Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 13.009 January 4, 2004 1) Dora Wasserman (1919-2003) (Zachary Baker) 2) Yosl Birshteyn o"h (Alex Dafner) 3) Introduction (Michael Fox) 4) Rikuda Potash (Michael Fox) 5) Yiddish at the movies (Kevin Cohen) 6) College Yiddish--Answers (Zelig Nirenberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 12:34:05 -0800 From: Zachary Baker Subject: Dora Wasserman (1919-2003) The December 19th issue of the Forverts includes a couple of notices announcing the passing of Dora Wasserman, the long-time director of the Yiddish Drama Group in Montreal, Quebec. For obituaries in English, see: Dora Wasserman, The indefatigable founding director of Canada's only Yiddish theatre died at 84, by Alan Hustak (http://www.jewish-theater.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=444); Dora Wasserman, Yiddish Theater's Grand Dame, Dies, by ARIEL ZILBER (http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.12.26/news11.html). [For the continuation of Zachary Baker's note, see the forthcoming issue of the Yiddish Theatre Forum, which is sent to all subscribers to MENDELE.] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 00:04:43 -0500 (EST) From: Alex Dafner Subject: Yosl Birshteyn o"h Yosl Birshteyn who died in Jerusalem last week was a bi-lingual Yiddish-Hebrew writer with a sharp eye and mind and was a keen observer of the lives of ordinary Jews. In the 1940's he lived in Melbourne and served in the Australian army during the war. He emigrated to Israel in 1949 and settled on a kibbutz where he worked as a shepherd for many years. He published 17 books and his novels and short stories were well received in Israel and around the Jewish world. Adam Gruzman in Jerusalem interviewed Yosl Birshteyn after his book of short stories "On the Streets of Jerusalem" was published in the mid '80's. To hear the author read two of his short stories from that book, go to http://www.sbs.com.au/radio_new/index.html From "Featured Languages" box, choose Yiddish. Alex Dafner 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 09:00:46 -0 From: Michael Fox Subject: Introduction You requested some biographical information. I am the youngest son of the Poet Chaim Leib Fox and Lea Greenbaum Fox. Yiddish is my first language, although I never developed it to the literary level that I wish I had. Still, I maintain an active Yiddish cultural life. I am a sometime-Yiddish folksinger. I am also one of the authors and performers of the successful Yiddish-English show "Kids and Yiddish" at the Folksbiene. I have performed with the Joseph Papp Yiddish theater and have co-directed the Yiddish Theater Workshop in the Oxford Summer program. For several years I taught the Gezang class at the Columbia summer program. Among my other interests, I am a practicing child psychologist. Michael "Menachem" Fox 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:58:51 EST From: Michael Fox Subject: Rikuda Potash [Editorial Remark: This note has been slightly abridged. For the full text, please contact Michael Fox directly (foxolini1@aol.com).] I have been forwarded several notices posted on Mendele that refer to Rikuda Potash. Several years ago Yael Chaver, who was then writing her dissertation, contacted me about her because of my father's connection to the poet. It raised many questions in me about the intertwining of feminism and personality, especially in those early days. It also rekindled my efforts to find Rikuda's daughter, Aviva. Alas, to no avail. You see, my father, Chaim Leib Fuks, the poet, was introduced to Rikuda by his sister Manya, who was Rikuda's close friend. He married Rikuda in Lodz, around 1929-30. Aviva is my father's daughter. When the couple separated in 1934, Rikuda took Aviva to Palestine. My father followed them there that same year, I presume to maintain at least some contact with his daughter. He stayed in Palestine until 1938, I believe. I suspect that Rikuda would have little to do with him and he finally gave up. I am fairly certain that he wrote letters to his daughter when he returned to Poland. Whether she got them, I don't know. I do know that after the war, my father repeatedly tried to contact Aviva. When I was old enough to understand that my father had had a previous family, when I was eleven, I saw my father write letters to her. I also saw them returned unopenned. Aviva was living in America by then. He knew her address because his sister Manya maintained contact with her niece. At one point aunt Manya came to visit us in New York. She went to see Aviva (somewhere outside Philadelphia, I think) and brought her a letter from my father. She refused it, and she could not be persuaded to have any contact with him. But he would not be disuaded by this rebuff. He kept writing to her, for how long, I do not know. At one point when I was about fourteen, he asked me to write to her in his behalf. It was a kind of letter of recommendation to my half-sister to give our parent a chance. My letter was also returned unopenned. A few years later, my cousin Arthur, the son of my father's sister Freyde Guteh, visited Israel and went to see Rikuda at her office in Jeruasalem. Twenty years after her separation from Chaim Leib, she was cold with rage at the intrusion by his nephew, and she showed Arthur the door. My father kept up with Rikuda's activities through their mutual cultural contacts. When Rikuda was honored in New York, about a year before her death, my father, who was on the executive board of the Yiddish PEN Club, brought her a bouquet of flowers, infuriating my mother, who was there with him. Yet, my mother understood the old flame in my father's heart and also his desparate attempt to gain favor in order to see his lost daughter. I don't know how Rikuda received my father or his flowers. He died in 1984, shortly after he received the National Yiddish Book Award for his last volume of poems, never having seen Aviva again. Michael Fox 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:32:17 -0500 (EST) From: "K. B. Cohen" Subject: Yiddish at the movies I'm wondering what the quality of the Yiddish spoken in the film "Ivan and Abraham" is? Are (any of) the actors native speakers? I ran across a review that mentioned that although much of the dialogue is in Polish, only one of the actors is a native speaker of Polish, and wondered what the situation is with respect to the Yiddish speakers in the film. A sheynem dank, Kevin Cohen 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Dec. 28, 2003 From: Zelig Nirenberg Subject: College Yiddish--Answers Does anyone know where I can get the answers to the exercises in Weinreich's College Yiddish? A Dank, Zelig ---------------------------------------------------- End of Mendele Vol. 13.009 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www.mendele.net http://ibiblio.org/yiddish/mendele.html