Oct. 22, 2005
BOOK REVIEWS: ‘Outwitting History’ Recounts 25-Year Effort to Save Yiddish
Books; ‘Born to Kvetch’ Reveals Cultural Influence of Yiddish; ‘Yiddish with
Dick and Jane’ Parodies Popular Readers for Children
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton, WV (HNN) – Three books about Yiddish, right after the High Holidays.
What could be better for fans of this amazingly expressive language that has
influenced North American English so much? Nothing, that’s what, so on with
the reviews, already!
“Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million
Books” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $13.95, 328 pages) is the new
quality paperback edition of Aaron Lansky’s 2004 book about his rescue
efforts that led to the founding of the National Yiddish Book Center and the
rescuing of a million – actually, about 1.5 million now -- books written in
Yiddish. Lansky was a 23-year-old graduate student who got a midnight phone
call one rainy night in 1980 that changed his life. It was from a woman who
taught the New Bedford, Mass. man Yiddish four years before.
She told him that thousands of books were in a Dumpster in New York City and
would disappear into a landfill forever unless Lansky did something about
it. He rounded up his friends and took the train from Massachusetts to
Manhattan and rescued thousands of Yiddish books that had been tossed into
the Dumpster. That was the beginning of the National Yiddish Book Center,
which resides in a beautifully designed permanent headquarters at Lansky’s
alma mater, Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Along the way, Lansky was
awarded a $250,000 MacArthur Genius Grant, which saved his operation from
financial collapse. It’s a memoir and a fascinating story for anyone who
loves books. It’s even more poignant when one realizes that in 1939, before
the German invasion of Poland, and the Holocaust, Yiddish was a language
spoken by 10 million people in Europe, Latin America and North America.
Today, it’s spoken by about 3 million people, with more learning it every
day, Lansky relates.
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Aaron Lansky, author of "Outwitting History"
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Among the wonderful – and some not so wonderful – people Lansky and his
associates met was Marjorie Guthrie, widow of Woody and mother of Arlo and
Nora Guthrie. Marjorie was a well-known professional dancer and the daughter
of Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt and had many books to donate to Lansky’s
center. Woody never converted to Judaism, but he had a yidishe neshome, a
Jewish soul, observed a neighbor. Arlo Guthrie, of “Alice’s Restaurant”
fame, learned about his Jewish heritage from none other than the late Meir
Kahane – at that time a rabbinical student. The Guthrie family foundation
even donated money to the struggling Yiddish Book Center.
Lansky and his young associates answered the question asked by older Jews:
“Where are the yung – the young people?” Lansky credits a world-wide network
of zamlers (book collectors) who locate Yiddish books that need a home and
get them to Amherst. The center (see the web site address below) sells or
donates books to people or libraries around the world.
The book has a brief description of how Yiddish evolved from German in the
10th and 11th Centuries by Jews in the Rhineland region of Germany. Much of
the Yiddish vocabulary is German, with mixtures of Polish, Hebrew, Aramaic
and other languages. It’s written in the Hebrew alphabet. The book is
outstanding, both a memoir and an exciting account of a quest by a driven
man. So, what does it lack? An index, that’s what!
* * *
When I mentioned “Outwitting History” and “Born to Kvetch” by Michael Wex
(St. Martin’s Press, $24.95, 320 pages) to a friend of mine in Milwaukee, he
related the following anecdote:
“Thanks for this. I will get it to my good friend, Paul Melrood, president
of the International Yiddish Societies. I'm reminded of sitting in the
theater watching Mel Brooks' movie “Blazing Saddles,” when the Indians
attack the wagon train. The white families all form a circle, but won't [let] the
one wagon driven by a Black settler into the circle. The Indians catch up to the
Black guy, take one look at him and the chief yells "Los em gehn!" (let them
go). I'm laughing like crazy and the rest of the place is silent.”
My friend and former Milwaukee Sentinel colleague is of German Gentile
extraction. A childhood friend was Jewish and – thanks to his fluent German
– my friend quickly picked up a working knowledge of Yiddish. He is also
fluent in Spanish and Russian, belying the old saw about what’s a person who
speaks only one language: “An American.”
Another friend, a Jew who grew up in Baltimore and now lives on the West
Coast, took one look at the jacket photo of the “Yeshiva Bokher” on “Born to
Kvetch” and called it playing to a stereotype. Ignore the photo and the
title and enjoy this R-Rated (maybe even X-Rated) look at Yiddish. Wex is a
Canadian novelist, academic and translator (his translation of “The Three
Penny Opera” by Brecht and Weill is the only authorized Yiddish translation
of this famous 1920s German play, the source of the song “Mack the Knife”).
So, ignore the title and the photo – even though I like both – and immerse
yourself in a book that explores in considerable detail the lingua franca of
Jews as well as many others who grew up in a Jewish environment. I remember
reading in fairly recent biography of Burt Lancaster that the actor grew up
speaking fluent Yiddish. This certainly didn’t hurt when he played the role
of a Walter Winchell-style columnist in the classic “Sweet Smell of Success”
in 1957.
Wex knows his pop music and Elvis and other rock stars manage to mix with
Rabbi Akiva, Sholem Aleichem and Chaucer – as well as the Three Stooges.
I’m kvetching (complaining) about the lack of an index. Academics would like
source notes, but this is not meant to be a textbook, but rather a cultural
examination of the language and the world it reflects. “Born to Kvetch”
could be characterized as a more academic version of Leo Rosten’s 1968
best-seller “The Joy of Yiddish,” although Wex would probably not welcome
the comparison. There’s a glossary of Yiddish nouns and verbs, reflecting,
according to Wex: ‘Words and phrases that recur throughout the book; and
weird stuff that readers might want to find quickly.” He’s not kidding about
that “weird stuff!” This is a quirky, thoroughly enjoyable book for general
readers.
* * *
Finally, for something completely different, as the “Monty Python” people
would say, how about a 2004 book called “Yiddish with Dick and Jane”
(Little, Brown and Co., $14.95, 112 pages). It’s a very funny parody by
Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, with illustrations by Gabi Payn, of the
well-known Dick and Jane reading primers. The two are now adults; Jane is
married to Bob, a real “mensch,” and has two perfect children. Dick is an
avid golfer who uses the game to “schmooze” with his business associates.
Dick and Jane have a sister in the People’s Republic of Berkeley who teaches
a course in “Transgressive Feminist Ceramics.” You get the idea, “nu?”
“Yiddish with Dick and Jane” is a lot more kitschy than the two serious
books by Lansky and Wex, but nevertheless it’s good fun – plus it’s got a
glossary, too. No index, but I didn’t expect one. It would make an excellent
gift for anyone who ever wondered whatever happened to those unreal kids,
Dick and Jane. They’re living in the real “Desperate Housewives” world of
“tsuris” (troubles).
Web site: Lansky book: www.algonquin.com
National Yiddish Book Center: www.yiddishbookcenter.org
Wex book: www.stmartins.com
Yiddish with Dick and Jane: www.twbookman.com