This Song is Your Song

Today we had our event celebrating the new Yiddish translation of Woody Guthrie's classic ode to America, This Land is Your Land. I joined Forward Editor-in-Chief Jodi Rudoren and Forverts writer Jordan Kutzik, along with musician-archivist Lorin Sklamberg, translator and Yiddish expert Michael Wex, and the singer of Dos Land iz Dayn Land, Daniel Kahn. We had a really fun conversation about the why and how of translating from English into Yiddish. If you couldn't make it live, you can watch the video now.

The funniest part, for me at least, came when I noted that in the Yiddish translation, Daniel had inserted a reference to the groyse ozeres, the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are, of course, one of America's natural wonders and a perfect fit for a song like This Land is Your Land. 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.  Oops. 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 The Travellers doing their Canadian version of This Land is Your Land.

Of course, it's well worth your time to watch Daniel perform the song (again).

And finally, for the last couple months I've been OBSESSED with this extremely funky version of This Land is Your Land 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.

 

me' khapt a nosh/ a homentash...

Purim sameakh/ a freylikhn purim, y'all. What are you doing reading this? Shouldn't you be pounding shots in a dark room in a terrible wig?

But, since you're here, and we're in a Purim mood, let's talk about hamentashen. What the heck is a hamentash (singular)? Is it from the Yiddish for Haman's (boo hiss) Pockets?

Not so fast, smarty pants. According to best-selling Canadian author Michael Wex:

Hamantaschen–pronounced homon-tashn in Yiddish–were originally mon-tashn, poppy seed pockets, that were eaten on Purim. The similarity between mon, Yiddish for poppy seeds, andHomon led to the name change, and with it a raft of after-the-fact attempts to explain what the pastry had to do with Haman, the villain of the Purim story. Variously said to represent Haman's ears and nose, his hat, and even his pockets, hamantaschen are more convincingly explained–if there is any explanation beyond homophony–by a pun on the various biblical verses in which the Children of Israel are said to have eaten ha-mon, the manna, which would also help to explain the popularity of the poppy seed filling.

Sorry, poppy seed h8ers. Go argue with tradition. And before you diss this tricorner classic, keep in mind its important place in Yiddish sexual euphemism:

The general appearance of  the hamantasch and its cousins in geometry, the knish and the pirogi, has given all three a special place in colloquial Yiddish as slightly coy vulgarisms for the human vulva, roughly equivalent to "pussy" or "beaver," neither of which is even vaguely kosher. Pireg–pirogi–is the most vulgar, hamantasch the cutest. Its triangular shape and varicolored stuffings make it a natural. Knish occupies the sort of middle ground that allows it to be used informally between consenting adults of either sex.

 esen a trois, anyone?

One last Wex related Yiddish factoid: Many years ago Wex taught me that in Yiddish, a nun is a monaskhe. Surely there's some interesting resonances there, or at least puns to be made, given the wonderful symbolic depth of the humble 'montash. Which brings me to our next hamantash related destination...

Over at Lilith magazine, there's an exploration of the hamantash as a symbol of ancient feminine fertility and power.

If Judy Chicago has never made a branded hamantash she really should

A must read is Susan Schnur's classic reclamation of the hamantash as the Womantash. As a feminist, it made me rethink my distaste for mon. After all, the little classic seed represents the fertile potency of Spring and is a powerful symbol of the feminine within the springtime stories of peril, triumph and rebirth. Can your apricot jam do all that?

Now go get drunk, seriously!!!