Neshama - The Vassar College Journal of Jewish Studies

The Vassar College Journal of
Jewish Studies
Neshama: The Vassar College Journal of Jewish Studies
Neshama
Spring 2015
Spring 2015
Neshama:
The Vassar College
Journal of Jewish
Studies
Editor-in-chief
Bethan Johnson
Assistant Editor, Designer
Elizabeth Dean
Faculty Advisor
Peter Antelyes
Authorization is granted to photocopy these works for
personal or internal use or for free distribution. Inquiries
regarding all types of reproduction and subscription can be
addressed to [email protected]
The Vassar College Journal of Jewish Studies
Issue 1
Spring 2015
Contents
Acknowledgments
3
Introduction
5
Guns, Gin, and Goyim: Jewish American Gangsters
in the Age of the American Outlaw
Bethan Johnson
7
Art, Family, and Modernity, Or The Fat Guy In
The Red Hat: Prolegomenon to a Jewish life in the
world of medieval Christian art
Marc Michael Epstein
17
‘Kosher Consumption:’ Review of Anna Shternshis’s
Soviet and Kosher
Emily Mitamura
23
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?:
The Assimilated Jewish Male in The Last Five Years
Christopher Gonzalez
29
God of Vengeance
Rogin Farrer
39
Review of Hebrew Classes’ Trip to See Musician David
Broza in Concert
Aiden Lewy
45
Eternal Light
Emma Glickman
47
Response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech
to Congress
Seth
49
The Uncanny Valley: Translation in the Poetry
51
Kevin Lozano
1
Dorm Room
Henry Rosen
63
64
Marokey Sawo and Andy Bush
Call and Response
Sahara Pradhan and Andy Bush
2
67
Acknowledgments
The Vassar College Journal of Jewish Studies owes so much of its reestablishment and re-imagining to countless members of the Vassar
those students and faculty who submitted work for publication; you are
the bedrock of this journal and all of us working in Jewish Studies Program hope that we have served as an equally steady force in your lives.
for its continued support of this project, among many others from the
grateful for all of those individuals working within the Jewish Studies
Program, as both faculty and staff, who have served to educate and assist students; as your words have inspired so many students, both those
who submitted work and those who will read this journal, we know that
without your wisdom and guidance, this work would not be what it is
today. Finally, we must convey our deepest thanks to the Chair of the
Jewish Studies Program Peter Antelyes. This journal is merely one of
many pieces of evidence of his strong and imaginative leadership this
year. Without his belief in the editors and students who worked on this
project, this journal would still be a mere dream.
3
4
Introduction
Peter Antelyes
Chair of the Jewish Studies Program
of naming is, of course, always central when bringing something into
being, and it is especially so when that something is Jewish, an identity
entrenched in history yet always struggling to renew itself. In this case,
Bethan came up with the perfect name: Neshama, meaning spirit, soul,
breath. Like the English word “inspire,” “Neshama” means to breathe
life into, which is just what Bethan has managed to do in putting togethsion of the goal of the Jewish Studies program, which is to provide a
space in which the many voices of Jewishness might be heard, shared,
essays about Jewish gangsters and Jewish translation, about Jews in
students and faculty. What they all have in common is their eagerness to
reach out to their readers, to start a conversation and keep it going. Indeed, that conversation begins in the pages of the journal itself, as piece
speaks to piece. This structure has, of course, a long lineage in Jewish
multiple methods by which those commentaries are to be discussed, analyzed, added to. One might see Neshama, then, as providing a glimpse
into the contemporary world of engaged Jewish thought, especially as it
ish community. We are proud of this journal, and wish to acknowledge
just how much we owe Bethan Johnson for its founding and nurturing.
Without her efforts, we would still be just so many voices without a forum. I would also like to thank her personally, for being a great student,
and the greatest of interns.
5
6
Guns, Gin, and Goyim: Jewish American
Gangsters in the Age of the American Outlaw
Bethan Johnson
Class of 2015
he was the best etiquette teacher a guy could have—real smooth.”
Luciano said of his former boss and renowned Prohibition-era gangster
and ushered in by the passage of the 18th Amendment, the Jewish gangster rose to national fame with such dark-hearted luminaries as Arnold
so often actively defying the American legal system through their killing,
Jewishness, particularly about Jewish men, common in American sociof Jewish American gangsters in the media in the age of the American
body and identity as a place of strength, intelligence, and assimilation, these portrayals also perpetuated anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant
ish gangsters, particularly through cinematic and television depictions,
same since the print media of the Prohibition era.
For both initial reporters and contemporary historians, the passage of the 18th Amendment prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol, which took effect on January 17, 1920, marked a substantial shift
in the culture and aims of the American criminal underworld, allowing
permeated American cities, crime historian Albert Fried notes that Prohibition effectively transformed a much-enjoyed youthful pastime into a
lucrative opportunity for those willing to risk imprisonment or death for
the sake of contraband liquor. After Chicago-born white-collar gangster
7
and many attempted to achieve his success. Each year, the smuggling
and distribution of contraband alcohol netted hundreds of millions of
these plans required thousands of workers and some anonymity, several
men emerged in this period as notorious, untouchable criminals. Arguably the most represented group among Prohibition gangsters was that
and David Berman. For decades their names and faces were splashed
was almost as large as their fortunes.
It is important to note that for many Prohibition-era gangsters
Jewishness was not merely a racial identity. While research cannot prove
their personal beliefs, many of these men outwardly displayed their faith
observant house than his contemporaries, Bugsy Siegel lived in a somewhat religious household and, following a Jewish funeral, Siegel received
stoker Synagogue) All of these men married Jewish women in Jewish
ceremonies. Crime historians also state that most lesser-known gangsters
had similar upbringings and with similar participation in religious practices. Of particular note is their decision to have religious funerals; as
moments covered by newspapers across the country in some cases, and
-
even highlighted—adding Yiddish nicknames—their heritage by using
their noticeably non-white names. These acts, it seems, show that these
men wanted to remain aligned with their Jewish heritage and for the
world to witness it.
According to early twentieth-century understanding and depictions of Jewish male bodies, American men should have had little to fear
from their Jewish counterparts, who were subject to a wide variety of
physical stereotypes. In Vaudeville, a popular means of cultural trans8
mission, the Jewface act rose to popularity in the decades just prior to
the rise of the Jewish gangster, playing out several of these preconceived
notions. Chief among the stereotypes was an inherent ugliness that
Jewface, 2) Another component
of their perceived unattractiveness can be tied to their physical weakness. One method of instilling this was through frequent depictions of
of aging; Jewish maleness was not threatening because these men were
to the Encyclopedia of Anti-Semitism, “in the course of the nineteenth
century, the image of the Jewish male as effeminate became one of the
Jewish men included that they killed children and ate them to stop male
dered order of society, and that they refused manual labor because their
them without physical strength or the ability to be imposing to non-Jews.
intimidating at the rise of Prohibition and the Jewish gangster.
Although these criminal enterprises spearheaded by Jewish
gangsters required far less physical work than the typical hooligan gangwork of past generations and still less than an industrial worker, Jewish
their identity as mobsters and their popularity with American society.
As gangsters were frequently tied to violent robberies or assassinations,
tempted to deny any violence by Jewish mobsters—arguing that they
results—with newspapers detailing mob assassinations allegedly carried
out by Jewish gangsters, such claims were never believed; Siegel and Comen for perceived slights or accidental errors, and their willingness to
of the hideous and impotent Jew. Siegel was widely considered one of
9
made their desirability widely-known, as photographs at their arrest, at
rants meant that Americans could see that Jewish men were not the
decrepit and undesirable men the media painted them to be.
cant strides in altering perceptions through their notorious fashion sense.
During the 1920s, images of Jewish fashion largely followed stereotypes
based upon the appearances of new immigrants. Along with the hideous
features of performers, common representations of Jewish fashion can
be found in Jewface. The forward of one collection of Jewface songs
describes how “The Hebrew comedian had a distinctive shtick, and
look…He wore oversized shoes, a tattered black overcoat, and a derby
Jewface,
2) The singers had similar attire; in the few images captured of these
Jewface,
soil, as their more traditional attire that may have included a kippah and
tzitzit
from mainstream America. These adornments, along with the shapeless
black cloak adopted by some, created a stereotype of the Jewish male as
notable for his particularly poor and unmanly fashion sense. Those who
chose to abandon these outer markers of faith still remained under at-
Famous American author of the time Fannie Hurst answered in the afThis assessment of a universal Jewish lack of fashion-sense would
have been a direct insult to and contradiction of the style of the most
required good grooming and they dressed the part of men commanding
10
well-tailored suits instead of opulent attire, meaning that he was never
considered fashionable, but also represented a form of break from the
ticeably fashionable appearances. Bugsy Siegel was
a sharp dresser. His taste ran to broad snapped-brim hats, pintailored overcoats with fur-lined collars, hand-crafted shoes with
similar tastes as photographs of their arrests or in staged portraits show
meant that photographs and sightings of them in high society venues
and on the streets demonstrated to countless Americans how much they
The sum of these stereotypical physical distinctions, along with
their religious practices, created an overwhelming belief that Jewish people could never fully assimilate into “white” society. Americans
placed them in a racial “other” category that they felt was fundamental
unto themselves in America, recreating shtetl life and only marrying
is an article in the Saturday Press, in which one non-Jewish American
separate and must handle Jewish crime, as it handles all other parts
non-Jewish Americans of the pre-Prohibition and even early Prohibi11
tion period. In its most pernicious and infamous form, this belief can be
of the Elders of Zion, and similarly published works, that claimed Jews
planned global domination that entailed conquering and subjugating
American and could never work with non-Jews in harmony.
ly lives, gangsters did so in more dramatic ways. Firstly, the elite Jewish
gangsters of the period differed from stereotypes by constantly integratan American: celebrities. According to crime historian Albert Fried, on
the throng of politicians, gamblers, hustlers, playboys, prostitutes, showbiz performers, newspaper columnists, gossip-mongers, [and] press
and Cohen were “hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite and having
way 37-39) Allegations of overly-friendly dinners between mobsters and
could be accepted, on some level, by American society.
Jewish gangsters also undermined the myth of the inassimilable
Jew through their criminal connections with other minority groups in
the creation of an organized crime system that stretched from coast to
coast and has remained in place for decades. Whereas in earlier generations, criminals had operated in smaller gangs based on racial identity—Jewish, Irish, Italian, African-American—the massive demand for
liquor and underground gambling required a level of organization and
to serve on equal footing in his organization, along with a variety of
other Jews, Italians, and Irishmen. This union of Lansky and Luciano
the two men overthrew the entire crime world together. The men used
Luciano and Lansky built the National Crime Syndicate, which granted
12
group was comprised of lesser-known gangsters who, when called upon
by the leading members of the national syndicate, became contract killers. These bonds did not preclude disagreements or prevent the division
of territory between Jews and non-Jews, but rather meant that the two
groups operated with equal respect and consideration. The integration
of Jews and non-Jews in the criminal underground went so far as to
prises and even saw several marriages between the children of gangsters.
that Italian and Jewish mobsters…did cooperate during the 1920s and
this period by white America, the public knowledge that Jews and Italians worked together to create lucrative enterprise frequently chronicled
to live peaceably and cooperatively with non-Jews.
The Jewish-American gangsters must also be seen as defying
the notion of perpetual distance from the essence of “Americanness”
by the American spaces and institutions they created. These racketeers
reshaped the urban landscape of America into what modern Americans
built the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of the desert, Lansky served as
the mastermind behind the Sands Hotel, and with the help of both of
these men and other Jewish contemporaries, the lesser-known David
Jewish gangster because the crime syndicates established territories of
cultural enterprise into areas while making other places unsafe for certain ethnic groups. Jewish men also built the empire of organized crime,
neers, and every subsequent bootlegger or rumrunner would be in their
13
Although they may have embraced their Jewish identity and altered
the underground enterprises or not comfortable with the idea of fellow Jews
regulating all activity within a community, the notoriety of these gangsters
elicited harsh criticisms. “Each Jewish community regarded its underworld,”
Fried argues, “as a wound, the pain of which had to be quietly endured and
more religious, saw these gangsters as unnatural and interpreted their acThese infamous gangsters did in many ways also harm more generalized attempts at acceptance, as non-criminal Jews feared, despite their popularity in the mainstream media. With anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiments predating Prohibition, the violent and illegal actions of these men
served for some as further evidence against Jewish Americans; anti-Semites
dangerous and sometimes fatal results of Jewish integration into American
-
presumption of guilt: only he could have inspired such a heinous deed.
On a broader scale, the notoriety of these few Jewish men led to
a strong resurgence of anti-Semitism, as not all Americans looked on the
Jewish gangsters reinforced the age-old fear of unwanted and undesirable
interlopers in an otherwise contented society; one Capitol judge at the time
described how “the Jews of America have produced far more than their
14
While not necessarily new prejudices, the reputations of these gangsters
them as representatives of the Jewish community, casting Jews inherently
by the mid-1920s for its anti-Semitic rhetoric, an article about police
corruption featured the lines “Practically every vendor of vile hooch,
every owner of a moonshine still, every snake-faced gangster and embryonic yegg in the Twin Cities is a JEW…I simply state a fact when I
say that ninety percent of the crimes committed against society in this
by a version of Jewish maleness that could corrupt “proper” Americans,
and never considering the reality that perhaps anti-Semitism created the
Jewish gangster, the American media and public demonized the Jewish
gangsters, and Jews in general, even as they idolized the gangster lifestyle.
In spite of the massive assault on Jewish stereotypes perpetrated
by these gangsters, as well as the damage done to Jewish Americans
due to attempts at justifying increasing anti-Semitism, modern popular
-
Jewish roles is only slightly better, as recently Irish-Catholic Ed Burns
these roles—but rather it merits noting that arguably the majority
of portrayals of these gangsters in the modern era, and thus the vast
majority of the images modern audiences have of these men, cannot
capture the destruction of the stereotypes that they had achieved, particularly in regards to the Jewish male body, because these men are not
Jewish Americans.
Throughout the reign of the urban American Outlaw during
Prohibition, men committed unspeakably violent acts in the name of
money and power, arguably chief among them Jewish men. Building
empires and cities along with their own reputation as educated, assimi15
lated, and alluring men, these gangsters undercut certain stereotypes
about Jews and Jewish men, while at the same time fuelling the growing
the face of Italian and Eastern European crime families, but for years
Jewish criminals were the most watched, wealthy, and stereotype-wrecking group in America. Although not properly recognized by the modern media, amidst the death and destruction that they wrought, Jewish
with to this day.
Works Cited:
Discussed by Fanny Hurst and Sophie Irene Loeb.” American Weekly
Jewface. Various artists. 2006. Idelsohn Society.
dice and Persecution, Volume 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
htm>.
16
Art, Family, and Modernity, Or The Fat Guy
In The Red Hat: Prolegomenon to a Jewish life
in the world of medieval Christian art
Marc Michael Epstein
Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion
Why should a nice Jewish boy be fascinated by medieval Christhe politically abject situation of my own people in medieval times, this
question used to torture me—I felt ill at ease aspiring to be a knight in
armor when I knew that medieval Jews ended up, with some regularity—on the wrong side of the weaponry of Christian knighthood. Sitting
fail to observe that his deep connection to the art he taught seemed to
stem in considerable measure from his connection with his own religion:
as an Episcopal priest he imagined himself as standing in an unbroken
chain leading from our classroom to the scriptoria of medieval monjealous—irredeemably distant from the object of my scholarly obsession.
ferent matter: for there, I was astounded to discover, so many of the
leading historians of medieval art—art, it might be argued, at its most
generally refugees from Europe before, during or after the Second World
War. The situation of art history in mid-twentieth century America was,
indeed, as I later learned that someone had cogently put it, one of “Jewish professors teaching Catholic art to Protestant students.”
But what kind of Jewish professors were these? They were secular, cosmopolitan, often politically active on the left, deeply committed
to culture and involved in the arts—people who were, in many ways,
not be interested in medieval—or any other stratum— of art. So I put
Samantha Baskind, Steven Fine and Eva Frojmovics treating questions
of Jewishness and art history and interrogating the strategies of art
17
historians of Jewish backgrounds in their approach to art produced by
ticular emphasis on the political implications of art history undertaken
by Jewish art historians. But in spite of the interesting and enlightening
work of these historiographers, the essential mystery of why so many
Only recently, reading an anonymous student evaluation from a
Arts,” have I realized that what was astounding to me in 1982 should
still be astounding. Having taught this course many times over the years,
tory classes at Vassar. But this most recent evaluation gave me pause to
It has really differed from what we did with some of the same material
but you never really discussed with us why you take the approach you
consider unimportant in Art History, and build on that. I have wondered
a lot about this. Do you think it might have something to do with the
Jew)?”
and sociologically progressive, but no need to quibble—the student got
it mostly right. The evaluation made me realize that the questions that
were different from the questions being asked in mainstream art history
of that period in the same way and to the same degree as the questions I
ask about visual culture differ from the concerns of my colleagues in art
history at Vassar and elsewhere today. Which naturally leads me to ask
self to them in terms of scholarly depth) nonetheless have in common
besides, as I said, the obvious qualities of cosmopolitanism, left-wing
politics, and commitment to culture and the arts.
Well, when one stops to consider it, although most of these art
18
often ardently secular and very culturally aware, they were also very
close—one generation in most cases—to a stratum of traditional Jewish observance. All—unsurprisingly—had traditionally observant Jewish
longer why Jewish scholars are interested in Christian art. The answer
to that question is fairly obvious, and has been well-considered by the
historiographers mentioned above. If the Jewish scholars in question
are secular, cosmopolitan Jews, the answer is obvious—it is a move away
from particular and parochial Jewishness in the direction of secular cosfrum zaydes und
bubbes—or even tattes und mammes—religiously observant grandparents or
even parents—made some of the closest, most cogent, most interesting,
Jesus—but observations that no one else was making.
artist father and I. And we are looking at a large painting of a distinctly
with singular focus.
And at this center of the swirl of activity, the tortured body
of Christ, suspended at the center upon the Cross. I am immediately
attention, yet somehow inhabiting a space apart from and above the rest
of the activity. The pathos of the broken body, its weight and gravitas,
suspended between life and death, the riddle of its meaning—why is he
here?, who did this to him? ...are simultaneously attractive and repulsive.
the subject of all my questions.
But my father has different concerns, and different questions.
pression on his face?” “How about this guy, do you see him? The fat guy
in the red hat? —He looks just like his horse!” His prompts, and observations, seem deliberately, frustratingly like misdirections. His questions
19
Why should this be? The answer lies in the difference between simply
being a deracinated secular Jew, and being a Jew distant by only one
generation or less from observant Jewish parents and grandparents, from
having about oneself, like the dregs of wine left in a Burgundy glass, the
remains of an observant Jew oneself.
I said that my father is an artist, what I did not reveal is that he
comes from a traditional—in fact, a Hassidic background. His grandspectively, and his parents were of the relatively small but deeply cohort
When he was a child, his mother was ill to the point of incapacitation
with arthritis and could not care for him properly, so he was sent away
from his New Haven, Connecticut, home in 1947, at the age of eight
to study at a new yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York—Chabad-Lubavitch,
the Chabad Lubavitch movement, who had come from Europe seven
of thousands of members worldwide. But back then it was just my Dad,
men at the yeshivah including Shlomo Carlebach, his brother EliSchachter-Shalomi).
doing—he was focusing me on peripheral details in order—somehow,
the central image and its discontents. He was making me an art historian on the Warburgian model. What do I mean by this?
“the man who reoriented the scholarly study of art from a discipline
devoted essentially to saying who had painted what pictures when to one
asking what all the little weird bits and pieces within the pictures might
the fat guy in the red hat, I developed a life-long love affair with “the
little weird bits and pieces within the pictures.”
In teaching my students how to notice and to analyze these weird
bits and pieces, students who will become—most likely—doctors and
20
lawyers and business people, not historians of visual culture, I help them
learn how to look and how to think about elements and factors in the
overlooked by other doctors, the clause in the contract unnoticed by other lawyers, the golden business opportunity connected peripherally but
ing me how to look at the margins, my father taught me an invaluable
skill I can pass on to my own students. We are all products of modernity
and postmodernity. We are all in debt to our families. And we are each
the result of long chains of attraction and repulsion to the cultures from
which we have come and in which we now live.
Marc Michael Epstein, Professor on the Mattie M. Paschall (1899) & Norman
Director of Jewish Studies. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, received the PhD at
Yale University, and did much of his graduate research at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. He has written on various topics in visual and material culture produced
by, for, and about Jews. His book,
(Yale, 2011) was selected by the London Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of the year. His most recent book is Skies
, a magisterial
large-format survey of the genre with over 300 illustrations in brilliant digital color.
(Princeton, 2015). During the ‘80s, Epstein was Director of the Hebrew Books
and Manuscripts division of Sotheby’s Judaica department, and continues to serve
as consultant to various libraries, auction houses, museums and private collectors
throughout the world.
21
22
‘Kosher Consumption:’
Review of Anna Shternshis’s Soviet and Kosher
Emily Mitamura
Class of 2016
In recent years, visual propaganda, especially that which came
out of the regimes of the WWII era, has become a source of popular
entertainment, in some cases to the point of obscuring actual history. It
society would be unable to pinpoint the temporal origin of what is now
ingly) speaks volumes about modern interaction with the media. The
phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On,” originally a graphic created during
WWII to boost British moral, can be admired on mugs, T-shirts, and
tote bags, among other commodities, and has been translated by social
media into an innumerable quantity of unrelated cultural references
enon, a symptom of the advent of the Internet, in the book Soviet
and poignantly highlights familiar relationships between human media
consumption and identity. Through the remembrances of 225 individuShternshis conducted in-depth interviews and other research, the as-
makes this book singularly worthwhile is that, in assessing the Soviet govmemory and, in combining these approaches, is able to create a personThe portrait she paints of the era between 1922 and 1939 involves an element of humanity that is often lacking in historical analysis
radical movements in this sense, she additionally adheres to common
23
series of singularities and contradictions in their day-to-day life with
allowed them to cope. Starting in 1922 with the establishment of the
Soviet government desired to usurp religion and replace Jewish morality with its own code of ethics, namely devotion to the state. Shternshis
systematic change and deliberate Sovietization. The Yiddish theater in
Jewish culture was allowed to endure because it was a way to access
the minds of the Soviet Jewry and, at the same time, was a way for the
replace the synagogue in what to some, especially those in the generafaceless masses of humans concurrently represented to us as numbers, I
Additionally, the multigenerational approach she takes, essentially grouping the interviews into three waves and thus three broad
attitudes towards the particularities of position faced by the Jews, allows
indicative of broad worldly change refute the popular portrayal of the
Soviet union as an isolated and static temporal location. In discussing education, and consequent ideological shift of the generation born
between 1917 and 1928 she writes, “Finding a balance between family, social life, and politics was a central problem faced by many young
to discuss that her interviews have led her to believe that this disparity
to simply accept contradiction. They, in general, had few problems
24
denouncing their parents and were often encouraged by their parents to
do so; however, children often maintained familial connection even after
Shternshis, in assessing how Jews observed and consumed Judaism and Anti-Jewish propaganda, comes to the conclusion that many
Jews were successfully convinced that religion was not a crucial facet of
a full life. Though fundamental values of family remained, the performative aspects of Judaism including ritual and verbal loyalty to the rites
tion of moral humanity.
In her discussion of the process of transformation of traditional Jewish
ceremonies, the process by which holidays like Passover were imbued
these new rituals into their daily lives…. One source is contemporary Yiddish journals and periodicals…The sociological surveys
that appeared in these publications were conducted in the late
1920s as a part of the preparation for the mass antireligious camof religious observance among Jews or emphasized elements that
As she speaks about here and in discussions of other possible—and
sources, there is little a researcher may cling to as an even remotely
cially this subject matter, and so she turns to oral history.
and in some cases illegitimate by many historians due to its, some might
say, grassroots attempt to grasp historical events at large. The problems
tion that is not always available to the public, in addition to the inherent
subjectivity of collected materials, and thus the seeming unreliability of
those interviews as sources of fact, force many to question it and push
it outside the bounds of “legitimate” historical study altogether. Yet I
believe, as clearly does Anna Shternshis, that its correct application in
-
25
unique and precious element which oral sources force upon the historian
subjectivity: and therefore, if the research is broad and articulated
enough, a cross-section of the subjectivity of a social group or class.”
interviews could have been better elaborated upon even in her footnotes
individual to come into encounter.
With this structure she chooses to employ, Shternshis effectively
highlights what governmental actions had lasting psycho-emotional
consequences and, by integrating the voices of those she has interviewed
tions, locals, and social situations. In the aforementioned work, Portelli
goes on to say that oral accounts “tell us not just what people did, but
what they wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, and what
li, 100) Shternshis here collects and interprets the voices of several hundred individuals and in doing so is able to display the Jewish response
to Soviet endeavors to shape their panoply of identities. In speaking to
them several decades after the events and phenomena they describe, she
transparently seeks to deconstruct their modern identities. By using oral
historical accounts in this way, she is able to see what Soviet actions had
actual, lasting effect and which ones were consumed as obvious propaconsidered illegitimate sources of information by many Jews because
they knew, in keeping with the Soviet understanding that Jews could best
the Yiddish language in general. The Soviets had hoped to separate the
Jews from Judaism but did not intend to separate them from what they
language. The interplay between intended and unintended psycho-emo“antireligious propaganda sometimes actually helped to foster Jewish
26
In the same vein, another narrative thread Shternshis effectively
vidual choice. Triumph of small acts of Judaism created a new space
for religious devotion and the miniscule and, some might say, “common” scale of practice made those acts all the more holy and worthy of
or Yiddish music for Soviet purposes, government agents often reused
familiar tunes, simply rewriting the lyrics to subtly, and sometimes less
accounts of how though Soviet Jews sang the words that represented
the new “freedom,” they often recall to this day the original lyrics which
lieve, makes this work.
The reciprocity and reverence for her interviewees involved in
the process that Shternshis employs lends added value to the work. The
life and adherence to Jewish laws, if they consider themselves Jewish, as
many do, they are given due respect of their identities.
and cultural reconstruction was not really touched upon. Her footnotes
and a sentence or two of her introduction minimally discuss some
aspects of Polish and Latvian treatment, but, even so, some brief conthat this is indeed a situation in which Jews were singled out above all
other groups, but if that is the case, I felt that this also should have been
addressed.
Even so, what has remained alive in the minds of the people
who lived through that era represents a crucial point of historical ac-
27
light on the hazy path the Soviet Jewry were made to take, breaking the
silence that surrounded such a totalitarian era with the sound of their
own voices.
Works Cited
Portelli, Alessandro. “The Peculiarities of Oral History.” History Work2014.
Shternshis, Anna. Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the
versity of Toronto, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2014.
28
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
The Assimilated Jewish Male in The Last Five
Years
Christopher Gonzalez
Class of 2015
as a kind of theatrical endeavor. Wherever Jews were forced by historical circumstances to adopt double roles and to use performance as a
survival strategy, there we see the twin roots of Jewish modernity and
as blackface and Jewface, proved pivotal for the assimilation of Jewish
mances of survival became staples in the growth of American popular
zling productions and long history of launching smash-hit musicals and
plays into mainstream entertainment and popular culture, offers a space
in which struggle of identity and representation can play out, subtly.
Perhaps Fiddler on the Roof
of this. The show “provided Jews, especially those assimilated Jews with
little connection to traditional Jewish culture or practice, with a usable
and religious coding mark the characters.) Yet, that connection to a tanSeinfeld
to American and Jewish American audiences. But in order for Jews—in
particular Jewish American males—to take center stage on a show like
Seinfeld, they had to “present as only partially Jewish, that is to say, can
The Last Five Years, a musical that premiered Off-Broadas a Jewish American male. Produced by a Jewish American composer
and a work in a larger narrative of Jewish-American theatrical productions, The Last Five Years
Seinfeld
29
and distances him from Fiddler. Through this distancing audiences see
tury, he is closer to being American than Jewish, closer to achieving the
American Dream—but still falling short.
The Last Five Years marks him as unquestionably Jewish. Of course, many of these indicators stem from ongoing
stereotypes associated with Jewishness, especially American Jewishness.
longer stand looking at you / the more I hear it splinter and crack/ from
within the larger fabric of Jewish-American males, this song does not
period of Jewish American popular culture. Jamie belts out that he has
“been waiting through Danica Schwartz and Erica Weiss…Heather
berg, Weinberg, Feinberg, Steinberg” among other names, as a marker
of a Jewish community. While the latter song points to the rising Jewish
population in Pittsburgh in a way only Jewish Americans would have
number of Jewish females in Washington Heights, New York. The song
does not aim to work as a string of coded lyrics and markers to those in
cause of this abundance of Jewish American families.
But out of the seemingly endless number of Jewish American
Jamie in a larger conversation:
reassuringly assimilatory for the dominant culture. When women are
middle class, as they always are, these relationships are also reassuring for Americanising [sic] Jewish men…where Jewish men dating
and marrying out connotes an increasing social cohesion by recon30
According to Stratton, Cathy offers a portal through which Jamie can
fully assimilate into the dominant culture. He relates her to his writing and how he needs her to become successful, singing: “You are the
story / I have to write.” But while that part of the narrative remains the
that he is a part of, not so he can gain access to it. Cathy could be bald,
a gang member, like to drink blood, and inhabit almost any identity
carry out her task as a “shiksa” in seducing Jamie away from his Jewish
culture; however, Jamie has already actively dismissed that part of his
identity. Further, he demonstrates a lack of connection of respect to his
Jamie refers to himself as a Hebrew slave for Cathy, are undoubtedly
played for laughs. In the liner notes for Jewface
tication, cleanse yourself of the old world taint,” which adds multiple
his own identity, he feels no connection to that oppression. The latter is
engage in this discourse in order to reject their identity, Jamie does it
Jewishness.
One might argue that his loss of Jewishness is not a laughing
The
Last Five Years premiered Off-Broadway nearly forty years after Fiddler on
the Roof
the portrayal of Jews has shifted with regards to how audiences perceive
Jewish persons on the stage in Fiddler
Sholem Aleichem”:
The musical had the advantage of immediacy: 1905 was close
enough chronologically to American Jews who were then only
one or two generations removed from villages like Anatevka. The
31
musical also had the advantage of distance: playgoers were far
enough removed to memorialize the past without honoring any
particular claims it might make, and without submitting to any
of Fiddler on the Roof, widening the distance between Jamie and history,
which in turn creates a greater distance between the audience and those
moments. The audience focuses on the here and now; they are more
ships of their ancestors. In the case of The Last Five Years
far removed form those historical events—he has made further progress
ing down on American soil. For Jamie, a stand-in for the Jewish American in this two-person cast, to shrug off a history of oppression is for
century Jewish American male. Finding love and success—as both are
are instead his driving forces. To that end, he, like the quintessential
American, wants to cut his own slice of the American pie.
Once Brown establishes a distance with Jamie and the audience
to these past struggles of an unassimilated Jewish American, he opens
and to take on a form of Jewface in “The Schmuel Song.” The start
though there are many holidays Brown could have chosen to write a
4th of July), he chooses Christmas, and instead of giving the solo to
a present to Cathy). If not a refusal, then, the Jewish song could emerge
The Last Five Years
in Christmas correlates to the way he sees himself as an assimilated
American. He begins with, “First, a story. A little Christmas Story. / I
Jewishness with the traditional Christmas story. As an assimilated Jewish
32
-
shiksa
the two in the world of The Last Five Years.
In “Seinfeld
shift in how Jews were perceived over time and understood racially.
Jewishness provided they did so within the bounds of civility. The new
possibility of celebrating Jewishness in the sense of a Jewish culture
Seinfeld, the
Jewishness was neither directly stated nor understated; it was visible to
those who understood the markers. That is to say, the audiences were
tices or the issues they discussed. At this point in The Last Five Years, the
presence of these allusions known through the combination of Yiddish
Fiddler
he performs with a Yiddish accent, the audience sees this as a marker for
his Jewishness, and that he is tapping into that part of his identity, not
out of necessity or survival, but as an act of choice. The power Jamie
possesses in maneuvering in and out of his Jewishness hearkens back to
the earlier part of the twentieth century, when many Jews wanting to assimilate made the conscientious decision to partake in Jewface.
dess” and “The Schmuel Song.” In some respects, much of the comedy
that has become a part of American popular culture can be tied to Jewimplies his Jewishness has become a part of that group as well, meaning
joking about Jewishness, perhaps, is akin to making jokes about whiteness. Stratton writes of Jewish American comedian Lenny Bruce: “[He]
always positioned himself as the outsider, and in an American individualism where there was no longer a clearly bounded Yiddish community,
comedians), with regards to talking about Jewishness, allows for Jamie,
of Jewish American entertainers and writers working to become part of
larger mainstream culture.
Still, there comes a point in The Last Five Years
33
ishness fades away almost entirely. His career as a novelist begins to skyrocket as his relationship with Cathy takes a serious turn. Successful with
an ideal woman—Jamie describes Cathy as his “personal Aphrodite”
American Dream. In that dream, however, is no place for his Jewishness,
into a history of Jews and modernity. Stratton writes about Ivan KalHe argues that these people, usually the more or less assimilated
Jews of modernity, including those who have made the biggest
contribution to modern life, have felt awkward about their Jewish
background. He suggests that they want to appear just like every-
to modernity, but just as The Last Five Years worked its way into American
The Last Five Years
being the ambivalently accepted Other, to occupy a position from which
[he] can comment on American life, or modern life more generally”
tion of a modern-day relationship. Therefore, if popular culture rea novelist to achieve fame and gain a wide readership, in this instance,
their work needs to walk the line between, as Kalmar notes, the “universo as he moves forward through time, the fact underscores his actions;
the Jewishness is there, because Brown includes it. While it might be a
makes no direct mentions of it outside of his Christmas story in “The
in the lacunae Brown does not address.
34
those pertaining to his masculinity. As with any stage production, the
cast of The Last Five Years changes as new productions spring up around
representations of Jamie and Cathy will likely be set), Brown embeds
struggles he faces as a writer and married man. He sings,
Everyone tells you that the minute you get married
Well, that’s not true
It only affects the kind of women
You always wanted to sleep with
But now they wouldn’t give you the time of day before
And now they’re banging down your door
And falling to their knees
tifying women, and they always reveal how, at least according to Jamie,
desirable he is. The Jewish male body, which is typically feminized,
awkward and uncool in representations, transforms into the objects of
female desire here. Perhaps Brown is stroking his own ego, but it works
within the narrative and historical arcs upon which The Last Five Years
touches. His marital contract with “shiksa” Cathy awakens his hypermasculine American form. His assimilation becomes a transformation.
that he has achieved the American Dream, an ideal status and state of
the rug out from under him. The marriage crumbles. Although the
side. His desire for women leads him to wander outside of the marriage
when Cathy proves to be a source of stress and anger for him. While
The Last Five Years
a Jewish American male. After numerous songs in which his Jewishness
comes “tsuris
35
some new tsuris / to push me yet further from you?” The word draws attention to the troubles Jamie feels are plaguing the relationship, but from
the lyrics it sounds like an outside force splintering the couple apart.
Jamie becomes the Jewish American male again, unable to completely access the hegemonic culture. Brown very well might have been
positioning Jamie in the latter half of the musical as the schlemiel, or the
Jewish fool, but with a twist. Stratton writes of the term:
Within the Yiddish community the term could simply describe a
when the term is applied to a Jew in interaction with the dominant
innocent, a man imposed upon by the unreasonable and threatening forces of the dominant culture. While he may not be able to
win, the schlemiel is able to provide insights into the condition of
the community. As a character in a joke, the schlemiel provides the
community with an opportunity to laugh at its own circumstance
and at the dominant society that has placed it in this circumstance.
By marrying Cathy, the dominant culture absorbs Jamie; however, in doing so, he takes on the societal role of the schlemiel, in a
sense. For, Jamie as the Jewish American is not equipped with the status
necessary to navigate that role and the hyper-masculine identity thrust
upon him, crushes him. That is not that say that Jamie is a victim,
because Brown grants him full autonomy, and according to Jamie, he is
the assimilated accepted Other to full-blown white American occurs at
cess, falling in love, a sense of security—each element pulls him forward,
schlemiel in how Brown uses him to catch a snapshot of the Jewish Amerisions, his sense of humor, and the way in which he assesses each new
tsuris thrown at him. The audience does not laugh at him as the schlemiel,
as would be the traditional case; rather, the audience sees that no matter
how successful Jamie becomes, there will always be a tsuris, always be a
dominant society, always be a circumstance pulling him down. Through
the vehicle of a relationship and love, The Last Five Years
36
On the surface of its lyrics, and its simple yet heartbreaking
The Last Five Years tells follows the highs and
relationship, whose story is told in chronological and reverse chronological order, respectively. But Jamie as a Jewish American male in the
even though assimilated and accepted, the Jewish in Jewish American
still presents its own tsuris when navigating through society. Perhaps
the greater takeaway, though, lies with The Last Five Years
longer timeline of Jews and their contributions to popular culture and
entertainment. With over a century of history and achievements behind
it, the musical presents itself to an audience where the Jewish American man has been and where he has arrived, and opens the question of
own paces, the dominant society deciding if and when and who gets
The Last
Five Years
success and a complete acceptance of his Otherness, without the societal
tsuris lurking around the corner.
Works Cited
Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America.
37
38
God of Vengeance
Rogin Farrer
Class of 2015
God of Vengeance,
of controversy and intrigue across Europe, sprouting productions in
its original Yiddish among the audiences of the Lower East Side, and
its popularity spurred an English translation. The success of an English
location before police detectives surprised the actors backstage during a
performance. They and their producer and director were indicted by a
What about God of Vengeance was so deserving of censorship?
Oddly enough, contemporary articles reporting on the trial from the
are so vague, they lack any mention of the content of the play. But the
Let me give you a quick rundown of the action: Yekel
Tschophtschovitch lives with his wife, Sarah, and their teenage daughter,
living by running a brothel in the cellar below their house. Consumed
Torah Scroll in his home. Doing so is a mitzvah, a commandment, and
a scribe to take his commission to write a Torah Scroll, despite his sins,
of the prostitutes, sneaks up from the cellar. The curtain descends as
39
613th of the 613 commandments in the Torah.) The rabbi, who should
arguably be the most pious character, is depicted as a dishonest, moneygrubbing businessman. But perhaps most egregious of all is the lesbian
relationship between one of the prostitutes and the daughter of her
employer.
However, the charges against the play were inspired by more
mary objection was not, according to Naomi Seidman, professor of Jew-
committed their obscenities in front of a non-Jewish audience.
For him and for the many other Jewish critics, the play itself
York. Their concern of the play moving uptown was the “airing [of]
play surpassed the moral tremors of its themes and the transgressions
of its seedy characters to the implications of what they represent to its
non-Jewish audience. At the trial, the presiding judge decreed that the
world to a modern, non-Jewish culture.
God of Vengeance
I had to double check that the publication date was, in fact, 1907. A
multitude of questions banged around in my head. Where did this play
come from? And why have I never heard of it? So stirred by the work,
few weeks. All but maybe one or two of the informed theater people I
spoke to had maybe heard of the play, including several of the faculty of
the Drama Department. How did a play so striking and progressive fall
into relative obscurity?
Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeancee amid a shift in theater and
40
performance in the Western world. Playwrights at the turn of the 20th
from melodramatic entertainment to the realm of social commentary
and realism. They peered into the psychology of common individuals,
peeling back the curtain of outward appearances. Although God of Vengeance still keeps a foot ankle-deep in 19th century melodrama, Sholem
Asch was certainly up to the same task. In fact, God of Vengeance bears a
Ghosts, which can be considered
the most iconic play of the artistic movement.
Written in 1882, Ghosts is also a critical social commentary told
through the lens of a “family drama.” Yekel shares with Captain Alving
his life of sin, the latter carousing with prostitutes, the former employappearances to society-at-large, straddling the line between propriety
reputation of her husband by covering up his transgressions to society
brothel and become respectable by marrying his pure daughter to a piweight of their deceit inevitably trickles down to their offspring.
Ghosts
masterpiece maintained its relevance over time and has been continuGhosts marked a turning point in the continuum of Western drama—God of Vengeance came more than twenty years later. Ibsen
interpreted as “too Jewish” for a wider audience or antiquated in its
style and language, the play still depicts the timeless theme of traditional
failing to progress into modernity, as well as the still relevant themes
theater.
After the trial in 1923, which successfully condemned the Broadof this kind of court sentence), the number of productions of the play
ground to a halt. Smaller theaters still produced the play, but its days
41
in the limelight were over. Not much was said about the play until two
decades later. Sholem Asch himself publicly announced his prohibition
of all productions of the play in any location and in any language. His
motivation for the ban? In words that sends goosebumps down my spine,
Over the following decades, the play fell from the cultural conously cited Joseph Landis translation). When I read the play last spring,
I was in the middle of the drama senior thesis scramble. In the spring,
junior drama majors divide and clamber into thesis groups to take on
but after reading God of Vengeance, I was determined to see the play proignore. Although Asch has clear intentions for his work, all of his charin the play. From Yekel to the rabbi to the women of the brothel, all of
their motivations are ambiguous. Everyone just wants to get out alive,
yet no one does.
During the year that I spent researching and preparing to direct
end involved discussion about the play. A number of translations and
tory Theatre will be opening its season this fall with a new play, IndeGod of Vengeance and the artists who pertheaters around the country.
larger revisit to the genre of Yiddish theater, especially at Vassar. In the
cultures and places, including Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanic
theater. Jewish and Yiddish drama is conspicuously absent. I believe we
hold notions that the genre is too foreign, conservative, or niche. That
42
of the category, God of Vengeance
Works Cited
2004. 54. Print.
Vengeance” in Any Language.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency. N.p.,
org/1946/05/27/archive/sholem-asch-bans-his-own-playprohibits-staging-god-of-vengeance-in-any-language>.
43
44
Review of Hebrew Classes’ Trip to See
Musician David Broza in Concert
Aiden Lewy
Class of 2018
Hebrew classes at Vassar College had a dream turned into a reality
when they traveled to New York to see Israeli singer/songwriter, David
Broza, perform live. David Broza performed a two hour set to a packed
venue at the City Winery.
When in the beginning of the year our Hebrew professor, Tzach
songs are characteristically slow, sweet, and melancholic until they build
eases them to a close. We, as a class, quickly became infatuated with the
song, even making sure to sing it for the language appreciation portion
odically in the class to study more of the varied vocabulary, we requested to see him as he made his way through New York.
Throughout the following months arrangements and plans
were made in an attempt to make our crazy fantasy come to fruition.
Through the hard work and planning of Bethan Johnson, a dedicated
and accomplished senior and Hebrew student, our frenetic schemes and
plans began to take form and become an organized and doable supplebacked our plans and provided us with the necessary funding in order
for us to see our newfound hero, David Broza. It took a lot of work, but
it was certainly worth it.
Leaving in the evening, we all got situated at the train station and
The two-hour train ride was great for a few reasons. It was great time to
bond not only with our own class, but with the intermediate class and
our language fellow as well. With a language class, collaboration and camaraderie is essential because one needs to have no fear of messing up
and making mistakes in front of classmates. It also allowed us a chance
to practice our Hebrew outside of the classroom. It was great to speak
45
David Broza himself. The inevitable closeness of the concert kept dawning on all of us as we continued to get more eager and more bouncy.
The venue was beautiful. The interior was large and had a rustic
but preppy vibe. We all got seats secured at the bar which had a nice
view to the main stage. After ordering some delicious dinner, the performance was about to start. Finally, after months of waiting, David Broza
graced the stage.
He was everything we could have hoped for. Watching him on
over and strum his guitar strings at an amazing speed that is just astounding to see. At times he got so invested in his music that he got up
and danced around the stage. His own enthusiasm and love of his work
was only matched by us. In every one of his songs his roots are present.
what language in which he sang, he sang for peace. His words were just
as beautiful as his melodies no matter what language came out of his
mouth. The concert beautifully ended with Broza singing the songs that
46
Eternal Light
Emma Glickman
Class of 2018
ated by the Nazis during World War II. I read this to my classmates as
we stood beside what was left of the crematoriums that were used as gas
Eternal Light
Jews will live on forever; Jews will never die.
Our spirit is an eternal light that has shone through the dark times.
Our dignity has remained through the beatings and brutal killings.
to accomplish their hopes and dreams in life.
We are here to show the Nazis that they never won.
We stand in this camp together, strong and proud of who we are and to
show the world that we are here to stay.
This picture was taken at the entrance of Birkenau. The train tracks
that I am standing on carried millions of innocent people who never got
47
48
Response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s
Speech to Congress
Seth
Israel in a worse position. Furthermore they see the prime minister as
attempting to sabotage a deal that would prevent a war. While these critspeech touched a fundamental issue with the way the Obama adminPresident Obama and his supporters have continually criticized
Netanyahu for what they see as getting in the way of making a nuclear
deal with Iran that would prevent a war. They see this current deal as a
current deal, citing that it would not dismantle any of the nuclear facilinot a peaceful energy program) and in ten years, all restrictions would
on the country. As the prime minister said, Iran would get the best of
both worlds, a thriving economy and a nuclear bomb. And if Iran gets
Arab nations) that Obama is willing to take any deal that is handed to
him by the Iranian regime.
to take a deal by Iran? Critics of the speech say that the administration needs to or Iran will just walk away from the negotiating table and
threat?
49
are they at the negotiating table to begin with? Are they here because
Satin and Israel the little Satin.
So no, they did not come to the table because all of a sudden
they had a change of heart and want to have a better relationship with
the West. The reason why they are there is because they need this deal.
Their economy almost entirely depends on oil revenue which is 90% of
tions on their oil industry, their economy is nothing.
and they have ours. This is just not the case. So why is Obama so set on
making a bad deal?
It is important to remember that Obama is doing what he thinks
which translates to acting weak towards these radical regimes. Clearly
Obama has never dealt with a bully before, which the leaders of Iran
are. Bullies are actually cowards who try to look fearless. However as
soon as they see weakness they feel powerful as if they have all the control.
Take this feeling of control away from them. Netanyahu understands that you must be strong with a regime of this nature. That is
the only way they will cooperate. If they walk away from a better deal
and increase sanctions.
As all good negotiator know, walking away is part of the negotiating game. Hopefully Obama will start to play it right.
50
The Uncanny Valley:
Kevin Lozano
Class of 2015
Language spoken and written always presents messy complications to users of the medium because within the world, the multiplicity
of tongues and dialects creates unease, within the inability to participate
in digestible and linear equities of communication. Translation is the
only source for moving between the borders of languages, but as it has
always been, language as it pertains to individual cultures and peoples
sible for the entire content of an utterance to be accurately transformed
carried onto the tongues in which they communicate. The engendering
community caused the formation of Yiddish, a language that is highly
mutable and hybrid, which borrows upon all its outposts and temporary homes in the world. There are fewer and fewer Yiddish speakers
throughout the world, but the language within a historical and cultural
can understand translation and the consumption of art which is medipoet provides a poetical project that can illuminate an understanding
of several contradictions and uneasy feelings we get when trying to
translation, history, and communication, I want to look at the poetry
of communication in a world that is constantly stuck within the void of
translation. I will do a close reading of one of her poems, A few words
in the mother tongue, while using the critical lenses of Benjamin, Spivak,
Shrieber, and Harshav to orient my reading.
Before providing a close-reading of the poem in question, I think
terms from any number of places Yiddish speakers have found themselves in the world, and therefore there is a borrowing of terminology
51
and reference points from any number of European cultures. There
is also the usage of the Hebrew alphabet in Yiddish, which leads to a
ing the language provides a fascinating way to engage with translation.
Its mutability and cross-cultural reference points show a language that,
in its history, evolved based on geography and circumstance. Since the
language is so metaphoric and beset by complicated degrees of arguit is a hard language to really talk about in such a short project. Instead
of trying to give a history and full understanding of the semiotics of
Yiddish, I just want to emphasize something Harshav sees as integral to
Yiddish, “assuming all frames of reference in the universe of discourse
of mutuality makes it a language so hard to pin down because Yiddish is
open to all frames of communication in its location geographically and
its history as a language of outsiders. Therefore, in some sense Yiddish
is impossible to translate in full equity; it can only be mediated via its
cultural and symbolical registers. With the passing of the Holocaust and
the adoption of Hebrew as the national language of the Israeli state,
Yiddish has passed from living and used language to one that has been
and translation. With that in mind, let us move to Benjamin.
It should be noted that we often forget when reading things in
class and in our free time, many times there is a small section of the
masthead of the book that gives credit to the translator. We are only atparticularly bad. For instance, when in middle school I picked up ConCrime and Punishment, which was rather
dry and stilted, I abandoned further reading of Dostoyevsky. In later
years I realized this may have to do with a rather literal translation of
lucky as consumers of literary production in translation to have great
mediators like Heaney when reading Beowulf or Homer through Fagle,
making it quite easy to forget for the casual reader that the language you
from. Although when encountering any translation, as Cervantes writes
52
there is something ultimately disappointing about translation—“like
looking at the Flanders tapestries from behind: you can see the basic
original luster.” Benjamin in “Task of Translator” does his best job to
provide a certain criterion in which we should evaluate works that are
translated. Translators are forced to navigate two schools of thought
or a cultivation of the spiritual content of the work? Because of this
tricky issue in translation, there will always be a problem with how we
deal with the mediation of languages. The issue is ultimately the tension
between an algorithmic approach to language, a series of outputs and
inputs. Or the consideration of language as metaphoric and interlinear,
therefore impossible to subject to clean formulas, meaning there is a
can combine both contradictory positions into a palatable aesthetic.
Without navigation of both with some kind of creativity, a translator can
is the unfortunate realization of a void that needs to be traversed, “all
translation is only a some what provisional way of coming to terms with
the foreignness of languages. An instant and rather than a temporary
and provisional solution of this foreignness remains out of the reach
Translation tries so hard to bridge the gap, but often it becomes a tricky
task when we are forced to realize the highly subjective and emotional
content of individual words and sentences. As Benjamin writes, “poetic
salient and incredibly true, but as Shrieber points out, in Western
give credence to the highly subjective and emotional aspect of attempts
at mediation. The ignoring of gender can be especially dangerous with
languages associated with Jewish culture. There is an impossibly tangled
tension between Yiddish and Hebrew that deals with highbrow and
ultimately man vs. female. In a case study about the Yiddish language, I
53
think it is necessary to point out that emotion and gender and subjectivThere has often been a location of the “mother” and the “feminine”
with the Yiddish language. It has been in the past jilted and ostracized
by this association, which is ultimately reductive and dangerous. Since
throughout this work we have been emphasizing the complicated web of
when talking about the subjectivity necessary for translation becomes
gate these issues of translation posed by Benjamin, but also contradicts
the missing aspects he assigns to the task of a translator by imbuing
encapsulating of the very act of translation. This will become apparent as I undertake my close reading, but by showcasing translation and
inviting the reader to understand it, she is able to bypass shortcomings in
mediated and translated for us without considering the alienating unease
we should feel in the void between languages.
ence, which showcases a intersection of her variety of outsider positions
for Yiddish, or serving as the repository of a dying tradition, but she
uses the language along with English as a way to present how language,
of translation but in the void of translation. In some ways, I would say
guistic freefall. Her poem, A few words in the mother tongue, presents KlepA few words in the mother tongue is a glossary of
sorts. There are Yiddish terms with their English translations, but the
54
understanding of the symbolic imports of each term. The poem starts
off with a translation of lemoshl
think this will just be a simple glossary of terms, but inevitably the list of
di kurve, which in English means “the
chooses to charge the translation with her particular subjectivity, and
she follows her translation of di kurve, with “a woman who acknowledges
her passions.” The terms that follow di kurve are other images of Jewish
femininity:
di yidene The Jewess The Jewish woman
ignorant overbearing
di yenta the gossip the busybody
and is never caught off guard
di liezbianke the one with
a roommate through we never used
the word
dos vaybl the wife
particular understandings of the words. When I say universal, there is
something archetypical and stereotypical about the images she presents
of “The Jewess.” She allows the reader to acknowledge the stereotypes
want us to believe di yidene in its translation is just the “The Jewish woman,” but sardonically all woman in her eyes occupy these same spaces of
plicated how we should understand the navigation of translating these
terms. Di liezbianke is something I have no way of conceptualizing. I do
55
is talking about forbidden love and lesbian relationships, when talking
about women with “roommates.” There is a mysterious content we are
losing when she moves from each language, and in order to not lose the
symbolism lost in translation, but in doing so a reader is never comfortable with all this information swimming in their head as they move from
term to term.
The poem continues along this track for a part of the second sections with truly obfuscated and personal understandings of the words in
in der heym at home
where she does everything to keep
yiddishkayt alive
yiddishkayt a way of being
der
heym and yiddishkayt mean, but she already casts each term in both languages in doubt. Perhaps yiddishkayt is a way of being Jewish, but is there
any way of being Jewish really? And if there is a need to keep yiddishkayt
alive at the home, is this a insurmountable and pointless act of preservanine images, normative conceptions of cultural symbols, and the very
instable contradiction of Jewishness and its preservation. Powerful stuff
right? Well, as we keep moving the poem, Yiddish and English sentence
-
di khalah braided
vi ir hor far der khasene
like her hair before the wedding
when she was aza sheyn meydl
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The three Yiddish terms that come in this section have no translation at all, but just the conjoining of English with Yiddish constructions, made me, as a reader, immediately question whether or not the
English sentences that follow the Yiddish phrases present a translation
or are independent units within themselves. In the stanza above, we
tive, but are the Yiddish sentences necessarily equated with the English,
Yiddish has started to invade spaces without translation and it is intersupposed to be reading from Yiddish to English and vice versa. The
reader is now forced to work with this subjective glossary of terms that
and the last stanza of the second section, any sense of linguistic navigareading, and the unsettling effect of both familiarization and defamiliarization comes into play. The invitation the poem offers is capsized
throughout the poem,
af roy kholmt a woman
dreams ir ort oyf der velt
her place in this world
un zi hot moyre and she is afraid
That it is not only culture and history that are alienating her as a woman, but the entire linguistic discourse. Words in their power as symbols
tably, we dictate hierarchy, placement, and understanding of our environment in relation to other people with words, and, since language is
so obscured and complicated, fear is the inevitable emotion that can be
only makes sense based on the very subjective glossary of terms that
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terms are pervious images of femininity that have been interspersed
throughout the poem, but they come in a torrent of irregular constructions and placements. Words, which we used to construct these terms,
are missing, and we have no way of trying to understand the third section, without attempting some translation work ourselves. The reader
has now becomes the translator. The poet has forced the unease of
alienation and familiarity into the hands of a reader by giving a glossary
fearful evocation at the beginning of the third section, and as I attempt
to translate the long list of words, something becomes very clear. How
words that have appeared before in this last section? Does it matter? No
disjointed puzzle. I have never been forced to translate, but I instead live
comfortably within mediation. As the poem came apart in my hands, as
the words hit me without signifying registers, there is palatable feeling
for this void from English to Yiddish, the uncanny valley of emotive and
symbolic registers that are lost between languages.
me as a reader a slight understanding of how language has othered her.
Spivak writes that, “Translation is the most intimate act of reading. I
family chorus before clear memory began, have a peculiar intimacy for
internalized with impossibly tangled subjectivity.
the poem comfortably, but as a reader traverses the poem, they enter her
unstable space. By acting as translator the reader becomes engrossed
towards a larger understanding of the poem, but inevitably as someone
in the poem a way to show that language in translation is still charged
in his look at the translator, but she also gives credence to his idea of
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“spirit” in language. She accomplishes transmitting the spirit of translation by imbuing her terms with instable and personal understandings of
gap between translation and is able to eke out a beautiful distillation of
what is intimate and unsettling about linguistic discourse. Translation is
ingrained in language is a history of symbols, metaphors, and trauma
a clean transfer of information, she chooses to suffuse relatively static
terms with a perspective that is highly aware of the ability of language
reader the project of her poetry:
Think of it: heym and home the meaning
but the shift in vowel was the ocean
Language is not easy. We force people to learn a new tongue
as they enter a new land, but how can we possibly sing our song in a
strange land with a strange tongue. The gap between languages is insurmountable and morbid and just so scary. We are constantly swimming
in linguistic discourse. Public spaces ooze with errant conversations in
all manner of tongues. We are rarely attuned to the discomfort in this
inability to realistically move from tongue to tongue unless we are truly
put into uncomfortable environments. We create reality with the utterance of a noun and a verb and some adjectives. But how are we supposed to react to reality, home, and memory when the gap from word to
word from Yiddish to English is a seemingly insurmountable gap? We
can retreat into our native tongues and refuse to participate in the mediation, but in doing so we forget that we live in a world full of people so
this so well, and, instead of drowning in this gap, she decides to provide
translation that is partial and, therefore, participatory for the reader.
The words she uses become repositories for perspective, emotions, and
complicated subjectivity that surpass the gap just a little bit.
emotional and personal understanding of the poem as not just a piece
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alienation. So often when interpreting a piece of literature for class, I fall
into trap of attempting to understand the piece in a analytical vacuum.
sation with a piece of literature where I really feel anything at all. Susan
Sontag writes in Against Interpretation, that often in the critical community
we react and critique and interpret literature in a manner that ignores
poetry truly makes me nervous and elated in one moment. I feel nervous
as I am unable to understand what she is trying to say, but I feel elation
suffused with words in a foreign language. The standard interpretative
few words in
the mother tongue makes sensuality a key issue to be interrogated and felt as
we read. Sontag famously ends Against Interpretation, writing, “In place of
poems, we cannot fall into hermeneutics, but we have to feel the erotic
and emotional content of what she is passing onto us. This has been an
how I should go about interpreting things from now on. It seems irresponsible to assign moral value to literature without some kind of trepidation. We should not be prescribing rights or wrongs. But I do think
at least in some sense, by being an outsider when engaging with these
poems, I could for short amount of time understand the various moduthe meditations of that question.
Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter, and Arendt, Hannah. Illuminations. New York:
Schocken, 1986. Print.
A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New
(1971-1990)
Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York:
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Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. New York: Farrar,
Harshav, Benjamin. The Meaning of Yiddish
1999. Print.
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62
Dorm Room
Henry Rosen
Class of 2017
i do not have
enough space
in my dorm room
this semester
i do not have
any place
to study
in my dorm room
this semester
i complained
to Administration
about my dorm room
this semester
i complained:
“i do not have
enough space
to pray
this semester!”
As if I pray
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Call and Response
Sahara Pradhan
and Andrew Bush
Evening falls as we begin to rip her old cotton saree, once crisp,
now soft and frayed in her cracked hands. We begin at one end, and
travel its generous length—it could wrap itself around my skinny sevenyear-old body at least one hundred times over. With folds of yellow in
one arm, she pinches the threads in one corner, and with the sudden
sound of a long rip, pulls it apart, a space begins to form between cloth
and several breaths to emerge at the other end with one thin, long, continuous, yellow strip, and we are now again at the beginning, ready to
start once more. This time, she places a corner of the saree in my hands,
if I bring it up to my face, I can smell the last traces of mustard oil. I
of strands, seams guiding hand chasing hand following thread moving
and tear till our hands are sore, making strips of colored cloth that sit
then to red with streaks of brown, the three she has given to me from
the shelves of her archive.
When it is time to braid, she twists three strips and wraps them
knot steady between my toes as I begin to braid with my hands, bringing each strand into the place of another, interweaving, until she points
to show me that the ends of the strips, which feel forever away, have
lengths and slowly undo the ends that have braided themselves into
knots, while I braided at the top. I braid and unbraid and braid again,
write and unwrite, unable to see both here and there at once, taking
turns for undoing and doing all that has happened each time I am elsewhere. When we reach the end of this long, threaded braid, we tie more
and every brown streak has been knotted and braided. After three nights
pass and the cloth runs out, it is time to sew. We coil the braids in circles
and bind them closely together, tightly, and the rings begin to grow outwards, the cloth folded into itself, as uneven, colored patterns begin to
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appear on its surface that begin to tell this story...
Dear you, I say, for in your unwriting you have yourself unnamed, a strand,
many strands, a knot, unkotted, of a piece and yet a piece only, in the beginning of
a story that does not begin, but begins as the telling of where the story had already
begun. Dear you who are, also, covering, discovering and covered by your grandmother,
your grandmother’s saree.
Two are holding a cloth--a talit, a saree, any textile is the text. This one says
all of it is mine. And this one says, all of it is mine. And how shall they not so swear
when each is right. To what may this be likened? To a saree, ripped lengthwise and
transmitted as a teaching. Is the teaching not of the teacher still when it becomes the
learning of the pupil? How could the rabbis, intent on adjudication, fail to see that
what is all mine be at the same time all yours? Or have they turned a blind eye after
all. This one shall swear, not less that half of it is mine. And this one shall swear,
not less that half of it is mine. So much for the warp and wool of weaving. And were
there a third holding to the cloth, then braiding; let the third also say all of it is mine,
all of it is yours, do I not still have a hand in it? If I turn toward you (the turning
of Hebrew possessive), if I stand by you, then do I not continue to take part in, and
in that way take part of, what is yours? If yours is the word, text and textile, do I not
still have--is it not still to me--not less than half in my responsibility to respond?
Let me say it this way: a tradition, a legacy, even a teaching embodied in
dark times, that we have been put, or put ourselves alone, still we know this, for the
distance of the cloth that measures out, that is held between the toe and the hand, or
if there is not a cloth, where there is no text between the toe + the stone in the game of
hopscotch). Let me say it this way: if Tal and Fisher’s Dosha—for they both hold
her hand, and they both say she is wholly mine, and they both swear part in their
responsibility for her story--is, in the West, Dora, then she is, in greek, a gift in which
giver + receiver have not less than half; but she is in her own Jewish family, Jerusha,
which means inheritance, like a Saree.
Yours,
Andy
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