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.

 

Honey on the Page on the Screen

For the last year or so I've been yelling (in print) about how good my friend Miriam Udel's new book, Honey on the Page, is going to be, once it's actually published and available for purchase. (I've had special insider access for a while, which is why I've been blabbing about it so much.) Honey on the Page is a collection of all new translations of classic Yiddish literature for children, with Miriam's brilliant context and framing for the adults.

And now, to celebrate the book's upcoming publication, YIVO has asked me to moderate an event about Yiddish children's literature with Miriam, called 'Yiddish Children's Literature Today'. On October 7, Miriam and I will be joined by Jennifer Young and Naomi Seidman to talk about pedagogy, ideology and the future of Jewish kid lit. It's a real dream team of writers and educators and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I hope you'll tune in!

Heebits and Hobbits

The Hobbit was recently translated from English into Yiddish and Heeb is here to tell us about it:

Hey, some people collect stamps; Some people build model railroads; And some people translate epic fantasy series into a language that hasn’t been widely spoken for nearly a century

Herp derp.

As usual, Heeb is about as edgy as a third grade bully.

On the eve of WW II (1939) there were approximately 13 million Yiddish speakers. After the war, that number was drastically reduced, but still numbered in the millions. And today, estimates have the number of Yiddish speakers at a million. It's true, the majority of those Yiddish speakers are some flavor of Haredi (and not the target audience for der Hobbit), nonetheless, they live and breathe and probably own the loft you want to rent in East Williamsburg.

Anyway, there's an interesting story in the transmigration of Hobbit to האביט, but as usual, the clever kids at Heeb can't figure out how to take a story beyond pointing and laughing.  To them, Yiddish is a punchline. I get it. Like bullies everywhere, they hate what's different and threatening to their sense of themselves.

So, you know, fuck them. Let's give the mic to Prof. Jeff Shandler. In his book Adventures in Yiddishland, Shandler notes that moving back and forth between languages (code switching) "constitutes a definitional Jewish activity."

"Since the beginnings of modern Yiddish belles lettres in the mid-nineteenth century, translation practices involving Yiddish-- both as a target language (i.e., translating into Yiddish) and as a source language...-- generate innovating meanings out of code-switching, as they engage new kinds of texts and create new kinds of readers. In particular, translation practices can be seen as exemplary Jewish engagements with modernity-- both expanding the frontiers of Yiddish literacy and presenting it with unprecedented potential for its dissolution."

Maybe you think translating The Hobbit into Yiddish is a waste of time. Heeb seems to think so. But Shandler opens his chapter on translation with a pertinent quote by the great Yiddish literary critic, Shmuel Charney. "One language has never been enough for the Jewish people."  Maybe one Hobbit wasn't enough for us, either. Who am I to judge?