Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.078 August 13, 1993 1) More on semiotica (Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Aug 12 16:35:10 1993 From: Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky <0005943838@mcimail.com> Subject: more on semiotica First of all, thank you all for your warm support, public and private. I am also glad that no one is arguing that the issues I discussed are out of bounds for Mendele. It feels like its a quiet summer and all those who would probably come out and argue with me lign oysgeshprayt baym yam un lebn a tog away from the computers. I also want to explain that I pay for my postings (not for receiving) and in my very busy summer of preparing for a bar-mitsva to be held at home, it is easier and cheaper for me to batch my responses instead of responding individually. So my responses turn out to be periodic and longer. --To Meylekh, You are right. I don't know how the halakhic issue of using Christmas decoration on a sukkah was gepasknt and would love to hear the argumentations, if I only knew/or had time to find them. If you ever come across any info on this, please let me know. But it's obvious that it is `muter', otherwise, you wouldn't find them being used. The new thing I discovered last week on my visit to the Paper Maven store on Coney Island Ave. is that they, at least, carry 3 imported lines of these products and only one of the 3 now has a symbolic Christmas green and red holly decoration, but no "For Christmas" text on them. The other 2 product lines are new and sound Jewish (one is "Devra Importers"). --To Lorinda, Thank you so much for offering such a similar analogy. It's exactly the same conflict. I personally don't associate the category of wreaths with Jesus's crown of thorns for many reasons. For me they are also not particularly Christian (perhaps Greek?) partly because I have my own Jewish associations with wreaths. As a child in Israel, we girls used to make ourselves a head wreath out of daisies and on Shavues, we children wore head wreaths in all kinds of school ceremonies. Several Yiddish songs speak of a "blumenkrants", but I don't really know how such wreaths were used in Eastern Europe. I am sure if we looked we would also find many ancient Jewish uses of wreaths. What I think marks the wreaths we are uncomfortable with are those that are just simply hung on a door or a wall--used in the particular way that Christians use them for Christmas. I also had no idea that the mylar papercuts are also popular in Israel, --probably the influence of American Jews. For more on this, see below. --To Ellen, Thank you very much for your note. Since posting my little essay on cultural borrowing, I have been thinking a lot about exactly this emotion you described in seeing the poinsettas in Israel, --this feeling of being jarred by what we are experiencing as misappropriation of symbolic values. I haven't studied it in depth, but it's fascinating to think about both personally and professionally. Maybe some others will write more about it. I'd just like to make three points. In America, poinsettas are endowed with the semiotics of Christmas, but YOU were not the one who endowed poinsettas with the semiotics of Christmas. American culture and business endowed poinsettas with Christian symbolism. (Are they now or were they ever traditionally used in Europe too for such occasions?) There is nothing Christian or ethnic about wreaths, poinsettas, papercuts, or stringed lights at this point in history. Their associations with Christmas is not very old and still regional at best. It is just that we Americans are constantly bombarded with all kinds idealized, secularized and deracinated images of Christmas, a Christmas devoided of dogma, and anesthesizing in its pleasantness and beauty. This is all the product of the commercialization of Christmas in America, a state of mind that can be attained by procuring such products as bushels of poinsettas, lovely wreaths, spiced eggnog, beautiful colorful lights, etc. and you never have to get into the issue of is Jesus your saviour or not. Where does that leave Jews? It leaves them safe from overzealous Christians, but in psychic limbo because that image of beautiful peacefulness is both so inviting to so many of us (as we see from the high rate of intermarriage and assimilation) and so easily acquireable at your local stores. So much creative artistry has gone into the creation of the secularized Christmas that it invites you in in so many ways. So some of us, e.g., Lorinda Weinstock and I, vis- a-vis wreaths, stand there not knowing whether to step into that semiotic realm or not. How do you get the aesthetics out of wreath and avoid the Christian part? Perhaps you could cut it up when you live in Israel, but its a bit harder to do it in cosmopolitan America, unless you buy into this secularized world. Re poinsettas: If the Israelis are aware of this association, they may, because of their own important flower-importing industry, choose to ignore this symbolism and use such flora in any way they see fit. It may also be possible that the poinsettas were part of a commercial effort there for the benefit of the Christian tourists who come at that time of year. Were these poinsettas planted by Israelis for native aesthetic consumption? Or else, it may be Christian, shmishtian, say the powers that be, these very showy plants grow well in Israel and poinsettas are a good practical aesthetic solution for all the tourists who come during school breaks in December and January. Lastly, I will tell you what I am doing with all this wreath, poinsetta, etc. analysis: I am suggesting that studying how semiotica is used and negotiated can be as fertile a territory as the sociolinguistic study of vocalic height in analyzing levels of group identity, ritual observance, social structures, ethnic marginality, etc. --things that you as a linguist know much about. --To Alef Shtumer, Wait for Purim! We can have several issues for that occasion, anisht vet men take kenen zogn "a gants yor shiker un Purim nikhter?" Internet has been described as a global faculty lounge discussion, and I'm sure when you conversed in faculty lounges, you appreciated connecting the person with the idea. That is a different and sometimes a more meaningful experience than just reading someone's ideas. In this faceless medium, masks can become on many levels meaningless and annoying. If we are going to attain here some level of that lounge discourse, I, for one, would want it nisht farmaskirt. But we'll all wait for a fun Purim! As for a writer pseudonymically writing his own good reviews, all I can say is it's sometimes pathetic, sometimes in the end justified (if no one is taking notice of your wonderful work), not uncommon, and richly varied in all its manifestations. If Wexler had written a pseudonymic self-promoting review of the type you are describing, I would have thought it sad, deceitful, etc., but I would never have spoken up about it publically. What so unnerved me about Wexler's type of self-promoting review is that he totally and ruthlessly buried other innocent people just to get attention for himself, nokh dertsu not in some esoteric journal, but in what is for me academically, sacred territory, namely, the journal Language. Secondly, I see the lack of condemnation of Wexler as most curious. I have heard very little talk and seen nothing written about it anywhere but in the journals already mentioned. It was just buried and and hoped to be forgotten. My husband, a film director ("Image Before My Eyes", "Partisans of Vilna", etc.) and a former linguist, was also surprised that Wexler was not fired for such a "shpitsl". --Tsu Danil, In di ale yorn vos ikh ken dikh, gedenk ikh nisht afile eyn mol redn english tsu dir un es filt zikh take modne dos do tsu ton. Vel ikh tipirn oyf transliteratsye azoy lang vi ikh ken oysshteyn, un vi lang der zeyger vet mikh lozn. (Ikh hof nor az dovid braun vet zikh nisht filn kegrivdet vos ikh hob zikh nisht azoy bamit far im.) Afile az du host hanoye gehat fun mayn kleynem essey do, meyn ikh az du host es emes nisht farshtanen. S'iz nisht emes az "vos veyniker men iz tif durkhgevept mit yidishe religye un ritualn, alts mer shtaygt di nervezkayt az andere veln meynen az men borgt/nutst khristlekhe traditsyes." S'iz lav davke punkt farkert. Di nervezkayt bavayst zikh nor ven men identifitsirt zikh shtark mit yidishkayt un ire verdn; nor demolt ken men zikh filn umbakvem ven men zet "poinsettas" in Yisroel, nitl likht oder nitl dekoratsyes oyf a sukke, oder a tmimesdikn krantz gemakht fun troybn vaynshtok. Oyb men volt nisht shtark gehaltn fun yidishe vertn, volt men zikh gelozt koyfn oder nutsn di khfeytsim (artifacts). Demolt volt men zikh gelozt farkhapn in di sheynkeyt fun a produkt. Vos volt dir geshtanen in veg? Es volt in gantsn nisht geven keyn inyen. Ven Lorinda Weinstock shraybt, "So, even though a grapevine is a wonderful symbol for most of the Jewish holidays; in the shape of a wreath I find it too potently Christian" iz es klor as zi iz nisht emes asimilirt anisht volt zi nisht dershmekt un zikh nisht dershrokn fun der makht fun dem simbol. Vegn dem inyen zelbst-bavustzinikayt gey ikh shoyn shraybn oyf english vayl ikh makh do azoy fil toesn in transkibirn mayn yidish, un far a Yivonitse vi ikh, ken ikh nisht lozn azoy fil nisht-korigirte toesn shteyn un s'iz shoyn tsu shpet tsu ton forzikhtikerheyt. Itst darf ikh baytn dos rendl un zikh iberorientirn tsu trakhtn oyf english, iz mir shoyn shver. >I believe it's also related to how comfortable one is displaying one's >own observances/traditions without feeling self-conscious. The source of the Jewish self-consciousness in using objects with known Christian symbolic value in an open society lies not in the discomfort in displaying one's own observances/traditions. I don't personally know the other people who posted here about this issue, but it surely doesn't sound like any of us are uncomfortable with displaying our Jewish "observances". You tend to find few such people on Mendele anyway. The issue is something completely different. All members of groups that compose a multi-ethnic society must continuously negotiate cultural and semiotic boundaries. When a strongly identified Jew decides to live in the open, multicltural part of American society as opposed to the distinctly orthodox or khasidic world, she/he accepts much of that society's values. But what one finds is the more one identifies Jewishly, the more selective and careful that person is about avoiding the religious Christian elements even after those elements have been secularized, humanized-- suggesting a spirit of universal inclusivity. Such people as I, or Lorinda Weinstock, or Ellen Prince or Naomi Cohen know not to buy or accept this new (commercial) sanitized Christianity in this mixed society where we spend a lot of our cultural time. I think that the source of the anxiety is the continuous care needed to avoid getting too close to that non-Jewish religious dimension. We set boundaries about our selves when we live in that environment. Unlike you, I for one, as I stated, came out of the frum Yeshiva world and decided I no longer wanted to live there. I deliberately live in a non-Jewish neighborhood un fir a Yidish hoyz dortn. You, as bal-tshuveh, seem to have come into the frum community accepting and buying all the traditional forms wholesale. And when you know that the Jewish G & G Sons sells these items for the frum market as sukkah decorations, you automatically accept the premise and buy it, un du varfst zikh arayn in dem layb un lebn --probably the way frum people think Jews living outside of such neighborhoods do vis-a-vis the rest of the world. But when you look closely, it isn't so, and for most Jews, has never been so. I have been fortunate in that I have spent a lot of time in my life getting to know and observing a very wide range of Jews and Jewish communities and I can tell you that all Jews get nervous about crossing inter- and intra-cultural boundaries. Everyone gets nervous. They just get nervous about different things. That khasidic lady buying a product marked "For Christmas" doesn't get nervous about one or two peices of questionable semiotica because she has both immersed and surrounded herself fun ale zaytn with every Jewish value and symbol. That's what I meant by making the boundaries between the Jewish and the "goish" world water-tight. I may have set myself up as a foil vis-a vis the khasidic lady and called myself an assimilated Jew in my posting to Dovid Braun in order to dramatize my point, but I don't know of anyone who would describe me as an assimilated Jew. The same can probably be said of the other contributors on this issue, I would guess. I must tell you one ancedote, again from the realm of the personal and then I got to go. My very cosmopolitan and brilliant son was switched to a modern orthodox Hebrew Day School (Yeshivah of Flatbush) two years ago and of course found the kids very provincial and small-minded. He also had a problem getting accepted by them. Since he is a very good kid with a wonderful sense of humor, he slowly won a nice loyal chevre in his grade, but he still has terrible problems with one clique and a few months ago he finally related to me what it's all about. That group of kids resent him because he seems to cross both the orthodox and the secular world with great aplomb; and though he never seems to suck up to any of the teachers, he still has all of their admiration for his great brilliance and multiple talents. (Remember, in this frum world, brilliance has the highest currency, and "coolness" the lowest.) They hate him because he seems to negotiate so easily that `tumedik', horrific open society without falling off into the tumedike abyss and can still so ably argue gemore when he wants to. He is "cool" and worldly with a father who is so celebrated in that goyish world, while remaining so Jewish and quite observant at the same time. Seeing such a combination at once when all messages to those very frum kids at the school tell them that these 2 worlds can not be juggled is very disconcerting to them. And they finally and explicitly let him know it. Iz makh es nisht azoy avek mit der hant az ale umbakvemlikhkaytn kumen fun zikh filn nit bakvem mit yidishkayt oder yidishe minhogim. Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky Reyzl@mcimail.com ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.078