Adventures in Yiddishland Postvernacular Language and Culture S Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies 1st Edition Jeffrey Shandler Available Full Chapters
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Adventures in Yiddishland Postvernacular Language and
Culture S Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies
1st Edition Jeffrey Shandler
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the s. mark tape r foundation
imprint in jewish studie s
by this endowment
the s. mark taper foundation supports
the appreciation and understanding
of the richness and diversity of
jewish life and culture
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the
generous contribution to this book provided
by the Jewish Studies Endowment Fund of
the University of California Press
Foundation, which is supported by a major
gift from the S. Mark Taper Foundation.
ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND
POSTVERNACULAR LANGUAGE & CULTURE
ADVENTURES IN
YIDDISHLAND
JEFFREY SHANDLER
Shandler, Jeffrey.
Adventures in Yiddishland : postvernacular language
and culture / Jeffrey Shandler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–520-24416-8 (cloth : alk. paper).
1. Yiddish language. 2. Yiddish language—Social
aspects. 3. Jews—Languages. 4. Language and
culture. I. Title.
PJ5113.S53 2005
439'.1—dc22 2005005293
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Author’s Note xv
Introduction: Postvernacularity,
or Speaking of Yiddish 1
1. Imagining Yiddishland 31
2. Beyond the Mother Tongue 59
3. Founded in Translation 92
4. Yiddish as Performance Art 126
5. Absolut Tchotchke 155
6. Wanted Dead or Alive? 177
Notes 203
Index 243
ILLUSTRATIONS
ix
“The Jewish Torah in Yiddish” cartoon 100
Page from a Yiddish translation of The New Testament 102
Cover of Yiddish translation of Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat 118
Page from a Yiddish version of Will Eisner’s A Contract with God 123
Bilingual announcement of a model East European
Jewish wedding, New York 129
Performance of Kheyder, Belorussian State Yiddish Theater, Minsk 133
New World Angel leading the Ashkenaz Parade, Toronto 137
Great Small Works’ The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln/Zikhroynes Glikl 14 0
Poster announcing the International Yiddish Festival, Cracow 142
Yugntruf cartoon 148
Jewish Mood Cube 157
Advertisement for Absolut Vodka 159
Lapel button 161
Mr. Mahzel figurine 163
Refrigerator magnet with Forward logo 165
Yankee Yiddish Cocktail Napkins 167
gefilte fish plastic ornament 168
Look at the Schmuck on That Camel board game 171
Promotional brochure for the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, New York 181
Promotional card for Isle of Klezbos 187
“Kosher” set of “talking stickers” 195
Souvenir amulet 197
New Yorker cartoon 200
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is difficult for me to say just when this project began. I am a native listener of Yid-
dish—that is, someone who regularly heard grandparents (native Yiddish speakers
and immigrants from Eastern Europe) and, to a lesser extent, parents and other rel-
atives converse in the language with one another but seldom with me. Consequently,
I have been engaged with the issue of postvernacularity, albeit unwittingly, since
childhood. I only began to address this issue—motivated, at the time, by a rather
open-ended curiosity about Yiddish—in my mid-twenties, when I enrolled in an el-
ementary class in the Yiddish summer program run by the YIVO Institute for Jew-
ish Research in conjunction with Columbia University. During the ensuing years
spent at YIVO and Columbia, I received more than a graduate training in Yiddish
studies; I acquired an intellectual orientation to addressing scholarly questions that
lie well beyond this field’s conventional boundaries.
Moreover, I found myself in the midst of a remarkable community of scholars.
It is my great privilege to have studied with Lucjan Dobroszycki, Benjamin Har-
shav, Mikhl Herzog, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Jack Kugelmass, Dan Miron,
and Avraham Nowersztern and to have benefited from collegial contact with Dina
Abramowicz, Zachary Baker, Adrienne Cooper, Jenna Joselit, Chava Lapin, Chana
Mlotek, Deborah Dash Moore, Marek Web, and Bina Weinreich, among others in
this community. In the spirit of intellectual rigor, creativity, and commitment that
these mentors and their predecessors in the field of Yiddish studies inspire, I have
xi
pursued this project in the hopes that it will, in some small way, further their schol-
arly ideals.
Although I first thought of writing about contemporary Yiddish culture when
considering possible topics for a dissertation, I didn’t begin to formulate the agenda
for this book until a few years after completing my doctorate. During a seminar at
the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where I had the
good fortune to be a postdoctoral fellow, a spirited discussion among American and
Israeli scholars about the curious nature of many Jews’ attachment to Yiddish
today—in particular, those who profess their love for the language but readily admit
that they don’t know it—first prompted me to consider addressing this and related
phenomena, as well as their larger implications. The result is this book.
I began approaching the task of analyzing contemporary Yiddish culture
through a series of separate research endeavors, some of which resulted in journal
articles that, in altered form, have become chapters or parts of chapters of Adven-
tures in Yiddishland. I thank the publishers of these journals for kindly granting
permission to publish these revised texts in this volume. Substantive work on this
project began while I was a Dorot Teaching Fellow at the Skirball Department of
Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, and I finished the manuscript
as a faculty member of the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. I
am grateful to my colleagues at both these institutions for their support of my re-
search over the years. During this time I also benefited greatly from a number of
opportunities to present parts of this study in a variety of scholarly settings: at
“People and Things,” the seminar on material culture in the Department of An-
thropology at New York University; during the year of seminars on the study of
performance at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at
Rutgers, where I was an associate fellow; at conferences on Yiddish culture at the
University of California Los Angeles, Northwestern University, and the Oxford
Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; as well as at seminars at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Princeton University, Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev, and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. I came away from the ex-
change with colleagues in each of these venues with fresh insights into the topic and
its analysis.
Among the dozens of friends and colleagues who have contributed in one way or
another to the completion of this book, I owe special thanks to Sally Charnow, Eve
Jochnowitz, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Naomi Seidman, and Kalman Weiser,
each of whom read a draft of the manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions for
its improvement. Eve also graciously provided a trove of remarkable resources, and
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I can’t imagine ever having been able to realize this project without Barbara’s prob-
ing insights, always generously offered, and her unfailing enthusiasm. Librarians
Zachary Baker, Faith Jones, and Yermiyahu Aharon Taub not only answered nu-
merous research queries but also brought to my attention wonderful resources that
they discovered on their own. The clippings of material related to my work that
Pamela Brumberg sent me over the years were also much appreciated and remain
treasured tokens of her friendship and collegial support. Paul Glasser, Miriam
Isaacs, Edward Portnoy, and Nina Warnke also gave generously of their time and
expertise in response to various research problems.
For their kind advice, information, and assistance offered along the way, I wish
to express my gratitude as well to Barbara Abrash, Natalia Aleksiun, Michael
Alpert, Gulie Arad, Aviva Astrinsky, Sholem Berger, Robert Bernecky, Toby Blum-
Dobkin, Alisa Braun, Sabina Brukner, Matti Bunzl, Hinde Ena Burstin, Yael
Chaver, Jesse Cohen, Adrienne Cooper, Lynn Dion, Vivian Ducat, John Efron,
Pearl Gluck, David Goldberg, Rachel Goldstein, Eric Gordon, Tresa Grauer, Janet
Hadda, Jack Halpern, Mikhl Herzog, Jim Hoberman, Andrew Ingall, Jenna Joselit,
Naomi Kadar, Ellen Kellman, Irena Klepfisz, Rebecca Kobrin, Szonja Komoroczy,
Chava Lapin, Shira Leuchter, Olga Litvak, Ronny Loewy, Chana Mlotek, Zalmen
Mlotek, Robert Neumann, Anita Norich, Sam Norich, Robby Peckerar, Wilbur
Pierce, Alyssa Quint, Henia Reinharz, Jenny Romaine, David Roskies, Yankl
Salant, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Peter Schweitzer, Nancy Sinkoff, Lorin Sklam-
berg, Chaim Waxman, Marek Web, Bina Weinreich, Aviva Weintraub, Michael
Wex, Adam Whiteman, Hana Wirth-Nesher, Edward Zaret, Froma Zeitlin, Eviatar
Zerubavel, and Yael Zerubavel. I owe special thanks to Stan Holwitz at University
of California Press for his thoughtful and attentive support of this project and to
Randy Heyman and Suzanne Knott, who always responded promptly and gra-
ciously to my many editorial questions and production requests.
My ultimate thanks and profoundest indebtedness go to Stuart Schear, who, as life
partner and fellow traveler in Yiddishland, has inspired my work and made the un-
dertaking of this adventure a great joy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Yiddish and Loshn-koydesh terms are generally romanized according to the YIVO
standard, except in citations, which preserve the romanization of the source. Yid-
dish terms are glossed the first time they appear in the text. All translations from
Yiddish are mine, except where indicated. The spelling of Jewish authors’ names
generally conforms to the Encyclopedia Judaica.
xv
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