Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.031 July 11, 1996 1) Oprikhtn goles (Eliyahu Juni) 2) Flogging a dead horse? (Zachary Baker) 3) Jonathan Rosen's article (Leah Zazulyer) 4) Birobidzhan (Zachary Baker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 04:13:11 -0400 From: e.juni@utoronto.ca Subject: Urrekhtn gules I have a question about the above phrase, but it requires a bit of a hakdume, with background info to follow. A few days ago, as I about to leave home for school, my grandfather noticed that I was carrying a schoolbag over my shoulder, and asked, b'deyrekh m'litse, "vus, gayst urrekhtn gules?" I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly, and asked him to repeat, which he did; he then explained that when tsadikim would go into exile, they used to call it "urrekhtn gules". "Gules" was a common practice in Eastern Europe for at least a few centuries: a tsadik would undertake a personal exile, to help fulfill or atone for the communal exile of Israel and hasten the redemption. For a second, I had thought that he said "farrekhtn gules", and would have taken him to mean "What, are you off to fix the exile?" I've never heard the word "urrekhtn" before. Is it an everyday Yiddish word? What does it mean? (How is its meaning related to the meaning of "farrekhtn"?) Is it idiomatically specific to this type of "fixing" the world (see below)? Is "urrekhtn-gules" a compound noun, a "fixing-exile" (in which case the question was "What, are you leaving on a fixing-exile?") Or maybe is it a different sort of fixing, fixing the self (see further below), in which case an "urrekhtn-gules" is an exile for personal atonement? (Since tsadikim on gules travelled far and wide, mostly by foot, and lived in poverty, they didn't carry much; my guess is that the image of the foot-traveller with a stick and a pack slung over one shoulder, which in contemporary culture is associated with the hobo, was, for the Eastern European Jew, associated with the wandering tsadik. The last figure outside the khsidishe world who I know is reputed to have gone on gules is the Noyde Biyhude. A lot of early khsidishe rebbes did it, but I think the practice had completely disappeared by the end of the last century, well before my grandfather was born, so he must know it as folklore, not first-hand.) (Re fixing: In kabbalistic and mystical terminology, mitsves and atonement are part of a larger framework of "fixing the world", setting right that which was ruined/lowered/defiled by earlier misdeeds, and/or perfecting that which is bad in the very nature of the world. There's a hook for this in the second half of Oleynu, and it has been used as a starting point for the popular term/concept "tikkun", cf. the magazine.) [More prutim on gules: Tsadikim often went on gules for long periods, and sometimes reinforced their decision by swearing not to set foot in their hometown for x number of years. Gules was sometimes prescribed to penitents as a way to do penance for their misdeeds. Some tsadikim did it under pseudonym, as an exercise in humility, or to live the life of the poorfolk, or so that no one would bother them or ask their advice. Inviting a wanderer into one's home, besides being charitable and therefore "the right thing to do", may have had held out the prospect of an interesting surprise, in the form of an illustrious pauper, a famous tsadik from far away--if only the balebos could get him to tell his name. It wouldn't surprise me if the phenomenon--which certainly existed--was hyped widely so as to tempt balebatim to invite wandering beggars home, and to keep them long enough for a decent meal. Cf. Hershele Ostrepolyer and the epidemic in Brod--"ven Hershele est. . ."] Eliyahu Juni 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:10:50 -0500 (EST) From: yivo1@metgate.metro.org Subject: Flogging a dead horse? This past Sunday [7/7/96] The New York Times Magazine had a article by Jonathan Rosen, "A Dead Language, Yiddish Lives; And So Does the Fight over Why." Surprisingly, none of our Mendelyaner has commented on the article to date. Rather than comment (editorially, that is), I wish simply to bring this article to subscribers' attention. The author, who is associate editor the The [English] Forward, describes the "reconstitut[ion of Yiddish] in multicultural America," as what "seems part of a larger phenomenon that might be called the re-diasporization of American Jews." He points to such developments as Yiddish courses on college campuses, the National Yiddish Book Center's building campaign, the identification of "a surprising number of young gay Jews" with Yiddish, the continued daily use of Yiddish among Hasidism (Rosen specifically mentions Satmar Hasidim in Williamsburgh), and "the debate over what the language means." (He mentions Ruth Wisse's recent article in The New Republic in that connection.) "Realistically," Rosen concludes, "American Jews aren't reacquiring Yiddish so much as they are adding an accent to English -- an intellectual, emotional, perhaps even a religious inflection. The more comfortable Jews feel in America, the more open they are to reclaiming a culture of exile. This is the paradox of the American diaspora: the wish to feel different *and* and home. Yiddish, with all its complex, contradictory associations, is the language of that desire." All right; I will make one editorial observation: I think that Rosen takes too narrow a view of his subject. However one might characterize the "Yiddish phenomenon," it is hardly restricted to America -- and not even to the Diaspora. Our Israeli Mendelyaner can certainly attest to the latter point. In that connection, I have just read a fascinating interview with Rachel Ertel in the latest issue of the journal Shofar (vol. 14, no. 3, Spring 1996). Prof. Ertel teaches in the Department of Jewish-American Studies at the University of Paris VII, where she has established a center for Yiddish studies as well. She also edits a series, Domaine yiddish, which publishes important works of modern Yiddish literature in French translation (concentrating on modernist writers, including Dovid Bergelson, Lamed Shapiro, and Moishe Kulbak). The interview was conducted by Jean Baumgarten, a notable specialist on Yiddish in his own right (author of Introduction a la litterature yiddish ancienne), in a special issue of Shofar which bears the heading "Jewish Studies in France" (the issue is edited by Alan Astro). The interview, which is quite extensive, deals with the status of Yiddish in France, primarily since the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews began in the 1880s, and above all during the last two or three decades. Prof. Ertel describes some of the notable Yiddishist institutions in Paris -- among them the Bibliotheque Medem, which is described at greater length in a separate article (written by Gilles Rozier, director of the library) in the same issue. The interview lends a useful comparative perspective to Jonathan Rosen's New York Times Magazine piece. The pivotal role of the events of 1968 in the French Jewish intellectual revival is emphasized by Prof. Ertel, and that revival led a number of younger French Jews to study Yiddish. (This summer, Prof. Ertel's university, is for the first time sponsoring an intensive Yiddish summer course.) Like Ruth Wisse, Rachel Ertel sees the dissemination of Yiddish literature in translation and the academic study of Yiddish as the essential vehicles for the preservation of the language and its culture. As she notes, at the conclusion of the interview: "No people can recover from a genocide. To speak Yiddish now means something entirely different from what it did in the pre-war world. Of course, you can raise the objection that in countries spared by the genocide, such as the U.S., Yiddish was also in decline. Linguistic assimilation is at work in all democracies. In open societies, minority languages are threatened and weakened. Nonetheless, the disappearance of Yiddish is something particular. The extermination of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe was the final blow, after which Yiddish could never regain its strength. Let us suppose that some fringes of the ultra-orthodox community emancipate themselves from ultra-orthodoxy. Then the Yiddish language could re-occupy its place withing a pluralistic society. In that marginal space, there could, perhaps, be born a new Yiddish culture of hitherto-unknown form, linked to a new literature, political vision and world-view, yet bound up with the thousand-year-old Yiddish past. For other Jews, for Westernized Jews in sum, Yiddish culture will survive through other languages and will assume forms that cannot be foreseen." (p. 137) Zachary Baker 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 10:08:13 -0400 (EDT) From: watson@uhura.cc.rochester.edu Subject: Jonathan Rosen's article My own reaction to the article on Yiddish last Sunday in the NYT was distress. I thought that either the author wrote an unbalanced piece, with many of the key elements which were not woven into a whole cloth, OR the piece was badly edited and chopped. Or both. I thought of immediately writing a letter to the editor to "balance" the exposition. Today I wonder if others, even more au courant than I about the state of affairs in Yiddish in today's world, might either have already done so or should do so! Can we have some discussion about that piece and how to most effectively respond to it? Leah Zazulyer 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:26:53 -0500 (EST) From: yivo1@metgate.metro.org Subject: Birobidzhan Today's New York Times (July 11, 1996) -- that fount of information on all things Jewish -- has an article on Birobidzhan by James Brooke, entitled "A Promised Land in Siberia? Well, Thanks, but..." The article occupies a prominent place on page 4 of the news section, under the heading "Birobidzhan Journal." Brooke briefly summarizes the Jewish Autonomous Region's history, leading up to a description of the mass emigration of Jews that has taken place since 1990 and the uneasy reaction of local authorities (some of them Jews) with Jewish emigration. Among those interviewed for the article is Lena Belyayeva, whom he describes as "one of two Yiddish teachers here." She is quoted as saying that officials in the city of Birobidzhan "are afraid that if all the Jews go, there will be no need for a Jewish Autonomous Region. Without that status, they will lose special subsidies from the federal budget." The drastic decline of the Russian economy (Birobidzhan's "industrial and agricultural production [have] fall[en] by half since 1990") is pointed to as the main reason for the current wave of emigration. Zachary Baker ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.031 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. 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