Word: yiddishe
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...Well, my friends," he said, "what can we do? We are an ancient people, we are used to it. We survived, we shall survive." And to the question of how Israel would react if Libya got the bomb, Begin replied, amid laughter, "Let us deal first with that meshuggener [Yiddish for lunatic], Saddam Hussein. With the other meshuggener [Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi], another time...
...take whatever tests can be taken.' Quite a smart woman. [Looks up to make sure you realize this.] And the doctor said to her, it's gall bladder, and we'll just operate. We take it out. We'll repair it. God knows what. [The sentences sound increasingly like Yiddish-English.] "So ... [long pause] she was operated on [by a different doctor]. My father and I were there. And the doctor came down...
...fine weave of the film is connected by haunting Yiddish melodies. Waletzky blends in interviews with Holocaust survivors, revealing the remarkably vivid recall each emigrant possesses. One elderly woman recites several Yiddish folk songs and prayers, and the mix of her voice with the photography brings us back to the old country. The narration, written by Jerome Badanes, is appropriately spare and unobtrusive. He usually avoids the temptation to moralize, and indeed understatement is what lends Image its unique force...
Image presents a candid mosaic of Jewish life in Poland. What emerges from the film's patchwork is a coherent portrait of a flourishing culture. Aspiring writers flock to Warsaw to study under Y.L. Peretz, the dean of Yiddish literature. In the town of Vilna, the Jewish community establishes schools for the mentally retarded and for orphans. In the shtetls, the townfold engage in lively commerce and conform to the letter of well-rooted traditions. The Jews are politically animated. The heirs of the Enlightenment try to balance universal values with continuing Jewish particularism (the "problem" of minority separatism...
...Actor Rod Steiger, 55, going from the Hasidic rabbi in The Chosen to Benito Mussolini in Lion of the Desert demanded a few changes. First, the Yiddish inflection was traded for an Italian accent. No problem there, since Steiger had played Pope John XXIII in And There Came a Man (1968) and, for that matter, the title role in Mussolini, the Last Act (1974). Next, the full, rabbinical beard had to go. Finally, Steiger's impressively shaggy head had to be shaved. But how closely? Over this hairy point, a heated argument arose between Steiger's makeup...