Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.082 October 16, 1996 1) Alexander Pomerants (Ron Robboy) 2) "Shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz" (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 16:52:08 -0700 From: rrobboy@cts.com Subject: Alexander Pomerants I am surprised that no one with first-hand (or even second-hand) acquaintance of Alexander Pomerants has responded to Kathleen Rose's request (Mendele 6.078) for information on Pomerants' later life. One small impediment she may have encountered in her search is that all the major libraries I checked spell the name Pomerantz. (It may be that the romanization wars are hopelessly futile!) The _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_ (vol.7; New York, 1968) provides substantial bio-bibliographical detail, from which I can offer the following: Pomerants returned to New York from Kiev before the outbreak of World War II, and during the war years published a series of works extolling Soviet life. In 1950, he quit the Communist Party. He became archivist for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (Local 22), and then bibliographer and cataloguer for collections at YIVO (where he was a specialist on Soviet Yiddish writers), Columbia University and, from 1955 until his death in 1965, Jewish Theological Seminary . Pomerants was among the original group working on the _Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur_; likewise on the _Groyse verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh_. He was a contributor to the _Dovid Edelshtot gedenk-bukh_ (Los Angeles and New York, 1953), as well as to the periodicals Tog, Fraye arbeter shtime, Tsukunft, Forverts, and Yivo-bleter. _Di Sovetishe haruge-malkhes : tsu zeyer 10tn yortsayt : vegn dem tragishn goyrl fun di Yidishe shraybers un der Yidisher literatur in Sovetland : eseyen, kritik, briv, biografyes, bilder_ (Buenos Aires, 1962, 498 pp.) appeared near the end of his life and, according to the Leksikon, generated considerable debate. The Leksikon also provides a bibliographic survey of secondary materials about Pomerants appearing from the 40s through the mid-60s, and if the sheer volume of periodical citations from 1962-63 suggests anything, it is that the book was indeed cause for much discussion. I myself have not read the book, much less the commentaries. Looking at the overall contour of Pomerants' life and career, however, even as outlined in the Leksikon -- two decades of ideologically determined writing, the abrupt dropoff in the late 40s, leaving the Party in 1950, followed by a decade of cataloguing lost writers (certainly a species of memorializing), and finally, as a kind of magnum opus, the immense reappraisal of the meaning of the Soviet experiment for yidishkayt -- one cannot help but infer an all-too-familiar trajectory of ideological commitment leading to what must have been devastating disillusionment, followed (at least in Pomerants' case) by what may well have been a therapeutic and even penitential scholarship. I may be, of course, one hundred per cent wrong in my interpretation, and would be most interested in hearing from Mendelistn who may have been close or have some informed knowledge of Pomerants' own views on his scholarly contributions. The contributions certainly merit that consideration, and I can only think the man does at least as much. Ron Robboy 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 00:39:33 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: "Shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz" As a child I perceived the expression "shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz," [you should be ashamed in the depth of your throat] as the height of verbal punishment, worst even than being beaten on the bottom with a belt. I never figured out why this particular expression, sometimes with "arayn" as an added zing at the end of the phrase (shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz arayn"), was to my young mind the N'th degree of reproving a Jewish boy for some unspeakable act of behavior. I felt that to be faced with "s'iz a shande" [for shame!], was bearable; "s'iz a shande un a kharpe" [double shame], was painful;" s'iz a bu'she, a kharpe, un a shande" [ditto in triplicate!] meant to me: "This is the end of your days"... But to be told "shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz" (with or without the "arayn") sounded to me like a public declaration of the boy's unpardonable behavior and irretrievable notoriety, a kind of non-rabbinical _khe'yrem_ [excommunication], with exclusion and isolation from Jewish society as imminent consequences. I never understood the literal meaning of the expression, nor why it obtained in my mind and heart such a dimension of fright. According to the claims of my self-serving memory, I was a good, law-abiding little boy and was never administered the "shem zikh in dayn vaytn haldz" rebuke. But every time I heard one of my friends condemned with these burning words, I feared that the ground from under him would suddenly open and swallow him up. "Bagrobn lebedikerheyt!" [Buried alive]... The notion of a "vaytn haldz" (depth of one's throat"?) kept puzzling me. Many, many decades later, now on a new continent and a newly acquired language, the key to the meaning of the expression was still hidden. Even when the expression "deep throat" entered the English language -- first as the title of a triple-X-rated movie, and later as the name of the anonymous purveyor of inside hot tidbits of secrets from the Nixon administration to the two Watergate investigative reporters -- was naturally of no help to me whatsoever because it failed to give a concrete meaning to the expression. The other day, upon rereading a "daf" (page) from Shakespeare, I believe to have discovered a remote possible clue to the puzzlement of my days, the particular Yiddish expression of deeply wounding a child with shame: "Who calls me villain, .... gives me the lie i' th' throat as deep as to the lungs?" (_Hamlet_). Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.082