Where is Yiddish? Depends on Your Perspective

The Washington Post brings us an interesting chart from the Pew Research Center. The chart tracks language presence in the United States from 1980 to today. Because Yiddish had the most stark decline between then and now (from #11 in 1980 to dead last today) the Pew chart is labeled The decline of Yiddish, the rise of Tagalog. Which, ok, is pretty accurate.  The Washington Post's headline, however, is How We Stopped Speaking Yiddish. Which isn't just bizarrely non-descriptive of this charticle (the 'How' never comes up), it also speaks to the media's love of a good 'Yiddish in decline' narrative.

For comparison, Greek was at  #8 in 1980 with 401,000 speakers. Today it's at #14 with 307,000 speakers. In 1980 Yiddish had 315,000 speakers and today around155,000. (By the way, I'm pretty sure this is an underestimate given the population explosion in the Hasidic world and how that explosion does not show up in official records.) Between 1980 and today both Greek and Yiddish dropped six positions. 

So, why no tears for the dramatic decline of Greek? Italian? Polish?

While the Washington Post leads with the disappearance of Yiddish, Salon reprints Ross Perlin's Jewish Currents piece on Yiddish on the Internet. Perlin, a Yiddishist living in New York,  finds a thriving Yiddish world on line.

The Washington Post may have stopped speaking Yiddish, but there's a whole lot of folks typing, texting and publishing in it online. But you have to be interested in finding them.

Bentsi der Geshtokhener, Nebekh

Yiddish Murder Ballads

Another terrific post from Itzik Gottesman's Yiddish Song of the Week. This one features a recording of Leah (Leyke) Carey, star of the Yiddish stage.

Leyke brings us a Yiddish murder ballad, courtesy of her mother, who was in Zhitomir when the events of the song happened. Bentsi was not such a nice guy, an alfonse (pimp) who was dusted by a couple of his compatriots. Leyke sings Bentsi's tale in an impressive 15 verses.

There's some interesting vocabulary in the song. For example, a shayke is a gang. And ikh hob dir shoyn gefetst (I've done away with you). Stuff you don't use in your day to day casual Yiddish. I imagine. I mean, I don't know you. But I imagine.

Bentsi's turncoat friends are referred to as gite-briderlekh. Itzik translates gite-briderlekh as buddies but notes that it is slang for 'thugs'. I wonder, though, if this is the best translation.

I recall Max Perlman's theater song Ven du lakhst (When You Laugh). He also uses 'gite brider' in a negative sense, but it's not quite thugs. It's more like simply false friends who will abandon you when things are going bad.

ven du lakhst lakhn ale mit dir mit/ ven du vaynst, vaynsti far zikh alayn
gayt dir git feln gite brider nit/ gayt dir shlakht bisti elent vi a shtayn

BONUS: Here's Wolf Krakowski doing Perlman's bluesy lament of the world weary entertainer. That makes one bloody murder ballad of pimpery gone wrong and one reminder of why you shouldn't go into show biz. You're welcome.

This Thursday at 7 pm - Peretz in a Time of Revolution פּרץ אין אַ צײַט פֿון רעוואָלוציע

A rare Yiddish-only, evening program at YIVO, this Thursday at 7. Not to be missed. 

Dr. Michael Steinlauf (Gratz College) will be speaking (in Yiddish) on I.L. Peretz and the failed revolution of 1905.

"In this talk, Michael Steinlauf (Gratz College) examines Peretz’s ideas during the 1905 Revolution when he developed his fullest articulation of the glories and dangers of building a modern culture in the diaspora."

Read this interview with Dr. Steinlauf  then go sign up for the lecture!

I Can Identify

You know no one love/hates talking 'identity' more than I do. So I was thrilled to find out today that I was invited to take part in a sure to be provocative conference coming up this spring. It's called 'Rethinking Jewish Identity and Jewish Education' and it aims to bring together an eclectic group of people (that's why they asked me!) to think our way out of this identity quagmire.

As conference co-chair Jon Levisohn blogged earlier: Enough Identity, Already!

From the conference call for proposals:

The concept of “Jewish identity” has been fundamental to post-war policy discourse and scholarship on Jewish education.  With the possible exception of “continuity,” identity (and the attendant fears of its disappearance or weakening) has driven more philanthropic initiatives and educational policy than any other single concept.  

Yet recent research has exposed the problematic nature of this concept.  The combination of strong identity and low engagement, as demonstrated by the recent Pew Report, suggests that the very concept of Jewish identity can no longer shoulder the burden of Jewish educational efforts. The time has come to reconsider the notion of “identity” as the desired outcome of Jewish education.
Standard uses of “identity” by Jewish educators and policy-makers fail to capture the complex ways in which people understand their Jewish commitments, engage with Jewish communities, and enact Jewish practices.  

Approaching identity as an outcome offers a mismatched measure of Jewish education and poorly describes the various and shifting ways in which people live their Jewish lives.

Damn straight. 

The conference isn't until the end of March, but I can't wait!

If You Listen to One Mickey Katz Blues Parody Today, Please Make It This One

Gevaldik...




And just because we're talking about shit I love, of course, there's this:

Blackface White Faces

A friend alerted me to this the other day:




It’s an Israeli group called Kleibedik (it's a pun on Klezmer and leybedik [lively]) doing a “klezmer” medley. In blackface. With fake neon payes. The whole video is like a seven layer pie where every layer is “WTF.” I mean, the terrible arrangements of Barry Sisters and My Yiddish Mame and and and COTTON EYED JOE? Guys, shit goes deep and that’s BEFORE we even get to the blackface 
.

Which… I have no explanation for. Do you? It seems to be their shtik, as you can find videos online of Kleibedik performing live in the same get up. And the sad thing is that the audience is eating it up. It makes my heart hurt. It’s like multi-level minstrelsy. The blackface goes with the blackhat.. face. Oysh.

Israel has so much amazing Jewish culture, but when it comes to eastern European/Ashkenazi stuff too often it’s just a big box full of cringe wrapped up with a bow of horrible. I mean, is this truly how young Israelis process and relate to Yiddish? Don’t answer that.

It makes me wonder… why is blackface still so compelling to artists? And not just American artists or Jewish artists.  I’m not sure there’s one answer, but it gives me an excuse to talk about some of my favorite examples of modern blackface, both Jewish and non.

(For a really great, though academic, exploration of the history behind American pop culture, Jews and blackface, please read Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Melting Pot of Hollywood by Michael Rogin.)

But we're staying mostly in the recent-ish past and present now...

1980s

Taco, Puttin’ on the Ritz

Apparently this video had the blackface parts removed when it was first released, but you can find the original now on YouTube. What could blackface possibly have to do with anything here?

Two thoughts. First, when Irving Berlin originally wrote the song in 1929, apparently the original lyric referred to young fashionable Harlemites strutting up and down Lenox Avenue. According to Wikipedia, when it was recorded for the film Blue Skies in 1946, the lyrics were changed to “Park Avenue” and a whiter kind of image.

Second, Taco isn’t just Dutch, he’s Dutch-Indonesian. Perhaps Taco was attracted to the idea of first, reminding us of the original racial dynamics of the time and place where Puttin’ on the Ritz was written. And/or, as a bi-racial artist, perhaps he was intrigued by the ambiguity of blackface as a way of playing with race. Or, maybe, the video is directly referencing some movie I’m not familiar with. This is always a possibility. Feel free to educate me in the comments. 

So, I think I finally figured out what the deal is with Taco. Or at least, part of the deal. It's so obvious I can't believe it didn't occur to me when I first wrote this piece. But here's the thing: there's a Dutch tradition of blackface called Zwarte Piet. It goes back to the mid-19th century and is influenced by and parallel to our own. This is a National Geographic Article from 2018:

The character was popularized in a mid-19th century children’s book written by a man who was very interested in the Dutch royal family members, “one of whom bought a slave in a slave market in Cairo in the mid-19th century,” says Joke Hermes, a professor of media, culture, and citizenship at Inholland University. This slave, Hermes suggests, may have helped inspire the character of Zwarte Piet.

Before the Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863, the country was deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade. It grew prosperous by selling enslaved people to the United States or sending them to work in Dutch colonies, and some nobles “gifted” each other with enslaved black children, who are shown in paintings wearing colorful, Moorish clothing 

The exaggerated appearance of Dutch Zwarte Piet costumes may have also been influenced by American blackface minstrel shows, which toured throughout Europe in the mid-19th century. “The Dutch tend to argue that Black Pete is a Dutch thing, and other people outside the Netherlands don’t understand our culture,” says Mitchell Esajas, co-founder of New Urban Collective and Kick Out Zwarte Piet. “But it is part of an international tradition of racial stereotyping.”

Culture Club, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

Boy George is on trial and a whole jury of black face Jolsons are there to render a verdict? Again, Boy George strikes me as an artist who is playing with sexuality/gender and perhaps is attracted to blackface as akin to his own trademark ‘drag.’ I’m not sure. What do you think?

1970s

Two icons of Jewish male sexuality: Elliott Gould and Neil Diamond. Both Diamond and Gould were very conscious of their Jewishness and never shied away from it, though Gould, being a much more talented actor, has played a much wider variety of parts.  Nonetheless… it makes sense that even in the 1970s, the shadow of Al Jolson crept behind both performers- both as products of American pop culture and as out Jewish men in the public eye.

Neil Diamond, The Jazz Singer

Neil Diamond tackles the Jolson legacy, straight on, by remaking the Jazz Singer in 1980. (I'm counting this as 1970s. Too bad.) Was The Jazz Singer 1980 a disaster on pretty much every level? Yes. Was it so bad it’s good kinda bad? I’d say yes. And that’s exemplified by the way Diamond works blackface into the modern setting. See, Neil and his band are playing at an uptown club and they can’t have no white man on stage. Hence the need for black face. It's so gloriously cheesy you can't help but enjoy the appalling spectacle.

For comparison, here's some Jolson:

Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye

A modern (1973) remake of Raymond Chandler's LA noir. I can’t find a clip of the scene I’m thinking of, so you will have to see the movie yourself. You’ll thank me. 

But here’s an image of Elliott Gould in the scene I want to talk about. He’s playing detective Philip Marlowe and he’s been brought in for booking at the police station. After being finger printed he smears ink on his face and breaks into a sardonic version of Jolson’s ‘Swanee’. It's his way of expressing his contempt for the corrupt police who know they've arrested an innocent men.   According to Gould, the whole thing was improvised on set, which only adds another layer of intensity to his performance. 

(He was a damn good looking man, right?) And some more Jolson, for good measure. What do you think about contemporary blackface? Do you see it around? Is it ever appropriate? Can it be a legitimate part of American-Jewish culture?

Weekend Links

Couple interesting things popped up in the feed this weekend:

• A new blog by an African-American Jewish man living in Crown Heights called 'Zein Shver.' He only has one entry so far, about his decision to participate in a project exploring his experience around the word 'shvartse.' It's an interesting read and I hope he'll continue to write more about life as Black Jewish hasid.

• What exactly does 'Ladino' refer to? I wasn't aware that this was in question, but an interesting post over at the University of Washington Stroum Center for Jewish Studies lays a little knowledge on us.

• And there's only five days left to contribute to the IndieGogo campaign to bring The Megile of Itzik Manger back to the stage via Motl Didner and the Folksbiene. DO IT!!!

New York Klezmer Series Returns Next Week With Miryem-Khaye Siegel and the Dave Levitt Trio!

Exciting news, klez fans. The New York Klezmer Series returns to the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue next Tuesday. It's curated by the only Seattle grunge style Klezmer poyk master in New York- Aaron Alexander- and it's the hottest spot for Jewish music and dance. 

Now, I'm not biased at all, but you'd be crazy to miss this rare feature appearance by the Dorot Division's most famous Yiddish chanteuse (and accordionistke) Miryem-Khaye Siegel.

Here's the details:

Miryem-Khaye Seigel and the Dave Levitt Trio
Tuesday, Jan. 28th, 7:30pm
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue
30 W. 68th St. NYC (bet. Central Park W. & Columbus)

$15 admission
Christina Crowder will lead the Klezmer Workshop before the show! 5:30-7:00pm $25
$35 for Full Night pass
Klezmer Jam session to follow the show



And the rest of the season's schedule:

Feb. 4 - CTMD -Tantshoyz featuring Avia Moore
Feb. 11 - OFF
Feb. 18 - Dmitri Slepovitch's 'Litvakus Trio'
Feb. 25 - Jake Marmer's Hermeneutic Stomp, featuring Greg Wall, Frank London, Uri Sharlin, & Eyal Maoz 

Mar. 4 - A Night of Montreal Klezmer! featuring Julien Biret's 'Ichka' and Yoni Kaston's 'Siach Hasadeh"
Mar. 11 - Tantshoyz, Featuring Steve Weintraub, and Alex Kontorovich's German Goldensthteyn Memorial Orchestra, with special guest, Naum Goldenshteyn 
Mar. 18 - OFF
Mar. 25 - OFF

April 1 - Inna Barmash's Hindele - Yiddish Lullabies & Love Songs
April 8 - Brian Glassman's Klez/Jazz Alliance 
Apr. 15 - OFF
Apr. 22 - Isaac Sadigursky 
Apr. 29 - Susan Leviton Band, w/Michael Winograd MD

May 6 - OFF
May 13 - OFF
May 20 - Allen Watsky's "Djangle Box Project"
May 27 - CTMD Tantshoyz w/Steve Weintraub, Music by Amy Zakar's Fidl Kapelye

June 3 - OFF
June 10 - Pete Sokolow's Klezmer Plus, with Ken Maltz 
June 17 - Student Concert, & Aaron Alexander's Klez Messengers

Vos Vet Blaybn - Reflections on Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman

(This is a guest post by Asya Fruman, in honor of the memory of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, z"l. Asya is a young translator from Kharkov, Ukraine. She's been studying Yiddish, and immersing herself in yiddishkayt, since she fell in love with klezmer music in 2009.)

VOS VET BLAYBN

Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman.

Of course I had heard of her before and knew some of her songs, but only this year did I really start to listen to Beyle’s songs, not just hern but aynhern zikh. My past several months have been infused with her music, her poetry, her voice.

There’s a thing about old songs — especially folk ones — sung by elderly people. I usually come across it in field recordings. It’s something very subtle and, I think, irreproducible. They sing out every single word with — how should we call it — reverence, feeling of value? As if they were weaving tapestry, knowing how important every thread is.

This has nothing to do with pomposity. No, it’s rather deep awareness; not a single sound is optional. It’s kavone, yes, but a very gentle kind of kavone.

Here it is, I’ve found the word: they sing with care.

And there is something else: the performer might have a beautiful voice or no voice at all, but in any case the manner of performance is not so vocal as it is narrative. By that, I don’t mean that they talk instead of singing, not at all; again, I am speaking of awareness. Their singing is always storytelling, even if it’s a nign (song without words.)

All of the above absolutely applies to Beyle.

I love her intonation: calm and reserved, full of dignity. Lyrical without being sentimental. 

Hers is not a stage voice — and yet she is a great singer.

In mid-November, having failed to make out a few words in a song from the Bay mayn mames shtibele CD, I sent an email to Itzik Gottesman to ask for help — but also to tell how Beyle’s songs resound in me, how charmed and moved I am by her poetry, music and manner of singing.

He answered the very next day, explaining the words I didn’t understand, and told me that he had read the letter to Beyle and that she thanked me.

It was a miracle.

Internetized as I am, I still feel amazed about the fact that one can send a letter to a great person on the other side of the  Earth, and the addressee will receive it instantly, and read it, and answer.

And what is even more miraculous is the connection between countries and generations, the honor and joy to share this language, this culture, to sing Beyle’s songs — because I sing them almost every day, when doing the dishes, when walking up the stairs, they are a part of me now. 

The opportunity to thank the author.

We’ve had a similar happy opportunity when Arkady Gendler came to our  Kharkov Klezmer Teg festival in the beginning of November, and we talked in Yiddish and sang together. Priceless moments of connection, a goldene keyt.

***

I watched Beyle’s funeral online and sang with everybody, so in a way I was present at the ceremony.

It was so much unlike the funerals I had attended here in Kharkov: oppressing, gloomy rituals that had nothing to do with the person gone. They left an aftertaste of senselessness.

Beyle’s memorial was full of her, as if it were not a funeral but her own concert. It was all about continuity and life: life going on with Beyle, not without her. And the ceremony didn’t leave an awkward feeling, only warmth and gratitude. I’ve realized how vital yidishkayt has become for me, how I want to live within it and transmit it.

What kind of person one must be to make even one’s own funeral inspiring!..

To leave behind oneself not a gap but a garden and a wish to be a gardener.

This is what remains. "Iz dir nit genug?” 

Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman koved ir ondenk

Thursday night we lost a treasure of the Yiddish world, poet, artist, songwriter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman. She was 93.

Beyle survived the war in the Czernowitz ghetto and, a few years later, moved to New York City with her family.

(from Wikipedia) After the war, Schaechter-Gottesman lived several years in Vienna, where her husband had a chief position ("Chefarzt") in the DP camps in the area. Their daughter Taube was born there in 1950; the family moved to New York in 1951, where the Gottesmans had two other children, Hyam and Itzik. In New York the Gottesmans took part in an experimental Yiddish community in the Bronx, centered around Bainbridge Avenue. There a half-dozen Yiddish-speaking families bought adjacent houses and reinvigorated the existing Sholem Aleichem Yiddish School. Schaechter-Gottesman became an important member of this community, writing classroom materials, plays and songs for the school as well as editing a magazine for children ("Kinderzhurnal") and a magazine of children’s writings ("Enge-benge").

In 2007 I wrote about Enge-benge for Jewish Currents:

Back in the 1960s, a few dedicated families of Yiddishist activists were trying to figure out where to live and faced similar issues. Three families, the Schaechters, the Gottesmans and the Fishmans, made a decision to move to Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx. There was nothing particularly wonderful about Bainbridge Avenue; in fact, the families looked at other possible places for their Yiddishist colony, including Roosevelt, New Jersey. But on Bainbridge Avenue they could get spacious houses near parks and transportation, and the men could commute easily to their jobs in Manhattan.

These families made a conscious decision to provide a Yiddish infrastructure for their children. Producing the next generation of Yiddish speakers, in a country and a time where Yiddish was less than a minority language, would take planning, dedication, and the will to leave nothing to chance. Even if the parents spoke Yiddish at home, the children would need peers, activities, and a school — a Yiddish culture of their own.

Many Yiddish-speaking families from the surrounding neighborhood already sent their children to Shul 21 on Bainbridge Avenue, part of the Sholem Aleichem Folksinstitute (SAFI), one of the oldest Yiddish school systems and the one that was apolitical, focused on culture rather than on any particular ideology. But as a supplement to five days a week of Shul 21, poet and painter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and her brother, Mordkhe Schaechter, a Yiddish linguist and scholar, decided to started a children’s svive -— an informal club that would give their kids more opportunities to speak Yiddish and do activities in Yiddish. The svive was called Enge Benge, after a counting rhyme made popular by Sholem Aleichem: Enge benge/stupe stenge/artse bartse/gele shvartse/eygele feygele khik. (The words are mostly nonsensical, to be used rythmically for choosing, like ‘eeny meeny miney moe.’)

Never more than a small, local playgroup for a handful of families (with names like Weinreich, Mlotek, Hoffman, Kramberg and others), Enge Benge was nevertheless politically and culturally influenced by the large, vibrant network of Yiddishist youth groups that flourished in interwar Poland. In the pages of the Enge Benge journal (1966-72), written by the kids and edited by Beyle Schaechter Gottesman, you can see traces of di bin (the Bee), a youth group founded in 1927 Vilna by Dr. Max Weinreich, the leader of Vilna’s YIVO. 

Though it seems like a quaint mimeographed relic, Enge-Benge represented a truly heroic task: the struggle for cultural continuity against the ravenous maw of American assimilation. 

With the loss of Chane Mlotek a few weeks ago, and now Beyle, the Yiddish world is that much poorer, that much further from the vibrant multi-lingual world of Jewish Eastern Europe. We are lucky, though, that both Chana and Beyle didn't just transmit that culture personally, but both worked to sustain the Yiddish institutional world in a multitude of ways. 

And as inadequate as I feel to carry on their work, I am inspired by my peers who have invested themselves in the project of Yiddish cultural continuity. They have worked closely with both Beyle and Chana and have taken inspiration, and spiritual nourishment, from both of them. I am hopeful that they can, and will, make Chana, and Beyle, and all our spiritual grandparents, proud.