Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 09.009 June 2, 1999 1) Academic Denial of Hasidic Yiddish (Bruce Mitchell) 2) borikh dayen emes (Dovid Herskovic) 3) discussing or using Yiddish (Oscar Antel) 4) The Life of Yiddish? (Larry Rosenwald) 5) Psychoanalysis useful? (Louis Fridhandler) 6) An experiment (Morrie Feller) 7) Lazy Yiddish? (Lucas Bruyn) 8) nokh a mol mit der meshugas (Golda Gross) 9) Hadda's Essay (Barry Trachtenberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 07:00:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Bruce Mitchell Subject: Academic Denial of Hasidic Yiddish: Does this need psychoanalysis? In Janet Hadda's article, "Yiddish in Contmeporary American Culture", we are presented with a psycholanalysis of the "Yiddish is just fine" attitude. Those who argue that Yiddish is indeed a living language with a future are allegedly "softening the blow" of language death through denial. Interesting, to say the very least. While Iosif Vaisman quite accurately pointed out in his response that Prof. Hadda overlooked the use of Yiddish among haredim, she conceded that it is a potentially consoling aspect. Indeed, Janet Hadda, like other Yiddishists who claim that their subject matter has died, has stressed her personal pain resulting from her conviction that Yiddish has no future aside from a few Yiddishisms used to lace American English. Without commenting further on this self-serving argument, by which we are supposed to be convinced of the death of Yiddish based on her personal pain, one must seriously question just what such an academic is teaching her students and whether or not it is indeed a service to the field to have professors with such attitudes teaching impressionable students. But even with a reluctant admission that Yiddish is used as a vernacular among haredim, and hasidim in particular, Prof. Hadda asks "who will read this literature, other alienated hasidim?" First of all, this critique is loaded with erroneus, if not outright bigoted assumptions: 1. Hadisidic literature is not written for other hasidim, and, if it is, then nobody outside the hasidic community will want to read it. My critique of this assumption: Well, a hasidic literature written for other hasidim is just as valid as Jewish literature written for other Jews, which it indeed is, or women's literature written for women, or Hispanic literature written for other hispanics, and so on. There is no reason whatsoever why hasidic stories should not interest non-hasidic Jews or gentiles. In fact, one does not need to look hard to find translations of hasidic tales into English. Although I do not have the sales figures at my disposal, the fact that these translations have not gone out of print is proof enough of sufficient demand. I might add that hasidim do not need any translation, so we may safely assume that the majority of people buying these translations are non-hasidic. Furthermore, a substantial part of the Yiddish literary canon consists of old Yiddish texts with traditionally religious material. The "Mayse Bukh", for example, claims in its preface that a substantial amount of the stories come from the Talmud, a Jewish religious text par excellence. Titles such as the "Tsene-Urene", the "Shmuel Bukh", "Melokhim Bukh" need no further explanation. 2. Hasidim do not read Yiddish literature which was not specifically written for them. My critique of this assumption: Although most haredim reject what Yiddishists would consider a secular Yiddish literature, this does not mean that none of them, including those who were frum from birth, have actually read works they consider to be heretical. I have personally met hasidim who have read Sholem-Aleykhem and given me a list of reasons why they do not like him (One hasid in particular belongs to a small sect in Jerusalem, where interest in a secular literature is the least likely). There are also Lubavitchers and members of other hasidic groups who have a basic knowledge of the Yiddish literary canon, although they would consider the formal study of Yiddish "bitul Torah", i.e. a waste of time. 3. Only hasidic dropouts will be able to read the original text of a "secular" Yiddish literature. Without discussing the hasidic dropout rate, which is very low, I would like to point out that not everyone who attends Yiddish-speaking haredi khadorim or yeshivas is necessarily haredi or even Yiddish-speaking prior to attending school. At least one well-known Yiddish scholar has attended frum, Yiddish-speaking schools, but is by no means haredi. In upper middle class areas of London, a significant number of parents send their children to frum schools where Yiddish is spoken NOT because they themselves are Yiddish speakers or haredim, but because they would like their children to have a traditional Jewish education. I myself, while not haredi, attend Talmud shiurim conducted in Yiddish. Therefore, we do not need to rely on hasidic dropouts for a Yiddish language readership, thank you very much. 4. There is a clear division between "them", i.e. the haredim, and "us", the non-haredim. As I have pointed out in point number 3, there are situations in which the haredim and non-haredim interact on a significant level. There are also some more secularized Jews who do not hate the haredim, and vice versa. Likewise, a non-haredi Yiddish language readership is not to be ruled out based on the present popularity of hasidic tales. There happen to be other hasidic genres being developed at the moment, but only time will tell how popular they will become. Please excuse me if I have falsely assessed the assumptions in the question "who will read this literature, other alienated hasidim?" or the statement that there will be no interaction between the Yiddish-speaking and non-Yiddish speaking Jewish population (See Janet Hadda's response to Iosif Vaisman's letter). Whatever the case may be, the attitudes implied in Janet Hadda's statements are common enough among Yiddishists that they need to be addressed. Finally, I must point out that, given the encouraging statistics of Yiddish language usage among haredim, it is truly baffling that so many Yiddishists dismiss the haredi population, DENYING its importance in the future of Yiddish. If they discuss haredi Yiddish at all, it is to disparage, belittle, and dismiss it. If anything deserves psychoanalysis, it is the academic denial of facts in support of prejudice, so widely accepted and unquestioned by their students. Bruce Mitchell 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 19:55:57 -0400 (EDT) From: David Herskovic Subject: borikh dayen emes borikh dayen emes hayst es yidish iz toyt in ikh? miz zan a shin daled di kinder? vos zol ikh tin ikh vil nisht moytsi laz zayn un der heym a bes hakhayim? vos? der tate, briders, shvogers, frant nu, gayendige matsayves in bakante finem oylem hanets khaloymes avade ober men trakht in az men trakht iz men nayn? in az men trakht of yidish iz yidish okh es miz zan dos hot nisht a khosid gezogt eyle may khsidim trakhtn nisht in redn? min hastam oykh nisht in blitigen, yo? mehaykhe tayse, ha? nor vos den der blit royt ober der shprakh toyt Dovid Herskovic 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 22:59:55 -0400 (EDT) From: oantel@escape.ca (oscar antel) Subject: discussing or using Yiddish In the last few weeks there has been a lot of discussion of the state of Yiddish, whether it is dead or dying or alive. Many theories have been developed and on the surface well researched. When you delve into all the theories you slide off the path and come only to your own opinions true or false. Personally I would prefer to treat all speculation as just that and come to my own conclusions to why I use Yiddish; why I respect and enjoy it, and as to why I think it is important to encourage it's use and enjoyment. The strengh and richness of nation's cultures can be measured and are expressed in their languages. They sink and swim together. The sink option does not appeal to me. I would urge the swim option. Yiddish is rich and historic. I prefer to encourage myself to use it, learn it better, enjoy it more and who knows because of this the state of Yiddish as well as my own cultural state will will not be in question. I will leave the analysis to the researchers and the mayvins and the use to "folks menchen". Oscar Antel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 23:14:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Larry Rosenwald Subject: The Life of Yiddish? I read the various responses to Janet Hadda's article with great interest. Many of them said things I was expecting people to say, though always with an individual accent or turn of phrase. And the one thing that worried me, as I read through them, was that it seemed to me we were caught in a box, and that it would be worthwhile to ask a supplementary set of questions - which, as best as I can, I'll ask, and would love to see responses to them. 1. Do the people who disagree with Janet Hadda think that first-class Yiddish literature is being written right now? If so, could they adduce some examples of it? I ask because I read some of what's in the Yiddish _Forverts_, and what I've read doesn't, to the extent that I can judge it, seem to me at the literary level that I'm used to in reading the Yiddish literature of the past. I mean no disrespect to living writers of Yiddish, and I'd be happy to hear particular writers and texts powerfully celebrated. 2. I think it's probably easier to claim, against Janet Hadda, that Yiddish is alive, than to give an idea of what its future life will be. Whatever it is, it seems likely that it won't be very much like the life of Yiddish before the Shoah. So I'm wondering what people think it will be like. Will there be a lot of unilingual Yiddish speakers? Will there be a rich interchange between the Hasidic and secular communities? What will be the relations between the academic study of Yiddish and other aspects of its life? Will a lot of parents outside the Hasidic communities raise their children with Yiddish as their dominant language? (Will that be possible?) 3. My own sense is that whatever future life Yiddish leads, as an academic language, as a street language, as whatever, will be profoundly shaped by the relations between the Hasidic and secular communities, and I'm wondering how people think those relations will evolve. Mendele subscribers write from time to time about _reading_ Hasidic texts, but I"m also wondering whether there are richer, more interactive exchanges than that (or maybe even whether one might be able to devise them). That is - to put my view more assertively - I think Yiddish is unlikely to have a future that very closely resembles its past. So I'd be eager to see what sort of future people imagine for it that isn't simply a re-animation of what's been before. Al dos guts, Larry Rosenwald 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 15:19:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Lfridhan@aol.com Subject: Psychoanalysis useful? I think Dr. Hadda's psychoanalytic approach (8.153, 1; and more complete in 8.153a) is useful. Seems to me psychoanalytic insights are meant to be corrective and educational rather than sources of comfort, although they sometimes are. Those insights may help to understand and deal with what is, whatever it is. Long ago, Rabbi Tarfon (Pirke Avot) developed a most useful insight (probably well-understood by psychoanalysts) which seems to offer an antidote to both delusions of grandeur and feelings of utter worthlessness. He said: "It is not up to you to finish the task, but you are not free to abstain from it." We can each of us do only our part for and about Yiddish as we find ourselves able to do a part. Some of us can do a lot, some only a little. So what? Better to keep at it and enjoy it than to surrender to abject discouragement. Somehow, I find Dr. Hadda's approach honest and constructive while I also find it (at least in part) tangential to an appreciation and understanding of the nature and fate of Yiddish language and literature. Her approach (as I read it) is that of research. That requires tentative postulations, hypotheses, and tests of those speculations. Tests matter. That is a constructive attitude, not destructive, no matter how deeply we may take issue with some of her points. On the other hand, what I deem rather destructive is the canard of "irrelevance" from Prof. Wisse. I believe I recall that she has also proposed that hanging on to Yiddish is somehow a route to hanging on to the poverty and cultural benightedness of many Yiddish-speaking Jews of yesteryear. But that was caused by oppression, not Yiddish. Destructiveness is exerted through such senseless, untestable notions. These ideas not only ignore reality but, in science, if proposals are not testable, they are quite irrelevant. See how Dr. Hadda's article has evoked such wonderful and useful responses! Among several, I was particularly struck by the young Brukhe Lang Caplan (9.006, 8) and her discovery of Yiddish only ten years ago as a life-giving force for her. The mastery she demonstrates in both Yiddish and English is both breath-taking, and, paradoxically, a breath of fresh air. I was also struck by the simple but central point made by Miriam Isaacs (9.006, 9): "[I]n reality, language[s] cannot die because they are not alive. They exist only in people's use of them. And one can only mourn people, not their failure to use a given language. Perhaps what we are really mourning, where mourning is real is the terrible losses of those who lived and wrote in Yiddish as a result of Hitler." At the same time, I suspect that Bowlby's formulation of the reaction to loss (cited by Dr. Hadda), no matter how hard to understand and tough to take, deserves to be taken into account when plumbing our current complex reactions to such loss. We are presented with a painful dose of reality. In response, we can join the task for Yiddish, or we may feel free to abstain from it. Louis Fridhandler 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 01:24:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "Morris Feller" Subject: An experiment Many long years ago when I was a student in the University of Chicago, I had a physics instructor who used to talk about making what he called a gedanken experiment. We would visualize a set of conditions, and then try to estimate what the outcome would be. So I would like to make such a gedanken experiment to estimate the future status of Yiddish. All the technology required to carry out this experiment exists today in one form or another. The experiment consists of a series of questions. What if all the current knowers of Yiddish were to utilize the Internet to correspond with each other by exchanging e-mail messages in real Yiddish? What if they could and would =B3chat=B2 with each other in Yiddish? What if they could use the Internet to actually talk talk to each other? What if those who don't have access to a local Yiddish class could take a distance learning course in Yiddish, and thus become proficient in the language. What if, over the next five years, one million Jews, both adults and children, would thus become literate in Yiddish and also capable of conversing in Yiddish? What if, because of further improvements in technology, the number of those who are literate and conversant in Yiddish were to continue to grow? What if all this came to pass? How, then,would you describe the status and condition of the Yiddish language? Morrie Feller Phoenix 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 11:25:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Marion Troia Subject: Lazy Yiddish? "Somnus simillima mortui est" (Sleep is very similar to death). It is obviously ridiculous to state that Yiddish is dead. It is not asleep either. But could it be that it is just very lazy? How long do we have to wait for a revised edition of Weinreich's Dictionary? Will there ever be a complete index to the words contained in "Der Oytser"? Is someone thinking of putting together a modern grammar of the written and spoken language, a reference work on modern Yiddish usage? That the Great Yiddish Dictionary seems to have stranded is regrettable. But would it be very hard to fuse Weinreich, Harkavy and Niborski into one dictionary? Is it really impossible to write a worthy replacement of 'College Yiddish', making use of modern methodology? Is it asked too much to organise modern teacher training seminars for teachers of Yiddish? The study of Yiddish is severely hampered by the complete lack of adequate, modern teaching and learning materials. If speakers of Yiddish are really worried about the survival of the language, how comes they don't seem to care about improving the situation by providing the necessary tools? Even real minority languages, like Cambodian or Frisian, offer a far better selection of tools to the learner than Yiddish. There seems to be no lack of enthusiasm, but little direction. Yiddish kind of floats between the past and the future. May be that is one of its main characteristics. Lucas Bruyn. 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 15:55:58 -0400 (EDT) From: gloria gross Subject: nokh a mol mit der meshugas I was glad to see the spirited replies to that meshugaas about the death of Yiddish. If Ms. Hadda wishes to diagnosis her own denial and depression, that's fine, but to appropriate other people's experience is crass and irresponsible. Her facile speculations disredit a heartfelt movement in contemporary Jewish life--our renewed connections to a vanished world. Psychoanalytic applications can strike gold, but they require more than just fleeting points of view and vague inference. Where is the research, the empirical evidence, the testimony of real people, that enables her to draw such dismaying conclusions about present-day Yiddishkeit and its supporters? Such doctrinaire method, with its accompanying glibness, I am sorry to say, is the worst stuff of academic elitism. It is the same approach Ms. Hadda used in her recent "biography" of Isaac Bashevis Singer. No wonder people kept asking her why she hates him. A bizarre conglomeration of psychoanalysis and hearsay, the book is riddled with cliches about conflict with mother, father, sister, brother, thus accounting for lifelong difficulty in relationships, particularly with women. Singer comes off as a mean, nasty, lowdown, dirty scoundrel. But, once again, where is the research, the empirical evidence, to support these terrible indictments of a man's moral, spiritual, emotional being? Instead, we get paraphrases of Isaac's and Israel Joshua's and Hinde Esther's memoirs with impressions and theories superimposed; chatty little asides about Ms. Hadda's negligible enounters with Singer over the years, where her feelings changed from disdain to (allegedly) acceptance; the use of virtually all English translations for an author who wrote in Yiddish and much of whose work remains still untranslated; precious little effort at uncovering new information, by this I mean FACTS, about a Polish-Jewish refugee who came to America right before the Holocaust, a prominent writer whose lifetime spanned the twentieth century. Naturally he was haunted by demons, as he was the first to admit. His rage and grief, his guilt and fear, are legitimate subjects for psychological inquiry, if skillfully managed. And so for that matter are his wit and courage and basic humanity in the face of unspeakable horror. Singer's life calls for our compassion and sensitivity, not contempt. Thus we come away from Ms. Hadda's performance not only baffled by why she hates Singer, but asking what on earth did he ever do to deserve her? For those of us who love Singer and love Yiddishkeit, we celebrate the resurgent interest in Yiddish theater, film, klezmer, artwork, the written and spoken language, the great variety of festivals, new museums and exhibits, study groups world-wide, the flourishing of organizations such as the Arbiter Ring, Yiddish Culture Club, the National Yiddish Book Center. The doomsday pronouncements of a handful of "flei en di noz" academics does not help us any better to understand this marvelous phenomenon. In fact, I would say to them, as my mother tells me the old Yiddish saying goes: "Oib tsvei mentshen zogen az di bist shiker, dof di zikh leigen shlofen." Golda Gross 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 19:45:33 -0400 (EDT) From: barry trachtenberg Subject: Hadda's Essay I wish to weigh in on the discussion regarding Janet Haddas Jewish Quarterly article. After reading the exchange between Mendele editor Iosif Vaisman and Professor Hadda, (one of my Yiddish teachers), and the subsequent comments by Mendele members, I am further convinced by Hadda's original thesis and bemoan the ill treatment both she and her article have received. Much of what has been written about her work does not seem to have paid attention to the crux of the essay, but rather, most of the critiques seem to stem from Professor Vaisman's reductive, distorting and insulting interpretation, that Hadda believes Yiddish is dead. Professor Hadda's article did not have as its central thesis the death of Yiddish, but rather one of its foundations held that, lacking a context in which to flourish, Yiddish culture is nearing the end of its dynamic period. This is an important distinction that needs to be recognized and heeded. The point of her essay can be summarized in large part with the passage, "Remembrance and cultural transmission are fine in themselves. But when they are consistently isolated from other aspects of Eastern European Jewish existence, they create a distorted picture of life in that time and place." By ignoring the main concerns of her essay--which was a) to critique the so-called Yiddish Renaissance for its lack of intimacy with its own subject matter, b) to offer a suggestion as to why such a reinterest is taking place, and c) to suggest a future for Yiddish within the culture in which the renewed interest in Yiddish is occurring--Vaisman and many other respondents have instead provided further evidence for Hadda's thesis in their impassioned defenses of the vibrancy of Yiddish in our time. When Vaisman wrote his response to JQ, I have to wonder if he actually read the entire text of Hadda's work. Besides misconstruing the thesis of her essay, he began by accusing her of belonging what George Steiner referred to the certain branches of modern literary criticism [which have] a covert distaste for literature. Vaisman then went on to state that this distaste stems from an unconscious desire to alienate oneself from ones subject of study,... In making the accusation that Hadda wishes to alienate herself from the source of her study, why did he not consider the references to Klepfisz, Singer, Spiegelman, Henry Roth, Abraham, and Stern, all of whom are hailed in Hadda's essay as examples of authentic expressions of Yiddish language and culture? This is Hadda's subject matter, which she proudly advocated in her essay. Instead Vaisman and other respondents wish to portray Hadda as an enemy of Yiddish, in spite of her role as a teacher of the language. Why not just cut to the chase and call her a self-hating Jew? For the record, I don't agree with all of Professor Hadda's assertions. While I believe the denial phase of mourning is the correct way to account for much of the refusal to acknowledge the diminishing of Yiddish culture, there are other reasons which we should consider as well. Much of the renewed interest in Yiddish, including my own initially, stems not so much from mourning the loss of a dear one, but instead emerged out of a search for a Jewish identity that corresponds to ones values and sense of self. The shift in the American left and liberalism over the last decade away from class identifications to ones of culture and ethnicity has inspired many Jews to turn to Yiddish as the source of their identity. Yiddish has become a sort of Rorschach test for my generation in that it offers a glorious way to create a romanticized version of ourselves. In it, we can see that which what we want to see and use it to construct our Jewishness. We can use Yiddish as evidence for either our secularism or religiosity, our alienation to American society or our connection to it, our love for Israel or hatred of it, our adherence to the Left or Right, or as a reason for jubilation or suffering. However, an examination of Yiddish culture demonstrates that it contained all of these elements, all interdependent upon one another. We mustn't parse out the good parts and ignore the rest, while at the same time proclaim to be the heirs of Yiddish culture. Just as the European Renaissance had less to do with an authentic return to antiquity than it was a reflection of the dissatisfaction with the religious and cultural ideals of the Medieval period, so too with the Yiddish Renaissance. A recreation of a Yiddish play or a reenactment of a shtetl wedding tells us little about the times in which they are set, but much about our own discontent. An examination of Jewish history in the interwar period (the heyday of Yiddish cultural creativity) can perhaps provide some perspective on the formation of Yiddish culture. The growth and flourishing of Yiddish culture occurred during the period in which Eastern European Jews were undergoing the formation of their national consciousness. As Joshua Fishman wrote in reference to Nosn Birnboym, the initiator of the Tschernovitz conference, "language equals nationality and nationality equals language." (1) We must consider that Yiddish culture is not something that can be made and created at will, but it refers to a specific period in our historical development, one which is not at all similar to our own. Additionally, one must acknowledge the uncomfortable fact, that even as Yiddish culture was undergoing a process of national revival and reaching its zenith, the use of the language was on the decline since Jewish acculturation was on the rise. This is indicative of what Ezra Mendelsohn referred to as "the yawning gap between Jewish political rhetoric and Polish reality, which we could expand to include Yiddish speaking communities throughout Eastern Europe." (2) If this gap between perception and reality was true during the apex of Yiddish culture, it is all the more so today. 1. Joshua A. Fishman, Ideology, Society and Language: The Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum, (Ann Arbor, 1987). 2. Ezra Mendelsohn, Jewish Politics in Interwar Poland: An Overview, The Jews of Poland Between the Wars, (Hanover, New Hampshire., 1989)12. Barry Trachtenberg ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 09.009 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu http://metalab.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html