Forward.com

A Book of Insults — Exploring Yiddish Curses

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:12:00 EST

If the classic Yiddish imprecation has an inverse, it is the Irish blessing. While the Gaelic bards gaily start benedictions with “May…” before politely wishing their recipient good fortune (“May the wind be always at your back; May the sun shine warm upon your face”), the Yiddish curse is a spell of invective, typically cast with the conditional “You should…” prior to the litany of ill tidings (“You should get windburn and a melanoma”).

Chagall’s Political Art

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:28:00 EST

Suspended in white space, a goat romps and a rooster struts across a modest book cover. Beneath them, running right to left, is the Yiddish word “mayselekh” — less a title than a simple description of what’s inside: two little stories for children. The book, which is more like a pamphlet, is small enough to slip into a greeting card envelope. Inside are 15 pages of rhyming Yiddish verse, plus eight black-and-white drawings. The book was printed in Petrograd, published in Vilnius (commonly known to Jews as Vilna) in 1917 and written by Der Nister, pen name of the avant-garde Yiddish writer Pinkhes Kahanovich (1884–1950). The illustrator is Marc Chagall.

Ruth Wisse: Generous Mentor, Worthy Adversary

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:24:00 EST

In September 1976, Commentary printed the letters of three novelists who had taken umbrage at appraisals of their work, in a previous issue, by a relatively unknown Yiddish professor named Ruth Wisse. Cynthia Ozick, the most fervent of the respondents, judged Wisse guilty of a “fundamental (and, for a good reader, unforgivable) critical error”: confusing literature with sociology.

Theatrical Translations

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:22:00 EST

It’s a funny thing, the way a young artist’s raw vitality is often forgotten in posterity, obscured by the seemingly tamer, more popularly appealing self that emerged later. Seven decades after “Our Town” was a Broadway hit, for example, almost no one remembers Thornton Wilder as an experimental dramatist, though he once was one. These days, we perceive him through muffling layers of homespun hokeyness.

Women’s Work

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:21:00 EST

Each month, a handful of New York feminists, who are also students of Yiddish, get together in each other’s homes to read the work of Yiddish women writers. Several writers, a couple of filmmakers and librarians, a culinary scholar and a singer/songwriter form the core of the group. Our population, however, expands and contracts, following cycles of visiting researchers, friends and the occasional curious academic.

Kids Lit: More Yiddish Books Begin To Sprout

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:19:00 EST

Let’s say you’re raising your children in Yiddish and you want to buy them some books. What do you do? If you walk into the children’s section of any bookstore, you’ll be deluged with a huge number of engaging, beautifully illustrated books, from board books to chapter books to beautifully rendered pop-ups. But none of these books is written in Yiddish — right?

The Poetry of Language

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:19:00 EST

There are many bilingual Jewish books in which the two languages are dependent on each other. The Gemara is a mostly Aramaic reworking of the Hebrew-language Mishnah. The stories of Reb Nachman of Breslov were told in Yiddish, but their first written versions were in Hebrew. The majority of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work is now best known not in the original Yiddish, but in the English into which Singer reworked his stories.

Book Center Goes Digital

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:16:00 EST

Long faced with extinction, Yiddish literature has been preserved for the digital age with a newly activated online archive.

Yiddish Teachers Form New Group

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:15:00 EST

When Lori Cahan-Simon, a singer and music teacher at the I. L. Peretz Workmen’s Circle school of Ohio, in Cleveland, was promoted to Yiddish teacher 10 years ago, her excitement was hampered by anxiety.

Sholom Aleichem: Finding Freedom in America

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:07:00 EST

‘Wandering Stars,” Yiddish master Sholom Aleichem’s comic novel about the Yiddish theater, has just been published in a new translation by Aliza Shevrin. The novel tells the story of Leibl and Reizel, two talented teenagers who flee their backwater shtetl with the help of a traveling Yiddish theater troupe. Sweethearts separated by corrupt theater companies, they each achieve their own successes in European cities and eventually in New York. But while Leibl devotes his talents to the Yiddish stage, Reizel becomes a star of the gentile theater — and always remains one city beyond his reach.

Life Imitates Art: An Excerpt From ‘Wandering Stars’

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:05:00 EST

If you live long enough, you achieve your goal. The day of the big test arrived for the “Yiddish Star from Bucharest,” whom the press had elevated to a place among the greatest actors like Sonnenthal, Schildkraut, Irving, Possart, and Rossi.

My Yiddishe Mama

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:44:00 EST

“My Yiddishe Mama” is a classic song that drips with nostalgia and sentimentality in celebrating the proverbial self-sacrificing Jewish mother of yesteryear. But times have changed — and old songs need updating. Here is a more realistic portrait of motherhood in today’s American Jewish community.

Revolution on Stage

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:15:00 EST

In 1992, the Guggenheim Museum collaborated with scholar Benjamin Harshav on an exhibit of Marc Chagall’s legendary set designs for the Moscow State Yiddish Art Theater, known as Goset. Harshav developed his research for that project into “The Moscow Yiddish Theater: Art on Stage in the Time of Revolution,” and indeed this book, like the best of museum exhibits, leaves the reader exhilarated, contemplative and with a new perspective on art. In addition to Harshav’s introductory essays, this work includes photographs of theatrical productions, full-color sketches of costumes and set designs, letters and writings by the artists and by contemporary critics of Goset, and scenes from plays by Sholom Aleichem, lovingly translated by Harshav and his wife and collaborator, Barbara Harshav. More than simply focusing on the history of the Moscow State Yiddish Art Theater, Harshav raises questions about the nature of art and about art’s power in revolutionary times.

Curious Linguists

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:13:00 EST

You don’t have to be Spanish to study Spanish. You don’t have to be Chinese to study Chinese. But, do you have to be Jewish to study Yiddish?

Beatle Mania

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:12:00 EST

Folk singer Gerry Tenney breaks into song midway through an interview: “Ze ikh a royte tir ikh vill es farbn schvartz….”

Lost in Translation: From Mameloshn to Belarusian

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:11:00 EST

Aleksander Astraukh, editor of a 50,000-word Belarusian-Yiddish lexicon currently on press in Minsk, Belarus, admits that his is “not a normal dictionary.” A bridge between two languages equidistant from the mainstream, the book includes in its entries illustrations, idioms, etymologies and citations from the literature of both tongues, which have historically shared large swaths of territory and vocabulary. “It is not for learning perfect Yiddish,” he said. “It is a book to read.”

Haynt Iz der Geboyrn-tog fun George Washington!

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:10:00 EST

A poem

One Hundred Years Later, Still Talking

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:01:00 EST

One hundred years ago, the great classical Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz declared Yiddish the national Jewish language, a tongue and a culture that had transcended the boundaries of the nation-state.

Songbook Recaptures Lost Melodies

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:56:00 EST

Heard any good Yiddish folksongs lately? Chances are good that the answer is “no.” Not because there aren’t any good Yiddish folksongs to be heard; for generations, the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe sang innumerable songs about love and loss, death and marriage. They sang to their children to soothe them to sleep, and they sang at work to relieve the drudgery of menial labor.

Yiddishists: The Next Generation Takes the Reins

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:55:00 EST

It’s been more than three quarters of a century since young intellectuals were voicing their Yiddish-inflected ideas in the parks, cafés and tenements of lower Manhattan. But the days of the Yiddish intelligentsia are still rolling for 24-year-old Menachem Yankl Ejdelman, who is the newly appointed leader of Yugntruf, a worldwide organization of young Yiddish speakers and learners. “We attract all types of people, from high-school students to young people with day jobs. Many of the people who come to our events love languages,” he said.