Word: yiddisher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also the center of a unique and conflicting culture. The embers of an ancient piety awaiting deliverance by the Messiah flickered alongside the political activists who led the fights for higher wages and better working conditions. Frictions between the old and the new were aired daily in the Yiddish newspapers. Most notable was the Forward, whose editor, Abraham Cahan, became the Solomon of assimilation. Allowing your son to play baseball, he assured one parent, would not necessarily turn him into "a wild American runner...
There was no shortage of popular culture either. The Yiddish theater, which Howe shrewdly compares to Italian opera (where the emphasis is on virtuoso performance rather than content), was not shy about amending Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet was set in a Polish village, and Friar Laurence was recast as a Reform rabbi. The famous performers originating in the ghetto included Al Jolson, the Marx Brothers, George Jessel, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice...
Leonard, Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks, who spatter their routines with Yiddish vulgarisms. Their stage bilingualism, Howe argues, spilled contempt on themselves for being inauthentic and disdained Gentiles for rewarding them...
...serving God. The two are intertwined." Besides recognized zaddikim, there are according to Jewish lore a group of hidden zaddikim in every generation, believed to number at least 36, upon whose merit the existence of the world depends. Only the virtue of these 36 hidden saints-lamed-vovniks in Yiddish-stays God's hand from destroying the world...
...Bashevis Singer nothing could be worse than to become obsessed with the Holocaust. In "The Yearning Heifer," a Polish immigrant praises the writer/narrator for his column in the weekly Yiddish paper. "The news is all bad. Hitler this, Hitler that. He should burn like a fire, the bum, the no-good. What does he want from the Jews?" But this passes quickly from the story--as deeply and sincerely as it is felt--so the narrator can talk about his main subject...