Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.302 January 31, 1995 1) Galitsianer I (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 12:47:36 IST From: Leonard Prager Subject: Galitsianer "On the Way to Modern Galician-Jewish Cultural and Political History: The Cases of Mordecai Gebirtig, Ignacy Schiper and Dov Sadan." by Leonard Prager (University of Haifa) A Paper Read at the International Conference on Galicja i Jej Dziedzictwo ('Galicia and Its Heritage'), Rzeszow, Poland, 14-18 September 1992. This paper was to appear in a volume devoted to the conference on Galicia and published in Poland in 1993. [note: publication has not yet occurred.] In 1934, twenty-two years after settling in the United States, the Krakow-born Hebrew and Yiddish journalist and author, Gershom Bader, published the first half of a Hebrew biographical dictionary entitled _Medina vachachameha_, which literally means 'a country and its scholars'.(1) The 'country' to which Bader referred was not Poland. The English title page makes this clear: "Galician Jewish Celebrities; An illustrated Cyclopaedia of noted Jewish Personalities, who contributed to Galicia's Progress during its existence." The author was piqued into compiling this work by the superior attitude shown by Russian-Jewish intellectuals towards their Galician fellows, an attitude which had found popular expression in malicious descriptions of _galitsianer_, as Galician Jews were, sometimes disparagingly, sometimes teasingly, called. Bader hoped his work would serve as a memorial to "our homeland, which for long was a tower of light for Tora and Knowledge, and which has now ceased to be a political unit in itself." The last phrase, as well as the words "during its existence" in the English subtitle, dispassionately acknowledges a change in sovereignty. What does not seem to have changed, however, even for the emigre author, is his -- and the word is his -- _galitsiyut_ 'Galician-ness.' Can we possibly define that elusive constellation of qualities, traits, predispositions, attitudes, sensibilities which 'Galician-ness' has meant to Jews in the past, to native sons and daughters as well as to others, and which it continues to mean in the post-Shoa present? In the relatively sparse Yiddish genre of travel writing, we find a 1926 book by Khayim Shoshkes with a chapter on Galicia. (2) Shoshkes asks (p. 311): "Vu hoybt zikh eygntlekh on galitsye?" ('Where does Galicia actually begin?') And he replies: "Ikh veys -- ir vet zogn, az dort tsvishn Krashnik un Rozvadov, oder tsvishn Sosnovits un Kroke, vu s'hot zikh getsoygn der amoliker estraykhisher grenits-pas. ('You'll probably say it starts betwen Krasnik and Rozwadow or between Sosnowiec and Krakow, where the former Austrian border stretched.') But there is a better answer: "... ikh zog as der bester bavayz dertsu, ven mir zenen aroysgeforn fun kroyn-poyln, iz der gezeml yidn af der stantsye un zeyere hitelekh oder kopelushn: ven ir zet, lemoshl unzere akheynu bney yisroel un afn shpits kop ba zey dos kleyninke khsidishe hitele (eygntlekh alt-holendish), zent ir nokh in "kongresuvke"; ven ober es hoybn aykh on shvindlen in di oygn rabonishe shtraymlekh (eygntlekh alt-shlakhtishe hit) mit gekrayzlte lange peyes -- zent ir shoyn in galitsye. Ot dos iz der emeser simen muvek; ir farshport afile araynkukn in a geografish bikhl." As long as you see Jews wearing little chasidic caps, you are still in Congress Poland, but when you begin seeing fur hats and long braided earlocks, then you are in Galicia -- this key is better than a map. Shoshkes goes on to say that: "Mir veysn do, ba unz, azoy veynik vegn galitsye, az oftmol gloybn mir di informatsyes, vos viln unz aynredn, az di yidishe bafelkerung dort bashteyt fun dray shikhtn: belzer khsidim, tshortkover khsidim un advokatishe doktoyrim, ober dos iz befeyresh nisht ingantsn rikhtik. ('We know so little about Galicia that we often believe the common talk that divides its Jews into three groups, Belz chasidim, Tshortkov chasidim and lawyers with doctorates -- which is surely not completely correct.') We are then reassured that in addition to these three groups, Little Poland has several hundred thousand ordinary Jews who are no better or worse than are all the other Jews in the Polish republic. ( ... nor oyser di oybndermonte shikhtn bavoynen kleyn-poyln oykh a sheyne por hundert toyznt stam-yidn nisht ergere un nisht besere, vi in der gantser poylisher republik.") (3) The notion that Galician Jews were distinct in dress, speech, and manners was surely not fanciful. The characterological traits ascribed to Galician Jews, however, are often no more than comic -- or bigoted -- invention. Among the definitions for _galitsianer_ in the leading Israeli dictionary of spoken Hebrew, we find, 1) one who comes from Galicia, 2) an affectionate expression for a shrewd person who can squeeze out of tight spots, 3) a person who is cutting in speech and knows how to talk his way out of things', e.g., 'This Arab, he's a 100% Galician.' 4) a schemer and trouble-maker. (4) It is not uncommon to find the attribution of cunning linked to dubious business practices, the sort of remark an antisemite might make about any Jew. In a novel by the Israeli writer David Shahar, a main character sees Red Ear, a Galician Jew, as "a man with two unusual qualities: he was both a shopkeeper and a Galician. She considered all shopkeepers thieves.... All Galicians were born crooks." (5 Galician Jews are also widely associated with humor, both as wits and as somehow laughable in themselves. It is no accident that there are so many Yiddish jokes about _galitsianer_ (6) and so many Yiddish musical comedies with a Galician address in the title. (7) The critic Shmuel Rozhanski has described Moyshe Nadir, one of the best comic stylists in Yiddish, as "efsher der galitsianishster shrayber fun der yidisher literatur. Leytsones un voylyungerishkeyt zaynen zayne kharikteristishe shtrikhn." ('perhaps the most Galician writer in Yiddish literature. Humor and playfulness are his most characteristic qualities.') There are at least a half dozen Yiddish writers who used the name Galitsianer as a pseudonym, and one who wrote under the name Kemat a galitsyaner ('Almost a Galician') -- perhaps because he felt he lacked whatever it was that the true Galician had. (9) So we see that among fellow Galician Jews, to be a _galitsianer_ is honorific. Used by non-Galician Jews it could be either a playful or a stereotypical cognomen for someone seen as too clever or too smug. One theory holds that the greater security and better education of Galician Jewry made them seem self-satisfied to their co-religionists under the heel of the Czars. Another view holds that their religious learning seemed superficial to the highly intellectual Lithuanians. For these reasons, for which there was perhaps a small kernel of truth, and others for which there was none at all, the Galician Jew's sobriquet, _galitsianer_, became more than a neutral term denoting geographical origin. It is thus not surprising that Jewish Galicians have often complained that they have not been adequately understood by other Jews. Dr. Jacob Zineman scored his compatriots in France and elsewhwere for not doing enough to make known the contribution of Galician Jewry "in dem geshikhte fun natsionaler uflebung un banayung" ('in the history of the Jewish national awakening and renewal') and for not fulfilling their duty to their forefathers who in the course of centuries created "dem gvaldikn gaystikn un moralishn oytser fun galitsishn yidntum" ('the tremendous spiritual and moral treasure of Galician Jewry'). (10) But if, as the apologetic literature suggests, Jewish Galicians have regarded themselves as insufficiently understood by other Jews, what can be said for their image in the eyes of Gentile Poles? The Polish-Jewish sociologist, Alexander Hertz, among others, has argued that Jewish Poland generally was an unknown territory to non-Jewish Poles. ... authentic Jewish life in Poland," Hertz writes, "has found no reflection either in journalism or in literature. Until the end of their existence on Polish soil, the life of the Jews was a terra incognita. Objectively speaking, it could easily have been studied. In a few instances it was studied by men of science, mostly Jewish. On the whole, however, in Polish society the knowledge of the Jewish world was astonishingly minuscule, fragmentary, and, most frequently, distorted." (11) But if Polish Gentiles wrote little about Jewish Galicia, the Jews on the other hand not only wrote about this region, but in the writings of at least one great writer, the Noble Laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Galicia and especially the town of Buczacz (playfully altered in his fiction to Szybusz, from Hebrew for 'muddle'), became symbolic setting of immense resonance. No serious critic of Agnon fails to stress the importance of Buczacz in the life and art of Agnon. One of Israel's most distinguished critics, Gershon Shaked, in his book on Agnon (dedicated to "the memory of the victims and survivors of [his] ancestor's Galician shtetl -- Belz) writes: "Buczacz was for Agnon a vivid memory, and it became the prototype of the _shtetl_ in his works. His relationship with his birthplace came both from actual recollections and from the image that he formed of the town after leaving. The conflict between his memories and that image is what gives his works their depth.... Buczacz never disappears from Agnon's works." (12) Galicia as symbol, setting or background is hardly less important in Yiddish literature than in Hebrew literature. The great Yiddish balladist, Itsik Manger, writes in the introduction to his charming _Medresh itsik_: "Der geniter leyener vet zikh khapn, az di landshaft, in velkher di khumesh-geshtaltn bavegn zikh, iz nisht di kenanishe, nayert a slavishe. Ikh hob getrakht vegn der mizrekh-galitsisher.... Di dozike landshaft mit ire verbes paze veg, ire vaynshl-seder un ire modne shtile demerungen, tsitert in mayn zikorn fun gor di frieste kinder-yorn." ('The skilful reader will see that the landscape in which the Bible characters move is not Canaanite, but Slavic. I had in mind eastern Galicia.... This landscape, with the willow trees along its roads, its cherry orchards, its strangely quiet twilights, has trembled in my memory from my earliest childhood years.') (13) Elsewhere the poet explicitly names childhood memories of Galicia as the wellspring of his lyrical power: "Ikh hob shoyn oysgeforn a velt, gevandert un gevoglt af a sakh vegn fun der velt, nor ka shum veg hot zikh nisht azoy arayngezunken in mayn gemut vi der veg fun tsvishn stoptshet un kolomey. Ot di por mayl vos farbindn dos mizrekh- galitsishe shtetele mit der 'shtot mit yidn', vi Shloyme Bikl ruft on kolomey, zenen gevorn _lid_." ('I have traveled the world over, have wandered along many a road, but none has so entrenched itself in my memory as the road from Stoptshet to Kolomey. Those few miles which join the eastern-Galician village with the 'town of Jews', as Shlomo Bikel called Kolomey, became 'song'.') (14) Manger as critic, writing about the aforementioned Moyshe Nadir discusses the role of his birthplace in his life and work and concludes: "Narayev iz a likhtiker punkt af der mape fun der yidisher literatur." ('Narayev is a point of light on the map of Yiddish literature.') (15) For Nadir, Narayev served as a refuge to which he could turn for relief from an often cruel and impersonal urban America. Jewish life has virually ended in Galicia, but in the pages of Jewish literature it lives on forever. If nostalgia was a major ingredient in Jewish writing about Galicia when Jewish life still thrived there, it naturally became uppermost following the mass destruction of Galician Jewry by the Nazis. The elegiac tone, as in the following lines by Yoysef Tenenboym, becomes dominant: _Galitsye_, mayn alte heym -- vos fara gefiln dos dervekt! Vifl tsertlekhkeyt, libe, benkenish un heymvey. Afile ven men veyst az khorev iz dos land, a land on yidn, on a haynt un on a morgn, farklemt dos harts un es flamert di neshome nokhn "a heym" fun amol. Vos vister un akhzariesdiker es iz di khorve fun haynt, alts hekher un loyterer geyt of der simbol funem nekhtn. Nisht di tsayt un nisht di brutale virklekhkeyt zenen imshtand tsu farvishn dem regnboygn fun nisht derkholemte khaloymes, oder tsu tseraysn dem geflekht fun nisht derdakhte gedanken un di nisht dergreykhte hasoges fun di yunge yorn. Dos zenen lebedike gayster -- di gayster fun lebn, vos shvebn iber di kupes ash un lozn zikh nisht farveyen fun beyze vintn -- nakete, shtume neshomelekh vos zukhn a guf, a vort, an oys vos zol zey gebn forem un oysdruk. Ot di galitsye lebt...." ('Galicia, my old home -- what feelings you awake! What tenderness, love, longing and homesickness. Even though one knows that the land is laid waste, a land without Jews, without a present and a future, the heart is shaken, the soul yearns for 'a home' that was. The more desolate and cruel the wasteland of the present, the higher and clearer rises the symbol of what was. Neither time nor brutal reality can wipe out the rainbow of undreamt dreams, or destroy the web of unimagined thoughts and unrealized achievements of our youth. These are living spirits -- the spirits of life, which hover over ash heaps and will not be dispersed by evil winds -- naked, dumb souls which seek a body, a word, an outlet to give them form and expression. This Galicia lives....'). (16) Here is a former resident of Rzeszow (Reyshe in Yiddish), writing from Washington after the Shoa, from which he evidently was spared: "Reyshe, di yidishe shtot reyshe vu es hot geblit dos yidishe lebn. Reyshe, di shtot fun rabonim, rebeyim, geonim ugdoylim vu es hot geblit der khasidizm, Reyshe, vu der yid hot farnumen dem oybn-on politish un ekonomish. Reyshe, vu yidn hobn geboyt dem handl un industri. Reyshe, di shtot fun maskilim, zhurnalistn un shriftshteler. Reyshe, vu der yid hot gelebt gliklekh, fray fun efntlekhe antisemitishe diskriminatsyes, Reyshe, vu es hot geblit der tsienizm." ('Rzeszow, the Jewish town of Rzeshow where Jewish life flourished. Rzeszow, the town of rabbis and scholars, where chasidism flourished. Rzeszow, where Jews were paramount in politics and commercial life. Rzeszow, where Jews built the commerce and the industry. Rzeszow, the city of maskilim ('enlightened' liberal intelligentsia), journalists and writers. Rzeszow, where Jews lived well, free of open anti-semitic discrimination. Rzeszow, where Zionism flourished.') In the body of this typically nostalgic essay, the author seems to be referring mainly to the Austro-Hungarian period, but the opening paragraph here cited appears to include the later Polish period as well. (17) There are also those ex-Galicians who look back on Galicia, not with longing, but with recrimination. The poet Meyer Shtiker, born in Boyberik around 1900, but in the United States from 1920 has written a bitter sonnet "Vos nokh bin ikh dir shuldik, poyln"? ('What More Do I Owe You, Poland?') which doubtless expresses how many ex-Galicians view their former homeland -- as a land of incessant and heartless discrimation against Jews. (18) However, in the vast memorial literature on Galicia written by by ex-Galicians in Hebrew and Yiddish, recrimination and nostalgia generally intermingle, though in varying proportions. Here, for example, is how a former resident of Skole looks back on Jewish life there after World War I: "Nokhn blutikn krig hot zikh dos andersh geshtaltikt unter der fray-tsehulyeter polyakn-makht mit ir has tsu un redifes af yidn, materndik zikh in noyt un in teglekher shrek, ober oykh mit shabes un yontefdike hofnungen, biz tsum onrukn fun fintstern khurbn...." ('After the bloody war things changed under the unrestrained Polish regime with its hatred and persecution of Jews, who toiled in great need and in daily dread, yet with Sabbath and Holiday hopes, till the dark descent of the Shoa....'). (19) This account by an unsophisticated individual essentially parallels the way most Jewish historians, though with different emphases, view Jewish life in Poland under the second Polish Republic, namely that it combined imposed suffering with great inner resourcefulness and creativity. All historians of interwar Poland, including of course, Galicia, agree that Jewish life in that period was intensely dynamic. Where most Jewish historians of the period disagree with their Polish colleagues is over the question of how anti-semitic Poland at that time was. I find Ezra Mendelsohn's conclusions responsible, judicious and balanced. He writes: "... interwar Poland was an anti-semitic country, both in its policies and in the attitudes of large sections of the Polish population. The depth of Polish anti-semitic feeling fluctuated, and historians will continue to argue both over its extent and its impact on the Jewish population." (20) Mendelsohn doesn't believe that this antisemitic policy was inevitable. A crucial factor was the belief of the Polish elite that a nation-state could not absorb non-Polish elements, including the Jews. Mendelsohn also stresses what Jews owe the Poles, especially the freedom to open schools, take part in politics, and write as they wished. "Polish freedom," he writes, "allied with Polish anti-semitism and Jewish modernization, made possible the emergence and popularization of the new Jewish politics, which, among other things, helped to build the state of Israel.... Interwar Poland was a relatively free country, a highly nationalistic country, and an anti-Jewish country. The experience of Polish Jews between the wars was a combination of suffering, some of which was caused by antisemitism, and of achievment, made possible by Polish freedom, pluralism and tolerance. Modern Polish nationalism led, inevitably, to antisemitism, but it also inspired Polish Jewish youth to raise the banner of Jewish nationalism." (21) Leonard Prager Haifa ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.302