Outwitting History (39 page)

Sometimes, at night, standing alone in our warehouse, looking at those rows upon rows of rescued books, I marvel at the wiles of history. How did it happen that we, arguably the most book-loving people on the planet, parted with an entire literature, without so much as a word of deliberation or regret? Even after twenty-four years of hauling and shelving and thinking about Yiddish books, I’m not sure I have an answer. On one level it’s obvious: Jews gave up their parents’ and grandparents’ books because they couldn’t read them, they didn’t know what they were, and they figured no one else in their families ever would, either. But sometimes, when I’m feeling especially road-weary or discouraged, I wonder if maybe it’s not more complicated than that. Maybe the reason Jews, the People of the Book, uncharacteristically discarded a literature was not because they didn’t understand it, but rather because they understood it too well. After all, look how Yiddish literature ended up: its world in ruins, its writers murdered, its readers dying, its children estranged. Tevye’s harsh judgment on himself could just as easily apply to every one of the one-and-a-half million
books we’ve saved:
“V’yishkhakeyhu
(And they were forgotten).
Oys di yidishe literatur
(No more modern Yiddish literature).”

But then I remember that despite Tevye’s certainty that his day is done, despite his insistence that Sholem Aleichem not write about him, the author does so anyway. And we, the readers, are glad he did.

Perhaps that’s how it will be with the rest of Yiddish literature, too. Given the magnitude of the depredations Yiddish books endured—the Holocaust, Stalinist purges, displacement, assimilation—it’s no wonder so many rational people concluded that their day was done. But just as Sholem Aleichem wrote about Tevye anyway, we have gone out and saved Yiddish books anyway.

“Un ver vet ibermishn gele bleter?”
the poet Kadya Molodowsky asked: “And who will turn these yellowed pages?” She was referring to ancient Hebrew tomes, but today her words might apply just as aptly to Yiddish books, including her own. Who will read them?

According to the Midrash, the reason the Jews spent forty years in the wilderness after leaving Egypt was because only a new generation, unbent by slavery, could enter the promised land. Perhaps so it is with us. After six decades of recoiling from the memory of a world that was destroyed, a new generation is emerging, unbent and untrammeled, to recover the shards of a shattered past, to turn the yellowed pages, to discover just how hip Yiddish really is. “Yiddish has not yet said its last word,” Isaac Bashevis Singer predicted.

It does have magic, and it is outwitting history after all.

34
“the wholly spontaneous questions”
Ruth R. Wisse,
The Schlemiel as Modern Hero
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 3.

69
A Brief History of Yiddish Literature
This chapter is based in part, on A Portable Homeland, a permanent exhibitionat the National Yiddish Book Center. I want to acknowledge the contribution of my colleagues Neil Zagorin, Nansi Glick, and Nancy Sherman on that project.

74
“The better Yiddish prose writers avoid writing about American Jewish life”
Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Problems of Yiddish Prose in America (1943),” translated by Robert H. Wolf,
Prooftexts: A Journal for Jewish Literary History
9 (1989): p. 7.

75
the Yiddish poet Mordecai Gebirtig wrote with blood-chilling prescience
Mordecai Gebirtig, “Es brent!” [It’s Burning!] in Jerry Silverman,
The Yiddish Song Book
(New York: Stein and Day, 1983), p. 185.

108
“Veyn nisht, Yishmeylikl tate”
Itzik Manger, “Hagar farlozt Avrom’s hoyz,” in
Khumesh lider
(Warsaw: Farlag Aleynenyu, 1935), p. 29. English: Itzik Manger, “Hagar Leaves Abraham’s House,” in
The World According to Itzik: Selected Poetry and Prose,
translated and edited by Leonard Wolf, with an introduction by David G. Roskies and Leonard Wolf, The New Yiddish Library (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 14.

119
–20
When I was growing up in Newark
Reprinted in Philip Roth,
Reading Myself and Others
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), pp. 175–77.

129
“In the eighteen minutes it took”
In Irving Howe,
World of Our Fathers
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), pp. 304–5.

129
“Over whom shall we weep first”
Ibid, p. 305.

131
Yiddish in America became “a tin can”
Michael Chabon, “Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts,”
Civilization
(June/July, 1997).

159
“No,” replies the bookseller
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Enemies: A Love Story,
translated by Aliza Shevrin and Elizabeth Shub (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), p. 261.

161
“We fashioned our own little battle”
Abbie Hoffman,
Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture
(New York: Putnam, 1980), p. 208.

162
–63
“They were utterly bewildered”
Mendele Moykher Seforim,
Kitser masoes Benyomin Hashlishi; The Travels and Adventures of Bejamin the Third
, translated from the Yiddish by Joshe Spiegel (New York: Schocken Books, 1949), p. 116. Excerpts from the Yiddish original added by the author.

163
“‘Your Honor,’ Benjamin vociferated”
Ibid., p. 123.

164
“The high honor”
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Nobel Lecture
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), pp. 6–7.

164
According to Max Weinreich
See Max Weinreich,
History of the Yiddish Language
, translated by Shlomo Noble, with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

166
Consider, for example, Peretz’s 1900 story
See I. L. Peretz, “If Not Higher,” translated by Marie Syrkin, in
The I. L. Peretz Reader,
edited and with an introduction by Ruth R. Wisse, The New Yiddish Library (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 178–81.

166
Here’s another of Peretz’s stories
I. L. Peretz, “Bontsha the Silent,” translated by Hilde Abel, in
A Treasury of Yiddish Stories
, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), pp. 225; 229–30.

167
“want to see in the story a paean”
Tzvi Howard Adelman, “Modern Jewish Short Stories and Diasporan Culture,” course outline, A Cultural History of the Jews, Hebrew University. On the Web site of the Jewish Agency for Israel (http://www.jafi.org.il/education/juice/history1/week12.html).

168
“Isaac Leib Peretz was arguably”
Ruth R. Wisse, Introduction,
The I. L. Peretz Reader,
p. xvi.

206
“Tell me, Rebbe”
“Domestic Happiness,” in
Stories and Pictures by Isaac Loeb Peretz
, translated from the Yiddish by Helena Frank (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1906), pp. 24–25.

207
“‘No Hannah’”
Ibid., p. 25.

217
It took months to sort and catalog all eighty-five thousand folios
The National Yiddish Book Center published a complete catalog of the Metro Music Collection, under the auspices of the Mel and Shifra Gold Yiddish Music Project. The highlights cited here are taken in part from the work of our cataloger, Paula Parsky, in “Gleanings from the Garage,”
Pakn Treger,
no. 8 (Winter, 1987).

219
When Merriam-Webster Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, with Seven-Language Dictionary,
3 vols. (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva, Sydney, Tokyo, and Manila: William Benton, Publisher, 1966).

226
“in hundreds of Jewish homes”
Professor Novershtern’s trenchant review of the Polish Jewry series appeared in both Yiddish and English (translated by Henia Lewin) in
Pakn Treger,
no. 15 (Summer 1991).

236
“You are only ninety miles from the winking lighthouses”
James Steele,
Cuban Sketches
(1881), cited in
Fodor’s Exploring Cuba,
2nd ed. (New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, and Auckland: Fodor’s Travel Publications, n.d.), p. 58.

241
Back in the U.S.S.R.
This chapter is based in part on my two earlier accounts: “Yiddish in the Soviet Union: A First-Person Report by Aaron Lansky,”
Pakn Treger,
no. 13 (Summer, 1990); and “Back in the U.S.S.R.: The Center’s Summer Expedition Succeeds in Delivering 6,000 Yiddish Books to Baltic Jews,”
Pakn Treger,
no. 14 (Winter, 1990-1991).

244
“With what anguish”
Chaim Beyder, “
Der Shayter
/Death Fire.” Translated from the Yiddish by Leah Zasuyer,
Pakn Treger,
no. 13 (Summer, 1990).

245
“For a time, life was sweet”
Kenneth Turan, “The Last Widow,”
Pakn Treger,
no. 13 (Summer, 1990).

266
“It has nothing to do directly with defending our country”
The exchange is recounted in Philip J. Hilts,
Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), pp. 98–99.

285
“At the opening of the Center”
Ruth R. Wisse, “Yiddish: Past, Present, Imperfect,”
Commentary
(November, 1997).

286
“He found them puerile”
Cynthia Ozick, “Envy; or, Yiddish in America,” in
A Cynthia Ozick Reader
, edited by Elaine M. Kauvar (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 20.

287
“The new building”
Ruth R. Wisse, “Yiddish: Past, Present, Imperfect.”

293
–94
“a massive explosion ripped through”
Nansi Glick, “Out of the Rubble,”
Pakn Treger,
no. 20 (Fall, 1995).

299
Forthcoming translations include
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Nancy Sherman in preparing these all-too-brief descriptions.

302
In Philip Roth’s 1969 novel
Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth,
Port-noy’s Complaint
(New York: Random House, 1969), p. 224.

302
–3
“‘Who’d you give the terfillin to?’”
Philip Roth,
Patrimony
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 94–96.

307
“I asked Chava”
Sholem Aleichem, “Chava,”
Tevye’s Daughters
, translated by Frances Butwin (New York: Crown Publishers, 1959), p. 97.

307
–8
“‘Maybe you’ve done enough jabbering’”
Ibid., p. 169. The adjective
milkhiger
(dairy) appears in the original Yiddish and was included here by the author.

309
“All the rest of the way”
Ibid., p. 177.

309
–10
“I put on my Shabbos gabardine”
Ibid., p. 178.

310
“Don’t forget what I asked you”
Ibid., p. 178. Excerpts from the original Yiddish included by the author.

I
DID NOT
save Yiddish literature single-handedly. Tens of thousands of people helped, including staff, board,
zamlers
(book collectors), volunteers, donors, and members. It would take another book just to list them all, let alone adequately express my thanks.

But I do want to thank those who made this book possible. I began preliminary work thirteen years ago, with help from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Last year, when I returned to the task, the chairman of the National Yiddish Book Center, Lief Rosenblatt, offered his encouragement and made sure I had the time I needed to write. My remarkable colleague Nancy Sherman led the Center in my absence, with help from Eugene Driker, Penina Migdal Glazer, Mike Reiff, Sam Rotrosen, Lou Cove, Jack Fortier, and Paul Page. My loyal assistant, Kelley, guarded my solitude and helped with research, as did Anne Atherley, Catherine Madsen, and Aaron Rubinstein. Samuel Kassow, Nancy Sherman, and Kenneth Turan read the manuscript and provided invaluable advice. Ken Coplon and Noemi Schwarz are great friends who never wavered in their support. My agent, Carol Mann, matched me with the perfect publisher. Patty Williams gave of her time and talent in taking the author photo.

During the months I spent writing, my neighbors in Nova Scotia, Kenneth and Marlene Comeau, and my landlord in Holyoke, Fran O’Connell, showed me special kindness, and our dog, Sadie, never left my side.

My editor at Algonquin, Amy Gash, and my copy editor, Judit Bodnar, worked their magic above and beyond the call of duty. My awe and gratitude know no bounds.

Above all, I am grateful to my family: our daughters, Sasha and Chava, and my wife, Gail. “Just tell the story,” Gail advised when I began. If only I had listened to her sooner, I could have finished in half the time.

for Gail

Author’s Note

Because I was a participant in the events that follow and not a reporter, most of the people who appear in this book did not know I would write about them one day. To protect their privacy, I have changed certain names, places of residence, and other identifying characteristics. The rest of their stories are accurate within the limits of memory, both theirs and mine.

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2004 by Aaron Lansky. All rights reserved.
First e-book edition, September 2012.

Excerpt reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group from
Patrimony
by Philip Roth. Copyright © 1991 by Philip Roth. Excerpt from
Tevye’s Daughters
by Sholom Aleichem, copyright © 1949 by the Children of Sholom Aleichem and Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.