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The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
29 October 2004

The Story of Yiddish Retold
by Leonard Prager

Dovid Katz, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. New York: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-465-03728-3

Dovid Katz's meteoric career as Yiddish scholar, teacher, publicist, author, and activist has spread his name among Yiddish-lovers the world over. His latest book, Words on Fire, will undoubtedly make him known to wider circles. Not, be it pointed out, known as DAVID Katz, but as DOVID Katz. That small syllabic alternation carries a large symbolic weight, hinting at the author's particularistic vision, a kind of "ecological Yiddishism" which challenges the menacing gleichschaltung of globalism. A consistent and feisty advocate of "Yiddish-in-Yiddish" within the academy, Katz has given us a work which is both analytical and polemical. In total opposition to the myriad voices eulogizing Yiddish and virtually burying it, Katz not only pens a lively account of its thousand year-old existence, but conjures a demographic argument that would seem to assure vigorous survival for another millennium.

"It was time for a radically alternative view of Yiddish to be presented in a book in English for a wider readership," a friend advised. One radical feature of the 400-page book Katz has now written is its effort to avoid monographic turgidity. For the sake of the general reader, not a single footnote blocks the author's flow of thought as he weaves a coherent overview of the Yiddish story. Nor is there a bibliography - the single reference tool is a copious 32-page index of names and subjects. The many helpful illustrations are adequately annotated, quotations are attributed to their sources and when necessary references to particulars (persons, events, books, etc.) are given in the running text. However, as one reads on and gradually uncovers the absence of references to scores of individuals who are the very foundation stones of Yiddish studies and Yiddish creativity, one thinks of Dante's alleged practice of placing his political enemies in Hell and his friends in Paradise. The great names of Yiddish scholarship are missing from the Index because they are missing from the book (though several names in the book are not in the index!) That Dovid Katz is a passionate man with fierce likes and dislikes may help explain the "Dantesque" quality of this highly individual composition.

Musing on the phenomenon of a book-length study of such intricate and multifarious subjects as Yiddish language and literature which minimize the normal trappings of serious scholarship, there comes to mind the feat of Erich Auerbach who wrote the seminal Mimesis - a book without notes - while in Turkey during World War Two. Auerbach was far from libraries, and though in far less drastic circumstances Katz too must have written much of his book in Vilna and in his Welsh retreat, neither of which can rival Yivo or Oxford library facilities. On the other hand there are writers who desire difficulties: Robert Frost saw an analogy between the formal qualities of verse and the net one requires in tennis. George Perec - distant relative of Y.-L. Perets - of the Oulipo school of writers composed an entire novel without the letter e and his translator in English followed suit! Igor Stravinsky is quoted as saying: "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit."

Words on Fire will sear the equanimity of many members of that miniscule group we can call the academic Yiddishists (in which group I would have to place myself). These critics will take offense at the exclusion of such major poets as Yankev Glatshteyn - arguably the finest of all American Yiddish poets - and Itsik Manger, the balladist who rewrote the Bible in an inimitably charming satiric vein. Nor would they grant that one can sketch Yiddish literary history without recourse to the work of Yisroel Tsinberg, Dov Sadan, Khone Shmeruk - to name several prominent omissions. One can nonetheless grant that the average reader is not likely to miss the scholar's much-loved documentation. Katz has a lot to say and he often does so in a brilliant manner, though not always stopping to give evidence for his assertions - the stuff of books-to-come?


Katz's Theses

Katz has been innovative in Yiddish linguistic research for decades; in the ongoing debate on the origins of Yiddish his is a respected voice. At the First International Conference on Research in Yiddish Language and Literature at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies in August 1979, he challenged the "standard" text theory of the origin of Hebrew and Aramaic materials in Yiddish with what he called the "continual transmission theory," basing his position largely on phonological grounds. Good classroom teacher that he is, Katz repeats his theses again and again from different vantage points and in varying contexts. His linguistic and socio-linguistic theses
posit: 1) present-day Yiddish is part of an ancient "Jewish language chain"; 2) Jewish internal culture is trilingual - Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic; 3) there is no future for secular Yiddishism - an opinion which is widely held and which continues to enrage the small bands of "yidishe yidn" who valiantly try to live in and through Yiddish; 4) Yiddish will be spoken by millions of ultra-Orthodox Jews a half-century hence - a view that is not original to Katz but that will now generate much discussion, cheering many Yiddish enthusiasts and leaving others disconsolate.


The Jewish Language Chain

In the first of the many gripping mini-histories of individual words that are dispersed throughout the volume, Katz traces mazl from its Hebrew beginnings through Jewish Aramaic and ending in Yiddish. "About five thousand years of history lie behind this one Yiddish word." (p.12) Though Yiddish is only a thousand years old, its pedigree can be stretched back to the age of its Semitic components and this venerability presumably adds to its worth. Katz writes: "... the Jewish language chain... originated ... with the consolidation of the first Jewish fusion language Hebrew.... Over a thousand years later,.. . the Judean exiles in Babylonia created the second major Jewish language, Jewish Aramaic, from the Hebrew (itself a fusion of Canaanite with an older form of Aramaic) they brought with them and the Babylonian Aramaic they found in their own home." (p. 15) Katz livens linguistic history by lexical borrowings from astronomy: "little bang" and "big bang." The meeting of Hebrew and Aramaic constitutes the "little bang," and their joint contact with medieval urban German dialects is the major explosion resulting in the creation of Yiddish, which itself divides into western and eastern branches, each with its own regional varieties (Figure 1.3).

Katz may be regarded as a "revisionist" in his understanding of the "big bang." Max Weinreich - for whom Katz has the greatest respect - regarded Loter, the Rhineland, as the cradle of Yiddish. The "revisionists" argue that Yiddish may indeed have first originated in Loter, but its subsequent development occurred in a number of dialects centered in Regensburg and Bavaria - the Loter beginning proved a dead end. This modification of Weinreichian theory is not considered eccentric; Weinreich and Katz would agree that there is no Yiddish dialect that corresponds in its major features to any one German dialect.


The Internal Trilingualism of Ashkenaz

In addition to speaking a local German dialect, Ashkenazim, according to Katz, spoke three Jewish languages: Yiddish (loshn Ashkenaz , Hebrew (loshn-koydesh) and Aramaic (targum-loshn). Following Weinreich, most writers in discussing internal bilingualism in Ashkenaz mean Yiddish and loshn-koydesh, the latter referring to Hebrew-Aramaic, to Hebrew and Aramaic conceived as one. Katz, however, claims that loshn-koydesh was the traditional name for Hebrew, assigning Aramaic (targum-loshn) a total and individual self. (If there is a misunderstanding, it is widespread, e.g. the first footnote in Naomi Seidman's book on the "masculinity" of Hebrew and the "femininity" of Yiddish, A Marriage Made in Heaven , which Katz much admires, reads: " Loshn-koydesh comprises not only the various strata of Hebrew, including biblical and rabbinic, but also Aramaic, the earlier Jewish vernacular in which the Talmud is composed.") Katz assures us that "The general configuration is one of graceful complementation between the three languages." (p. 46) A minority of a minority commanded Aramaic for studying and writing talmudic and kabbalistic literature; everyone spoke Yiddish - but it was neither "low" nor "high" in terms of prestige. Debate on the meaning of so central a term as loshn-koydesh can only be welcome. It is no accident that Katz's chapter on Old Yiddish literature is the shortest in the book. Here is a subject which is difficult to present in a popular manner without being superficial. The Yiddish medieval heritage was rediscovered at the beginning of the last century by Eastern-European Yiddish scholars looking for creative continuity; it is only now coming to the attention of a wider audience. Wisely Katz concentrates on Elye Bokher's inimitable Bove bukh ('Bovo of Antona'), racily summarizing its plot and informing us that this creation was the first to employ ottava rima in a Germanic language (which I learned about in a famous essay by Benjamin Harshav in the now 40-year old and still worth reading festschrift for Max Weinreich on his 70th birthday). Katz also discusses Pariz un Vyene, another adaptation of an Italian romance, formerly thought to be by the extraordinary Elye Bokher, but as the result of new discoveries now thought by many students of Old Yiddish to be by a protege of the master. Succinctness is surely a virtue, but Katz often moves too swiftly for his readers. Thus we learn that "One of the most adored of European works rendered in Old Yiddish was King Arthur's Court." But why was it adored, how do we know it was adored and by whom and where and when exactly was it adored and what do we mean by "adored", etc.?

There is a partial one-sentence answer: "The two central characters, Gavein and his son Vidvilt (Widwilt) were as cherished for Yiddish readers as they were for Germans and other Europeans." This chases us around the block without revealing why they were cherished and by which Yiddish readers. But the general reader may not require lengthier explanations.

Katz is very gender conscious and he surveys the large subject of Yiddish and women with empathy and with narrative skill. Shmuel Niger's pioneering Der pinkes (Vilna) essay of 1912 on the role of women readers in the development of Yiddish literature goes unmentioned, but Katz knows the research in this area and discusses most of the important individual "books for women and simple men," buttressing his very readable account with basic bibliographical notation. Far more than anyone before him, he carries the theme of women's contributions into the field of Yiddish and Kabbalah, where he makes a strong claim that will attract the attention of feminists and would-be kabbalists alike: "The Yiddish works that brought kabbalistic ideas to the wide readership of men and women played an essential role not only in the dissemination of those kabbalistic ideas, but also in a newly uninhibited transmission of classical Jewish knowledge in the universal vernacular. Kabbalah became a motivating factor in the enfranchisement of women and unlearned men." (p. 121).

The core of Katz's book is two long chapters (6 and 7) which cover the larger periods of Yiddish literary development. Pushed out of the Germanic lands and welcomed by tolerant pagans in the East, Jews developed a large measure of autonomy that enabled the Jewish polity to thrive culturally for several centuries. The rise of hasidism is reviewed by the author, who in hyperbolic manner, nominates Rabbi Nakhman Braslaver's Sipurey maasiyoys ('Stories') as "the first actual literary masterpiece of East European Yiddish, perhaps of East European Jewry altogether." We are not shown in what way the original Yiddish oral version is so distinguished. The roots of modern Yiddish literature lie in the clash between traditionalists and reformers and Katz very competently surveys the German haskala and its movement eastward, relating linguistic phenomena to historical and social changes. Dov-Ber Kerler's Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Oxford 1999) is judged "definitive" in its demonstration of the way many features of pre-maskilic eighteenth-century Yiddish approached the new Eastern-European Yiddish literary standard.

Katz justly commends the innovative Mendel Lefin of Satanow, "a master of style" who precipitated fiery debate on the very legitimacy of Yiddish when he translated Proverbs "into a rich, idiomatic, local Galician-Ukrainian Yiddish, bringing into play the Hebrew and Aramaic (Semitic) elements of the language as well as the Slavic elements that had been part of spoken Eastern European Yiddish for centuries but had not been freely represented in written language." (See Lefin's translation of Koheles at <http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il). Katz writes that Perl "translated Fielding's Tom Jones into Yiddish." Perl's "translation" - the ms. is in the library of the Hebrew University - appears to be from a German adaptation of the novel. Katz omits the title of Perl's famous anti-hasidic Hebrew satire - Megale temirin 'Revealer of Secrets'; he might have mentioned Dov Taylor's highly useful translation entitled Joseph Perl's "Revealer of Secrets"; The First Hebrew Novel (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), sure to be of interest to students of Yiddish.

In his sketch of modern Judaism's many faces with particular regard to tradition and language-use, Katz shows a broad grasp of the Jewish scene: "One major accomplishment of all the new German-Jewish persuasions and their transplantation to other western countries, was the rise of a Jewish metaculture in German and English and other languages that enabled immersion in various aspects of the Jewish heritage using the tools and institutional possibilities of the West."(p.228) "A second major metaculture involved the arts." (p.228) Katz has placed on opposite pages (Figures 7.7 and 7.8, pp. 218-9) Yehuda Pen's "Reading a Newspaper" and his "The Watchmaker." In the first we are told that a revolutionary reads a secular organ, the St. Petersburg Der fraynd, while in contrast "a traditional watchmaker" reads the conservative daily Warsaw Haynt. I recall seeing somewhere a fuller reading of the famous "The Watchmaker": The subject is reading the last page of Haynt, which was always reserved for sensational material: the clamoring (and possibly risque) now clashes with the eternity of Time as imaged in all the clocks in the picture. In his description of the growth of modern Yiddish culture, Katz introduces an almost metaphysical concept: the "secular outburst." (p.229) The agents of the cultural explosion he draws were all in some way connected with tradition, no matter how far they had personally abandoned it. Pen's watchmaker looks backwards and forwards. (Reproduction in color on page 346 of Lithuanian Jewish Culture and in black and white at http://w3.vitebsk.by/vitebsk/pen/pic/pic_08.jpg .

Tirade is rare in Katz's generally well-balanced but by no means aseptic discussion, yet he can sally forth with slashing generalizations that one would like to refute or at least modify: "Although pointing it out is not politically correct nowadays, the State of Israel was built almost entirely by Yiddish-speaking East European Jews who were able in their deepest soul to 'translate' the erstwhile Jewish readiness to die for God and his Torah into a modern kind of ultranationalism that entailed rejecting their mother tongue and the culture of their parents, families, towns and civilization." (p.236)

"The loathing of Yiddish among East European native-Yiddish speaking Zionists in Palestine, who where actually speaking Hebrew, was incalculably more bitter than anything seen in the Mendelsohnian circle in late-eighteenth century Germany or their East European followers in the 19th." (p. 238) Katz's final view of Zionism is positive: "The rise, growth and solidification of a revived Jewish state in its ancient homeland is one of the major accomplishments in all of Jewish history, whatever one's view of Jewish language and culture..." (p. 373), yet a certain residual embitteredness occasionally rises to the surface: those Zionists "created a kind of golem: a proud, new Jewish-derived people who became Israelis, leaving their ethnic, cultural, and linguistic Jewishness far behind. They would prove to themselves and the world that the 'old Jew', whom they considered passive, hapless, effeminate, who jabbered that ugly jargon, would be replaced in the ancient homeland." (p. 238)

Katz contrasts "humanist" Yiddishism with "ultranationalist" Zionism, ignoring the history of a movement saturated with utopianism, and large sectors of which were dedicated to the creation of a model society in Palestine, one based on ancient biblical and modern socialist ideals of justice. Katz pits the Socialist Bund against the Zionists as regards diaspora politics, but Zionists too fought antisemitism, defended Jewish rights, seeing immigration as a gradual process which did not relieve them of civic responsibilities in their native lands.

It is true that in some homes in some shtetlekh, some servant girls and others spoke some Yiddish, but there is no evidence that Yiddish "was also understood by many non-Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe". (p. 243) Centuries ago as today, nothing has ever been as sure a proof of a person's Jewishness as his ability to speak Yiddish. (In America everybody "speaks Yiddish" - e.g. the kabbala scholar Madonna, Colin Powell, etc.).

There is no subject developed by Katz that will be as new to many readers as his discussionn of ultraorthodoxy. Most of us know little about the Khasam Soyfer (Moyshe Shreiber, 1762-1839), author of "one hundred books, all unpublished." It was Akiba-Joseph Shlezinger (1837-1922) who published Shreiber's ethical will in Yiddish in 1864, a "little book that 'codified' the question of Yiddish for Haredim for all time to come, warning everyone, 'Be careful not to change your name, language or clothing to those of the gentile, God forbid!'" (p. 252) Shlezinger described Yiddish as the language "unique" to Jews, i.e. not known by Gentiles.

Katz sees Eastern-European Jewish cultural autonomy as successful - despite the political and socio-economic oppression of Jews in every Eastern-European country in every period including brief ones of relative communal independence. He has made a major effort to reconcile his own liberal views with the irrefutably obscurantist stance of the ultra-Orthodox, candidly acknowledging their theological chauvinism (belief in innate ethical superiority to Gentiles) and discovering intellectual flexibility in their talmudic study (though their fundamental assumptions are unshakeable); moreover, he sees in their thriving Yiddish periodicals promise of a literary flowering. He is justly incensed at the brutal manner in which Hebraists attacked Yiddish cultural expression in the Yishuv and in the early years of the State of Israel and of the continuing - if lessening - opposition to Yiddish in Israeli society. He sees modern Israeli Hebrew as "Israeli" - as distinct from the language of the Bible. This "Israeli" is a largely artificial creation with European-Yiddish syntax and Semitic word stock - a view elaborated in the writings of the young Israeli linguist Ghil`ad Zuckermann. Katz sees Hasidic Yiddish-speaking communities living in and outside of the Jewish state, fulfilling a modern ecological mitsva of being different and preserving age-old differences. These communities alone can assure the survival of Yiddish since they alone preserve an internal trilingual culture.

Words of Fire joins a growing body of books which attempt to describe some facet of Yiddish language or literature in English for the general reader. Maurice Samuel's In Praise of Yiddish (mentioned by Katz favorably) is still a valuable and engaging work; a recent addition to this literature is Miriam Weinstein's popular and readable Yiddish (2001). Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish will continue to be a litmus paper dividing the "non-compromisers" from the "accomodationists" (Katz praises Rosten whereas in my club he is the acme of vulgarity and firmly proscribed.) Katz's book, powered by large ideas and drawing upon a lifetime of wide reading in the scholarly literature of Yiddish, is unlike any of these popular works and is worth reading by footnote-loving scholars as well as by laymen.
Many of us will want to say to Katz (in "Israeli"!): "kol hakavod" and then, deep into the night, to argue with him in the glow of his Words on Fire...

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