Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.277 April 4, 1997 1) Yiddish Studies in Israel III (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 97 23:48:26 IST From: rhle302@uvm.haifa.ac.il Subject: Yiddish Studies in Israel III Publications The individuals engaged in Yiddish scholarship in Israel invariably have a certain sense of mission as regards rescuing and refurbishing a largely lost or unknown body of works. The Hebrew University hopes to catalogue all Yiddish books printed during the first two centuries of Yiddish printing, to index all major Yiddish periodicals up to World War II, to prepare a modern-spelling critical edition of the works of the greatest of all Yiddish writers, Sholem Aleichem. Progress has been made on all three projects (e.g. all major Warsaw Yiddish dailies in the interwar period have been indexed and can be accessed electronically). The Hebrew University Department of Yiddish also has to its credit the publication 1f a distinguished series of edited texts of major authors under the rubric "Yiddish Literature." These attractive paperback books for both student and educated laymen have authoritative introductions and fresh critical assessments. Arye Pilovski (who heads the Yiddish Studies Program at the University of Haifa) has not only compiled a volume of Aharon Reuveni's short stories, he has restored this author's rightful place in Yiddish letters and skilfully elucidated his complex career as bilingual, Hebrew-Yiddish, writer. Through Collected Yiddish Stories of Aharon Reuveni (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), Pilovski has helped to reshape the constantly shifting contours of the Yiddish literary canon. This ongoing reordering and revaluing lends a needed vitality to a critical enterprise centered on a literature whose indigenous makers, while still potent, are fewer and fewer. While well known to the serious modern Hebrew reader, Reuveni had receded from the Yiddish canon until reintroduced by Pilovski. Moreover, Pilovski decisively proved that Reuveni's important works published prior to 1918, thought to have been composed in Hebrew, were in fact translations from Yiddish. The Great Dictionary Debacle A significant feature of the "Yiddish Literature" series is their Yiddish-Hebrew-English glossaries. Glossaries in foreign-language texts are hardly remarkable, yet these are. Their uniqueness stems from their being virtually the only place students can find the meanings of many less common Yiddish words. They include words which cannot be found in the two best and most widely used bilingual (and trilingual) dictionaries, Uriel Weinreich's Modern Yiddish-English English- Yiddish Dictionary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968) and Alexander Harkavi's Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary (New York: Hebrew Publ. Co., 1927; repr. 1988). Strange as it may seem in an age when world Jewry spends millions of dollars in memorializing the victims of the Shoa, ceaselessly building Holocaust Museums, the effort to record for ourselves and for posterity the immense lexical riches of the Yiddish language (the language of so many of the murdered millions) has so far largely failed. The story of this failure is international in scope, yet much of it is set in Israel. The task of extracting the true facts from clouds of accusations and counter-accusations is beyond the scope of this essay. But we know that the Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh:ehp1. ('Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language') (New York: vol.1, 1961; vol. 2, 1966; vol. 3, 1971; vol. 4, 1980), was conceived in New York and later moved to Jerusalem, where it somehow expired. The non-native Yiddish- speaker/reader/writer is often dependent on dictionary help. The four volumes of the Groyser verterbukh cover the letter Alef ('A') and include about one-third of the Yiddish lexicon (since numerous words have prefixes beginning with alef, e.g. avek-, arum-). Two-thirds of the Yiddish word stock prepared for the Groyser verterbukh lingers in card catalogues. Nathan Susskind's English introduction to Vol. 4 is entitled "Yudel Mark's Dictionary." Mark died in 1975 in Israel. One of the greatest students of Yiddish in the world, he was a central figure in the dictionary project. In 1968 the Yiddish Dictionary Committee in New York negotiated an agreement with the Hebrew University which enabled Mark to settle in Jerusalem. Susskind writes: "The partnership with the Hebrew University has proved a blessing in many ways. Most importantly it achieved what everybody hoped for: ensuring the continuation of the work." Unfortunately nothing has yet insured the continuation of Mark's work. We still lack a comprehensive Yiddish-Yiddish dictionary. Can there be a more pressing agenda for the world Yiddishist community than the creation of such a dictionary? _Chulyot_ ('Links') Dr. Shalom Luria of the University of Haifa, son of the famous Yiddish linguist Zelik-Hirsh Kalmanovitsh (1885-1944), founded a new journal symbolically entitled "Chulyot" ('Links'). I believe it is the first Hebrew-language periodical to devote itself wholly to Yiddish language, literature and folklore, continuing the great tradition of the Yivo publications such as "Filologishe shriftn" (1-5, Vilna, 1926-1929), though its focus is mainly literary. The first issue was enthusiastically welcomed both in Israel and abroad and it was quickly sold out. The second issue, in a larger printing, with the University of Haifa folklorist Dr. Chaye Bar-Itzhak as Associate Editor, and now jointly sponsored by the Humanity Faculties of both Haifa and Tel-Aviv Universities, made an even greater impression. The success of this journal suggests that among Israel's literary intelligentsia there are a substantial number of persons who are interested in Yiddish and even able to grapple with an original text (with a dictionary, perhaps) but who would be somewhat pressed to read entire critical articles in Yiddish. "Chulyot" provides literary texts in Yiddish and in Hebrew translation -- Luria's marvelously felicitous Hebrew translations are themselves a contribution to Hebrew letters. Among the bridging functions of "Chulyot" is that of familiarizing Israelis with the work of Yiddish scholars outside Israel. Shortly before his death several years ago, Professor Chaim Shoham of the University of Haifa Department of Hebrew Literature finished editing the first volume of his newly founded English-language journal Haifa Studies in Jewish Theater and Drama (JTD). The title itself suggests the Sadan image of a unified multilingual Jewish literature. Inherited by the University of Haifa theatre scholar, Dr. Avi Oz, this new journal should stimulate renewed interest in Yiddish theatre and drama, encouraging proper exploitation of Israel's several theatre archives. Just before his death (in 1995), Haifa's Ezra Lahad, with the help of Dr. Shalom Luria, completed his magnum opus, a bibliography of the printed Yiddish drama. Hopefully, this will someday be published. Bar-Ilan, Tel-Aviv Universities and Beersheba Universities Bar-Ilan University, which has been especially successful in its Yiddish-taught-in-Yiddish summer courses, and which has had the benefit of the services of the eminent Hebrew University folklorist, Professor Dov Noy, has also undertaken a program to reissue scarce Yiddish works. Noy has edited an attractive photo-reproduction edition of the St. Peterburg 1901 Ginzburg and Marek edition of Yiddish Folksongs of Russia . Bar-Ilan has also awarded several doctorates in Yiddish studies (e.g. to Ariela Krasni of Haifa in 1993 for her dissertation on the batkhn ('traditional wedding jester') as seen in pre-modern sources). Tel-Aviv University recently inaugurated a Yiddish "chativa" ('program') to be guided by Professor Avraham Novershtern. It is funded by the London Maecenas of Yiddish culture, William Margulies and his sister, Professor Alice Shalvi of Jerusalem, and is dedicated to the memory of their parents (who were themselves patrons of Jewish culture in London). One of Tel-Aviv University's prominent linguists, Professor Paul Wexler, who has written widely on Jewish languages, including Yiddish, electrified the world of Yiddish with his startling theory that Yiddish is Judeo-Sorbian, a Slavic language. The accepted view is that Yiddish developed from Middle High German. Wexler also argued that Modern Hebrew did not develop from Classical Hebrew, but was Yiddish that had been relexified to Hebrew. His third bombshell was the assertion that Ashkenazic Jews stem from a small Palestinian Jewish emigre community that intermarried with larger groups of converts from Asia Minor, the Balkans and the Sorbian region -- correcting the views made popular by Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe (London, 1976), which traced Ashkenazic Jewry to the Khazars. Though sharply attacked on all sides, Wexler's revisionist theories of the origins of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Ashkenazic Jewry, generated useful discussion -- which is by no means over. Indeed, the question of the origins of Yiddish is presently agitating the minds of Yiddishists the world over. Yiddish studies are a lively field. Beersheba University has made significant progress in organizing the letters to and from the eminent London Yiddish folklore scholar Jacob Maitlis. It took twelve years for the Hebrew University to catalogue the Ravitsh archive, but it has been done. [end of Part 3] ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.277