurd hs r†d huu" hs igdbTvgd zht Pge hs rgcht x†uu ypuk rgs iht rgs iht ymhuuagd ic†v'x /dbunhya gehspxun gshn jrzhn iup y†v'x wzhuke iup ybguu gyrghungd hs lhhv rgs yeuegdP†rT yhheshn rgehs,ca rgehkhhv T yhn y†v lhhv-r†ngnkT rgs iup iut wasue-iur† rgbgdbTvrTp y†v yPTkegd iut wohbP xgåna ogs yrgnhagd .kT l†b /irgxgrdrTp um yhhekhya hs hsF vkhp≤ rgsgh rTp rg T xbhht ourT wygPa ign zht zhuke iup igdbTdgdxhurT lhz iut rgmrgv gyakjrTp grgyfhb hs ykhprgs wrgdhhz kygya gmbTd hs ihua y†v ogs l†b iut /ohhvT yk˙tgd iyhn ohb≤ujn hs yebgsgd woukj iehs,ca T iht huu ycgkgd -xbe ogs iut cuya iht ivhksd 'r ˙c lhz igbhpgd x†uu i,j /ignuer†p ybuu† iht iyr†s yguu x†uu k†n xehrgcht geTy lhz ic†v lgkshhn gb†ygdb† ogrTuu ic†v iut ykhpgd ,ca iehsrgybhuu ogs y† iht ehsçuy-ouh rgdbTk rgs yhn P†rT iut ;hurT yrhmTPagdnurT khp um 'r iup rgymbgp gehybr†p hs xhurT ighhd rht um x†uu xTd gbs†n zht werTn chhvb† iht wiyr†s r†b iut /cuya xvhksd xbs†k ghukc grht yhn igbTyagd iz†krTp huu iut ehygnut van-ovrçT i≤ujn ogbgzguugd xkrhn iup cuya gxhurd hs x†uu iudhb rgfgkhhrp rgsgh yebgregd hz y†v'x /xgbruc
iht igbuuTs iehsnh†rub-ohnh i˙z wo≤xv-in wl†b l†s "/grgdgsTx iymgk ogs ehsbrgfhhr wy†v i≤ujn rgfgkykguu rgs iut ohbP idbgrya T yarnukF wx†rhPTP iehyfTb-rTp-ehy˙rp :ignueTc "/vkhkju-xj ?sung irTp igbuuTs yguu rg ?rguu" /iygc oht k†z gn wyk†uugd y†v rg rgyrg hs iup k†n T yhn rsj iht gkT lhz ic†v ogmukP iup lhz iut ixgdrTp çr ogb† y†v i≤ujn rgs /i†ygd chhv T gfkguu wigkrhn idgeT idhhb lgkykguu ignubgd xby˙uu rgs †s k†n iyarg oum shhke ogbgs˙z-hurd idbTk T iht lhz y†v gbgnuegd hs um ic†v idhut ghukc grht /izhuuTc rgnhmxg iht ohbP rgbgaTuugdP† x†uu r†b rgs iut wykfhhnagd ohb≤ujn igzgdxhut y†v iut xTkc yrgyTngdxhut huzT iguugd zht lhz y†v dhut isngrp ogs /i,nt rgs iht huu rgykg x†uuyg wkshhn gehs,unhn≤ ihhe yahb zht hz zT yfusgd geTy ihua x†uu kc˙uu gfgkypTabs˙k lgkbhhuugdnut iT xgPg r†b lgkegra oht y†v hz x†uu wiTn iyhn r†h rhp-˙rs ihua ycgk i† iut ypTa˙rygd xhurd yhn rgcht oht lhz yhd iut chk xhut ohbP rgkgshht rht ihua ygz ogs rgcht zT wiucaj oua ;hurgs ehsbeue-yahb wxTkc yrgyTngdxhut iut shn huzT rgxTuu gykTe erTya yhn dbTk x†uu r†b oht y†v hz x†uu /i†ygd ,ukudx hhkrgkT oht iut yahrpgd wy†v hz x†uu yrgvgdb˙t yahb lhz y†v i≤ujn rgs /yd†zgd oht um widhut ghukc gyahrpgdP† hs yhn ehskfhhna :yhhrsgdxhut ckTv ivhksd 'r um lhz y†v rg "/yhhrd zht rg w†h ?ihhd igbuuTs wx†uu" wyrgegdnut ohbP iyhn rht um rgshuu lhz y†v rg iguu iut igbTyagd zht hz /ixgdrTp yTvgd oht i† ihua hz y†v gckgz hs yhn oht um iut iehktuna idgeT rgymbgp o˙c :ykfhhnagd idhut ghukc gyahrpgdP† wir†pgdeguuT y†ya-z˙re iup zht rg huu ogs l†b whz zhtI hs rgcht ihhkT gbhht lhz iut iguugd iyr†s k†n ihht l†b hz yguu y† ?iguugd x†s zht iguu /yhhrsgdnurT ixTd gyxuP "/iguugd zht x†s iguu igb†nrgs lhz iut yfTrygd argsbT xgPg idguu ihua hz y†v ihhkT r†b T l†b ogmukP lhz wigb†nrgs ybgegd yahb iput-ouac lhz xgPg rgshuu iyr†s iut yPTfgdb˙rT rsj iht lhz um k†n yrgegdnut ehrum iyr†s iup lhz wohbP ixTkc ogs i†ygd rht chkum zht x†uu wiehktuna ydhhkgdr†p iut rgnhmxg iht :igdbTdgd yahb igbuuTs iut Pukuy ogbgrhufy ogs i†yb† eaj ihhe yahb y†v rg" "?ihhdfrus kygya irgcht kxhc T rht yhn lhz kTa T iht kshhn T ogs l†b ihua lhz y†v iyr†s iut †s iut iykTvrTp cuya xrgy†p rht iup rhyzhuv rgs icgk hs iz†krTp wkygya irgcht gshhc irhmTPa hhz huu igzgd lgkxgdrgybhv hs um eguuT lhz iz†k iut xTd gyargs†p ourT /,ca-kcen zht'n Uuu oharsn-h≤c gbgyfhukTc hs yhn wgynhregdxhut rgymbgp ic†v oharsn-h≤c hs ourT iut
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He wanted to be begged. Suddenly all in the room rose from their places. The father-in-law-to-be forgot completely about the rabbi and from a distance began bowing in a worldly manner to Mirel who, clad in a long gray silk gown, made her appearance here in the dining room for the first time. Her blue eyes smiled at her newly arrived prospective in-laws, but her freshly washed face was pale with exhaustion and looked somewhat older than it really was. To the eye of a stranger she seemed to be no artless girl, but an unusually passionate young wife who’d been living for three or four years with a husband whom she loved to distraction and to whom she unreservedly gave herself with great devotion; that because of this her refined face appeared so weary and pale with exhaustion, despite the fact that she’d only just spent a long time refreshing it with ice-cold water and applying all manner of lotions. The prospective father-in-law paid no attention to what she smilingly said to him with her newly freshened blue eyes. He half-turned to Reb Gedalye: —What? Time for prayers? Yes, he was ready. And when he turned to face her again, she’d already forgotten about him. She stood at the window opposite Shmulik and smiled at him with the same newly freshened blue eyes: —After he’d left the provincial capital, she’d been there once on another occasion and she’d wandered through the deserted streets all alone. When had this been? She’d remember in a moment. But already thinking about something else, she was wholly unable to recall, suddenly hurried off to her own room again where she once more did something to her pale face, then returned to the dining room and suggested to Shmulik, who hadn’t gone to prayers for her sake: —Did he perhaps feel like putting on his skunk fur overcoat and taking a walk through the shtetl with her? In various places afterward, girls in shawls dawdling in front of their fathers’ houses saw them both strolling through the shtetl, leaving the main street and making their way to the back alleys with their illuminated studyhouses where the Sabbath was being welcomed. All around these study-houses, crooked windows sealed with clay displayed the little flames of their Sabbath candles to the late evening air. At one such window, two young women, shortly to be brides, who’d gone to visit their neighbor, stood with their hostess watching Mirel and her husbandto-be, wanted very much to catch a glimpse of Shmulik’s face and couldn’t. And quite by chance, a young wife who was standing outside saw Mirel stopping with her hus-
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band-to-be in front of the clay-caulked door of Lipkis’s house and pointing it out to him: —A very close friend of hers lived here; his name was Lipkis and he was a student. But he was very poor and walked with a limp. r
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On Sabbath morning, the town learned that Reb Gedalye’s relative by marriage would lead the congregation in prayer. By the time of the Additional Service, the Husiatyn study-house was packed with householders from both prayer houses as well as from the big artisan’s synagogue. Listening to the way this relative by marriage unhurriedly ended one series of blessings and moved equally unhurriedly on to an other, those in the backmost rows stood on tiptoe to get a better view, but owing to the height of the central reading desk could see no more than the tip of the gold-embroidered collar on his prayer shawl, and reflected on the good fortune of this middle-aged, bigcity magnate: there at the eastern wall his son, the bridegroom, was standing next to Reb Gedalye, while he himself led the prayers in a strong, pleasant voice: —He led the prayers like the very best cantors. The fatigue induced by the lengthy service hung in the air over the heads of the congregation. High above, the brick walls of the study-house oozed moisture; curtained off, the Holy Ark looked down from the eastern wall in hallowed Sabbath weariness; and the face of the beadle, who kept banging on the desk before every prayer in order to intensify the silence, gleamed from the height of the central reading desk. They left the study-house late, around one o’clock, and hurried home, feeling weak from the gnawing pangs of hunger. For the rest of the day, the entire shtetl lived as though in a Sabbath dream, remembering the in-laws-tobe and the bridegroom who were staying with Reb Gedalye, and the betrothal party that would be held that evening. Warmly dressed young women certainly felt excessively festive this winter Sabbath and spent far too long parading up and down the long street onto which the front windows of Reb Gedalye’s house looked out. Only some way off, near the beginning of the marketplace, the big house with the blue shutters belonging to Avrom-Moyshe Burnes, the father of Mirel’s former fiancé, stood strangely isolated and abandoned. Every joyful melody that the Husiatyn Hasidim sang in Reb Gedalye’s house caused it distress. No one entered it and no one left it throughout that entire Sabbath, and it gazed out as though rigorously banned from all social contact. Velvl Burnes himself was assuredly
rTp ie†rargs kxhc T ukhpT ihua lhz y†v rg lgkgxhka gb˙z l†b ogmukP oht um zht gfkguu wigkgyhd xhp hs ;hut lhz rg y†v yhhvrgyrgehuvgdb˙t /igdbTdgdum wykguu rgs iht zht rg Uuu yxUuugd yahb wykgyagdphut ihht iup yrTagdnurT ybgv gehsbPTy yhn dbTk y†v iut /rgyhhuum rgs um gbgage yhn y†v .rTv hs /y˙uu rgs iup igzgd x†s y†v krhn /igdbTdgdum oht um hz zht wi†ygd hm T oht um ,ubnjr xhurd iht rhs ˙c ///lgkgxhka hs wl†s hhz igb˙z y†" "/hhz idhk aTy iyargchht i† shn≤ iup /if†rcgm hz y†v igzxhut rgehygnut i˙z rgerTya T zht wrgrht rgy†p rgs wrg zT ychhkdgd hz y†v iut /lhz irhkrTp um yhb w.k†ya i˙z um hsF .kT i†y ige iut iehpkhvTcnut iT igzrgs k†n iyarg oum oht hz y†v ymht ehygnut /sruh ogbgrhukrTp i,nt iT iup igzxhut iT yhn yhn igkgyhd icgk ixgzgd hz zht khya ehbgyrgybut iut gbgsHh gehyfhzmrue hs y† huu yrgvgd iut gy,b≤ujn rgs sbhergyxguuagd rghhz ;hut grv-iuak ihhe isgr yahb khuu yhn y†ya-ghbrgcud ihht iht ybhuuu x†uu hexbThk†Pa Tsht hz zT ikhhmrgs i† ychhv hz /iTn ogb† iyr†s yakgp iut rht rhmhp† iT yhn rgyTgy iht igzgd iTsht k†n ihht y†v ihhkT lhz yPTfrTp r†b wehbfgyhk†P iehsbPgkaf†b T yhn iut :iygkdrTp xg khuu iut iTn rgs iut wTsht wihuarTP gynhrTc hs l†s hz zhtI wyksbTv rg /iTn-rgdbuh rgb˙p T xhuugd zht oTrcT rgrht iht z˙uunhasj zht iut guuyxybTsbgybht rgs yhn wlhz yfus wign yd†z wcuya hs ///grghhz cuya hs r†b /†yahb ohhv rgs "/g˙rp T r†d-r†d ///gehyb˙v T ihua zht gehsbgbgrc khp hs yhn iahy gyhhrdgd gxhurd hs ourT ehrum yTvgd yxgd "gbgaTuugdI hs ihua lhz ic†v yfhk ignubgd "thmunvI l†b skTc iyr†s ic†v hhz /ymgzgdeguuT ohhjk igebhry wrgnhbP gehyfTb-um-,ca hs yhn igkfhhna iut igebhry rgshuu wxgeahkge hs yhn igdbhke wisgr iut iup ehy˙mbhht id†rygd lhz y†v xguna rgs /isgr rgshuu .kT x†s iut wrgk˙n gehsbgebhry iut gehsbg˙e ehmfgz wrgHrp huu wlhz k†z wkrhn whz zT yrgyagd yahb l†s y†v -ghbrgcud gxhurd hs igebgsgd k†z hz zT wikhp oTzbhht irgnhm rhp iht hm ˙rs iht iehktuna yhn yguu hz Uuu y†ya hz zht iyr†s x†uu ixTd hs ikgyar†p lhz k†z iut wigbhuuu /iguugd ivhksd 'r yhn z˙uusbhe k†n T ihua huzT yfTbrTp-rgnuz T iht iyr†s ihua hhz ikguu .gdrg" um x†uu idguu ic†v yahb iut lgkgnTP ihhd wihhd ighhuum iht idguu ic†v yahb rgshuu iyr†s iut ohhvT irgenut lhz wisgr "/isgr um x†uu y† iup ˙x i˙z yahb ihua yguu imrTv iphut yud erTya /ohhvT lhz irgenut ogbup ˙x wrhmTPa iehyfTbrTp ogs ///.huuruv krhn whz r†b "?ifTn lhz yhn ybgegd ihua hz y†v x†uuI gbgshharTp /ixeTuugd zht ahurgd rgruFha ckTv rgs
iht zht rgbhhe /ivhksd 'r ˙c igdbhz ohshxj rgbgyTxT imbTd ogs rht iup zht rgbhhe wignuegdb˙rT yahb rht iup huu hz y†v yeuegdxhurT iut wigdbTdgdxhurT yahb ,ca iyr†s zht ihhkT xgbruc kuukguu /orj irguua T rgybut Uuu .gdrg idgkgd iut iguugd yahb ,ca ogs y† ;hut xhuugd ihua l†s ign y†v y†ya iht r†b /ehrguukup iphut lhz ˙c rgyhhuum i˙z yhn rgsbTbup lhz yhhd rg zT yxUuugd ˙x huu ˙x vbu,j i˙z zT isgh ykhhmrgs ihhkT rg x†uu x†s zT iut vkF /ohbPk r†b lhut zht unjb-,ca ;hut ir†uugd ydhhkgdP† zht r
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iguugd cuya xgmhuuruv vhksd 'r zht xyfTb-um-,ca iut gehyr† khp yhn ykupgdrgcht iut iyfhukTc erTya /ohrhçd yxgd gehskygya-sngrp vtbv erTya yxgd hs y† iup kchyargs†p iht ic†v'x gyngr†rTp lgkegra xvhksd 'r iup gehbhht yTvgd gyud l†b y†v vhksd 'r x†uu ishrpum iguugd wohjkuan T l†b ybTv hs iyhhuum oum rgbhht lgkhhrp huzT wsb˙rp :yegryagdxhut rTdhm ?T wimce ihhe yahb lhut ///?† ogs y† ;hut uyxd†z x†uuI "/rTdhm T chd x†uu ahy iehsfgk˙e ixhurd ogs ourT dbg iguugd zht'x rgs iup irhy gybpggdrgsbTbup hs zhc iyr†s lhz y†v zht ohb≤ujn gshhc icgk i† ichut /idhumgd kTz rgbgyfhukTc oujb rgfgkhhrp rgs ixgzgd ykge iup ohbP iahrp T yhn hs ;hut rup rgbgdhht i˙z yhn x†uu r†b zht rg /˙cTrTy ikhhmrgs ihhkT yngagd yahb ihua lhz iut ignuegd oh†b≤ iut wçuy-arus T ivhksd 'r zht rg zT igkx†h-çegh i≤ujn ogs out ukhpT woh†b≤ xrgyf†y i˙z ;hut ignuegd rTprgs zht ˙c rgdhhz T igm zhc ir†pgd rgvT zht rg /xyfTb-um-,ca x†uu rgymbhp rgs iht Uuu .gdrg ukhpT ygazsb†kcgd wyfTb ymht /ignuegd yr†p zht iut w;r†s iehsbp†ka T rgybhv yhn wexghkP ifgkhhrp i˙z yhn yngrThkgd †s ihua rg y†v x†uu vkta rgehm†h i˙z yhn iut rgybut dburPa iehmbue i˙z ivhksd 'r iehygnut gbs†n ogs k†n gkT rg y†v rht yhn :yrgybhngd yfTn vhksd 'r :yahb yhhyarTp rg ?igs gaz x†uu" "?i˙z yahb ˙crgs yguu w˙cTrTy wrg iut wsbhe T ˙c oh†b≤ iut ehygnut erTya iguugd i† d†y ˙c iup zht vhksd 'r icgk ehsbmhz /oht um ysgr gn x†uu yxUuugd yahb iut ikTpgd widhuuagd y˙m gmbTd hs rg y†v ybTv rgebhk xb≤ujn ogs igebTsgd gahsruh yhn P†e ogbgz†kgdP†rT iT yTvgd rgvT ymht ihua lhz igb˙z yxgd gkT hs y† zT yxUuugd iut r†b wrgmgzb† ogs vhksd 'r woht chkum yahb ir†pgdphubum i†hkhn ickTv T ˙c y†v x†uu igkx†h-çegh i≤ujn if˙r ichkum rgehsvuutd rgs wrg zT `rgdhhya iahrhçd iphut yeTbe iut um rTprgs lhz yeue iut wiuprgs xhhuu wi≤ujn rgrgybun iut 'r woht ;hut rTprgs ic†v wyxgd hs whhz iut /out yahb oht /ur um lhut oht iz†k iut ,ubnjr wivhksd
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not there but was spending the day somewhere or other on his farm. Nevertheless, it was now common knowledge in town that he was breaking off with his second fiancée, and that what he himself went round telling everyone – that his wedding had been postponed until the Sabbath of Consolation – was merely to save face. That Saturday night, Reb Gedalye Hurvits’s house was brightly lit and filled to overflowing with many wealthy guests, both local and from out of town. In the entrance hall, several of Reb Gedalye’s shockingly impoverished agents derived great pleasure from these guests, were delighted that their employer still had good friends, and after each new arrival, cheerily cadged a smoke off one another: —What d’you say about that one, eh? . . . Also not a pauper, eh? Give us a cigar. There was a crush around the big circular table that stretched from the hallway to the widely opened doors of the well-lighted salon. At its head, between the parents of bride and groom, his face freshened from the cold outside, sat the perpetually cheerful Nokhem Tarabay. He’d only just arrived in his own sleigh and had no hesitation in personally telling the groom’s father, Yankev-Yosl, that he wished Reb Gedalye well and had therefore come to his daughter’s betrothal party, even on a Saturday night. He’d been on the road until ten o’clock, had even taken a wrong turn somewhere in the dark behind a sleeping village, but had made his way here despite it all. Now he made a boisterous commotion with his merry hand-clapping, his nimble capering about, and the fatuous questions with which he continually attempted to animate the oddly morose Reb Gedalye: —How else? He couldn’t understand: how could he not be present when Reb Gedalye was celebrating his child’s betrothal? All day Reb Gedalye had been deeply unhappy and depressed, registering nothing of what was said to him. Sitting without speaking on the left of the groom’s father, his bowed head filled with the negative thoughts of one who’d come down in the world, he was fully aware that all these guests had assembled here not for the sake of Gedalye the bankrupt, but for the sake of his relative by marriage, the rich Yankev-Yosl who was worth half a million and flaunted his wealth in the grand manner; that this arrogant, hearty relation-to-be knew this and therefore paid Reb Gedalye no attention. And for their part, the guests pitied Reb Gedalye, and left him in peace. By now he’d even grown a little afraid of Gitele, who suddenly came up to ask him for his keys. Hunched over,
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he struggled to his feet in disoriented confusion, groping fumblingly in one pocket after another. From some distance away, Mirel noticed this. Her heart went out to him in great compassion, and she came up. —Here they are, your keys . . . they’re in your top pocket. His sorrowful expression broke her heart. She’d always believed that her father was strong and would do whatever was necessary to retain his dignity and his self-respect. And now for the first time she saw him impotent, looking truly wretched at his ruin and loss of status. Sadly and in submissive silence she sat beside Gitele and the groom’s mother, listening to that myopic dullard trying to avoid speaking ill of their cousin Ida Shpolianski who also lived in the provincial capital, where she deceived her husband. Starting to report that on one occasion she herself had seen Ida at the theater in company with an officer and a tag-along polytechnic student, the groom’s mother caught herself and tried to gloss over it: —But then Ida was a well-known person, and her husband Abram was undoubtedly a fine young man. He did business with the provincial administration and was away from home for months at a time. But their home . . . their home, it’s said, is run on modern lines . . . free, very free . . . Around the substantial, well-supplied tables with their gleaming candelabra, ritually observant guests who’d risen to wash their hands and recite the appropriate blessing before eating had resumed their places. There, after the recitation of the blessing over bread, they were soon beaming with post-Sabbath contentment, drinking toasts and chatting, clinking their glasses together, then drinking and chatting some more. The conversation flowed from sixty eating and drinking mouths simultaneously, but none of this prevented Mirel from feeling as isolated as she’d felt before when she thought of the great provincial capital where she’d live with Shmulik in three or four rooms, and imagined the streets she’d once visited there as a child with Reb Gedalye. —There one summer evening they’d stroll out somewhere as a couple, would walk slowly and have nothing to say to each other, would return home and again have nothing to speak about there. No great happiness would derive either from this evening stroll or from that return home. Yet she, Mirel Hurvits ... —What could she possibly do with herself now? The half-drunk tumult intensified. Shouts of various kinds continually stifled the table hymns other people were trying to start, and the groom’s boisterous father, Yankev-Yosl, drank so much and with such doggedness
:yPTkegd "!!!krhn wlht xhhv rgvT ihhdum xhhv'f !!!krhnI rht iht ig˙ra rgs y†v x†rsrTp iehskeg iT lhz iut xgmhhkP hs yhn ihvT igbTyagd zht hz /ipurgdxhurT :igzgd y†v hz /ipurgdP† yahb yhhya irghut gydbgryagdb† yhn isHh kybhc T iahuum -ohnh T hhz rTp ydbhz wrsj iup yhn rgs iht ehktuna yfTn iut ohbP iahrTb T ˙crgs y†v wkehya iehsnh†rub /izj T huu ybgv hs yhn †s ymht k†z rg wyk†uugd erTya rht lhz y†v rgHrp y†v skTc r†b wigz yhb oht k†z hz iut wi˙z yahb cuya iht iut wyerTyagd yhhehykhdf˙kd gehygnut hs rht iht lhz y†v gk˙uu T /iguugd yahb imrTv rht iht ihua zht ikhuu ihhe ;hut yrgsbUuugd lhz iut yeuegd xby˙uu rgs iup oht ;hut hz :ihhkT lhz iut ///?rujc ogs y† wyprTsTc oht hz y†v x†uu chkumI "?ir†h grht gkT i†y oht yhn hz yguu x†uu wkkfc rgnhmxg eg iht x†uu yr† ogs hz y†v ogmukP iut iyr†s lhz wrsj iht lhz um igdbTdgdeguuT wiz†krTp ygc iht sbhuuagd huzT lhut lhz wi†ygdxhut sbhuuagd /ia†kgdxhut Pn†k ogs iut ydhhkgd rhy iht rht um k†n r†P T ogs l†b ihua y†v gkgyhd :ixhrgdb˙rT ydgrgdphut ihvT ymgk um lhz iut yPTkegd l†s zht'x ?huzT xg yuy rguu ///iuhzc T yuaP l†s zht'xI "/ihha yahb yuaP kxhc T iut idgkgd ygc iht ehykhdf˙kd iyr†s zht hz iut :yrgpybggdP† ehszdurc "?ihha yahb zht'x zT yd†zgd rht x†s y†v rguuI cuya iht wybgegd yahb iut ip†kab˙t yk†uugd y†v hz yhn iahy `igbTyagd knuy rgruFha rgs dbTk huzT l†b zht wid†rygdxhurT rgnhmxg iup yarge† iyr†s ign y†v ebgc lhz hz y†v wichuvgdb† ˙b'x iup iyr†s ign y†v imbTy iut rgyhhuum rgs ;hut y˙z ihht iup yhhrsgd dbTk ygc iht †s :ihhkT lhz ;hut zdurc iguugd zht iut vbu,j ihhe um /i˙z yhb yahbr†d ogs iup yguu ˙x huu ˙xI çhujn yahb zht hz ///krhn whz iut wignueum yahb x†s yguu iht ydbhz x†uu wrujc ogs y† idguu woht idguu iyfTry um yhn ˙crgs yfTn iut kehya iehsnh†rub-ohnh T rgnhmxg u /izj T huu ybgv hs
xbrgsbT iT imgng k†n gkT idr†uurgs ic†v ighhragdxhut kx†h-çegh i≤ujn rgrgybun rgs iut wiudhb ogbgchhvgdb† rg l˙kd w,ubaeg TzT yhn iut khp huzT igeburygd y†v lusha T y†v rg zT ebTsgd ogs igebhryrTp ikguu yk†uu iut ymgzgdb† dbTk yhb y†v x†uu imce T yhn i†ygd yhn iyr†s rg y†v k†n gkT /vyurP T yahb ihua yd†nrTp igb˙z rgagkp wyPTkegd ahy iphut yxhup iehypgre i˙z wymgzgd lhz y†v Pn†kdbgv rgs wix†dgm lhz iut ikTpgdnut yahb k†n ihht ukhpT lhz wyPTkegd .kT l†b y†v rg iut :çr ogs knvrçT um igHragd iut ivhksd 'r um yeuegdnut xhhv rhn yhn l˙kd ///!igebhry xhhv lht !çr knvrçT 'rI "/igebhry lht y†v iut rsj eg iyhhuum iht ixgzgd .kT l†b zht krhn rgmbTd rgs y† zT fusgd lhz y†v z˙uubyubhn /idhuuagd rgyhhuum T chkum r†b wrht chkum yahb r†p ynue ahurgd whz iut wishrpum erTya k†n-xbe iyhn zht x†uu krhn y†v iut y˙z rgs iup r†b .kT x†s ygz wkrhn g,nt hs iyubhn hs y† iup y†v hz iguu iut /yahb ,uf˙a ihhe umrgs rgxhurd T l†b zht'x zT ychhkdgd ihua hz y†v wyfTuurgs wiehktuna ogs y† yhn ic†v vbu,j k†n T yguu hz hm epx `ohhjk ign yebhry oht um x†uu iut i† ichut ymhz rg x†uu iyhn lhz yhhrp gn x†uu x†s ˙x ahrTb ihua zht rTprgs zT x†s ˙x wahbggagd rgehyfhuu T xgPg yhn huu k†n-xbe ogbgs˙z-hurd og˙b ogs y† iht idhumgdb˙t lhz y†v hz x†uu xgPg huu okug iahrTb ogs y† iahuum †s ymhz iut shhke gfgkyg yhn ehrum hz y†v y† iut /gkgk gyrghhkagd T gbgdhht hs rsj iht rht ˙c x†uu kdhPa iht igzgd vga ygxr†d ogbgdhumgdb˙t dbg idbTk iyhn ybgv gyegkPybT rgbgh igbhpgd lhz k†z rht icgk zT yk†uugd erTya iut lhz iup k†n T ihua oht y†v hz x†uu rgkgv i,b rgckgz huu rgn yahb lhut ikhuu rgs y† ihua l†s zht /iguugd jkan hz y†v irgkgv i,b ogs y† ogr†uu wiguugd yhheahrTb T :yd†zgd k†n T ihua hz yguu x†uu iut /ic†v vbu,j oht yhn yguu hz wyud wubI "?ogs l†b i†y :ihhkT w.huuruv krhn whz iut iut waybgn rgbgxeTuurgs T wlhz yfus wihua zht hzI iyxbrg iT r†d-r†d huu wlhut wlhz yfus wihua rht zht yfgka w"x†uu-xhhuu-jur-rgsI T .kT l†b hz zht ihhkT r†b wiaybgn gahrTb gfkgzT z˙uuby˙m l†b rht ifhre P†e iht iut "/igebTsgd knuy iruFha irgcht yPTfgdphut imbTd iht lhz y†v hz gskhuu yhn iguugd ku p ahy iehsfgk˙e o˙c ihua zht x†uu gbgxhrgdrgcht iut "xfrca-hnI gahbzj yhn wighhragd iyubhn gfgkyg y˙m ihua iyr†s y†v rgmgng /igdbTzgd /igHragdxhurT ign†b rht ,ubaeg TzT yhn idguu kxTh-çegh i≤ujn rgruFha ckTv rht lhz y†v x†s z†kd T yhn yPTkegd wyguurTp ˙cTrTy oujb yhn xgPg rgshuu iut z†kd gyhhuum T yPTfgd wif†rcgm hz wahy iht
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that it seemed as though he were determined to drown the thought that his son’s marriage was allying him to a pauper who’d recently gone bankrupt and now hadn’t a kopeck to his name. He persistently banged the table with his powerful fist, bottles fell over and spilled their contents, the ceiling lamp trembled and dimmed, yet he went on banging, never once turning to glance at Reb Gedalye, and yelling out to Avreml the rabbi: —Reb Avreml! Rabbi! I want you to drink! . . . I want you to keep pace in drinking with me! Mirel still sat in silence at the opposite end of the room. Every now and then it seemed that the cause of all this uproar was not she but some other Mirel who was perfectly content with this betrothal party, and she, the real Mirel, was observing it all as an outsider wholly unconnected with it. And when she roused herself from such moments, she went on believing that there was still considerable doubt about whether she would ever marry this Shmulik who was sitting at the head of the table and to whom all were drinking toasts, and that consequently it was foolish not only for everyone to be rejoicing at this betrothal party as though it were some truly important event, but also for her to have swathed herself in this new gray silk dress and to be sitting here among this foolish company like some sort of chrysalis in a cocoon. Only a few hours earlier, in the mirror in her bedroom, she’d glanced at her own bare arms and her long, tightly laced corset, and had been overcome with a strong desire to have at her side that very Nosn Heler whom she’d previously sent packing. But this desire, too, was nothing more than foolishness, because once before she’d openly told Heler: —Well, good – she’d marry him. And then what would she do? And what of Mirel Hurvits herself ? —To all appearances she was now an adult and she felt as unhappy as only a deeply serious person could feel, yet she still remained wholly unaccountable even to herself, and from time to time such foolish thoughts still crept into her head. She was fully roused from her reveries by the drunken tumult round the circular table, filled with wild outcries, by blessings chanted in the cantorial manner, and by heedlessly interrupted table hymns. For several minutes now, someone over there had been mulishly shouting out her name. Having made some sort of wager with Nokhem Tarabay, her half-drunk prospective father-in-law Yankev-Yosl had been banging on the table with a glass, broken it, snatched up another, and had started banging again:
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—Mirel! Come here! Come here, I’m telling you! This shouting roused disgusted resentment in her. Making no response, she turned her back on it and saw: Among a crowd of people listening intently, Shmulik stood in the middle of the room with a foolish expression on his face, singing an extract from the liturgy of the High Holy Days and gesticulating like a cantor. Earlier she’d longed for him to be absent from the house at this time so that she wouldn’t be obliged to see him, but now despondent indifference had deepened within her, and she found herself without desire of any kind. For a while she stared at him from a distance, and was astonished at herself: —What could she possibly have wanted him for, this young man?… And taken all in all, what would she do with him all the rest of her days? Abruptly she left her place at the end of the dining room, went off to her own room, undressed very quickly, and just as quickly lay down in her bed and extinguished the lamp. Several times after that Gitele knocked on her door, and finally burst in, greatly agitated: —It’s quite simply scandalous! . . . Who does things like this? It’s quite simply appalling. And lying in bed in a state of complete indifference, Mirel replied in some irritation: —Who told her that this was appalling? She wanted to fall asleep but was unable to do so because the drunken uproar in the house went on for a long time; only now were tables and chairs carried out of the dining room, and dancing started there in earnest. For a long time she tossed and turned in her bed and was angry with herself: —In any case, nothing would come of this. It would never lead to any wedding, and she, Mirel . . . she wasn’t obliged to think of him, of this young man in the dining room who was singing an extract from the liturgy for the High Holy Days and gesticulating like a cantor. u
The New Yiddish Library, edited by David G. Roskies, is a joint project of the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature and the Yiddish Book Center. Additional support comes from The Kaplen Foundation, The Felix Posen Fund for the Translation of Modern Yiddish Literature, and Ben and Sarah Torchinsky.
OutwittingHistory Mit vareme grusn,
ters with neighbors, friends, and family. The show boldly took on racism, women’s liberation, homoIn late December 2009 the Yiddish Book Center sexuality, and anti-Semitism, pitting Archie against received a historic gift from the Estate of Mickey Ross. his liberal son-in-law (played by Rob Reiner, son of We’d never met nor even corresponded with Mr. Ross, the famous comic Carl Reiner). Family spun off other though we knew him by reputation as a fervent advocate shows, equally successful, like The Jeffersons, the first TV of Yiddish culture and a committed supporter of comedy about an African American family, and Three’s Yiddish education in Los Angeles, Company, about the misadvenNew York, and elsewhere. And tures of two women and one man he clearly knew of the Center’s living as career-minded roomwork: shortly after he passed away, mates in southern California. his attorney called to tell us that I wonder if the people involved Mr. Ross had made a bequest to with these shows had any idea that the Center of $4.5 million (with their collective successes would the assurance of more monies invigorate Yiddish culture in such forthcoming). a significant way! We are deeply grateful to this Mickey Ross’s generous long-distance friend of Yiddish bequest will go directly into the for all that his gift will make Yerushe Fund, the Book Center’s possible. Among the programs endowment, helping to ensure our that the bequest will help realize long-term financial stability and is the appointment of a fullthe ongoing exploration of Yiddish time Yiddish language instructor language and culture. With this A young Mickey Ross who will design and teach tremendous lead gift bringing our with a young John Ritter. intensive Yiddish courses, both endowment to over $12 million, online and onsite in the Center’s new Kaplen Family the Center’s Board of Directors is considering the launch Building. “Our intention,” Aaron Lansky, president of a major fund-raising campaign focusing on and founder, noted, “is to create a ‘Yiddish University’ endowment growth. for the hands-on exploration of Jewish language, Our endowment provides the Book Center and all of history, and culture. In this way, Mickey Ross’s gift is our members and friends with the assurance that what we transformative.” have built together will continue to grow for generations. Who was Mickey Ross? If you’ve watched televiThrough our endowment, we know that Yiddish culture sion in the last 40(!) years, or if you tune into the rerun will not only survive but will also thrive. channels, you’ll know. Mr. Ross was the Emmy-AwardI look forward to speaking with you personally about winning writer and producer of some of the most influthe many ways you can contribute to the Yerushe Fund. ential television series ever created – but they weren’t startling investigative reports or searing dramas. They Mit a hartsikn dank! were comedies, truly funny, truly innovative, and truly provocative. Take All in the Family, probably his bestknown show. In it, Archie Bunker, a middle-aged bigot memorably played by Carroll O’Connor, mouths off about the issues of the day during hilarious encounMaxine Stein, Director of Development
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In the Galleries at the Yiddish Book Center April 11 – September 26, 2010
They Called Me Mayer July
Mayer Kirshenblatt: The Purim Play: “The Kraków Wedding”
In 1934, at the age of 17, Mayer Kirshenblatt left Apt, Poland, for Canada, where he eventually opened a wallpaper, paint, and flooring store. At the age of 73 he taught himself to paint and created a visual record of everything he could remember about his hometown in prewar Poland. This traveling exhibition was organized by the Galicia Jewish Museum, Kraków, and was curated by scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
May 16 – October 3, 2010
Essen! Jews and Food in America The Jewish story in America is vividly reflected in an everyday activity – eating. In early days, manufacturers advertised products in Yiddish to appeal to a new immigrant community; later, English replaced Yiddish as Jews began to embrace “American” food customs (such as Chinese food), and Jewish family businesses grew into large corporations eager to market to non-Jews as well. This exhibit features fascinating artifacts in Yiddish and English, including signs, menus, ads, and packaging.
yiddishbookcenter.org/calendar
v a U r h Yerushe Fund The Endowment of the Yiddish Book Center Yiddish is the key to a thousand years of Jewish history! Help preserve our yerushe – our legacy – by making an endowment gift to the Book Center. For information, please call us at 413 256-4900 x117.
It’s our Eighth Annual
MEMBERS DAY! Sunday, November 7, 2010 11 am – 4 pm Come celebrate the opening of our new permanent exhibitions: • Yiddish Writers, Yiddish Books • Der kinder vinkl • Home Sweet Heym • Discoveries! • Yiddish Print Shop special exhibit: “Monsters and Miracles” – Jewish Children’s Book Illustrations plus: A gala concert by The Wholesale Klezmer Band
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Free to members No reservations necessary – just come by! Enjoy a 20% Members Day discount in our store
YIDDISH BOOK CENTER www.yiddishbookcenter.org/calendar 413 256-4900
Non-Profit ORG U.S. Postage
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PAID
PAKN TREGER Yiddish Book Center Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building 1021 West Street Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-3375
Springfield, MA Permit No. 107
Boston’s Yiddish Diva, Leye Carrey, four years old.