Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.027 July 2, 1996 1) _Konin: A Quest_ (David Herskovic) 2) Yiddish humorists (Itsik Goldenberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 01 Jul 96 15:39:24 EDT From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: _Konin: A Quest_ I would like to recommend the book _Konin: A Quest_ by Theo Richmond which was recently published here in the UK. The book, though titled "a quest" is in reality more of an obsession that the author has with his father's shtetl, Konin, a small town in central Poland. In a masterly reconstruction the author brings to life the shtetl way of life in its entirety. He interviewed survivors in the UK, US and Israel and scoured mounds of documents for every detail of what the place felt and looked like. That he has been so successful is largely a testimony to the author's perseverance over eight years. Apart from the history of the town we are allowed to watch, from behind the curtain, a woman giving birth and are witness to all the sgiles which are almost as integral to the event as the cutting of the cord. If the child is a boy we can follow him to kheyder and get a taste for some lashes or even a booting. If he is from an enlightened household we are guided to the gymnazie where for some time a Mr. Leopold Infeld, who later went on to become a distinguished scientist and a close colleague of Albert Einstein, was a teacher. The author takes the reader for rides on the river Warta, for Lag Bo'Omer outings, to the matza bakery, the non-hasidic and hasidic one, and a host of other activities. The reader can peep in to the feldsher's practice and find out the difference between plain bankes and geshnitene (wet) bankes and see the tooth puller's 'surgery' done in public on market days. While all this is the Konin before the war he also presents the Konin after the war in the living rooms of survivors the world over who all live up to the paraphrased adage 'Jews can leave the shtetl but the shtetl can't leave Jews'. He attended a Konin memorial meeting in New York where a fracas breaks out when one Koniner "declares out of the blue: 'I want to make a proposal. I propose that all our meetings from now on we conduct in Yiddish.' His wife shrieks: 'Why nut?' An opponent retorts: 'We forgot already Yiddish.' The disrupter screams at the top of his voice: 'Our fathers, our grandfathers talked Yiddish so I want to talk Yiddish." He meets a communist in Haifa who still believes the Stalin purges are an invention of the West while another survivor in London will barely open his mouth until he has switched the tape recorder off. His frustration is almost palpable when some ultra-orthodox survivors refuse to meet him, mistrusting his motives. Although he chronicles in detail the annihilation of the Koniner Jews including the most horrendous eyewitness account of the mass murder in a forest outside Konin, this book is not a lamentation of the atrocities but a celebration of life. Life lived in piety with a purpose, with faith and belief. Of men, women and children who had very little but nevertheless made do of what they had and in a way succeeded more than their descendants (where there are any left) in today's generation. If there is one thing that interests the author more then Konin it is his own yikhes (ancestry). When dealing with kheyder teachers he mentions his grandfather who was a rebe but is quick to add that he was a humane melamed. Where he mentions a suicide in Konin which rattled the whole shtetl and the victim happens to be related to him he interposes in parentheses that it is only by marriage. In that vein he tries to add any lustre he can to Konin itself. He admits that 'Konin produced no great and famous son' but nevertheless tries hard to prove that Napoleon 'might' have slept there. As a last resort there is always Barry Goldwater who is a Konin descendant. The last phase in his journey is a return to Konin with a London Koniner who offers to accompany him. I sensed there a similar feeling which I felt when I returned with my father to his birthplace. That while to the locals everything is simply a matter of time that this used to be like this and like that, to someone who was slung out of there by the thread of his or her life it is all a different world. One world is the hundreds of years that Jews lived in Poland which came to an abrupt end in 1939 and the other world begins in 1945 where the Jews live on in faraway lands and Konin withers away with the in-between years being an unimaginable abyss. Things are not 50 years ago or 60 years age but 'faren krig' and 'nokhen krig'. Before the war and after the war. The book is a gem for the shtetl mayvin and a must for anybody with even the slightest interest in the matter. David Herskovic 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 13:09:18 -0400 From: goldenbe@cataract.nfss.edu.on.ca Subject: Yiddish humorists Here are a few titles/authors of Yiddish books containing short humorous stories, averaging 3-4 pages, which I have been reading from at our Yiddish vinkl in Buffalo NY. All are probably available from The National Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts: _Azoy lakh ikh_ (H. Gutman) 1918 _Nitgedayget_ (Sam Liptsin) 1934 _Abi men lakht_ (Chane Gottesfeld) 1948 _Lekhayim, yidn!_ (Hirsh Reiff) 1948 _Ikh bin alrayt_ (M. Nudelman) 1951 _Shept nakhes_ (M. Nudelman) 1958 _Humoristishe monologn_ (Bessie Hallowitz) 1959 _Kishon, du lakhst?_ (Efrayim Kishon) 1976 (transl. from Hebrew) Itsik Goldenberg Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.027