tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35865650643728475902024-03-17T22:59:50.741-04:00Rootless CosmopolitanRootless Cosmopolitanrokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-66150741815447570912023-12-08T15:39:00.002-05:002023-12-08T15:39:37.106-05:00Khanike 2023 - A Few Last Minute Listings and a New Music Video!<p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's <i>khanike/xanike/hanukah/chanuka</i> and we all need a little more light (and a little more joy.) </span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I've put together some very last minute Klez-Yiddish listings for the next few days, mostly in NYC and environs, but a few beyond, too. Also, make sure to check out the awesome new video from the ever-brilliant Frank London. (Make sure to read to the end...)</span></h3><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-family: arial;">Saturday </span><span style="font-family: arial;">December 9 </span></u></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">3-8 pm, <b>L’chaim to Light: A Hanukkah Celebration. </b>Wine tastings, food, music. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sideways.bar/" target="_blank">Sideways Bar</a> Ellenville (Hudson valley)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">7:30 pm, <a href="https://www.yiddishnewyork.com/programming/special-events-and-evening-programs/" target="_blank">Lauren Brody (accordion) and Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl)</a> at Old Broadway Synagogue, 15 Old Broadway (at 125th Street)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">6 pm <b>Eleonore Weill and Friends</b>: <a href="https://www.viewcy.com/e/eleonore_weill" target="_blank">a “deviant tribute” to Chet Baker at Barbes</a> and then another show at 11 pm at <a href="https://jalopytheatre.netlify.app/performances" target="_blank">Jalopy as part of Roots and Ruckus</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>Sunday December 10 </u></span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1:00pm (online) <a href=" https://www.circle.org/events/khanike2023" target="_blank">Workers Circle Yiddish Khanike Party:</a> with music, skits, and songs to sing along</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>Monday December 11</u></span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">7:30 pm </span><b style="font-family: arial;">Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn, with special guest Sasha Lurje </b><span style="font-family: arial;">at Flatbush Jewish Center, Brooklyn.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>Tuesday December 12</u></span></h4><span style="font-family: arial;">9:00 pm <b>Branches of Light: The Sway Machinery's Holiday Ball (Jeremiah Lockwood)</b>, <b>with Kohenet Shamira and Eleonore Weill</b>. At NuBlu, <a href="https://dice.fm/event/vnqgg-branches-of-light-the-sway-machinerys-holiday-ball-12th-dec-nublu-new-york-tickets?lng=en-US" target="_blank">tickets here</a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>BONUS Sunday December 17</u></span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1:00 pm <b>We Are Here: A Yiddish Meet and Greet</b>, with performers Miryem-Khaye Seigel and Zisl Slepovitch. At the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/bronx-yiddish-center-antisemitic-graffiti-sholem-aleichem-cultural-center/" target="_blank">Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center</a>, 3301 Bainbridge Avenue, Bronx. <a href="https://facebook.com/events/s/we-are-here-a-yiddish-meet-and/6778622858841215/" target="_blank">More details here</a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">8:00 pm <b>Isle of Klezbos</b> release party for "Yiddish Silver Screen," at Joe's Pub. <a href="https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2023/i/isle-of-klezbos/" target="_blank">More details here</a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>ON TOUR</b>: Throughout the 8 days of khanike, <b>Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn</b> will be on tour in cities up and down the East Coast including New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Check for more details <a href="https://www.michaelwinograd.net/live.html " target="_blank">on his website</a> ...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm very excited to share the first video from <b>Frank London</b>'s new <b>Klezmer Brass All Stars </b>album, a new <i>khanike</i> banger: <b>GREEKZ (Yevonim)</b></span></div></blockquote><p></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hxd8DRyWA2A?si=_yws_T6NbMYUmOIU" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> <div><span style="font-family: arial;">Download <b><i><a href="https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/album/chronika " target="_blank">Chronika</a></i></b> over at the <a href="https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">Borscht Beat Bandcamp page</a></span></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-70733661387505338422023-08-29T11:30:00.000-04:002023-08-29T11:30:32.018-04:00Announcing My New Fall Course on Ashkenazi Folk Magic and Ritual<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Between Heaven and Earth: Yiddish Women's Folklore, Rituals, & Magic</i></div><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'm so happy to share that this fall I'll be teaching my first class for the Yiddish Book Center. I've created a brand new course on the Ashkenazi folk magic and ritual of women++. (While the folk magic and ritual domain was one where women played significant leadership roles, it did not exclude men.) We'll be covering plague weddings, <i>feldmestn</i> (grave and cemetery measuring), candle magic, the indispensable art of evil eye removal, protections for pregnancy and childbirth, Ashkenazi herbalism, divination, and more. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We'll talk about why some magical practices have persisted for hundreds of years, despite the disapproval of the rabbis, while others have almost completely disappeared. And we'll explore the role (or lack thereof) of folk magic and folk religion in American Judaism.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The course will take place over four consecutive Wednesdays in October and November, starting right after the High Holidays. <a href="https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/educational-programs/adult-learners/between-heaven-and-earth-yiddish-womens-folklore-rituals-magic" target="_blank">Click here to register or find more information</a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaayIEPmNJ-0TSiIHt9LRSDG_Cz2b-NDNbk7RZFdwTpUXylFn8tFB_kmjmRcOA2xt2s27TKg8_TgoMcv3lnmsMwylA0RVKyXFMYCmNgsIlcTjObiKUORxKUWKjf3m1tejVc2yTkq_nNuaJs9l9Gb2tSASmQIzWrG-YmRdR-ZQ5N2myxXTQ4eLNSiX2FBe/s1280/between%20heaven%20and%20earth%20image.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaayIEPmNJ-0TSiIHt9LRSDG_Cz2b-NDNbk7RZFdwTpUXylFn8tFB_kmjmRcOA2xt2s27TKg8_TgoMcv3lnmsMwylA0RVKyXFMYCmNgsIlcTjObiKUORxKUWKjf3m1tejVc2yTkq_nNuaJs9l9Gb2tSASmQIzWrG-YmRdR-ZQ5N2myxXTQ4eLNSiX2FBe/w480-h640/between%20heaven%20and%20earth%20image.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><p></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-89658008753231013202023-07-21T19:01:00.001-04:002023-07-21T19:06:14.764-04:00Remembering Theo Bikel and the American Folk Music Revival<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">July 21 is the eighth <i>yortsayt</i> of Theodore Bikel, at least according to the western calendar. He passed in 2015, at the age of 91. Bikel led the kind of outsized life which is almost impossible to sum up. His <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Bikel " target="_blank">Wikipedia page</a> lists his many careers as “actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist.” But those many careers overlapped and reinforced each other, with the sum of the parts adding up to a whole which was extraordinary. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">He acted on Broadway, in the movies, and on television. He fought on behalf of American civil rights and for Soviet Jews. He created the role of Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” on Broadway, was the president of the Actor’s Equity union, and appeared as <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sergey_Rozhenko" target="_blank">Worf’s adoptive Jewish father on "Star Trek: The Next Generatio</a>n.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">
Theo Bikel was a giant, not just on the stage, but on the <i>world stage</i>. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In remembering Bikel today, I want to focus on just one slice of his astoundingly diverse body of work: his career as a folk musician.
Even his folk music oeuvre is too great to summarize here. He started recording “folk music” albums in 1955, putting out 18 albums for the Elektra label alone. Jewish material was just one part of his global repertoire. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In 1958 he recorded “Theodore Bikel sings Jewish Folks Songs”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f96hP3WBPmM" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> <div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> In 1965, he recorded “Theodore Bikel Sings Yiddish Theater and Folk Songs” for Elektra</span></div><div><br /></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fgrP-B9mdtY" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In 1959, he was one of the co-founders of the Newport Folk Festival, along with Pete Seeger. Seeger was another long lived, American cultural giant, as a musician, activist and co-founder of the folk revival magazine, <i>Sing Out!</i> in 1950.
I recently spent some time wandering through the pages of Sing Out’s early issues, now available digitally on archive.org. You can read my latest GOLDEN CITY column about it, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/yiddish-musical-treasury-folk-music-ruth-rubin-sing-out-magazine" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">
Of course, Theo Bikel was a frequent presence in the pages of <i>Sing Out!</i> in those years. In April 1960, he was on Broadway in “The Sound of Music” when he appeared on the cover of the magazine. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIJ4vb-8LTEL67FmbbXF-AAZV8c8mKlPdUXRX4YAjxov_Bg2UvjaD_3GREEIGgDnVD0XgFsthaIecsNbcdwWKdlShOziLeu01xeD9ylW7CcH37LRoelFWz1YqyNAUFdo8SOCt9Cmb5W-DpHoPevF1qTRnj2RHy3iqP530Dw9qpiSHigyYVctFSslwZ698i/s495/Bikel%20cover%20Sing%20Out.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="306" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIJ4vb-8LTEL67FmbbXF-AAZV8c8mKlPdUXRX4YAjxov_Bg2UvjaD_3GREEIGgDnVD0XgFsthaIecsNbcdwWKdlShOziLeu01xeD9ylW7CcH37LRoelFWz1YqyNAUFdo8SOCt9Cmb5W-DpHoPevF1qTRnj2RHy3iqP530Dw9qpiSHigyYVctFSslwZ698i/s320/Bikel%20cover%20Sing%20Out.png" width="198" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A note on the inside cover describes Bikel as having “achieved an enviable reputation and popularity.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;">At that time, Bikel was as close as the magazine would come to huge mainstream crossover potential (and advertiser appeal, too.</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Inside the magazine you find “A Backstage Chat” with Bikel, as well as reprints of songs from his repertoire. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwqG--KpFQSOLjsuodbvE3yMfEG-bcWadtWptFdDE4ARTkapOGOxr46ukg81_ggzkxEKcSuoRJKkJBhpV-g4Liukx5Zawc27aOnty_UkMz9DsR0SkNAOoSncwNm5gdv46p79TVyQAbfKxI2qjoiwgo_wkEBBI0rvcOvwPaLoc9q_nG_eWyi9_Q1oF3Wmb/s1076/Backstage%20Chat%20with%20Bikel.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="1076" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwqG--KpFQSOLjsuodbvE3yMfEG-bcWadtWptFdDE4ARTkapOGOxr46ukg81_ggzkxEKcSuoRJKkJBhpV-g4Liukx5Zawc27aOnty_UkMz9DsR0SkNAOoSncwNm5gdv46p79TVyQAbfKxI2qjoiwgo_wkEBBI0rvcOvwPaLoc9q_nG_eWyi9_Q1oF3Wmb/w640-h309/Backstage%20Chat%20with%20Bikel.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the Summer 1961 issue, to take another example, you could find his name in an “industry roundup” column, noting that he had just signed on with talent impresario <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Hurok " target="_blank">Sol Hurok</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0AHcfmwKdbhhY0fdwWYDuukpd8YBB8WLCrm60BUmP8JSoiieGLa2N60-H83nsWJ5WhQweu4AGTpFBdc30NhAKYy-vF4R1MqAc8J5cdqWMgmBnqaIWBnuH1MIqKOswhr5uK5pJWFsQfynQAfDQ_vojv-LB1xzV-ycknvJoYm2l8Nct5dQDU8jW0Fnc3aUk/s220/Bikel%20Hurok.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="95" data-original-width="220" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0AHcfmwKdbhhY0fdwWYDuukpd8YBB8WLCrm60BUmP8JSoiieGLa2N60-H83nsWJ5WhQweu4AGTpFBdc30NhAKYy-vF4R1MqAc8J5cdqWMgmBnqaIWBnuH1MIqKOswhr5uK5pJWFsQfynQAfDQ_vojv-LB1xzV-ycknvJoYm2l8Nct5dQDU8jW0Fnc3aUk/w400-h173/Bikel%20Hurok.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
You’d also see him name checked in one of the many Yiddish folk songs the magazine published, here, <i>Di mezinke oysgegebn</i>. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The editors note that a recording of the song can be found on Bikel’s album, “Jewish Folk Songs.”</span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhrehXsfLf664r4Y_KOcF8DF-P5bqqMZl4gUjqHHkhPkg1usiLlhrwRoog4cwU-ZfEhGyLAeAVNblfboEWOAw6u37BDPmGytUQAVD2EAOhbSS6DV68JbqAqAftqF2gyEjbY8uYwHZMZri0aJY6ff6jRw5W-B9tT0a2n2xkjPF_A8GCvd7RYtUhLtW5Bqj/s518/Mezinke%20oysgegebn.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="478" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhrehXsfLf664r4Y_KOcF8DF-P5bqqMZl4gUjqHHkhPkg1usiLlhrwRoog4cwU-ZfEhGyLAeAVNblfboEWOAw6u37BDPmGytUQAVD2EAOhbSS6DV68JbqAqAftqF2gyEjbY8uYwHZMZri0aJY6ff6jRw5W-B9tT0a2n2xkjPF_A8GCvd7RYtUhLtW5Bqj/w369-h400/Mezinke%20oysgegebn.png" width="369" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And finally, he is at the center of this two-page advertising spread:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-d_tMyoWBMESYHcQXPLsDa_1n2HJf1VgpiaO1WHejGKs9eBU_gmuroq4Ltil0FKZYYrjyy4hUSDkIbF6jTg7X0FSLSGEboj5bprVj1xBIeqNT5u33a0zPyacMLAuNPgRIU4es9txTlGFL2TqnYgjc6R3QgLHDGFjkkhLduK4kHlC36ztWpKzymgZZ02N/s1028/Goya%20guitars%20and%20Grossingers%20facing.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1028" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-d_tMyoWBMESYHcQXPLsDa_1n2HJf1VgpiaO1WHejGKs9eBU_gmuroq4Ltil0FKZYYrjyy4hUSDkIbF6jTg7X0FSLSGEboj5bprVj1xBIeqNT5u33a0zPyacMLAuNPgRIU4es9txTlGFL2TqnYgjc6R3QgLHDGFjkkhLduK4kHlC36ztWpKzymgZZ02N/w640-h318/Goya%20guitars%20and%20Grossingers%20facing.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">One page is selling the Goya model guitar. Facing that is the upcoming <b>Grossinger’s First Annual Folk Music and Guitar Festival</b>, September 1961. Bikel meant big business for <i>Sing Out!</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Yet, the magazine didn’t pull punches where there was criticism to be made. In the April-May issue of 1961, Ruth Rubin, the groundbreaking folklorist and regular contributor to <i>Sing Out!</i>, published a long and rather devastating review of Bikel’s new song collection, “Folksongs and Footnotes” (the same book advertised as a premium giveaway with the Goya sponsored Grossinger Folk Fest.) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">First off, she says, many of these cannot even be considered folksongs, but for Bikel's choice to falsify their authorship.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>From Rubin's review of Bikel's collection, "Folksongs and Footnotes."</i></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHxIcrIYjM6TIHkYjbQDhFMBMOD-NmyHO6-hgsBIFcVYinJJPF_NMxIHjQ3TyYxIC_CPFUpkW6gY_uHtQ41ZrEzBGp1SZpg4GCg2kfrIM-gP20GrOrbl-TK6j6BmuU3Ka9T3AUUcxje47WLQw0xbh7Ty6XUz0js_hVdv00viyDoSQduzW-RZEGSotM1Q3Y/s490/Bikel%20songbook%20Rubin%20review%20pt%202.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="282" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHxIcrIYjM6TIHkYjbQDhFMBMOD-NmyHO6-hgsBIFcVYinJJPF_NMxIHjQ3TyYxIC_CPFUpkW6gY_uHtQ41ZrEzBGp1SZpg4GCg2kfrIM-gP20GrOrbl-TK6j6BmuU3Ka9T3AUUcxje47WLQw0xbh7Ty6XUz0js_hVdv00viyDoSQduzW-RZEGSotM1Q3Y/w368-h640/Bikel%20songbook%20Rubin%20review%20pt%202.png" width="368" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Bikel, she says, has rushed in "where angels fear to tread..." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQld03s8UNch-MMWtRBUwGKaLCPRp-jGfJpbf_JMdjPqGnvBmjmzzWkKfcPOkbYVczXZs_JLONBIPziCjtqBQJSYvzt1IFT3KMiL3-T0QedNnfGSQDnhuzXfvuHJhfPrpWSIKFe2OyE5GuYqMXxvJYMip00JuU11BA3HbnscdLjEM40eOnThwm7HF7a0X/s273/Bikel%20songbook%20angels%20fear%20to%20tread.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="245" data-original-width="273" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQld03s8UNch-MMWtRBUwGKaLCPRp-jGfJpbf_JMdjPqGnvBmjmzzWkKfcPOkbYVczXZs_JLONBIPziCjtqBQJSYvzt1IFT3KMiL3-T0QedNnfGSQDnhuzXfvuHJhfPrpWSIKFe2OyE5GuYqMXxvJYMip00JuU11BA3HbnscdLjEM40eOnThwm7HF7a0X/w400-h359/Bikel%20songbook%20angels%20fear%20to%20tread.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nor can he spot, she says, the difference between an earnest folk song and obvious satire</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuz-p_aRez8SgxMIiyMp5kohXbF4Pb5K0V61Fwy-NPkBtWAMoQeEOsawo7z0g1lSQbcf2Sduxrf4rqsYQ6GnS9Y8nyd6qL3O_biOEsAzuCoDoI0G8HbV0DWG24T4DBLnq3VBdvm4EXLIrizpNku4rq7sLbI2J0VK-qg85MQuUdKscfK89cojUscXWZ2jyd/s366/Bikel%20Rubin%20review%20hasidim.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="229" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuz-p_aRez8SgxMIiyMp5kohXbF4Pb5K0V61Fwy-NPkBtWAMoQeEOsawo7z0g1lSQbcf2Sduxrf4rqsYQ6GnS9Y8nyd6qL3O_biOEsAzuCoDoI0G8HbV0DWG24T4DBLnq3VBdvm4EXLIrizpNku4rq7sLbI2J0VK-qg85MQuUdKscfK89cojUscXWZ2jyd/w250-h400/Bikel%20Rubin%20review%20hasidim.png" width="250" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Ouch</div><br /><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s pretty clear that a negative review in Sing Out! had approximately zero effect on Bikel’s career. The magazine needed a popular draw like Bikel far more than he needed them, that’s for sure.
</span></div></div></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">
And at a time when many assimilating Jews were embarrassed of Yiddish, or thought it too provincial, Bikel’s mix-and-match strategy of combining songs from many traditions, while not appealing to folklore purists, placed Yiddish on equal footing with other global cultures. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In June 1960, Bikel released “From Bondage to Freedom: Songs of Many Lands, of Tyrants and Slaves, of Free Men and Liberty,” for Elektra records. Yiddish songs like “<i>Di shvue</i>” (the Bundist anthem) “<i><b>Un du akerst</b></i>” (so you plow) appear alongside “Les guitares de l’exil” and “Scots Wha Hae.” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In her April-May 1961 review of Bikel’s songbook, Bikel’s version of “<b><i>Un du akerst</i>”</b> is another target for Rubin’s ire. She dings him for his “limited knowledge” of even the “basic facts” about the song. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What basic facts are those? It was Rubin who tracked down the history of the text, back to an 1864 German song later adapted into Yiddish by Chaim Zhitlowsky. Rubin published her findings in her own songbook, “<b>A Treasury of Jewish Folksong</b>” (1950).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I can imagine Rubin’s irritation that, firstly, Bikel’s book, with a no doubt quite significant mass commercial audience, would introduce factual errors about the song. Secondly, it demonstrated that Bikel was unfamiliar with the important folkloristic work she had already published ten years previously. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://ataleoftwomuseums.yivo.org/items/show/5342" target="_blank">(Listen to a version of “Un du akerst” Rubin collected in Montreal in 1955) </a></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For Rubin, this isn't just sloppiness, it's "<i>chutspe</i>." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogbSxzHOv3BjdMz-F8gE9Vz4rz48Ey6J4qWpMwRICIffxNUDKkqSoQx0nzVCLIVd1ECrW8T-WSpw_mIdHm96IO491OveErDzwOGDMYJdv8SHRZCj0T38GU9wJOsxhmVI3f3g3zVtU6guflPhnO_fDyHRvOFGQv6n5I_m2ZDNtTEVavF5Cx7t2Tgn8PPoK/s509/Bikel%20Rubin%20review%20chutspe.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="281" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogbSxzHOv3BjdMz-F8gE9Vz4rz48Ey6J4qWpMwRICIffxNUDKkqSoQx0nzVCLIVd1ECrW8T-WSpw_mIdHm96IO491OveErDzwOGDMYJdv8SHRZCj0T38GU9wJOsxhmVI3f3g3zVtU6guflPhnO_fDyHRvOFGQv6n5I_m2ZDNtTEVavF5Cx7t2Tgn8PPoK/w354-h640/Bikel%20Rubin%20review%20chutspe.png" width="354" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>OOF</b></i></div></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If you’re my age (or older), you probably grew up with at least a few of Bikel’s records in your house, maybe you even had some of the Yiddish ones. In addition to his many brilliant contributions to American (and world) culture, Bikel's records were a crucial vehicle for bringing global folksong into American homes. Even today, his version of “<i>Un du akerst</i>” feels fresh and stirring (if not a bit overly macho.)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m7JxZZ3ybYE" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> </div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Ruth Rubin’s criticisms remind me of arguments which persist today in the Yiddish world. Is it better to maintain the Yiddishist’s focus on accuracy and purist respect for the totality of Yiddish culture? Or should we be open to more popular/populist interest in Yiddish, even if it means accepting a certain amount of errors, misapprehensions and, at times, insulting Yinglish misconceptions about the language and culture? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Though I tend to fall on the side of the humorless Yiddishist, when it comes to the life’s work left by Theo Bikel, I must disagree with the most esteemed Ruth Rubin. I am grateful to Bikel, his work, and his lifelong commitment to Yiddish culture. Even the mistakes. All of us would be incalculably poorer without it. <i>Koved zayn ondenk.</i></span></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-10708959052221731862023-04-17T12:32:00.000-04:002023-04-17T12:32:31.412-04:00Everything Returns - Upcoming Event with Black Ox Orkestar, April 20<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I'm very happy to announce that I'll be in conversation with Montreal's <b>Black Ox Orkestar</b> on Thursday, April 20. Last year, the band returned to the (virtual) recording studio and concert stage, after a 15 year hiatus. Their new album, "<a href="https://cstrecords.com/pages/black-ox-orkestar" target="_blank">Everything Returns</a>," is gorgeous and moody, with a sound wrapped in Leonard Cohen-esque colors. In an age of disappointing reboots, "Everything Returns" is exactly the album fans were waiting for.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjG6VQl4qFcAIVgtIOV13WDYA2pmCcjk25ybwM4Ffm4MNckD7v1IPiV60AKUEt5-JWTngyUlNJJyvugYlZRtV5b7lfazvjGbJSIieHCGOVkClA3kBnJ59LbkbPwU2Um1o_z1TMThC8Ob675EwfRiHk2wQS0ZumstcNydQJqAiBZXpcGcpk05xxLDC2w/s960/Ox-20AprilEvent_1080x1080_band.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjG6VQl4qFcAIVgtIOV13WDYA2pmCcjk25ybwM4Ffm4MNckD7v1IPiV60AKUEt5-JWTngyUlNJJyvugYlZRtV5b7lfazvjGbJSIieHCGOVkClA3kBnJ59LbkbPwU2Um1o_z1TMThC8Ob675EwfRiHk2wQS0ZumstcNydQJqAiBZXpcGcpk05xxLDC2w/w400-h400/Ox-20AprilEvent_1080x1080_band.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><a href="http://bit.ly/BlackOxApril2023" target="_blank">Make sure you register now </a></span></p><p><br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5KhLZ6s62Zs" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-82518883545629507702022-10-25T02:03:00.004-04:002022-10-25T02:03:19.766-04:00The Many Faces of the Dybbuk<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">There’s still a few days left to put the <i><b>spook</b></i> in Spooktober. <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/many-faces-dybbuk" target="_blank">My latest <b>Golden City</b> column</a> is up now and in this one, I look at just a few of the many incarnations of the dybbuk.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Of course, there’s the 1938 Polish produced, Yiddish-language film adaptation of Sh. Ansky's play, <i>der dybbuk</i>. But there’s also a 1960 made for TV, English-language adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet! I had a vague understanding that Lumet came from a Yiddish theater background, but it’s much juicier than that. Sidney was a child actor in the Yiddish theater in New York. He got his start there thanks to his dad, one-time Vilne Troupe member and then New York Yiddish actor, Baruch Lumet. You can read all about that over at the <a href=" https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/lessons-from-sidney-lumets-yiddish-actor-dad" target="_blank">Digital Yiddish Theater Project</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There have been many, many productions and adaptations of Ansky’s dybbuk play, the two I just mentioned are the tip of the dybbuk iceberg. Traditional dybbuk lore has also done its own share of “inspiring” stories. I don’t know how I missed <i>Psi Factor </i>when it was airing in the late 90s, but this bit of forgotten Dan Ackroyd paranormal silliness will appeal to anyone who loves spotting Toronto locations. And in the first season of the show, the Psi Factor cops took on a dybbuk.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IXYGBA1g2Kc" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Dybbuks aren't just for grown ups! On this episode of Rugrats, the Yiddish-accented grandfather tells a scary story about a dybbuk, which he says is a kind of monster.
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 56.25%; position: relative;"> <iframe allow="autoplay" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="100%" src="https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x3jbjiz?autoplay=1" style="height: 100%; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 100%;" type="text/html" width="100%"> </iframe> </div>
<o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #7f7f7f; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Thank God I wasn’t born a dybbuk<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">One of my absolute favorite YouTubers is Justin Sledge, the man behind the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel" target="_blank">Esoterica channel</a>. Sledge is an academic specializing in Western Occultism and Esotericism. It's really fascinating material presented in a down to earth, accessible format. This week he focused on, what else? the origin of the dybbuk in Jewish philosophy. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TEBeSIQlkTM" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As Sledge explains, the concept of a dybbuk, a dead human spirit possessing the body of a living person, only came about relatively late, within 16<sup>th</sup>century Spanish kabbalah. It took a number of philosophical developments to finally get there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Before that, Judaism, Islam and Christianity had beliefs around possession by malevolent spirits, though not the spirits of formerly living <i>people</i>. Jews in the ancient world were well known for their association with spirit exorcisms. Many of the miracles of Jesus, as Sledge reminds us, were exorcisms! However, after the rise of Christianity and its “embrace” of possession and exorcism, the rabbis lost interest in possession and exorcism. It would take a thousand years, and the rise of kabbalah, for spirit possession to come back to an influential place in Jewish philosophy and theology.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Finally, as I discussed in my column, there has been a bit of a dybbuk renaissance in cinema in the last ten years or so. Unfortunately, the catalyst for most of that “dybbuk revival” is down to what I would call an urban legend, <b><i>the dybbuk box</i></b>. (I go a bit more in depth on this “haunted wine box” in the column.) The important thing here is that the dybbuk box urban legend is not a Jewish story, but another take on the modern craze for haunted objects, wherein "Jewish culture" (or an approximation of such) lends a slightly different form to the elements of the genre. But the story is not actually Jewish.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In addition to the movies I covered in the column, the “dybbuk box” pops up elsewhere, as in this 2019 short film, about two couples camping in the desert. One of them accidentally open a “dybbuk box,” unleashing a murderous spirit. If you thought violent possession couldn’t be dull, you haven’t been looking in the right places. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v5DoUZgueBU" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It irritates me when artists (loosely defined) extract Jewish culture and distort it for their own uses. I’m tempted to say that those people are getting dybbuks “wrong.” But if you’re a modern, scientifically minded person who doesn’t believe in a literal reality of spirit possession - and I am - it seems sort of… <i>silly </i>to say that they’re getting the facts about a ghost story wrong. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">To go back to Justin Sledge, we can see that the concept of the dybbuk is in fact a historical, contingent phenomenon. If the Jewish world can go from being full of spirit possession experts to a thousand years of <b>No Possession, Please </b>and then on to a kabalistic explosion of possession and <i>dybukim</i>, we understand better that these kinds of supernatural stories change with the times, reflecting the concerns and conditions of the people who tell them. Who am I to say that modern “dybbuk boxes” are stupid, offensive and just plain <i>wrong</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">So I won’t say that. But I will say that the “dybbuk box” conceit is one that allows anyone to profit off a fresh angle on a supernatural story (something rare in Hollywood) while marginalizing the Jews who would have otherwise been central to such a story. And at the risk of opening a box full of angry dybbuks, I will indeed call bullshit on any story which exorcises the Jews out of their own myths. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-89654630284355177552022-08-23T18:53:00.003-04:002022-08-23T19:04:26.919-04:00The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye (Book Talk with Barry Trachtenberg) <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'm happy to say that the video is now available for the book talk I did with author Barry Trachtenberg for his latest, <i><a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-holocaust-and-the-exile-of-yiddish/9781978825451" target="_blank">The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye</a></i>.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The <i>Algemeyne Entsiklopedye</i> <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">(General Encyclopedia) was a 16-volume set published between 1930 and 1966, with Yiddish and English volumes, some on Jewish topics and others for general knowledge. But that dry description really can't capture the many twists and turns the project took over three decades.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">I had a fantastic time chatting with Barry for a book talk sponsored by the <a href="http://congressforjewishculture.org" target="_blank">Congress for Jewish Culture</a>. I hope you'll give it a watch. He is a wonderful historian and a really engaging speaker.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">(And while you're watching the video, make sure you subscribe to the Congress for Jewish Culture YouTube page.)</span></span></div><div><br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pxw3UbMN_3s" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The men who launched the <i>Algemeyne</i> project hoped:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><blockquote>"...to add a sophisticated Yiddish language encyclopedia to the already blossoming global genre of Jewish encyclopedias in world languages. The <i>Entsiklopedye’s</i> central tension lay between those who felt the goal should be to offer world knowledge for Yiddish readers, and those who urged the <i>Entsiklopedye</i> to educate Jews about their own history. It was a tension that would linger across the <i>Entsiklopedye’s</i> many twists and turns.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">For more on the wild history of Yiddish reference books, see my May column, </span><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/yiddish-encyclopedia-rokhl" target="_blank">Encyclopedic Knowledge</a></i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-47139436971531168962022-08-23T16:46:00.066-04:002022-08-24T12:53:14.382-04:00Who By Fire, Who By Knight of Swords<p></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">New at <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/golden-oldies-khazones-rokhl" target="_blank">Rokhl's Golden City</a>: </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jeremiah Lockwood and the revival of traditional cantorial music<br /></span></h1><p></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>...With one holy tune, one can relay the content of entire bookshelves, for the language of melody is concise.</i> </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">-Shneur Zalman of Liady (first rebbe of Chabad), quoted in Avrom Rekhtman's <a href="https://u1lib.org/book/17527721/ca7eb3" target="_blank">memoir of the Ansky ethnographic expedition</a>.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Cantors, khazones, and nigunim were central to the work of the Ansky expedition, carried out in the heart of Hasidic Ashkenaz. In contrast with the s</span><span style="font-family: arial;">cholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, who found the redemption of Jewishness in books and other texts</span><span style="font-family: arial;">, the Ansky expedition privileged the sensory and sensual, ephemeral and ghostly traces of what they perceived to be a disappearing, pre-modern existence. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />And how do you capture a Yiddish ghost? Not with a proton pack, khas v'sholem, but with an Edison wax cylinder phonograph. The expedition made 500 such recordings (in addition to collecting 1,000 melodies and 1500 folk songs.) </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Avrom</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Rekhtman's memoir of the expedition notes many funny and fascinating (and at times, disturbing) encounters between the expedition team and shtetl residents, mediated by this spooky new piece of technology.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />A hundred years later, Jewish modernity is still being shaped in the encounter between Jewish researchers and their Hasidic neighbors. I recently caught up with <a href="https://jeremiahlockwood.com" target="_blank">Jeremiah Lockwood</a> to learn more about his research in modern khazones. As we talked, bright lines of connection emerged between the work of the Ansky expedition team and Jeremiah's own work recording the rebel cantors of contemporary Hasidic Williamsburg. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />That new record is called "<a href="https://jewishfestival.bandcamp.com/album/golden-ages-brooklyn-chassidic-cantorial-revival-today" target="_blank">Golden Ages: Brooklyn Chassidic Cantorial Revival Today</a>." But </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>"<b>Hidden Melodies Reveled</b>" - the name of his </span><span>upcoming Rosh Hashanah concert event with </span><b>Because Jewish -</b><span> resonates just as much with the work he's been doing with these Hasidic cantors.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xZBbk64-8ww" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What I discovered in our conversation is that in 2022, Hasidic Williamsburg is not some romantic source of "authentic" Yiddishkayt to be "collected" by objective scientists. Rather, it is a community that, in some surprising ways, is just as alienated from its own past as a child of 1980s Jewish American suburbia, such as myself. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The "hidden melodies" in this case are the recordings of Golden Age khazones, made a hundred years ago by men who prized improvisation and artistry. I</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">n order to access this tradition, t</span><span style="font-family: arial;">he Hasidic artists whom Jeremiah recorded had to do their own kind of salvage ethnography. Indeed, one of the cantors got into this repertoire after finding a cassette tape of Golden Age khazones underneath a washing machine! ...</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Last November I wrote about how <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/whats-in-a-name-yiddish-pseudonyms" target="_blank">taking a new name was a key act of self-creation for modern Yiddish speaking Jews</a>. I asked Jeremiah to speak to the history of cantors and name changes:</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">...many cantors took new names when they performed for non-Jewish audiences, at the opera, for example, or even in vaudeville. “Name changes,” he said, “reflect the polyglossia of modern Jewish life. Jews weren’t satisfied with just code switching, they had to change the very substance of their beings. They’re like Jacob wrestling the angel and receiving a new name. It’s the angel of history now, instead of the angel of the Lord.” Lockwood pointed me to the cantor Pierre Pinchik as a particularly vivid example.<br /><br />Pinchik was born Pinchas Segal somewhere around 1900 in Russia. He went from the Hasidic yeshiva world to the Kyiv conservatory....<br /><br />...after he had immigrated to the United States, he released an album called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzZwICRkLM">Two Sides of Pinchik</a> (1962). The cover features two pictures of him, one, in his cantorial garb, the other, in his incarnation as a suave artist of the world. This duality is also reflected in his song choices. One side of the album is liturgical and the other is traditional Yiddish songs.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">There’s something intriguing in the</span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Two Sides</span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">concept. Though he has changed his name to the continental-sounding “Pierre,” Pinchik is not hiding anything, but rather, he’s putting his various selves into conversation, perhaps even inviting us to imagine</span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"> </span><a href="https://momentmag.com/music/#music-lockwood" style="background-position: 100% 92%; background-size: 100% 1px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1155cc; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">many sides to Pierre Pinchik</span></a><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">.</span><span> ...</span></span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'll conclude by going to back to Shneur Zalman: "<b>the language of melody is concise</b>." </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I recently had a friendly argument with Jeremiah about whether you needed to understand the words of a song to enjoy it. He came down pretty firmly on the "don't need the words" side, a take which, I'll admit, scandalized me, as a writer of words. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But it also reminded me that in approaching khazones, it's ok to not worry about the meaning so much and to simply let yourself listen once in a while.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/golden-oldies-khazones-rokhl" target="_blank">Read more about Jeremiah's work over at Rokhl's Golden City</a></i>...</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-26545846260381400522022-04-21T12:07:00.001-04:002022-04-21T12:11:42.562-04:00Listening Parties & Posthumous Release of The Ginzburg Geography<p> </p><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; min-width: 100%; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td style="margin: 0px; padding-top: 9px;" valign="top"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; max-width: 100%; min-width: 100%; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 18px 9px; word-break: break-word;" valign="top"><h2 style="color: #222222; font-size: 34px; line-height: 42.5px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><i><b>Save the Date: </b> Listening Parties & Posthumous Release of<br /><u>The Ginzburg Geography</u></i></span></h2><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><i><u><br /></u></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrvZy43OlHvO5xhYhtIoreWuXxXjqhH9zM1eKfROEnhpRjugEcZTFM6rdZTUvuIv5NMSQgrp_Ny95kxkGhnPAKog_ruEbMNx6yP416AKLLP0iM2rTR3cvKgNnvQGi7aiboYwQBnh2OnVFvukdOdXp-2bMOFayJ0o4t8SttGyS5vSHu2niiTAV3fo49Qw/s917/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-21%20at%2011.56.42%20AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="917" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrvZy43OlHvO5xhYhtIoreWuXxXjqhH9zM1eKfROEnhpRjugEcZTFM6rdZTUvuIv5NMSQgrp_Ny95kxkGhnPAKog_ruEbMNx6yP416AKLLP0iM2rTR3cvKgNnvQGi7aiboYwQBnh2OnVFvukdOdXp-2bMOFayJ0o4t8SttGyS5vSHu2niiTAV3fo49Qw/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-21%20at%2011.56.42%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><u><br /></u></i></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; min-width: 100%; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td style="margin: 0px; padding-top: 9px;" valign="top"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; max-width: 100%; min-width: 100%; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td style="line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 18px 9px; word-break: break-word;" valign="top"><p><span style="color: #757575; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b>Come to hear new songs, sing-along with her bandmates, listen to friends and collaborators discuss the new CD and watch recordings of Jewlia Eisenberg as she speaks about her music. </b></span></p><br /><span style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica;">East Coast | West Coast Listening Parties & Streaming Options:</span><br /><br /><b style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">May 20, Friday 8 p.m.</b><br /><b style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">Venue tbd, East Bay, </b><b style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">California, </b><b style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><br /></b><span style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica;">with: Jason Ditzian, Cynthia Taylor, Laura Inserra, AnMarie Rodgers</span><br /><p style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><b>May 22, Sunday 4 p.m.</b></div><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><b>Barbès, Park Slope, Brooklyn <br /></b>with: Blake Eskin, Marika Hughes, Jill Slater, Jeremiah Lockwood</div><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">With </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">The Ginzburg Geography,</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"> Charming Hostess explores sense of place in the lives of Natalia and Leone Ginzburg, Italian writers famous for their intellectual brilliance and resistance to Mussolini’s fascist state. This album is a musical map of the Ginzburgs, with original scores set to their work. It evokes the Ginzburg's lives in Turin, Abruzzo, and Rome—cities that sustained them emotionally, spiritually, and politically. The sonic palette of </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;">The Ginzburg Geography</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"> draws from Italian regional traditions, anti-fascist songs, and Italian Jewish liturgy.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117); color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"> </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);" /><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);">The album and installation addresses ideas that Jewlia dedicated her life to exploring, "resistance and what sustains people in severely oppressive situations"-- as relevant today as it was for the Ginzburgs during WWII. Getting the album produced was the one thing Jewlia was most steadfast to complete after her 30-day induced coma and intubation. When she did recover in early 2020, the induced paralysis left her unable to wiggle her fingers and toes. She learned to walk and sing again vowing that now more than ever she needed to get her anti-fascist album, </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);">The Ginzburg Geography</i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);"> out into the world. While Eisenberg was able to record vocals and oversee the majority of the band tracks before her passing, the album was ultimately completed by guitarist/producer </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);">Max Baloian</b><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);"> and Eisenberg’s longtime collaborator, cellist/vocalist </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);">Marika Hughes</b><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);">.</span></div><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(117, 117, 117);"><br /></span></div>Much, much, much more about Jewlia and her work at the <a href="https://www.charminghostess.com" target="_blank">Charming Hostess website</a><br /><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"> <b> <wbr></wbr> </b></div><p style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><i> </i> <wbr></wbr> <br /><b> </b> <br /> <wbr></wbr> </p><p style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #757575; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-88522377032168285942022-03-14T23:37:00.005-04:002022-03-19T21:34:57.185-04:00On the first yortsayt of Jewlia Eisenberg, a reflection on Sarajevo Blues<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">We’re coming up on the 30</span><sup style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">th</sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">anniversary of the opening of the Bosnian war, which began, more or less, at the beginning of April 1992, and ended three years later, with heavy intervention from NATO forces.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">Despite an estimated 100,000 casualties (though that number could be much higher), the war seems to have faded from public memory. Last week, during a visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London, Prince William appeared to give voice to this perception. During his public remarks at the event, the Duke of Cambridge <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/prince-william-criticized-calls-europe-conflict-alien-compared-africa-asia-journalist-activists-history" target="_blank">observed</a> that </span>“it’s very alien to see this in Europe…” The “this” presumably being war, now being waged with genocidal fervor by Vladimir Putin against the people of Ukraine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202122;">Prince William was ten years old --not to mention a European monarch in waiting-- when the Bosnian war began. That he apparently has no historical consciousness of what has been called </span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150509083402/http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/bosnia/" target="_blank">the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II</a>," and which happened in his living memory, made him the rightful target of media criticism.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202122;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In addition to the human casualties, the Bosnian war was marked by systematic rape, ethnic cleansing, <span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">and the resulting displacement of 2.2 million people. And yet, as William’s remarks show, those of us not directly touched by it have mostly allowed it to slip from memory. Certainly, World War Two is far further from us in time, and yet remains much, much more present in public memory.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Today, accessibility of digital video and ubiquity of social media combine to make the war in Ukraine uniquely consumable in all its angles, across every platform. Even if there is (god willing) a quick and peaceful resolution, it’s unlikely that Putin’s war against Ukraine could be forgotten in the same way as the Bosnian war. Think about the little girl singing “Let it Go” from a bomb shelter or the plucky babushka downing a Russian drone with a jar of pickled tomatoes. They have both become characters in the global war discourse- images easily adaptable to hopeful Facebook posts and late-night comedy monologues; eagerly consumed by a pandemic-weary world looking for distraction.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And it’s true, the emergence of such wartime “characters” has been a powerful way to elicit material support for those under siege. But our attention comes at a steep cost: their human peril reframed as our entertainment. And as important as it is to rally global support for Ukraine’s government in its fight against Russian aggression, it feels almost impossible to do so without also turning the war into just another piece of content, a kind of spectator sport, with attention grabbing characters, and clearly delineated teams to cheer (or boo) from the safety of thousands of miles of distance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span>It seems to me that the ethical implications of our present-day war-media synergy have gone mostly uninterrogated. Perhaps it is too soon to reflect productively on events still unfolding. But that doesn’t mean no one is speaking to our current moment. Since the war began, my thoughts have turned again and again to my friend, the forever unclassifiable Jewlia Eisenberg. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">From the “forgotten” Bosnian war to Ukraine, her 2004 album </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><a href="https://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=7197" style="color: #954f72;">Sarajevo Blues</a> </i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">feels more relevant than ever. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">March 11 was Jewlia’s first yortsayt. You can read </span><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/remembering-jewlia-eisenberg-rokhls-golden-city" style="color: #954f72;">the tribute I wrote</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"> right after her passing last year. For a beautifully detailed examination of her multifarious oeuvre, especially her scholarship, you can read </span><a href="https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/in-celebration-of-the-life-of-jewlia-eisenberg/" style="color: #954f72;">this recent piece</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">, by her close collaborator, Jeremiah Lockwood. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With her band Charming Hostess, Jewlia put out <i>Sarajevo Blues </i>in 2004, based on the book of the same name by Bosnian journalist-poet, Semezdin Mehmedinovic. The texts collected in <i>Sarajevo Blues</i> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: arial;">reflect his experience living through the years long siege of Sarajevo.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;">Like all of Jewlia's work, her musical adaptation of </span><span><i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: arial;">Sarajevo Blues</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;"> sits at the intersection of music and translation. With </span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;">Sarajevo Blues, </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;">she </span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;"></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;">adds another, very simple question to her musical methodology: </span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;">what is my relationship to the news</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;">? In the liner notes to </span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;">Sarajevo Blues </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: arial;">she says: </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“We all know that simply watching news is not doing anything about what you see. We want to know what’s going on, but human experience in a place where “news” is happening is reduced to the most sensationalistic elements—pain, terror, despair. Watching or even reading the news, one can become complicit in a kind of war-profiteering—the experience of suffering people is appropriated and used to sell cars. Orphans and refugees become icons, divorced from the people they represent, metaphors for other things.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Going further, she declares her intent to explore “other ways of being with the news, ways that focus on real human experience, on particularity and wholeness.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Take the song “Death is a Job.” The lyrics describe the dark irony of life under siege, where a person can find themselves dodging both sniper bullets and war photographers. Jewlia puts the text to a disarmingly upbeat <i>a capella </i>setting, propelling us across that intersection, along with the narrator, who has come to see war photographers as just another enemy faction: <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">They’re doing their job, in deep cover</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If a bullet hit me they got a shot worth so much more than my life</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">That I’m not sure who to hate</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">The sniper or the monkey with a Nikon</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">…</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For the chetniks, I’m just a simple target</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But those others only confirm my utter helplessness</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And even take advantage of it… </span></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">War time journalism has the potential to bring our attention to the atrocious human cost of war. But as a practice, war journalism necessarily obscures its own complicity in the events which give it purpose. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Here Jewlia raises the very questions which seem to me so urgent, and so unaskable, in these heated days of war. In the liner notes, she says that <i>Sarajevo Blues </i>was an extension of her previous work, now “morphed into questions about the possibility of encountering another person’s experience without trivialization or appropriation. What comes of delving into events characterized by vicious nationalism, opportunistic fascists, fleeing refugees, concentration camps, mass slaughter and do-nothing bystanders? … Is it possible, or even desirable, to create emotional connections to brutal events that most Americans (b’ezrat ha-Shem) will never experience?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Sarajevo Blues </span></span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">doesn’t pretend to retrospectively educate Americans on the complex of identities which powered both the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. Nor does it prospectively presume to teach us any grand lesson about the meaning of war. Today, it speaks to us from a place of humanizing paradox. It is both an act of resistance against the historical erasure of a specific war, and at the same time, an assertion of the dignity of human frailty; a song sung against totalizing ideologies and political statements; a testimony to the capacity of music(s) to translate the human experience in ways so compelling that we cannot help but pay attention. In other words, it is alive with everything that made Jewlia the extraordinary artist she was, and always will be.</span></span></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-39414980098751876692022-03-10T18:11:00.000-05:002022-03-10T18:11:24.433-05:00Jewlia Eisenberg and the Sphere of the Endless<p> <b><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Jewish Currents, July-August 2006</span></i></b></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The Sphere of the Endless</span></i></b></h1><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: arial;">[New York City, summer 2006. In which your faithful columnist heads to Joe's Pub to hear the music of Jewlia Eisenberg]</span></i></b></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">...<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Charming Hostess is a </i></b>delightfully indescribable enterprise, more an ongoing project than a band. Though the members of the group haven’t changed much over the years, it is mainly the brainchild of Jewlia Eisenberg. Eisenberg takes unusual, provocative texts and sets them to her own eclectic brand of Jewish fusion music, mostly exploring different traditions of <i>a cappella</i>singing. Imagine the love letters of Walter Benjamin set to transmogrified doo-wop. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">On her newest album, <i>Sarajevo Blues</i>, Eisenberg uses the translated poems of a contemporary Bosnian poet named Semezdin Mehmedinovic. The resulting piece is astonishing in its beauty and its relevance, especially in the way it humanizes the inhumanity of war. Our war in Iraq has been so tightly, criminally managed, leaving us shielded from the death that is being doled out in defense of “our freedom.” What is needed to mobilize opposition, even more than comprehensive, popular reporting about this war, is empathy. Poetry, at its best, can awaken that empathy in us. <i>Sarajevo Blues </i>moved me in a way that a week’s worth of <i>New York Times </i>editorials could not. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When I listen to Jewlia Eisenberg, I am always struck by how she manages to take disparate texts, marry them to odd, haunting music, and express her humanity in an immediate way — and make it all work. She sings in many Jewish languages —Yiddish, Ladino, German, English, Hebrew —and references many musical traditions. Where I would normally pounce on such a <i>khutspedik </i>exemplar of cultural appropriation, I could only crane my neck around the amourous French throng and clap like mad. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHD21wtEGPfMNTekBMojxFTQo46Rbtk_-3WKs5ToxsGnf9aJTZgwT6TPMx-l-YaH8eslmk0kueCy0PU-63TyL8Zd5hWezgKwUIbxHiGfNmzkq_A8k2MZjFFs476AeE5VyGyXIOiLfaz_nQmhl_st6CozctYR5UPMP1LGYDBH3zIGHZ0erEuGl6R5fi8A=s293" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="198" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHD21wtEGPfMNTekBMojxFTQo46Rbtk_-3WKs5ToxsGnf9aJTZgwT6TPMx-l-YaH8eslmk0kueCy0PU-63TyL8Zd5hWezgKwUIbxHiGfNmzkq_A8k2MZjFFs476AeE5VyGyXIOiLfaz_nQmhl_st6CozctYR5UPMP1LGYDBH3zIGHZ0erEuGl6R5fi8A=w270-h400" width="270" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>Ma nishtana . . . </i>What makes her promiscuous appropriation different than others? Usually I hate performers paying tribute to “Our Jewish Heritage” with a song in Yiddish, a song in Ladino and maybe a <i>Hava Nagila </i>encore, doing justice to none and making <i>kitsch </i>out of all. Eisenberg, however, never tries to pass off her pieces as anything “authentic,” except authentically her own. </span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Her exploration of Jewish music, themes and texts is always specific, and motivated, dare I say, by a solid grasp of her own rootlessness. She sees herself in these disparate forms because she appreciates the disparate elements in herself. As she wrote in her liner notes for <i>Sarajevo Blues</i>: </span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“As described by Sem [the Bosnian poet], Sarajevo sounds very cool; a pluralistic place [that] included not just the South Slavic ethnic and language groups, but also Sufis, Sephardic Jews and Franciscans. For many years, Sarajevo successfully rejected the limits of nationalism and militarism, and instead embraced connectedness.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She goes on to observe that out of this connectedness came a wartime, urban culture of magazines, poetry and films that served not merely to inform the outside world about what was going on, but to nourish the people of Sarajevo by reaffirming their community and connectedness in the face of nationalism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><i>The tension between nationalism and connectedness </i></b>can also be expressed as the tension between what Shimon Rawidowicz (1897-1957) called the “spheres of the end and the endless.” The sphere of the end, as he described it, is the world of the immediate: of results, solutions and exclusions. The sphere of the endless is the world of the spirit: of the expansion of possibilities, of learning and creativity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nationalism belongs to the sphere of the end, and by its nature excludes — usually violently — other possibilities of connection to others. As Rawidowicz (author of <i>Israel, the Ever-Dying People and Other Essays </i>and a long-time philosopher at Brandeis University) explained it, the meaning of Jewish redemption changed from the time of the Prophets to the time of the Second Temple’s destruction, after which:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“the heavy yoke of galut [exile] made the dream of redemption on the one hand more urgent and burning than in the days of the Prophets, and on the other, more radical, theoretical and utopian. . . . For various social and political reasons, the vision of redemption became more national than before, narrower and more restricted, but also more concrete and bloodier, because redemption [<i>goel</i>], by its very nature, is blood-drenched. The root gimel-aleph-lamedis related to blood . . . Redemption, then, is initially linked with blood, the blood of the individual, of the family, and of the tribe. Later, an abstract, spiritual meaning developed from the word or concept <i>goel</i>: <i>geulah</i>, redemption as national liberation, redemption of the people. But ultimately, redemption is bloody, it costs blood.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nationalism comes at a great price. Despite this price, however, the “sphere of the end,” as Rawidowicz points out, is seductive to all peoples, and especially to Jews. It’s not surprising that with the suffering of millennia upon us, Jews long for an end, either through self-redemption or self-annihilation (assimilation). But Rawidowicz warns against blind faith in the redemptive power of force: “Man does not live by force alone, and certainly not a nation. Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘Zion shall be redeemed by justice’ was not just a catch phrase . . . Justice is, on a deeper level, one of the symbols of the endless, the infinite.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Two weeks after being charmed by Charming Hostess </i></b>and their Francophile audience, I stood on the sidelines of the “Salute to Israel Day” parade and thought about the collision of Rawidowicz’s spheres in Jewish life. Also on the sidelines were anti-occupation protesters (and a few anti-anti-occupation protesters) and the laughable Neturei Karta waving their Palestinian flags. Suddenly I was seized with the desire to lead my own Salute to <i>Golus </i>Day parade all the way back uptown— away from the sphere of flag-waving sameness to the sphere of the endless in my surprisingly diverse Jewish neighborhood. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Judaism and the Jewish people are often criticized for tribalism, and for focusing on law over spirit. Yet Jews have always roamed widely, both geographically and spiritually-intellectually. One of the keys to our survival has been our unique status as an international nation, a scattered people that embraced many kinds of Jewishness, many languages, many nationalities, many traditions. And the truth is that we still do. But no one’s going to organize a parade to celebrate that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“The people of the endless in its true depth,” wrote Rawidowicz, “are essentially the backbone of the Jewish people . . . they are often the great hidden ones of the generation who protect the house of Israel from external and internal fires. They are the personification of stiffneckedness; in them, it reaches its fullest and highest expression; even if they are not the wings of Israel, they are its head and its heart, its hands and its feet.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jewlia Eisenberg’s creative, integrative, connected music was, for me, a small taste of the endless that sustains us. And in these times, with the demands of multiple nationalisms upon us, we need her, and people like her, more than ever. </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-31029688929141440452022-01-30T18:34:00.003-05:002022-01-30T19:22:54.272-05:00International Holocaust Remembrance Day<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">January 27 was <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/remember/international-holocaust-remembrance-day" target="_blank">International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a>, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the last few years, I've published a number of pieces about Holocaust commemoration and memory.</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /> Looking back, a couple things stand out to me:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">1. The importance of being able to identify the perspective of whatever text you’re using: Who is telling the story? Whose documents/archives are being used to construct a narrative?<br />2. The urgency of elevating victim-centered narratives: How did victims themselves understand what was happening? What were their strategies of resistance and resilience? <br />3. The continued expansion of access to contemporaneous testimony via diverse texts. This includes wonderful new film and musical adaptations of archival materials. These new archive-based projects not only present new materials for Holocaust education, but they are also models for future generations to produce new understandings of historical events. ...<br /><br /></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In January 2019</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">, I wrote about the <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/milk-can-memories" target="_blank">film adaptation</a> of Samuel Kassow's history of the Warsaw Ghetto's Oyneg Shabes project, <i>Who Will Write Our History</i>. I argued that the film provides an important new perspective on Holocaust education: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Survivors are worried that they will be forgotten and their individual stories blurred together. Leaders and educators are worried that with the passing of the survivor generation, a powerful weapon against forgetting and Holocaust denial will be lost.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But if ignorance of the Holocaust is rising in general, along with bolder attempts at normalizing Holocaust denial, we cannot lay the burden of education on the shoulders of survivors. General ignorance about the Holocaust is a problem of education and the thinness of historical consciousness in the United States. And the rise of neofascism is a problem that demands a political analysis and solution...<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">...the release of <i>Who Will Write Our History</i> has the potential to effect a sea change in the way we think about Holocaust education. Indeed, I would go so far as to call it the most important Holocaust movie in decades. <i>Who Will Write Our History</i> is the first Holocaust documentary that centers victim stories along with the written and visual materials they created to document their lives. It presents a multifaceted picture of spiritual and cultural resistance within the Ghetto. It sympathetically portrays the everyday dilemmas inherent in survival. Most importantly, it figures the events of World War II as a continuation of Jewish history, not an interruption.</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In January 2021</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">, I wrote about how <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/songs-from-the-ghetto" target="_blank">partnerships between Holocaust archives and musicians are creating new ways into Holocaust memory</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The notes for <i>Cry, My Heart, Cry!</i> run to some 30 digital pages, a dazzling work of musical, linguistic, and historical contextualization. [Producer Zisl] Slepovitch brings his command of many languages and his training in ethnomusicology. At times, the story behind the song is just as gripping as its performance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In his archive testimony, Henri G. recalls how his family moved to Paris in 1932 to escape the anti-Semitism in Poland. But when war broke out in France, Henri and his brother had to escape again. He put on a uniform with the insignia of Marshal Petain and went to the train station with his brother, where they had to fool the patrolling Germans. Henri instructed his brother to sing “Une Fleur au Chapeau”(A Flower on the Hat), a jaunty French scouting song. The song itself became an essential part of their survival. As Slepovitch writes in the notes, the arrangement “attempts to convey the feigned carelessness of the two teenagers running for their lives from occupied Paris.” As sung by Sasha Lurje, this version of “Une Fleur au Chapeau” does exactly that, bringing the listener to a moment of breathless daring and bravery with just a few snaps of the finger.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Each song on <i>Cry, My Heart, Cry!</i> contains a hundred threads leading in every direction, inviting contemplation, as well as further research on the part of the listeners. </span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 848px;"><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p></div><blockquote><div class="BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 848px;"><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p></div></blockquote><div class="BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 848px;"><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">September 2019 </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">was the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland. I took the opportunity to <a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorized/5570/unquiet-ghosts-of-the-ghetto/" target="_blank">write about a then-new documentary called </a><i><a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorized/5570/unquiet-ghosts-of-the-ghetto/" target="_blank">Warsaw: A City Divided</a>. </i>"Featuring 10 minutes of newly found amateur footage shot inside the ghetto, <i>A City Divided</i> does something quite extraordinary: It takes us to a place that no longer exists." </span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Holocaust commemoration in the 21st century is haunted by the disappearance of elderly survivors, as well as the physical deterioration of historic killing sites. Each gives us access to irrefutable evidence of crimes that the world would love nothing more than to forget. <br /><br />“[T]he destruction of humans is often symbolized by ruins,” writes Jerzy Elzanowski, a Polish historian of architecture and conservation. Warsaw’s lack of ghetto “ruins” confounds a satisfying encounter with the past, while the ghosts of the Muranow apartment block speak to the unquiet nature of memory.</span></blockquote><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: large;">This January,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> I <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/rethinking-authenticity-kahn-zeitlin" target="_blank">explored the role the Holocaust plays</a> in American Jewish identity formation<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Who am I and what is my relationship to the past?</i> For the modern Jew, there are perhaps few questions greater than this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">American Jews have never stopped struggling with their relationship to the past. Consider the 76% of American Jews (per the <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/" style="color: #954f72;">2020 Pew survey</a>) who view “Remembering the Holocaust” as essential to being Jewish. (This is in contrast with the mere 45% for whom “Caring about Israel” is essential, not to mention the 15% who claimed the same about “Observing Jewish Law.”) In fact, for almost every single demographic slice across the data categories listed, “Remembering the Holocaust” was deemed the most essential to being Jewish.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;">While there are certainly myriad factors working to put the Holocaust at the center of modern Jewish life, it makes sense to me that at a time of diminishing historical consciousness, the Holocaust would be so crucial to American Jewish identity. Understanding one’s own place in history is key to identity formation. For many, the Holocaust is the sole entry point to a thousand years of European Jewish existence. It provides their geographic orientation to Eastern Europe and maybe even their primary contact with Yiddish language and song. And while American Jews as a whole are not terribly interested in going to synagogue, the various days of Holocaust commemoration provide their own structure to the American Jewish calendar...</span></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p> </p><div class="BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 848px;"><div class="BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 848px;"><br /><br /><br /></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-68897163934207269622021-12-13T07:06:00.007-05:002022-12-27T12:58:54.823-05:00Tekufes Teves<p><i> A short story for the approaching solstice... </i></p><p><br /></p><p>--------</p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><i>Tekufes Teves*</i> or Deep Winter, New York City</h1><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I admit I’ve fallen into a rut. So much of what I write these days is polemical and issue driven. Snitches get stitches and polemics get clicks, right?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">You know what else gets clicks? First person confessionals. Problem is, then a lot of strangers on the internet know your darkest secrets. And once they know your secrets, they think they know <i>you</i>. So I don’t share too much about my personal life on here. But it’s the twilight of the year, maybe even sunset on this goddamn pandemic. For once, it feels ok to allow myself a little sentimentality. So, I’m gonna do something a little bit different. I’m gonna tell you what happened on December 21, 2001, the night of <i>Shtumer Shabes</i>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I was in social work school at the time, working at our clinic dedicated to issues affecting elderly widows and widowers. One of the things we learned in clinic was that surviving partners will often have issues around eating. They might end up buying too much and have lots of spoiled food in the house, or, conversely, they would stop buying food altogether and lose the will to eat. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">In many cultures, it’s customary to bring prepared food to mourners. It’s not just a kind gesture or allowing for the debilitating effects of grief, though those are certainly important factors. But something much deeper is happening, even if we’re not aware of it. When we bring a mourner food, it recognizes that eating with, and feeding someone, changes us on a cellular level. And the longer you’ve been sharing food with someone, the greater the effect. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sharing meals isn’t just tied to the release of insulin, but it also affects cortisol and adrenaline levels. Sudden and prolonged changes in these levels can even have an effect on the expression of genes. Many scientists now consider dramatic changes in eating patterns a kind of physical trauma. Emotional blows engender physical wounds. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">What’s worse, this kind of trauma to one person can have a physiological effect two generations afterwards. There’s a whole new field of science around this called epigenetics. One of my professors referred to it as <b><i>‘the haunted body.’</i></b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">During the clinic on widows and widowers, I was paired up with an elderly woman from Poland named Sonja. She had survived the war, but lost her first husband. She remarried in a displaced persons camp in Germany, like many other survivors. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja was very old. I was never exactly sure how old, because she was evasive about it, but she had to be at least 90 when I met her.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Before the war, Sonja had been a dancer in Warsaw. When she got here, she taught dance at Camp Kinderland and other progressive Jewish summer camps. In the 1960s, she started teaching Israeli folk dance at the 92<sup>nd</sup>Street Y. When I asked her where she had picked up Israeli folk dance, she told me she hadn’t. She just did the dances she knew from Poland and changed the hand movements a little. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja understood the value of living boldly. Sometimes she would tell me, “survival isn’t for wimps”. At first, I thought she was referring to what she had to do to survive the war. Much later, I realized she meant that outliving your own world was itself a kind of death.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I ended up hanging out with Sonja, even after the semester was over. One day she called me sounding much more serious than usual. First, she said, she was getting married. I knew she had a gentleman friend named Harry, but I didn’t realize it was so serious. Then she told me she was having a dinner party on Friday and that I was coming. I thanked her for letting me know. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">She hustled me off the phone so quickly, I realized she hadn’t told me what I was bringing. I just assumed the dinner party was in honor of her engagement to Harry. I thought it might be nice if I brought some champagne. When I called her back, though, Sonja told me not to bring anything. Not<i>, oh, bring whatever dessert you like</i>. No, she instructed me, very seriously: I was not to bring anything. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">When I went up to Sonja’s apartment that Friday night, something seemed off. On my previous visits, the apartment had always given off cozy cooking smells, like a hug waiting at the door. This time, the only thing I smelled was a hint of weed creeping out from the far end of the hall. I waited uneasily for Sonja to let me in.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">This was the peak of winter and the sun had gone down hours before. Sonja led me in and my eyes took a moment to adjust. The apartment was in shadow, and flickering candles were scattered about. I suddenly remembered it was Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath or <i>Shabes</i>, as Sonja called it. I had grown up with a vague idea of Yiddish, but never heard anyone speak it. <i>Shabes </i>was a foreign country, and Sonja was my tour guide. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">At the dining room table three place settings were laid out, with beautiful fine china plates and silverware gleaming in the candlelight. Two unlit sabbath candles were waiting near the table.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja had been waiting until I got there to light the candles. You’re really supposed to light them before the sun goes down, she told me, but it was more important that I be there when she did it. At that time, I knew almost nothing about traditional Judaism, having grown up in a very assimilated home in the suburbs. It was the time I spent with Sonja which awakened me to Jewish life, as well as its mysteries. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I stood with Sonja at the dining room table and looked around for the other people. “Where’s Harry?” I asked. Sonja glared at me and I realized this was not an engagement party.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Then she motioned to me to sit down. Sonja and I were at either side of the head of the table. Between us, a third place setting waited in front of an empty chair. Sonja asked me if I knew what day it was. <i>December 21<sup>st</sup></i>. Yes, she said, but what else? I thought for a moment. <i>Solstice. The shortest day of the year. </i>For the first time since I got there, Sonja smiled.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I must have looked exasperated because Sonja began to explain: “What you must understand is that our calendar follows the night sky. It’s the Christian calendar which serves the sun. Our week won’t start until three stars are counted. Our holidays follow the moon. Shortest day, longest day, these are irrelevant to Jewish time.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">But in Zambrow [a town near Bialystock, Poland where Sonja was born], there was one exception. Wintertime, the <i>Shabes </i>before the shortest day of the year, all of the widows who hadn’t remarried observed a holiday of their own. No men, no children, no married women. The widows shared a Friday night meal at the home of the last woman who had lost a husband. It was called **<i>shtumer Shabes. </i>Aside from the blessings, they ate in total silence, and all of their deceased husbands were invited to join. It was considered a sign of respect, as well as a request that the deceased husbands intercede in heaven for the wives they left behind, that they should find new husbands who could take care of them or at least help provide for them.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I gathered that the third place-setting was not for Harry, but Sonja’s deceased first husband, Wojtek, of whom she had often spoken admiringly.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Being young and dumb at the time, and intent on acting out the role of comforting social worker, I took Sonja’s hand. “Well,” I said, “it seems as if Wojtek has already blessed you with Harry.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja gently removed her hand from mine. “This is not for Wojtek. This is for the second one, Itche Meyer.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja rarely spoke about Itche Meyer. He had owned a newspaper kiosk in Times Square. An American relative bought it for him when he and Sonja arrived in 1948. He and Sonja had lived in this apartment for decades until he died sometime in the 1970s. But that was all I knew.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“Rukhele,” Sonja said, “I am what the rabbis calls an <i>isha katlanis</i>, a black widow<i>.”</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">A split second of nervous laughter forced its way out of me before I could cover it with a cough. Sonja’s attitude toward rabbis - and anything that she perceived as too religious - was usually at least mildly sarcastic. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">She ignored my fake cough and continued.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“An <i>isha katlanis </i>is a deadly woman, a wife who has already killed two husbands. The rabbis<i>*** </i>believe such a woman may not be allowed to take a third husband because it would be like murder.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">I pointed out that the Nazis, not Sonja had been responsible for Wojtek’s death. And hadn’t Itche Meyer died of a heart attack?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“Itche Meyer died of a broken heart” Sonja said. “He was a good man. I thought I could learn to love him. But he was a terrible teacher. All he could do was love. Until I started to hate him for loving me.” Sonja stood up and placed her palms on the table.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“Tonight, I invite him home for <i>shtumer shabes</i>. I must know that he forgives me and that I’m not a murderer. My marriage to Harry hangs on his blessing.” <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“But Sonja, I’m not a widow-“<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“It’s America, he’ll understand.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“But how will you -” Sonja cut me off. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">“I will light the candles and make kiddush and then we must not speak another word.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Sonja lit the candles and quietly said the blessing over them, then over the wine. She lifted an embroidered cloth off a plate to reveal three bagels on a plate. She lifted two and said another blessing. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">A simple meal followed, with gefilte fish from the jar (I could see into the kitchen) and a thin chicken broth. Sonja bustled about silently dishing out food, making sure to give the greatest portion to the place setting in front of the third, empty seat. It was physically painful for me to just sit there and not say anything, especially after what Sonja had just laid on me. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Just as I was finishing my second bowl of soup, our silence was broken by three loud knocks on the door. My heart jumped out of my chest and my spoon clattered noisily against the soup bowl. Sonja lived in a doorman building where all visitors and packages were announced via intercom. I looked over at Sonja, but she was calmly sipping soup. I started to ask a question and she shook her head. What question would I even ask?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">When she decided the meal was complete, Sonja silently led me to the door and kissed me on the cheek. As I walked out into the hall, I almost stepped on a bouquet of white roses sitting on the ground. I bent down to pick them up. A card attached to the bouquet had two words written in pencil: <i>mazl tov</i>. I turned to hand the flowers to Sonja, but she had already closed the door. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">*winter solstice</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">**silent Sabbath<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">***Yevamot 64b<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-63817425633025728292021-08-27T16:19:00.005-04:002021-09-09T13:38:50.104-04:00Kum tsu mir (or, that time I translated Jimmy Buffett into Yiddish)<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If you've ever studied a second language, you know there's a huge difference between the skills needed for passive reading comprehension, conversation, and translating from your native language into the second language. Translating into Yiddish was one of those things I just thought I'd never be able to do well, so why even try?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>And then I tried.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">See, this spring, everyone was talking about a "hot vax summer" and the resulting hedonism. Haha! But who knew then the hot vax summer was gonna be one big fizzle? I got a dybbuk in me (as one does) and decided I would translate Jimmy Buffett's 1973 hit <i>Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)</i> into Yiddish.</span></p><p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LL9O0B0gzZE" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<span face="Arial, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">My translation sat on my computer until I saw some very odd news. Jimmy Buffett himself was about to open another hotel in his worldwide lifestyle empire. This would be his</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> first </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #373737;">Margaritaville Resort </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">in New York City, at Seventh Avenue and 40<sup>th</sup>Street, the heart of the Garment District. In an “only in New York” turn of events, the newly opened </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #373737;">Resort is the first of Buffett’s worldwide themed properties to boast an onsite synagogue, the historic Garment Center Congregation. If the universe was going to send me a message to bring my translation into the world, this was it. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737;">At one time, the Garment District employed thousands of Yiddish speakers, especially in the post-war era. </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">To celebrate this unusual meeting of worlds, the <a href="http://congressforjewishculture.org" target="_blank">Congress for Jewish Culture</a> (<b><i>Kultur Kongres</i></b>, in Yiddish), commissioned a superstar group of top klezmorim to bring <i>Kum tsu mir </i>to life: Sasha Lurje (voice), Craig Judelman (violin) and Lorin Sklamberg (guitar, voice). Pay special attention to Craig Judelman's brilliant klezmer break during the instrumental section. Genius.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I couldn't be more thrilled with their interpretation. What a dream come true!</span></p><p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hJZBn6yO-bI" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">If you want to read more,</span><i style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"> </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">we</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"> got some nice coverage from the good folks at </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><a href="https://www.heyalma.com/the-yiddish-cover-of-jimmy-buffett-you-didnt-know-you-needed/" target="_blank">Hey Alma</a></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><a href="https://www.heyalma.com/the-yiddish-cover-of-jimmy-buffett-you-didnt-know-you-needed/" target="_blank"> </a>and the </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><a href="https://forward.com/yiddish/474741/watch-come-to-me/" target="_blank">Forverts</a>,</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"> the <i><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/jimmy-buffetts-famed-bar-ballad-gets-yiddish-translation/amp/jessica@timesofisrael.com/batshuaj/" target="_blank">Times of Israel</a>, </i>and the <a href="https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/when-pina-coladas-meet-kiddush/" target="_blank"><i>Jewish Standard</i></a>.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">If you watch the YouTube video of <i>Kum tsu mir</i>, you'll see you can toggle between Yiddish and English closed captioning. What I tried to do was more than a word for word translation, but rather a cultural translation, flipping the point of view from a man's to a woman's. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">One of the reasons I wrote it this way is that, obviously, I'm a woman and it's natural for me to write from a woman's point of view. More than that, there are very few modern Yiddish/klezmer compositions being written from a woman's point of view. There are a couple I knew of, but not enough. I wanted to give a shout out here to one of my favorites, which was definitely in the back of my head as I was writing my own translation. This is Golem's <i>Come to Me</i> from the <i><a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/0QM2eRSGdPnyhayKBQp0sE" target="_blank">Citizen Boris</a></i> CD:</span></span></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lNmTjP68Izo" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #373737; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And finally, if you enjoyed <i style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">Kum tsu mir</i>, I'd ask you to consider a pre-yontev donation to the <a href="http://congressforjewishculture.org" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;" target="_blank">Congress for Jewish Culture</a>. The song would never have been realized if not for the substantial support of the Congress. Please support artists and arts organizations bringing new Yiddish work into the world. Your contribution makes magic happen!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>
<br />rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-67099216636023968752021-08-04T23:34:00.004-04:002021-08-04T23:34:58.250-04:00In Case You Missed It....<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> My <b><i>Rokhl's Golden City</i></b> comes out twice a month. Are you caught up? Did you see:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/talking-to-the-dead-psychics-witches" target="_blank">Talking to the Dead</a>: </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">A few months ago Brooklyn witch <a href="https://www.moonplutoastrology.com" target="_blank">Aliza Einhorn</a> came to me with an unusual request: to work on her Yiddish skills so she could talk to her dead grandfather. In July, we sat down to </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">chat about about her new book, speaking Yiddish with the dead, and what it's like being a Jewish witch in the heart of Hasidic Brooklyn.</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> ... <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/other-side-of-summer-weddings" target="_blank">The Other Side of Jewish Weddings</a>: For a minute it looked like the vaccine was bringing back real, in person June weddings. (Though dancing was gonna be touch and go.) My friend Sonia Gollance published her wonderful new book on dancing in Yiddish literature and I feature some of the great Jewish wedding dance scenes she talks about in the book ....<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/sounds-of-summer-yiddish-music" target="_blank">The Sounds of Summer</a>: A mid-year check-in on some of the best new klezmer and Yiddish music... <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/spring-awakening-yiddish" target="_blank">Spring Awakening</a>: Whether it's Satan or allergies, Jews have traditionally had a complicated relationship with the great outdoors...</span></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-19417340410892086162021-08-04T22:35:00.001-04:002021-09-09T13:33:18.005-04:00Yiddish in the Mountains<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>EDITED TO ADD</b>: For kids my age ('80s babies) Jews in the Catskills means one thing: DIRTY DANCING. Well, on Tuesday, September 14, DIRTY DANCING screenwriter Eleanor Bernstein will be talking about the stories from her own life which inspired the movie, as well as lots of juicy 'behind the scenes' memories. The event will be live streamed from the Center for Jewish History. More info and tickets <a href="https://programs.cjh.org/tickets/inside-dirtydancing-2021-09-14" target="_blank">here</a>...</i></span></h3><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I didn't grow up going to the Catskills. The golden age of the Jewish Catskills was long over by the time I came along and neither of my parents grew up in the New York area. There was simply no nostalgic attachment to draw us there. My real introduction to the area's faded glory was in the winter of 1998, when I attended my first KlezKamp. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For my July column, I set to researching <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/yiddish-in-the-catskills" target="_blank">Yiddish in the Catskills</a>. The big hotels (Kutshers, Grossingers) have, of course, become synonymous with the Catskills, and the comics who came out of those hotels <i>are</i> the Borscht Belt. The boisterous, in-your-face style of those comics was matched by hotel guests who knew what they wanted and weren't shy about getting it: </span></p><p><span style="background-color: #f7f6f2;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">That image of the Catskills persists today: a shrieking, shpritzing, fressing, Jews-only paradise (and antisemite’s nightmare), where mating was pursued with the kind of collective single-mindedness to make a salmon pause upstream in admiration. With some degree of ambivalence, Richler called the hotel guests “sitting ducks for satire.” Weren’t these Jews simply living the American dream of abundance and security?, he wondered. In any case, he assured us, hotel guests had a sense of humor about themselves. Whatever you might say about them, they had already said, loudly, and worse.</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Catskills hotels, <b style="font-style: italic;">where mating was pursued with the kind of collective single-mindedness to make a salmon pause upstream in admiration.</b> Sure, singles were there to find mates (to put it mildly). But sex was just as important to families who came up for extended summer stays. Often times, the women and kids would stay at a bungalow or <i>kokhaleyn</i> (a self-catering kind of holiday rental) during the week and the men would come up on the weekend. This didn't make it into my column, but I kept coming across references to the men who would come up for the weekend: they traveled on the <i style="font-weight: bold;">bull train </i>or a solo husband driving himself was making the <b><i>bull run</i></b>. Forget about salmon, our metaphor has moved out of the stream and onto the farm. Buckle up, friends. Jewish continuity is not a child's game. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For research, I watched <i>The Goldbergs</i> 1954 summer arc, where the whole family heads off to Pincus Pines hotel. Each episode opens with Gertrude Berg (playing Molly Goldberg) pushing Rybutol vitamins on us. She tells us Rybutol can counteract the draining effect of the summer heat. I only hope all those husbands were taking Rybutol before heading off to do their mountain duties.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">On this episode, the Goldbergs are still at home in the Bronx when Mr. Pincus (the Yiddish theater great Joseph Buloff) comes to visit. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Interestingly, Gertrude Berg was born to Catskills hotel owners. Far from the character of Molly Goldberg, though, Berg spoke unaccented English and had to read any Yiddish lines phonetically. Here we have Joe Buloff, originally of the Vilne Troupe, playing a put upon hotelier, and Gertrude Berg, the thoroughly American daughter of hoteliers, playing the greenhorn hotel guest. <i>That's showbiz, right?</i></span></p><p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nMSlYIJsOrQ?start=725" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(Side note: once I started watching The Goldbergs, I started thinking of daughter Rosie as the Marilyn Munster of the Goldberg family. She's the young, thin, beautiful one who clearly fits in with mainstream American society. The parents' generation is still that of immigrants. And, of course, what is <i>The Munsters</i> but a story of immigrants trying their cheerful best to assimilate???)</span></div><div><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">On this episode, daughter Rosalie is bored because there are no eligible young men to talk to. Then a young, single doctor comes along and the hotel guests collectively <b>lose their minds</b>.</span><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><div><br /></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oUDaNKs8W-I?start=725" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And finally, my favorite episode, where we get to see the hotel staff getting ready to close out the season and put on their end of summer talent show. The chef "Maurice" is played by a German-Jewish actor named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Hillaire" target="_blank">Marcel Hillaire</a>. After the war he came to America and reinvented himself as a "Frenchman" for hire. His "Maurice" seems to be typical of the shtik he toured around the country.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n68Mq8_UckA?start=615" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-40207371136624368732021-06-08T19:44:00.004-04:002021-06-08T19:50:53.178-04:00Streets of Fire is Finally on Netflix!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>(Crosspost from my <a href="https://notsocriticaltheory.blogspot.com/2021/02/streets-of-fire.html" target="_blank">movie blog</a>)</i></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A couple months ago I wrote about the neon-and-leather fairy tale flop, <i><a href="https://www.netflix.com/watch/1007457" target="_blank">Streets of Fire</a></i>. It's finally arrived on Netflix (can't believe I paid to see it in February!) so I'm reposting my essay, in case any of you are curious about the movie...</span></h4><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">----------</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Have you seen</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Warriors </i><span style="font-family: arial;">(1979)? I consider it one of the finest American films of the last fifty years, and not just because director Walter Hill had the audacity to make a movie about New York gangs and dressed them like this.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5RFvhv5Bxek/YC3yGxm516I/AAAAAAAAMuI/8yFgpHy6YswjKw6fL9YybifBX4GF9utCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s697/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-17%2Bat%2B11.49.59%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="697" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5RFvhv5Bxek/YC3yGxm516I/AAAAAAAAMuI/8yFgpHy6YswjKw6fL9YybifBX4GF9utCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-17%2Bat%2B11.49.59%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><p><br /></p><span style="font-family: arial;">Anyway, this isn’t about that. Sorry.</span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">After <i>The Warriors</i>, Walter Hill had an odd career trajectory, with huge hits like <i>48 Hours </i>(1982), and daring flops, like <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005FDW546/" target="_blank">Streets of Fire </a></i>(1984). You can see flashes of <i>The Warriors </i>in <i>Streets of Fire</i>: the heroes fight to make it across a city, there’s an epic gang battle, and the camera lovingly returns to lonely train station after lonely train station. But none of it can possibly add up to the gripping sweep of <i>The Warriors</i>. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In 2017, after decades lingering forgotten on the outskirts of pop culture, <a href="https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/streets-of-fire-collector-s-edition?product_id=4996" target="_blank">Shout Factory reissued <i>Streets of Fire </i>on Blu-Ray</a>. The film is now undergoing a bit of a reconsideration, quietly going from neglected flop to cult classic, especially among viewers who weren’t even alive in the 1980s. If you check Twitter, it seems someone is always discovering and subsequently flipping their wig over its many virtues: the bangin’ soundtrack, Ry Cooder score, Hill’s odd fixation on suspenders, and the amazing cast, including an extremely young and hot Willem Dafoe. What’s not to love?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KFwdVesD2Tw/YC3_cCzm_lI/AAAAAAAAMuc/J-2a7xe7cWMEAy8nMnL8M777d-wHku7aACLcBGAsYHQ/s554/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-18%2Bat%2B12.47.02%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="554" height="184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KFwdVesD2Tw/YC3_cCzm_lI/AAAAAAAAMuc/J-2a7xe7cWMEAy8nMnL8M777d-wHku7aACLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h184/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-18%2Bat%2B12.47.02%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>LOL what the fuck?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Well, it turns out, a lot. What’s so fascinating, and ultimately disappointing, about <i>Streets of Fire</i>, is that despite the insane amount of talent both behind and in front of the camera, it’s painfully clear what made the movie flop in the first place. The script simply stinks. The dialogue sounds like a first draft and the characters are forced to say witless, obvious things, over and over. The inane dialogue is in stark contrast to the movie’s gorgeously rendered visuals. <i>Streets of Fire </i>immerses you in its darkly sexy, gritty world, where even the puddles are full of sex and neon. I understand why so many want to claim the film for a neglected masterpiece. If only the human beings in it had more depth than the puddles! </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Sure, the movie is supposed to be stylized. I can get down with stylized. But there’s stylized and then there’s just undercooked. If you only watched the first few minutes, though, you’d have a very different impression of the film. The opening is a killer; a breathless set piece which drops us right into the movie’s brilliantly conceived nether-world, amping up the excitement with a nightclub number and introducing us to the story's beautiful damsel in distress, Ellen Aim (Diane Lane). But where <i>The Warriors </i>told a story almost without words, seamlessly melding action and immersive visuals<i>, Streets of Fire </i>is weighed down by its dreadful script, punctuated by exciting musical moments. I’m sure that at the time, <i>Streets of Fire </i>was dismissed as a symptom of the MTV-ification of the movies. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lEOvn2IaLMM" width="560"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was alive during the '80s. I remember well the panic about music videos and what destruction they were wreaking on our culture. There was moral panic (over, of all things, a Duran Duran video FFS) as well as aesthetic panic. We were warned that fast paced ‘MTV style’ cutting was going to be the death of all things right and good with cinema, as if Sergei Eisenstein himself hadn’t died for all our sins right there on the rapid-cut Odessa Steps sixty years earlier. But, really. <i>C’mon</i>. Rapid cutting can be good! Music videos can be good! The problem is not the pernicious influence of music videos. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And not every music-video inspired movie need be as bad as something like <i>Flashdance </i>(which, curiously, like <i>Streets of Fire</i>, also feaures Lee Ving in a supporting role…anyway…). If Walter Hill had wanted to make long form music videos, then he should have had the courage of his convictions and just done that. It worked for Jon Landis and Thriller! <i>Streets of Fire </i>would work a lot better if you think of it as a bunch of spectacular, high production value music videos, vaguely connected by a cartoonish storyline. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The script isn’t the only problem with </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Streets of Fire</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">. Walter Hill made the fatal mistake of hanging the movie on Michael Pare, who plays Tom, the roguish anti-hero called home to rescue his ex-girlfriend. Standing still, Pare looks like a GQ model. In motion, he’s got all the sizzle of wet firewood. His lack of screen appeal is all the more apparent because he’s up against Willem Dafoe, playing the villainous gang leader who kidnaps Ellen. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">It’s Dafoe’s first real starring role and he’s magnetic. You see him and think, </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">yup</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">, </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">that’s what a movie star looks like</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">. </span><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #555555;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">You see Michael Pare and you think, <i>yup, that’s what a sub-par hunk looks like, the type Menachem Golan might pick up in the duty-free on his way home from Cannes if they’re all out of Dudikoff.</i> </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Pare never exhibits the slightest bit of humor or self-awareness, a pre-requisite for any good anti-hero. Pretty much </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">everyone </i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">in the movie is dour and unnecessarily mean.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Perhaps most unforgivably, Hill cast Rick Moranis as Billy Fish, Ellen Aim’s obnoxious manager-cum-boyfriend. Just as Moranis was sliding into his golden era of comic triumphs in the 1980s, Hill handed him this absolute turd of a role, though he does his best with the material at hand. I dare say, a less talented, and less lucky, performer would have had his career utterly derailed by such an unfortunate turn. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In a film where most of the dialogue is clunky and the characters are underwritten, Billy Fish is the clunkiest and flattest. Was it a coincidence that the one Jewish-coded character in the movie is a greedy little shit who can’t stop talking about money? He’s constantly berated for being short, which gets really tired after about the tenth time. Hill might as well have placed a Kick Me sign on him and called it a day for character development. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Hill came <i>so close </i>to stumbling onto what would’ve been a brilliant casting choice. No director or writer has yet spotted the untapped potential in casting Moranis in a really juicy bad-guy role.** If you go all the way back to SCTV, you see the range of his personas, far beyond the cliche nerds, and Moranis can <b><i>rage hard </i></b>like nobody else. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Larry Siegel is just one of my favorites.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tKBwIxvONSc" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Having Moranis play a psychopathic gang leader would’ve been utterly unexpected, and absolutely delicious. I still hold out hope that in one of the endless pieces of licensed Marvel garbage now keeping the movie industry afloat, someone somewhere will understand this and convince Moranis to make a big comeback as a Marvel villain. I'm asking you, <i><b>Where is the villainous short king we deserve???? </b></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><b><br /></b></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i></i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yOv67uVqhZo/YC3-q8_yrhI/AAAAAAAAMuU/VvGdgazLLpc1SXFUw6M1xU4yHvHfLaTkACLcBGAsYHQ/s837/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-18%2Bat%2B12.43.32%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="837" height="103" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yOv67uVqhZo/YC3-q8_yrhI/AAAAAAAAMuU/VvGdgazLLpc1SXFUw6M1xU4yHvHfLaTkACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h103/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-02-18%2Bat%2B12.43.32%2BAM.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Of course people are obsessed</i></td></tr></tbody></table><i><br /></i><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Willem Dafoe has said that playing the Green Goblin in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies was one of his all-time favorite roles. It was both a critical and fan favorite and even I, a person who hates comic book movies, I have to agree that it was a very good thing. I will (happily) eat my comic book hating hat if it’s Marvel which ends up finally giving us the nerd-to-America's dad-to-anti-hero character arc for which we've already waited too damn long. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">**Arguably Mel Brooks had the genius to do just that, casting Moranis as Dark Helmet in <i>Spaceballs, </i>giving us a taste of what might still be...</p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-2354904842918532442021-04-05T13:17:00.001-04:002021-04-05T13:17:45.378-04:00Commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19<span style="font-family: arial;">On April 19, the <a href="http://congressforjewishculture.org" target="_blank">Congress for Jewish Culture</a>, along with Friends of the Bund, Jewish Labor Committee and Workers Circle, will once again observe the anniversary of the 1943 <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising" target="_blank">Warsaw Ghetto Uprising</a>. It's always a moving event, with music and speeches and fellowship. The event is usually held at the stone in the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Plaza (<i>der shteyn</i>), in Riverside Park.<br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">But because we cannot gather at the <i>shteyn</i> this year, the event will be live online, at the <a href=" www.congressforjewishculture.org/videos" target="_blank">Congress for Jewish Culture website</a> <span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;"> </span>and at its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCImhbhZ0JyMyEG1_KPnOXYQ/featured" target="_blank">YouTube page</a>. The program will begin at 1 p.m.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">...I've written about cinematic and documentary depictions of the Warsaw Ghetto <a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorized/5570/unquiet-ghosts-of-the-ghetto/" target="_blank">here</a>, and about the ghosts of the former Ghetto, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/ghosts-of-the-ghetto-rokhl" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-91977866951558330152021-03-21T14:07:00.006-04:002021-03-21T14:33:48.000-04:00Adapting Jewish Literature: Yentl and A Tale of Love and Darkness (video)<p><span style="font-family: arial;">"Without hubris you will never be an artist..." -my teacher, Ruby Namdar</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Last week I had the honor of joining Ruby Namdar, Fania Oz-Salzberger, and Eitan Kensky for a delightful and thought provoking discussion of <i>Yentl</i> and <i>A Tale of Love and Darkness</i>. The video of that event is now available to watch.</span></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EvlAbIV7F1g" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Many thanks to Stanford University and </span><a href="https://momentmag.com" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">Moment Magazine</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> for inviting me and making it happen.</span></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-3885263306599665762021-03-17T21:54:00.000-04:002021-03-17T21:54:36.216-04:00The Lives and Legacies of Jewish Women Who Resisted the Nazis (video)<p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm pleased to say that video is now available for the live webinar I moderated on the role of Jewish women and resistance. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wagner College professor Lori Weintrob led the program, called "Heroines of the Holocaust," based on her research and teaching at the Wagner College Holocaust Center. We were also lucky to have a survivor named Rachel Roth and her family as special guests during the program. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It was a really special program and I hope you'll watch it.</span></p><h1 class="title style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" style="border: 0px; color: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary)); font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-size, var(--yt-navbar-title-font-size, inherit)); font-variant: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-variant, inherit); font-weight: 400; line-height: var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem); margin: 0px; max-height: calc(2 * var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem)); overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-shadow: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-text-shadow, none); transform: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-transform, none);"><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="word-break: break-word;"></yt-formatted-string></h1><h1 class="title style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" style="border: 0px; color: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary)); font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-size, var(--yt-navbar-title-font-size, inherit)); font-variant: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-variant, inherit); font-weight: 400; line-height: var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem); margin: 0px; max-height: calc(2 * var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem)); overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-shadow: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-text-shadow, none); transform: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-transform, none);"><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="word-break: break-word;"></yt-formatted-string></h1><h1 class="title style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" style="border: 0px; color: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary)); font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-size, var(--yt-navbar-title-font-size, inherit)); font-variant: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-variant, inherit); font-weight: 400; line-height: var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem); margin: 0px; max-height: calc(2 * var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem)); overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-shadow: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-text-shadow, none); transform: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-transform, none);"><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="word-break: break-word;"></yt-formatted-string></h1>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nVFMUCsfdDE" width="560"></iframe>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-38203403282701263132021-03-13T23:36:00.004-05:002021-03-14T00:43:32.727-05:00Jewlia Eisenberg and the Music of the Spheres<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script async="" crossorigin="anonymous" defer="" nonce="wHYfbHFy" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v10.0"></script><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>(read more about the new-old Yiddish rituals of mourning in <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/magical-thinking-rokhls-golden-city" target="_blank">my latest column</a>) </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A few days ago we got the terrible news that Jewlia Eisenberg was <i><a href="https://www.facebook.com/charminghostess/posts/10222720754140459" target="_blank">avek in der eybikayt</a></i>, she had passed into the next world. It's always a tragedy when someone is cut down in their prime. It hurts even more to lose an artist like Jewlia. More than just talented, she was a force of nature; a holy vessel of song; a generous, optimistic, expansive soul. I felt so lucky every time I got to be with her. My heart and my thoughts are with her partner, AnMarie, and the rest of her family....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I had first seen Jewlia and Charming Hostess at Tonic, some time in the early 2000s. I was immediately smitten with her, her music, and the incredible musicians she worked with. I had never heard anything like this. I didn't even have the words to describe what they were doing. How often can you say that?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">On one of Jewlia's visits to New York she visited me at the law firm where I worked. This was probably sometime around 2014 or 2015. We had lunch in the fancy firm cafeteria, sitting by the wraparound windows, where you could eat your panini and enjoy the view of Fox News HQ. I remember Jewlia telling me about her work as a <a href="http://radicalritual.com/Welcome.html" target="_blank">ritual facilitator and officiant</a> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in the Bay Area, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">a world away from midtown. Though I rolled my eyes at the thought of getting </span><i style="font-family: arial;">too</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> into god, by the end of our lunch, I was making plans to fly to Oakland just to be able to pray with her and her </span><i style="font-family: arial;">khevre</i><span style="font-family: arial;">. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Even after we had become friends, I remained a dedicated Jewlia superfan. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I was sitting front row, of course, at this 2013 show at Barbes, where I took this picture.</span></p>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fA2mDVRzMIg/YE11FYFPhDI/AAAAAAAAM7w/WwJEmd2MoX410dpi5Ah8yCHNmq7l_eGTACLcBGAsYHQ/s1952/Jewlia%2BBarbes.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1952" data-original-width="1458" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fA2mDVRzMIg/YE11FYFPhDI/AAAAAAAAM7w/WwJEmd2MoX410dpi5Ah8yCHNmq7l_eGTACLcBGAsYHQ/w299-h400/Jewlia%2BBarbes.jpg" width="299" /></a><div><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Jewlia at Barbes in 2013</span></i> </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Jewlia was one of the very first artists I profiled as a journalist. I wrote about her in my Rootless Cosmopolitan column in <i>Jewish Currents</i> in 2006. (Apparently not available online)</span><div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pa2z_tqlTnc/YE14jxNp-PI/AAAAAAAAM78/vqipw_yn2vo_6eb2A_TgUwowNhFCOg1wgCLcBGAsYHQ/s491/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-13%2Bat%2B9.38.12%2BPM.png"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="413" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pa2z_tqlTnc/YE14jxNp-PI/AAAAAAAAM78/vqipw_yn2vo_6eb2A_TgUwowNhFCOg1wgCLcBGAsYHQ/w336-h400/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-13%2Bat%2B9.38.12%2BPM.png" width="336" /></a></div><br /><p></p><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MKMlkOzRwXQ/YE14j1FQeKI/AAAAAAAAM74/2OZ2MVYG3eI_SO31jBKKHOZ4SJram3aNwCLcBGAsYHQ/w312-h400/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-13%2Bat%2B9.38.44%2BPM.png" /></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><br /></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><br /></a><br />I'm still trying to get my mind around losing her. I knew she was sick and had been for a very long time. And yet. In a year which has seen such unbearable loss, losing Jewlia feels especially unbearable.<br /> <br />How painfully apt then, that my <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/magical-thinking-rokhls-golden-city" target="_blank">last column</a> ended up being delayed, coming out the day after we learned the news about Jewlia's passing. The topic was the one year anniversary of the pandemic, and Yiddish <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/magical-thinking-rokhls-golden-city" target="_blank">rituals of grief and mourning</a>. For this column, I learned about the skilled mourning women of Ashkenaz, the <i>klogmuters</i>, who wailed and ripped their clothes and performed grief for the community. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I interviewed my friends who are researching and reclaiming the practice of </span><i style="font-family: arial;">feldmestn</i><span style="font-family: arial;">, the ritual measurement of a graveyard with string and use that string to make </span><i style="font-family: arial;">neshome likht</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> (soul candles). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Like the </span><i style="font-family: arial;">badkhns</i><span style="font-family: arial;">, the </span><i style="font-family: arial;">klogmuters'</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> wailing work consisted of variations on established themes and set patterns. With her work as a ritual facilitator, and her interest in women's poetry, I think Jewlia would have been fascinated by the functional poetry of the </span><i style="font-family: arial;">klogmuters</i><span style="font-family: arial;">. All we can do now, though, is wail in her memory, the best we can.</span></div></div><div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div></div></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-90189700128273576422021-03-11T20:23:00.005-05:002021-03-13T23:51:14.225-05:00This Song is Your Song<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Today we had our event celebrating the new Yiddish translation of Woody Guthrie's classic ode to America, <i>This Land is Your Land</i>. I joined <i>Forward</i> Editor-in-Chief Jodi Rudoren and <i>Forverts</i> writer Jordan Kutzik, along with musician-archivist Lorin Sklamberg, translator and Yiddish expert Michael Wex, and the singer of <i>Dos Land iz Dayn Land</i>, Daniel Kahn. We had a really fun conversation about the <b>why</b> and <b>how</b> of translating from English into Yiddish. If you couldn't make it live, you can watch the video now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The funniest part, for me at least, came when I noted that in the Yiddish translation, Daniel had inserted a reference to the <i>groyse ozeres</i>, the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are, of course, one of America's natural wonders and a perfect fit for a song like <i>This Land is Your Land</i>. But it also struck me as a very personal reference to Daniel's homeland of Detroit. Though I, a parochial New Yorker, confessed I had never actually seen any of the Great Lakes. At which point, Michael Wex chose to chastise me in front of the crowd, reminding me that I had been to Toronto (in fact, countless times) and had enjoyed walking along one of the Greatest of lakes. <i>Oops</i>. To make up for my unintentional insult to the great nation to the north of us, I'll encourage everyone to listen to the folksinging group <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trNCBMKvHcs" target="_blank">The Travellers doing their Canadian version of <i>This Land is Your Land</i>.</a></span></p>
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<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course, it's well worth your time to watch Daniel perform the song (again).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GnP8zWcy1ZA" width="560"></iframe><div><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2;"><br /></span>
<div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">And finally, for the last couple months I've been OBSESSED with this extremely funky version of <i>This Land is Your Land</i> by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Sharon sings the verse that's often omitted, in which the singer comes across a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign (and walks right past it). If you've never heard this version, PLEASE drop everything and listen right now.</span></div><div> </div><div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XQ78uDio_ao" width="560"></iframe></div></div></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-64009339697709431862021-03-10T14:20:00.000-05:002021-03-10T14:20:38.121-05:00How Do You Get to Second Avenue?<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">[I'm very pleased to tell you about a new, in-depth </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/" target="_blank">Digital Yiddish Theatre Project</a></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> piece on my play, <i>Shtumer Shabes</i>. Read it <i><a href="https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/shtetl-gothic-on-the-virtual-stage-rokhl-kafrissens-shtumer-shabes-at-the-chutzpah-festival" target="_blank">here</a></i>.]</span></h4><p><span style="font-family: arial;">-------------------------------------------------------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You know that moment? When a Broadway show finally opens? The drama critics rush to the phone booths to dictate their reviews to their various newspaper copy desks. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU598QhODA8/YEkW4_9qOaI/AAAAAAAAM7E/vhtpzB8Um60f2w6-Wi8VPTcKRsjVYUqQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s521/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-10%2Bat%2B1.58.13%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="396" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU598QhODA8/YEkW4_9qOaI/AAAAAAAAM7E/vhtpzB8Um60f2w6-Wi8VPTcKRsjVYUqQQCLcBGAsYHQ/w152-h200/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-10%2Bat%2B1.58.13%2BPM.png" width="152" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>Before the cast can even finish their champagne toasts at Sardi’s (I imagine), the late edition newspaper is being delivered, along with the critics’ verdicts, and, by extension, the show’s future. It's one of my favorite movie magic moments. It’s all so brutal, but dramatically efficient. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Life isn’t always so dramatically efficient. Or, maybe, not in the ways we ache for. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">At the end of November, 2020, I presented excerpts from my new play, <em><a href="https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/shtumer-shabes-a-new-play-by-rokhl-kafrissen" target="_blank">Shtumer Shabes</a>, </em>at the <a href="https://www.chutzpahfestival.com/event/shtumer-shabes" target="_blank">Vancouver Chutzpah! Festival</a>. This was as close as I was getting to my big opening moment amid the bleakness of 2020. Afterwards, though we didn’t all retire to Sardi’s together (halevai!) I got some truly wonderful messages from the folks who watched, especially the many Yiddishist world friends who had “attended.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the great surprises was getting warmly positive feedback from the non-Yiddishists, too. Their enthusiasm made me feel like just maybe, I could write accurate, compelling drama about a highly niche subculture and still make make something watchable for all audiences. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BPx5q2rr75I/YEkbU3rgDVI/AAAAAAAAM7M/LmNguha-cc04mgB9sfSClsrVZxgGQok6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1908/IMG_4766.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="1908" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BPx5q2rr75I/YEkbU3rgDVI/AAAAAAAAM7M/LmNguha-cc04mgB9sfSClsrVZxgGQok6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_4766.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;">And yet, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat unsatisfied. In November, there had been no opportunity for me to spy on the audience and see who laughed and who didn’t, no post-show shmoozing in the lobby, no face-to-face rehash. The delicious intimacy of theater was lost in the move to the virtual space. And I had poured so much into the text: carefully researched history, character details, in-jokes and lowbrow gags, and maybe even the memory of an old lover repurposed for my own dramatic use. The feedback I did get was lovely, but at a melancholy distance. <br /> <br />So I was all the more thrilled when a few weeks ago, Yiddish literature scholar Sonia Gollance told me that she would be writing about <em>Shtumer Shabes </em>for the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project (DYTP). Sonia’s piece, <em><a href="https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/shtetl-gothic-on-the-virtual-stage-rokhl-kafrissens-shtumer-shabes-at-the-chutzpah-festival">Shtetl Gothic on the Virtual Stage</a></em>, is out now and I’m not ashamed to say it made my damn month. It's an in-depth look at the reading we did, touching on the text, the performances, and the technical challenges of this new kind of performance. <br /> <br />Going from critic to playwright is a harrowing prospect, if you think about it too much, which I try not to. Such a path holds way too many opportunities to be tripped (if not worse) on one’s own prior arrogance. So it was all the more gratifying to read, for example, that my “play is full of the kind of ‘thick’ Jewish cultural literacy that she regularly champions in her <a href="https://www.lilith.org/articles/birthright-stole-my-kids-future/" target="_blank">other</a> <a href="https://www.jfunders.org/podcast_rokhl_kafrissen_hungry_for_jewish_education" target="_blank">work</a>.” Whew.<br /><br />Further, Sonia writes:</span></div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">It is also rare to see a production that so accurately captures the highs and lows of graduate student research–the joys of discovery, the comradery of an enthusiastic but highly specialized community, the uncertainty, the dependence on an advisor’s approval. Yet other aspects of <em>Shtumer shabes</em> feel more universal…It is precisely because Kafrissen has so carefully conveyed these more specific worlds that she can powerfully and convincingly meld the universal and the particular…</span></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Who knows what the immediate future holds for live theater, but I'm very cautiously optimistic that we will soon be making small steps toward live performance and being together again in theaters of all shapes and sizes. I'm hoping my play can be part of that in some way. And if you want to bring it for workshopping at your theater or cultural space, of course, be in touch right away.</span></p><blockquote> </blockquote>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-65402538583726933342021-02-14T02:27:00.004-05:002021-02-14T02:36:21.548-05:00Guns, Ghosts, and Girls: All About the Yiddish Love Song<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you believe in ghosts? I'm open to convincing, but the only proof I'll accept is when (not if) Leonard Cohen's ghost pays me a visit to whisper sexy ghost things by night. And, with all due respect, sir, I've been locked in my apartment for 11 months. What are you waiting for?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Leonard Cohen singing <i>I'm Your Man</i> is surely responsible for at least 55% of the unrealistic heterosexual expectations held by women across the world. Not that I hold it against him. Unless he wants me to.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For my column this week, I <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/best-yiddish-love-songs" target="_blank">took a look at some of the best Yiddish love songs</a>, with picks by me, as well as a couple of my esteemed friends. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What exactly is a love song, anyway? One of my favorites has always been Nellie Casman's <i>Yosl, Yosl</i>. In it, a woman is waiting for her lover, Yosl, to make up his mind. Yosl, that cad, is taking his time, while in the meantime, she's being married off to another guy. But our narrator cannot get Yosl out of her mind. </span></p><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;"><i>Baym trinken, baym esn, ken ikh im keynmol fargesn/Yosl, du ligst mir nokh in zin</i></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;">(While drinking, while eating, I just can't forget him/Yosl, you're always in my thoughts)</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;">If you've ever felt your very life essence trickle away as that special someone took their time to realize you were perfect for them, if you've ever had occasion to </span><span style="background-color: white;"><i>unironically</i></span><span style="background-color: white;"> say to someone <i>ikh krapir nokh dir</i> (I'm expiring for you) well, you may relate. But is it love? Now, some 20 years after first hearing it, I wonder if Yosl is even a real person. Maybe Yosl is a <i>Fight Club</i> style figment of the narrator's fevered imagination? Let's be real, some of us are just addicted to the drama.</span></span></div></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lXQssPj2GQk" width="560"></iframe> <div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">.......</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Another friend named <i>Oy Avram</i> as a favorite love song. It contains one of the best (and most over the top) images found in Yiddish song:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Oy, Avram, ikh ken on dir nit zayn! <br />Ikh on dir, un du on mir <br />Iz vi a klyamke on a tir! <br />Gedenkstu, gedensktu, oyf dem bulvar <br />Ikh der kluger un du der nar? <br />"Oy vey, Rivkenyu, gib zhe mir dayn piskenyu!"</i><br /><br />Oy Avram, I cannot live without you <br />I without you and you without me <br />Is like a doorknob without a door! <br />Remember the day on the boulevard <br />I was clever and you were silly? <br />"Oy vey, Rivkenyu, give me your lips!" </span><div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I didn't have enough room to include what is perhaps my all-time favorite version: the hair-metal triumph of Yiddish Princess:
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TxxZ2YGK8wc" width="560"></iframe>
</span></div><div></div><div><span style="background-color: #b2b2b2; font-family: arial;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">.....</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Two of my respondents named <span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><i>In Droysn Iz Finster</i> (It's Dark Outside) as their favorite Yiddish love song.</span> My friend <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Sarah Biskowitz, a senior at Smith College, described her very sweet association with the song:</span></span></div><div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"My favorite Yiddish love song is <i>In Droysn Iz Finster</i> because I remember the TA Allison Posner and RA Adah Hetko singing it during the Steiner summer program 2018, where I started learning Yiddish. While it may be a romantic love song, it reminds me of the camaraderie and warmth I have found in the Yiddish community thanks to my teachers, mentors like Allison and Adah, and friends." Awwwww. That made my cynical heart smile.</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can see Allison and Adah perform it together here (with English subtitles):</div></div></div></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jxMn3ncQ8Vw" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">......</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">When I was at the YIVO summer program in 2019 Lorin Sklamberg taught us a song from the Ruth Rubin archive, a real heartbreaker called <i>Mayn Harts, Mayn Harts</i>.</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><i>Mayn harts, mayn harts veynt in mir,<br />Az ikh darf zikh sheydn itst mit dir; <br />Mayne gedanken – ahin-aher,<br />Mit dir tsu sheydn iz mir shver.</i></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">My heart weeps within me<br />Since I must now part with you. <br />My thoughts - this way, that way, <br />To part from you is terrible.<br /></span><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I dare say the words aren't so different from many other love songs. But there's something about the tune that elevates it to extraordinary. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Lorin and Polina Shepherd sing it on their gorgeous new choral (and more) album, </span><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://polinashepherd.bandcamp.com/album/150-voices" target="_blank">150 Voices</a></i><span style="font-family: arial;">. You can see them perform it live, here:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0s59zPv2Qms" width="560"></iframe> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">But if I can be a little pushy, allow me to give you a firm push toward the Ruth Rubin archive where you can hear <a href="https://ruthrubin.yivo.org/categories/browse/Item+Type+Metadata/Performer/Freed%2C+Israel?site=site-r" target="_blank">the journalist Israel Freed sing an unaccompanied version</a>, which Rubin recorded in 1967. This is taking nothing away from Lorin and Polina, but I've listened to Freed's recording at least 15 times in the last few days. There's something about it, the depth of feeling both in the melody, and his stunning performance, that just pierces me right through....</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">.......</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In my column I made all too brief mention of<i> Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt </i>(Quiet, the night is full of stars) as one of my favorites. It's one of those songs that can still get me choked up: the subject, the imagery, the tune, everything. The song is credited to Hirsh Glik and celebrates one of the female fighters of the Vilne Partisans, Vitka Kempner. It's quite possibly one of the only Yiddish songs in which learning how to use a gun figures prominently. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Shtil di nakht iz oysgeshternt<br />un der frost hot shtark gebrent,<br />tsi gedenkstu vi ikh hob dikh gelernt,<br />haltn a shpayer in di hent</i></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The quiet night is full of stars<br />And the frost strongly burned;<br />Do you remember how I taught you<br />To hold a gun in your hand?</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The Wikipedia entry on the song cites folksong collector Ruth Rubin on another interesting aspect of the song's imagery. It uses three different Yiddish words for weapon: "<i>shpayer</i> (a local word from Vilnius), <i>nagan</i> (a Russian term referring to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagant_M1895">Nagant M1895</a>), and <i>pistoyl</i> (a German term) – to denote an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol">automatic pistol</a>. Perhaps this was meant to show multiculturalism of the region."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">There are many fine versions of <i>Shtil, di nakht</i> but this one by Daniel Kahn and Sasha Lurje just rips my heart in two.</span></div><div><br /></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_lAuSDY7wAs" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Whew.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;">..........</span></div><div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">To end on a lighter note, I'll close with two songs about the marriage of Yiddish food and Yiddish love. First, one of my favorite albums: the bawdy songs of a certain Goldie Schwartz, aka Patsy Abbott. Pretty much every track on Patsy's <i>Yiddish Songs Mama Never Taught Me</i> is gold. And many (most?) touch on matters of the heart (and lung, and liver, and other body parts.) But if I had to choose one to close with, I'm going with <i>Mein Butcher</i>. I can't even begin to translate the lyrics (both single and double entendres), but the gist is, all the ladies go to this butcher. His meat is extremely satisfying and he even throws in a little "bone." I think you get the picture.<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/212734261&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><div style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 100; line-break: anywhere; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; word-break: normal;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/dzstein" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="dzstein">dzstein</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/dzstein/10-mein-butcher" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="10 Mein Butcher">10 Mein Butcher</a></div> </span></div><div><br /></div></div><div style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 100; line-break: anywhere; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; word-break: normal;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">And what comes after you visit the butcher? Why, the brisket, of course. Here's Rick Moranis* singing about his mother's legendary brisket. It's the sexy, jazz-y, lounge-y tribute that shabes dinner always deserved. (*Honorary English language entry)</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Aq1TOf9IR8k" width="560"></iframe><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />It occurs to me that just as kids never want to hear what their parents had to do to bring them into the world (<i>ewwww!!!</i>), perhaps it's in poor taste to put the neighborhood butcher in such close proximity to a beloved mama's brisket. But you didn't come here for good taste, anyway, did you??? In other words, I wish you all a lovely Valentine's Day, no matter how you get there.</span></div>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-72319069294867262022021-01-26T14:53:00.001-05:002021-01-26T14:59:34.175-05:00On Wandering - New Podcast Episode Out Now!<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wayyyyyyy back last spring, Clarissa Marks asked me to be a guest on her podcast <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.onwandering.co" target="_blank">On Wandering</a>. </i>Though we recorded months ago, <b><i>luckily</i></b>, almost nothing has changed between now and then (LOLSOB). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.onwandering.co/episodes/embracing-yiddish-language-theater-culture-and-history-with-rokhl-kafrissen" target="_blank">We talked about</a> going from 0 to Weirdo as a born-again Yiddishist, how I started writing cultural criticism, and the secret to getting your creative projects done. Clarissa is a wonderful, thoughtful interlocutor and it was a delight to spend time with her. Hope you'll check it out!</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RfbyaeFdupM/YBBytvanv_I/AAAAAAAAMUg/Im4toRCoEoYDt3Los2apDHDmu-0vVTJggCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/Rokhl%2BKafrissen%2BPhoto%2Band%2Btitle.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RfbyaeFdupM/YBBytvanv_I/AAAAAAAAMUg/Im4toRCoEoYDt3Los2apDHDmu-0vVTJggCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Rokhl%2BKafrissen%2BPhoto%2Band%2Btitle.png" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3586565064372847590.post-81240077920674371732021-01-07T01:00:00.003-05:002021-01-07T01:00:46.826-05:00Salomea Perl Book Talk This Spring at YIVO<p><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the pleasures of my work is discovering and sharing new Jewish art and culture. In the case of <i><a href="https://benyehudapress.com/books/the-canvas-and-other-stories/" target="_blank">The Canvas and other stories</a></i>, the new translation of Salomea Perl's Yiddish stories, it's a new-old discovery. We finally have all of Perl's exquisite Yiddish stories gathered in one place, a hundred years after their publication. And we have a brand new translation by Ruth Murphy, presented in a beautiful bilingual edition, making it perfect for those who want to work on their Yiddish reading skills with the aid of simultaneous translation.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYzBrVQIOGU/X_ajApOOY-I/AAAAAAAAMSc/8ZgSKB-KKSAnJW69r1sb5-peTAvA-CkNACLcBGAsYHQ/s429/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-01-07%2Bat%2B12.57.35%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="323" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYzBrVQIOGU/X_ajApOOY-I/AAAAAAAAMSc/8ZgSKB-KKSAnJW69r1sb5-peTAvA-CkNACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-01-07%2Bat%2B12.57.35%2BAM.png" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I wrote about </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Canvas</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> in my </span><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/gene-therapy-rokhl-genealogy" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">recent column on the Jewish obsession with genealogy</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. Perl herself was writing at the time Sholem Aleichem created his mytho-genetic family tree of modern Yiddish literature. He named Salomea Perl's erstwhile friend and publisher, Y.L. Peretz, as the father on that tree. But Perl, who eventually fell out with Peretz for unknown reasons, received no such mythologizing. As far as we know, she only published seven Yiddish stories in her lifetime, and after her death, they fell into obscurity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">After publishing the column in which I talked about <i>The Canvas,</i> YIVO asked me to lead a conversation about it, and the literary life of Salomea Perl. <a href="https://yivo.org/Salomea-Perl" target="_blank">It's going to be on May 25</a> and because it will be online, there's no excuse not to see it. We've put together a fantastic group of folks for the talk: <i>Canvas</i> translator Ruth Murphy, literary scholar Justin Cammy, and master teacher of Yiddish literature, Anna Fishman-Gonshor. See you in May!</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>rokhlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15442447160759343139noreply@blogger.com0