Word: yiddishe
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...give a reading from his latest novel that he sounded too much like a whining old Jew. From one of his own stories in this new collection, one gets the impression that Bashevis Singer isn't always well-liked. The story is about a New Year's party for Yiddish writers, and in this seemingly autobiographical sketch, the narrator/author says he has always hated such parties because "Leftists scolded me for failing to promote world revolutions. The Zionists reproached me for not dramatizing the struggle of the Jewish state and the heroism of its pioneers." And his hostess adds...
...people, the young Golda decided; rather, the Jews chose God: "The first people in history to have done something truly revolutionary." From Pinsk the Mabovitches emigrated to Milwaukee. At the Fourth Street School, still standing in the shadow of a brewery, Golda learned English to complement the Yiddish spoken at home and the Hebrew she would later speak with an accent. She yearned to become a schoolteacher, but Labor Zionism exerted a stronger pull. In 1921 she emigrated for the final time to the Yishuv, the Land of Israel...
...today, is clearly Chinese-American." Joan Micklin Silver's film by the same name is set at the turn of the century, a time when the street was a major center of activity in New York's Jewish ghetto, and the men who shuffled down its sidewalks were mumbling Yiddish under their beards...
Fortunately, the Yiddish in this film does not degenerate in a Fiddler on the Roof-like parody of Jewish mannerisms. Silver has wisely avoided this pitfall by having her characters converse in Yiddish where appropriate, and translating the conversation with subtitles. And while such classic Yiddishisms as "You vont that I should... "remain, they sound thoroughly plausible within the greater framework of this film. Mrs. Kavarsky is the film's greatest source of acerbic Yiddish wit, with such comments as "You can't pee up my back and make me think it's rain." She is the archetypal yente, always...
...Gulag Archipelago Firsthand. A one-man show with Yaakov Khantsis, featuring a simultaneous Yiddish translation. In the Leighton Room of Phillips Brooks House, November 20, at 6:45 p.m. Admission free...