LIPA!!!!!

There's a new video from international Hasidic pop star, brocade bekeshe and funky glasses wearer, Lipa Schmeltzer. It's called Mizrach (East) and it celebrates unity or achdus among all Jews. Well, among all kinds of male Jews. OK, maybe not all male Jews, but anyway.

The Mizrach at issue here is Israel and the division between its haredi and secular Jews. That division (and the bitterness it creates) is felt in the haredi community's (until now, legal) avoidance of national military service via the Tal law. "The law, enacted in 2002, provided a legal framework for full-time yeshiva students, mainly from the haredi community, to indefinitely defer military service."  That law recently expired and the government is now free to start calling haredi youths for military service.

As you can imagine, the military's absorption of a huge, restive demographic with highly specialized ... ahem... needs is both a logistical and cultural challenge. There's a lot of ill will from all sides mizrakh, maariv, tsofen, durem (east, west, south, north). Enter Lipa.

Lipa is a vocal supporter of haredi participation in the Israeli military and this video is an interesting, and in some quarters provocative, statement of his support. He dances with soldiers, he dances with frum yingermen. He wears funky glasses and hipster square Satmar briln. He's got multiple kippah changes. Lipa is Liberace in pelts and this is 2012 akhdus, baby! 

Check it out:

Yiddish Theater comes to South Fallsburg This Weekend!

New Yiddish Rep and the Rivoli Theatre present:

Yosl Rakover Speaks To G-d

Thursday, August 23rd 10 PM Motzei Shabbos, August 25th 11 PM Rivoli Theatre 5243 MAIN STREET SOUTH FALLSBURG, NY 845 436-5336 $10 newyiddishrep.org

Brokhshtiker/Shards

On August 12th we observed the 60th anniversary of what has come to be known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. August 12th, 1952, 13 Soviet Jews were executed in Moscow's Lyubyanka Prison, as part of Stalin's larger plan to decimate Soviet Jewry. Five of those executed were writers. All had been leaders and public figures associated with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Today, commemorations often include other prominent Soviet Jews murdered by Stalin in the same period, such as Shloyme Mikhoels. 


Modernist poet Perets Markish was among those executed in 1952. One of his most famous poems is Brokhshtiker (Shards.) From Brokhshtiker comes the image of a shpigl af a shteyn, a mirror on a stone. Shpigl af a shteyn is also familiar to students of Yiddish literature as the title of the most important anthology of Soviet Yiddish writing. 



Here's the title page of my very old copy:




And the list of authors found within:

For this year's August 12th commemoration, Australian animator Jack Feldstein created a short film set to Brokhshtiker. Feldstein uses a technique he calls 'neonizing' which is "a combination of live action video recording and public domain material..." The result, with Yiddishist Shane Baker reciting the words of the poem, is a beautiful new interpretation of Markish and his poetry.

Memorials, Music and (M)dybbuk: Coming Up

Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird at Lincoln Center, Sunday at 1

Did you know the Yiddish Pogues were in New York City? I didn't, either. Sunday at 1 pm Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird will be playing at Lincoln Center in a rare (and free) NYC appearance. Highly recommended.

If you can't make it on Sunday, Kahn and the Painted Bird will be playing at the Living Room on Ludlow, Thursday the 16th at 10 pm.

Memorial for the Murdered Yiddish Poets, Sunday at 3

And then at 3 (on Sunday) is the annual Memorial for the Murdered Yiddish Poets. From the Congress for Jewish Culture:

On August 12th, 1952, Stalin's regime executed, among other members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, five Yiddish writers whose achievements represent some of the high points of 20th century literature: Dovid Bergelson, Itzik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, and Moyshe Kulbak. 

This Sunday, August 12th, 2012 at 3 PM, the Congress for Jewish Culture together with CYCO Yiddish Books, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Jewish Labor Committee and the Workmen's Circle will be holding a memorial

 to remember those and other Yiddish writers who suffered repression in the Soviet Union.

The event is free and open to the public, one need only register in advance at the following link: http://yivo.org/events_signups.php

It will take place at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) in Manhattan.

The program is in Yiddish and English. Professor Thomas Bird of Queens College will chair, with the participation of Boris Sandler, editor of the Forverts; Paul Glasser of the YIVO; Hy Wolfe of CYCO Yiddish Books will recite and sing poetry by the writers; Paula Teitelbaum, the folksinger, will sing two songs by Moyshe Kulbak (executed in 1937) and read poems by other writers; and the program will also feature two new short films using poems by Perets Markish as the soundtrack, one by neon animator Jack Feldstein and one by Paul Fischer.
Come, help us remember!

New Staged Reading of the Dybbuk, Wednesday, August 15th, 7 pm

The Dybbuk Revival of 2012 continues apace with a new staged reading (with music) of Sh. An-Sky's The Dybbuk. This new Dybbuk is the brainchild of Shane Baker and Benjy Fox-Rosen, two of my favorite young Yiddish artists.

You are hereby cordially invited to attend the wedding of the holy bride and groom. Stand with us under the khupe on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012 at 7 PM as Leah Bas Sender is married to Menashe Zoknlialke at the behest of her father, R' Sender Brinitzer.  Potluck orem-moltsayt (seriously, bring a dish fit for a rich man's daughter's wedding).  We present to you a staged reading of selections from The Dybbuk, by Shane Bertram Baker and Benjamin Haim Fox-Rosen with S. Z. Rapoport. Music combobulated by Benjamin Haim Fox-Rosen. Free and open to the public. RSVP requested. Limited seating. Dress your Sabbath best.

at The St. James Building, 1133 Broadway, Suite 245 southwest corner of 26th Street and Broadway

And the Dybbuk's Dybbuk

Finally, a little Hasidic foygel reminded me that you can watch the original Yiddish Dybbuk on-line. Enjoy!

"Based" "on" "a" "True" "Story"

There are two ways to make a Jewish supernatural horror film. One, Jewish vampires and werewolves (American Werewolf in London, Fearless Vampire Killers). Or two, take supernatural elements from Jewish folklore and spin a story around them (the Dybbuk, the Golem). Option one presents a wider range of story elements, but presents the challenge of harmonizing supernatural cosmologies. Is a Jewish vampire repelled by a cross and holy water? Does the presence of Jews in a horror film necessarily destroy the illusions of a fantasy universe? 

Option two is more rare, I think, because most people, Jews and non-Jews, are unfamiliar with the world of the Jewish supernatural. The most developed body of Jewish supernatural lore comes from Eastern Europe and its Yiddish culture. And as with the Yiddish language, American Jews really haven't the slightest interest in Eastern European folk religion (and its spirit world). Which is too bad, because the potential for a really good, really creepy, really Jewish horror movie is there.*

Alas, there is a new 'dybbuk' movie coming out soon. And while I long to see a great Dybbuk for the 21st century, I'm fairly confident this ain't it. At the end of August, Lionsgate will release The Possession, a new film featuring a dybbuk in a box and a really creepy little girl possessed by said dybbuk. Oh, it's got Matisyahu's beard (z"l) attached to the character of Tsadok, a Kabalist exorcist. If you ask me (and, really, you should've) a brilliant move would've been to hire an actual Hasid (or recently ex-) to play the role of Tsadok. I'm thinking someone like Luzer Twersky. He's a young actor who comes from that part of the world (Hasidic Brooklyn) where they actually believe in this stuff. (Not fakelore like a dybbuk haunted winebox, but you know what I mean.) Ah well. Movies. You expect intelligent verisimilitude and you get Renee Zellweger in a shpitzl.

You can see the trailer for The Possession online. They're pushing the 'Based on a True Story' angle pretty hard. It's true that the movie bears a relationship to a real, purportedly dybbuk haunted, winebox, though that relationship is more commercial than familial. 

Back in 2004 the press picked up on the story of a haunted winebox that had somehow ended up on Ebay. The current owner of the box, Jason Haxton, just released his own book, describing his journey to discover the truth about the box. You can read my review of Haxton's 'Dibbuk Box' at the Forward. From what I see in the trailer, and what I've read about the movie, The Possession bears scant resemblance to the book, aside from both having dibbuks and boxes. And don't even get me started on what relation the book may have to 'reality.' In February I noted that the book had the uncanny authority of a Wonderbread bagel.




At least from the trailer, it looks like the producers were less interested in drawing on Jewish lore, and more content to recycle familiar horror movie tropes. The trailer itself is a callback to The Exorcist and its prototype 'little girl possessed by middle eastern entity' images of terror: little girl undergoing medical scanning, little girl suffering bodily possession, etc. The actress in The Possession even looks a bit like Linda Blair.

Watch the first minute and a half of the trailer and you'll know everything you need to know about the movie, aside from its lack of imagination. The requisite bearded university expert (it's beard vs. beard up in here) examines our mysterious object of evil, saying: "It says 'dybbuk'... Hebrew word for demon." 

Bahah. OK. Except no. "Dybbuk" contains the loshn koydesh root 'd-v-k' which means to cleave. The word dybbuk comes to us from the phrase ruakh medabek or 'spirit who cleaves'. We find Jewish folklore about dybbukim and possession arising in pre-Enlightenment Eastern Europe. Dybbukim were a kind of failed gilgul, or reincarnation of a soul. A dybbuk was believed to be the soul of a sinner fleeing his (always his) spiritual punishment. He would take refuge in a woman's body (always a woman) until driven out by the local mekubel or his non-union Ukrainian equivalent. The point being that dybbukim were not supernatural entities per se, they were discarnate souls just looking out for themselves. They had no larger agenda of evil. Not to put too fine point on it, but goyish and Jewish possession are totally different animals. Or animus. And The Possession seems to miss this distinction entirely.


As for demons, Yiddish does contain plenty of supernatural beings to be scared of. The most obvious 'demon' therein is a shed, a servant of Ashmodai found, for one, in IB Singer's short story 'The Last Demon' or, in Yiddish, Mayse Tishevits. (And, if you can read the Yiddish, it is infinitely better than the watered down, de-Judaised English translation. Ahem.)

But maybe these are the academic niggles of a humorless Yiddishist. After all, the real question is, will The Possession give me tingles in my scary place? Who knows, maybe Matisyahu will surprise us with his riveting screen presence and glatt Hasidish gravitas. And maybe we'll see a new twist on the quiescent evil lurking in small girls. 

Indeed, it is possible to shamelessly recycle horror tropes, sprinkle brazenly with homages to classic movies, and indulge in just the kind of fakelore which usually leaves me clutching at my pearls, and still end up with something that's fresh, fun and, most important, scary. I'm thinking of the recent Hammer studios reboot Wake Wood. I won't give too much away, but Wake Wood's protagonists are a young married couple who move into an isolated Irish village whose residents turn out to practice the kind of tweedy, Celt-ish earth magic found only in certain mid-century English horror films. Deliciously scary hi-jinks ensue.

In Jason Haxton's 'The Dibbuk Box,' a trail of mid- to large size catastrophes seem to follow the box around, pinging everyone with the bad luck to enter its orbit. The spookiest thing that happened to me was someone (presumably a publicist) arriving at my blog by googling 'dibbuk box' while I was reading it.  I'm still holding out hope that The Possession can conjure up a scare or two better than that.

Bright Lights, Yiddish Stage

The New York Yiddish scene has been kind of quiet lately. That's summer in the city for you; all the cool kids are in Berlin, Krakow or Minsk. But two great Yiddish theater events are coming up in August, so mark your calendars:

First, on August 8: You Don't Have to Speak Yiddish to Understand the Truth, an evening of vintage vaudeville benefitting the Sholem Aleichem Foundation and the Congress for Jewish Culture. Performers will include Yelena Shmulenson, Shane Baker, Allan Rickman, David Mandelbaum and many, many others. (Wednesday, August 8, 9:30 pm, at the Metropolitan Room)

And then, The Essence, a Yiddish Theatre Dim Sum, returns to the New York stage as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The Essence is a madcap overview of the history of Yiddish theater like you've never seen before. In the words of the producers, "Leave Grandma at home."


Tuesday August 14 at 7:30, Thursday August 16  at 7:15, Friday August 17 at 4, Sunday August 19 at 9, Friday August 24 at 4, Sunday August 26 at 1 


At the Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios 
(440 Lafayette Street, below Astor Place, across the street from the Public Theater) 

Buy your tickets for The Essence here.

Radical Camera and Red, White and Blue-washing

This winter the Jewish Museum mounted a terrific exhibit about the Photo League called Radical Camera. The Photo League (1936-1951) was a group of amateur and professional photographers who joined together to teach and exhibit cutting edge photography with a socially conscious point of view.

As the name of the exhibit hints, the Photo League, its members and the work it produced, reflected the progressive/Socialist/Communist currents of the day. Mason Klein's essay in the exhibit catalog argues that viewers should resist easy categorization of the League, and, he says, to generalize about the radical politics of the League is to make the same totalizing mistake of the blacklisting madmen who eventually destroyed it (along with many similar organizations.) He writes:  "To reduce such a vitally boisterous and dynamic association to its earliest iteration [which was more explicitly Marxist] is to echo the mindset of the U.S.attorney general's office, which falsely condemned and ultimately destroyed the Photo League as a subversive organization in 1947."

Fair enough. Art is a messy business and an artists' collective bears little resemblance to a political party. However, there is no question that the League and its members were "informed by a socialist sensibility and advocacy..." [catalog, p. 13].  This made the League no different than any number of magazines, clubs,  and fraternal organizations of this period, all with an over-representation of young Jews, most the sons and daughters of poor Eastern European immigrants.

As you can imagine, I loved the Radical Camera exhibit. The radical history and art of Eastern European Jews (and their children and grandchildren) is an important part of American Jewish history, one that can be appreciated without subscribing to its politics. (Indeed, to presume that investigating, discussing and appreciating the history of Jewish Communists should be taboo, and somehow implies an endorsement of Communism or, kholile, Stalinism, is a childish and willfully malicious manipulation of history for ones own political purposes. But that's another discussion.)

A new documentary has just arrived on the scene, also about the Photo League. The movie is called 'Ordinary Miracles' and I was excited to check it out recently at Quad Cinema here in New York. My excitement quickly turned to rank dismay. For one thing, the word 'Jewish' was mentioned once in the movie, as far as I could tell. How could a subject so richly Jewish as to be featured at the Jewish Museum be portrayed without addressing the Jewishness of its members? The mind boggles.

But that was only the beginning. The politics of the Photo League students and teachers isn't just toned down in Ordinary Miracles, it's almost entirely erased, only to emerge, toward the end of the film, out of nowhere, as a catalyst for the Photo League's prosecution and and ultimate dissolution. A viewer who knew nothing about the history of the Photo League would be baffled as to why the League would be targeted at all.

Instead of exploring the politics of the Photo League (an integral part of the League's approach to documentary photography), director Nina Rosenblum chose to spend large chunks of the narrative (in an already brief movie) on subjects only tangentially related to the story of the League, namely the visit of Lewis Hine to the League's New York headquarters and the military service of various League members during World War II. But why?

It seems to me there are two, complementary explanations, neither of which reflects very well on the film's maker. If you look at Nina Rosenblum's filmography, her previous documentaries include films on, you guessed it, Lewis Hine and soldiers fighting in World War II. Rather than tackle the tough subject of politics, Rosenblum does a cut and paste from her previous work, something we should all be wary of these days.

But there's something else going on in Ordinary Miracles. The director is clearly uncomfortable with the politics of the League, going so far as to erase it almost completely from the film. She focuses on the war time service of League members, and their implied patriotism, as well as using clips of interviews with a few League members who play down the role of politics in the League, decades later.  The effect of these narrative choices is to present a sanitized Photo League bearing little resemblance to the one portrayed in the Jewish Museum's Radical Camera exhibit.

Ordinary Miracles's is so brazen in its distortions as to inspire a genre all its own: Red, White, and Blue-washing.  It's a disingenuous, baffling dishonor to the work of the Photo League and, ironically, a betrayal of the very ideals of truth and documentary integrity at the heart of the Photo League mission.

Abie mitn Fidl

Like a lot of Yiddish culture in America, the origin of much Yiddish music is now generally so unfamiliar as to be easily dismissed as 'folk music,' as if the lyrics to 'Oyfn Pripitchek' were found on an anonymous clay Sumerian tablet. On the contrary, many of these 'folk' songs have well established authorship. For example, 'Oyfn Pripitchek' was written by Mark Varshavsky, a colleague of Sholem Aleykhem and a fellow maskil.

In the US, the Yiddish stage was the source of the musical pop culture for Eastern European immigrants. Many of these songs were so well crafted that they far outlived the shows they were written for and are still known to the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those same immigrants. Abe Ellstein, one of the Big Four composers for the Yiddish stage, may not be a well known name today, but his songs are still familiar, even if his name isn't. Ellstein wrote the music for Yidl mitn fidl, Mamele, Zog es mir nokh a mol, and many, many others.

While much of his work for the Yiddish stage has been recorded time and time again, he also composed lesser known symphonic pieces, as well as an opera based on the story of the Golem of Prague. Unlike Yidl mitn fidl, recordings of those pieces are much harder to find. Enter the beautiful people at the Milken Archive. The fine folks there have issued recordings of Ellstein's classical work and you can even see a clip of a live recording of Hassidic Dance here. How cool is that?

Gey shray khay ve-kayem

Presented without comment, our favorite voice of reason and moderation in all things klal yisroel related:

“Everyone must act in accordance with the custom of his ancestors… Al titosh Torah imecha… Ailu v’eilu divrei Elokim chaim… However,” said Rav Yosef, “when Moshiach comes, all will follow the minhag of theSefardim.”

“We cannot decide until Moshiach comes for everyone to do the same. Only Moshiach will do it. He will tell them: What do you say, ‘Burich atu‘? Say, ‘Baruch atah‘!”And when he says it, they won’t be able to disagree. …Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov will arise. What will they say? They werechalabim… They didn’t say, ‘Burich atu.’ They said, ‘Baruch atah.’ You’ll say, ‘Baruch atah,’ and all Ashkenazim will be chozer b’teshuvah.”

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.