The guttural tongue of their ancestors

Memes of the Yiddish Atlantis: As stated in the fine print of the Geneva Convention, journalists may not discuss new Yiddish entertainment or Yiddish academic news without invoking at least one meaningless cliche about the language and culture. 

Here's the thing. These little nuggets of common wisdom aren't just filler. They're signals that the writer has nothing to say on the subject and not the smallest bit of curiosity about it. Reciting the memes substitutes for any real context for the story and relieves the writer from the work of making something like a real historical, artistic or aesthetic judgment. After all, that would require actual knowledge of Yiddish language and history and, c'mon, that's just meshugene.

Grapevine: It’s Yiddish revival,  Jerusalem Post

Yiddish culture appears to be enjoying a revival in many parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, where it was stifled for so long; Western Europe, where it all but disappeared; and even Israel, where, under David Ben- Gurion, it was publicly banned.Now it is being taught in Israeli universities and other institutions, and in fact has been for some time.....

[Legendary Yiddish theater artists Mike Burstyn, Shmuel Atzmon and Bar Ilan University President Moshe Kaveh] will be part of strategic planning team proposed by Kaveh, with the aim of advancing Yiddish language and culture within and beyond academia.

Yiddishspiel, the Israeli Yiddish theater, has been in operation since 1987, 25 years. Yung Yidish (the Tel Aviv bus station based Yiddish organization run by Mendy Cahan) has been around for almost 20 years. What was arguably the most important Yiddish literary journal of the second half of the twentieth century, di goldene keyt, was published from Israel until 1995. The State of Israel is, and has been for decades, an important center of Yiddish culture and publishing. The new (and really interesting) partnership at Bar Ilan and the Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies is part of that long history. Why are we not allowed to recognize it as such?

Making Yiddish Theatre Matter in 2012, TDF Stages: a Theatre Magazine

From a review of the Folksbiene's new mainstage production, The Golden Land:

Although American Jews are arguably more assimilated than ever before, Yiddish—and by extension Yiddish culture—is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Young Jews are increasingly studying the guttural tongue of their ancestors and seeking out live Yiddish entertainment in an attempt to reconnect with their immigrant heritage.

Just. Ugh. Guttural tongue? Really?

Bonus points, though, for working in a bunch of our other favorite memes. This includes the passive (aggressive) invocation of unspecified 'critics,' the ones who think anyone who does anything with Yiddish is fighting a losing battle rather than, oh, fulfilling an artistic mission or trying to make a buck. 

Yet Mlotek admits that some critics think he’s fighting a losing battle trying to keep a dying language and culture alive. “I have that argument all the time,” he says. “It’s no longer the lingua franca of American Jews, so what’s the point? The answer is simple: It’s not about reviving something that was popular once upon a time. It’s about bringing this culture to new audiences in a way that they can appreciate.

 Joe Berger would be proud.

Kulturfest 2015

Hey! There seems to be a big pile of Yiddish related news items to get outraged about. Not that I'm outraged about Yiddish, but at the inevitable (it seems) cliches applied to it.


So:


Exciting news from the Folksbiene. At the theater's big gala few weeks ago,  plans were anounced for a festival named for the gala's honoree, Chana Mlotek. Kulturfest: The First Chana Mlotek International Festival of Jewish Performing Arts is scheduled to open in 2015.  According to the New York Times, Kulturfest will be "A weeklong festival with 100 events including concerts, film screenings and theater."


It's kind of amazing that New York doesn't already have something like this. Toronto has the biennial Ashkenaz festival. Krakow has its yearly Jewish Culture Festival, just to name two of the most important. New York City is the global capital of Jewish culture. Why don't we have a Jewish festival on par with Toronto or Krakow? A good question, but one unanswered in the Times article.


Like with many of Joe Berger's articles about Yiddish, Felicia Lee of the New York Times can't write about a Yiddish related topic without using an 'on the one hand- on the other' framing of the relevance of Yiddish. On the one hand, you have amazing, ground breaking news from an important cultural institution. On the other hand, you have some spurious, bull shit straw man argument that Yiddish is dead/dying/only spoken by the undead of Williamsburg and, what's more, Yiddish will never again be a vernacular so therefore just GET OVER IT ALREADY.


As Felicia Lee learned at the Joe Berger school of writing about Yiddish, the context and import of this announcement must be secondary to passive aggressive beard stroking about the futility of Yiddish. For expert commentary, Lee got novelist Thane Rosenbaum:

Mr. Rosenbaum, who moderates an annual series of discussions on Jewish culture and politics at the 92nd Street Y, predicted that Folksbiene’s “interest in memorializing Yiddish culture and making it relevant” will turn the festival into a “pep rally” for the more than 1,000-year-old language.

Pep rally? Is this a joke? What does that even mean? Whither flows such toxic, and unbecoming, condescension, Mr. Rosenbaum?


You would hope that the Times and its meticulous, in-depth research would explore some of the reasons why we should devote large sums of money and resources to promoting Yiddish culture. You would also be disappointed.  Let's see what the Times has to say about the contemporary relevance of Yiddish:

Yiddish, a Germanic-based language, has contributed terms like "oy vey," and "bagel" to the English vernacular and is still taught.

Rakhmune litzlon. If that's the best the New York Times can come up with, we're all fucked. To hell with Sholem Aleykhem and Peretz and Mendele. Who gives a shit about Inzikh and di Yunge. Not the New York Times, not Thane Rosenbaum, not every ignorant putz who feels compelled to piss on something that makes them feel guilty and defensive:

“It is still a dying language,” Mr. Rosenbaum said, noting that Yiddish has few speakers outside Hasidic enclaves. 

Ah yes, the "still a dying language" trope. I think I've seen that before.  And, did he just imply that Hasidim are not actually living? Gevald.


In any case, claiming that Yiddish is dying is a red herring that's been invoked by many people, for many purposes, for at least a century, if not more. What's so wrong with admitting that Yiddish is the cultural inheritance of the majority of American Jews and thus matters, whether it has 100 (non-Hasidic) native speakers or 100,000? No one's proposing to send Thane Rosenbaum  to a Yiddish re-education camp [not yet -ed.] Yiddish is no threat to him. Can't we just let the death of Yiddish die already? But no, we can't, because the casual delegitimization of Yiddish is not quite complete. Rosenbaum asks:

“Are there original plays being written in Yiddish?”

Well, are there? [crickets]   


Aside from a few recent Folksbiene productions, no mention is made of contemporary theater being made in Yiddish. Because, you know, that's got nothing to do with this story, except it's got everything to do with the story. The Folksbiene is planning a massive, 100 event festival inspired by Yiddish theater and the thrust of the Times story is that contemporary Yiddish theater does not exist (or didn't leave a forwarding address) and a so-called Jewish culture 'expert' is hard pressed to hide his contempt for it.


For the 'other hand' part of the formula the Times did consult with an honest to goodness voice of authority on contemporary Yiddish theater :

Shane Baker, executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, founded to promote Yiddish culture, argued that Kulturfest is groundbreaking because it is interdisciplinary and international, both scholarly and artistic, and has the Yiddish component. 

“To bring together all the arts is a wonderful and brilliant idea,” Mr. Baker said. “There has to be a dialogue. I imagine one of the things they’ll be looking at is what is Jewish culture. I’m a gentile fluent in Yiddish, and I play in Yiddish theater.”

What the Times leaves out is that Baker doesn't just play in Yiddish theater (and would have much to say on what might be programmed in Kulturfest) but he himself is a creator of new Yiddish theater, answering Rosenbaum's no doubt rhetorical question about whether such a thing even exists.


So, to sum up: the New York Times will cover the announcement of a major new culture festival for New York City, but only if it can invoke the same old, irrelevant, cliches about the supposed death of Yiddish at the expense of reporting on what the actual content of the festival might be.


And they say all publicity is good publicity. Ugh.

See you at the Yiddish theater, dahling

Once again we're in the Yiddish theater season. No excuses, you've got to check out these shows.

First up: A new production of H. Leivick's Shmates called Welcome to America. 

Welcome to America is produced by New Worlds Theatre Project, translation by Project Artistic Director Ellen Perecman.

Running through May 20th at the 45th Street theater. Tickets.

And then: Two shows running in repertory at the New Yiddish Rep, Agentn and Meshiekh in Amerike.

Agentn, a three act play based on the works of Sholem Aleykhem, directed by Yiddish theater legend Moshe Yassur.    Tuesday, May 8th at 7:30 PM


Meshiekh in Amerike, Moyshe Nadir's scathing satire on the intersection of American capitalism and Jewish assimilation.       Sunday. May 6 at 7:30 PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 7:30 PM

Performances at the historic Hebrew Actors Union building in the East Village. Reserve your tickets right away!

And later this month, at the Folksbiene: the hardest working man in Israeli Yiddish show business, Mendy Cahan makes a rare appearance on the New York stage. 

Cahan brings his show A Yiddish Bouquet to the Engelman Recital Hall at Baruch College, May 20th.