Book Description
In 1937, Edith Westerfeld's parents-before being killed by the Nazis-sent her from Germany to live with relatives in America. Fifty-four years later, Edith decided that it was time to, with her grown daughter Fern, revisit the town she had left so many years before. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and-more importantly-with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them.
Customer Reviews:
A Trip Into the Past.......2007-10-07
"Motherland" by Fern Schumer Chapman centers around an intriguing premise, that of a mother and daughter returning to Germany to discover what happened to the family left behind during the war, in an effort to let go of the war that plagues their relationship. The author's mother was sent as a refuge to America a year after her older sister, leaving her grandma and parents to endure the wrath of the Nazis. Feeling abandoned and unloved, the author's mother never returned until the early 1990s, still hesitant to encounter the past.
For Germans, it seems as if WWII and its legacy is always close to the surface; a feeling a guilt pervades their interactions with those from other places due to the constant association with evil they must endure. Mother and daughter certainly encounter that on their journey to the small town where her mother lived her first 12 years of life. The town, while greatly changed, is still home to many former classmates. Escorted around town by a man eager to make amends for his past actions, the two discover that the past is always present, no matter how hard one tries to forget.
Overall, "Motherland" is a quick-paced read, an accounting of the author's attempt to understand her mother. Yet at times the narrative reads as if the author is trying to hard; she was five months pregnant when the journey was made, and perhaps her emotional swings show through too much. The flow is often interrupted by liteary efforts at similes, comparisons which aren't necessary and do not add to the story. However, the story is one that the author needed to discover and one that she needed to tell. It is an interesting look at how someone who wouldn't necessarily qualify as a 'survivor' did survive, but still passed on that legacy of loss and war to her daughter.
My son teenage son even read this one.........2007-08-30
I had begun this book and put it down--to pick it up again was a very good idea. This author has a very readable style. A great book to read if you want
to know about the Holocaust and beyond--just like the title says--it says it all.
Schools use Motherland To Teach About Moral Choices.......2006-05-15
Edith Westerfield Schumer left Germany in 1938 as a twelve-year-old. She left alone. Her parents sent her to America, removing her from the threat of the Nazis in her German homeland. Her Jewish father mistakenly believed that Hitler would acknowledge his service to Germany in World War I. However, most of her family did not survive the persecution or the death camps. Edith never saw her parents again.
She rarely spoke of her childhood. Perhaps so much loss could not be expressed in words. Perhaps she didn't know how to convey to her family what was ripped apart in her past. Her daughter Fern knew little of her heritage.
"Motherland" tells their story through her daughter Fern's perspective. When her mother finally agrees to return to Germany, Fern accompanies her-hoping to learn about her grandparents, hoping to see aspects of her mother's childhood, hoping to better understand how the Holocaust stole her past when it stole her mother's.
Through their journey Fern and Edith learn much more about each other and about the quest to reconcile the past than they expected, significantly deepening their mother-daughter bond. Fern relates with poignancy how moments from her mother's childhood are revealed during their visit. For the first time she realizes that her mother's inability to speak German without an American accent parallels her inability to speak English without German pronunciations creeping in. Her speech identifies her as different from other Americans-and other Germans. Fern learns her mother's favorite German food only to realize that Edith never learned to cook it before she was sent away. For the first time she hears of her mother's insecurities about leaving her home.
They encounter people from Edith's childhood who through their silence aligned themselves with the Nazis. Their lives still echo with hidden guilt. The mother and daughter speak with others who have never overcome their anger at the Nazis and what they suffered when they tried to help and protect the Jews. The women are struck by how people's lives have never returned to normal.
Their story provides insight into mother-daughter relationships and the role of roots in those relationships. The memoir was named a finalist in 2000 in the National Jewish Book Awards by the Jewish Book Council and a number of schools use Motherland to teach about moral choices.
Edith and Fern acknowledge that the Holocaust has now affected three generations of their family. Somehow those who carry on must remember history and honor those cut down by cruelty, yet let go of the past moving ahead with the new generations into healing.
Mother "can't go home again", daughter watches in perplexity.......2005-07-02
This book covers the return of a Jewess, at 12 years old separated from her parents from the Rheinland on a Kindertransport, to her small hometown, Stockstadt-am-Rhein in 1990. Her daughter, pregnant, goes with her, although unable to speak German, and writes from her younger, American Jewish perspective on this whole process of reclaiming her mother's past, her Heimat (homeland), her Motherland so to speak.
As you can read, most reviewers rave about this book. It is well-written, if a bit too introspective at times (these parts a reader can skip, such as the daughter's thoughts dwelling on herself and her own children). I'd like to make these criticisms for the author, that she may rewrite it perhaps, or if it should be done in a film version, some negative feedback could also perhaps be useful in making a tighter story:
1. The mother's verbatim words should be used in the text, with footnotes underneath for translation into English. Many who read this book know German and do not want to read about the daughter's struggle to make out this or that trival word. Dare I say it, the daughter might have made a better effort to know her mother's language? How else to understand her own roots, her own mother's culture, her longing for her childhood?
2. Don't introduce side issues that remain unresolved. For example, a very intriguing juicy bit is thrown in, that her older sister was sent a year ahead of her to America, adopted by another set of relatives, and now that the two sisters (her mother and her aunt) are now in their late 60's, they still don't get along. This isn't worth delving into, or at least explaining a little bit? WHy leave it hanging? Why bring it up if not to grab the reader's attention? WHy not go and interview the aunt, find out her own bitter memories or reasons for spurning her younger sister an entire lifetime?
2. Why no mention of this author's father? Who was he? How did he influence the family with his own traditions, career or job, attitudes and hobbies, personality? Reading this book, one could think that there was no father in the author's life. If we are to understand her pain as a daughter in not grasping her parents' lives, then surely some mention should be made.
3. Why not explain her mother's cowardice in not giving her own daughter Jewish names? She says she is named Fern (for a relative, Frieda) and Brenda (for another one, Brondl). This is strange to me, for the names "Fern Brenda" certainly don't indicate the great Jewish heritage that the mother wants kept.
Meanwhile, we hear that the German families are naming their kids Joshua and Sara, with no shame or hiding. Strange indeed.
4. Why not look at Germans more as people? Her impression of a silly clerk called the immigrations controller is that of a nasty Nazi, simply because he is German with blue eyes and blonde hair, and stamps their documents with authority. Don't ALL immigration people behave this way in every airport of the world? They're SUPPOSED to be abrupt, to give people unease. Does she call the ones down in Israel with their "brown eyes and dark hair" typical Mossad types? Nasty because they're Jews? I should think not, it's lame stereotyping at best.
Overall, this book needs editting by a non-Jewish, non-German hating professional editor, who can guide Fern into a more balanced presentation of her mother's beloved homeland. Otherwise, the hatred comes through with the stereotypical slights, and weakens the story's validity.
The best angle, if a movie were to be made - hopefully in Germany's Babelsberg and not here in Hollywood, God forbid - the theme of Mini, her childhood friend. Now there's a morality play full of contradictions! Wilhelmine (Mini for short), a child six years older from a dreadfully poor family of seven kids, is sent to be a servant/maid to the well-off Jews, and becomes best friends with the daughter she is meant to serve. Then her friend is sent to America, making Mini 18 and Tiddy 12 when they separate. Mini is so enraged to have lost her adopted sister and family that she spends the rest of her life documenting the Nazis, and whether they're all prosecuted. Her own grown son, nearing 50, feels himself deprived of a proper childhood or mothering because Mini devotes herself to fighting the evils of the past rather than living in the present. She is a living testament to the folly of grudges, which the author's own mother avoiding doing - she purposefully shunned nostalgia for her lost homeland and family, until her 60's.
In many respects, this daughter and her emotions, this author, is the problem in the story. She should rewrite it from the participants' point of view, either her mother's or Mini's, in the third person, and take her own petulant self out of it.
Now THAT would be a mature and interesting novel.
Hey, also, put in some of these pictures that she dwells on!
Vietnam Vet.......2004-10-25
I recently purchased your book and happened to glance at the back cover. From that point on I could not put your book down until I had read it from cover to cover. I was memorized! I AM YOUR MOTHER!
I'm a Vietnam combat veteran and used the same ploy as your mother - denial and never talk about it. My wife and three sons bore the brunt of my walled memories. And, unfortunately, in order to bury Vietnam I also buried most of my youth.
I recently retired and the unexpected free time has caused my walls to crumble and my nights are filled with nightmares. Part of my counseling is to write about my trauma. You have inspired me to take these outpourings, organize them and get them published. I intend to "look fear in the face" and share my burden with others who may face the same hardships I do. Like your mom, I want to "be here now."
Average customer rating:
- Very good
- Beautifully Written Memoir
- An impressive memoir
- An Amazing Writer's Quest
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Motherland: A Memoir
Pamela Marin
Manufacturer: Free Press
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ASIN: 0743256107 |
Book Description
Pamela Marin was fourteen when her mother died of breast cancer. After keeping her illness a secret from her daughter, Mildred Marin left her home in Evanston, Illinois, to spend her last months alone and without treatment in California. When she died in 1973, her husband buried the family's memories with her -- clearing the house of her belongings, avoiding any mention of
her, and never once taking his young daughter to her mother's grave. Before Marin was out of her teens, her father went bankrupt and moved in with his thirty-years-younger girlfriend. Now in this luminous memoir, written with rare grace and unflinching honesty, Marin chronicles how she came to reject her father's dismissal of the past and ultimately to embark on a cross-
country search for traces of the mother she never really knew.
With family and home gone, Marin got to work supporting herself, first as a waitress in Chicago's northside bars, then as a secretary, and finally as a journalist, landing a job as a staff writer at a newspaper in Southern California when she was twenty-seven. Two years later, happily ensconced in a beach house with the man who would become her husband and the father of her children, Marin began to dream about the mother who'd been gone for more than half her life. Those haunting dreams led to the quest at the heart of Motherland.
Fifteen years after Mildred Marin's death, the author dropped out of her own life to research her mother's. Using her reporter's skills, Marin traveled to Tennessee, where her mother was born and reared; to Chicago, where her mother worked as a commercial artist and met the man she would marry; and back to California, where Mildred Marin went to die. Along the way, Marin collected treasured artifacts as well as others' memories of her mother. She confronted her father about the silence that enshrouded his wife's illness and death, causing a rift in their relationship that would last until he died a decade later.
Motherland is a journey shot through with love and pain. It is a story of loss, discovery, and, ultimately, forgiveness. By coming to terms with her mother's life, Pamela Marin opened the way for the emotional intimacy she had craved as a child -- and finally found in her own motherhood.
Customer Reviews:
Very good.......2005-12-16
This is a fine work, very moving and important. People will respond to it with feelings from their own lives. It is not simple or obvious, but something that the author must have felt very strongly and thought about so much. Any reader will find something important in this book.
Beautifully Written Memoir.......2005-06-22
Pamela Marin's memoir is beautifully written and is an honest, gripping account of her journey to better understand her mother. The relationship between mother and daughter is so intense and the bond so strong that Marin's search to 'discover' the truth about her mother is both heartbreaking and touching. Her writing is easy to read and beautiful...I would highly recommend this memoir.
An impressive memoir.......2005-05-29
This is a moving and well written work. Applause to Pamela Marin; this should be recommended.
An Amazing Writer's Quest.......2005-04-21
Ms. Marin's story recounts the disappearance of her mother from her life when she was 14 years old. A lifelong Baptist, Mildred Marin secluded herself in a Christian Science Retreat 2,000 miles from her home and family because of illness until her subsequent return to Illinois, where she was hospitalized and then died.
Pamela Marin didn't know her mother was ill. Her Christian Science, ad-executive father didn't tell her, nor did her older brother. Her closest friend during those trying days after the loss of her mother was the housekeeper.
The ad-executive father began dating, the housekeeper lost her job because father went broke and within a couple of years Pamela was living on her own in Chicago, working in bars, taking temp jobs...just trying to get from one day to another.
This is a stunningly honest book. The confusion, sadness and depression of those years isn't tempered with much sweetness and light, yet the morass of that time is brightened with the love she finds with her partner and husband and her successes as a journalist. Yet still she struggled with the questions about her mother. Finally, her own recurring dreams about her mother, Mildred, forced her to try to find answers to her questions about not only her mother's life, but her father's coldness and refusal to help her understand why answers weren't forthcoming.
I was fascinated with how Pamela Marin finally faced and dealt with her problem - for it was affecting her entire life. She journeyed to the place her mother grew up, talked with people who knew her mother and kept digging and traveling until there was no place left to go. It was a brave, ten year journey and this beautiful prose is the result. If all of the pieces of the puzzle aren't there, it certainly wasn't from lack of trying.
If you appreciate gritty honesty and intense emotion and true love expressed with deep sincerety, you'll grab this book from the shelf and after you've read it, you'll think about it over and over again and, finally, buy some for a few good friends.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Theodor Herzl Foundation on November 1, 2003. The length of the article is 4059 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: How I failed my motherland: a memoir.(postwar social conditions in Russia)(Column)
Author: Emil A. Draitser
Publication:
Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2003
Publisher: Theodor Herzl Foundation
Volume: 49
Issue: 7
Page: 21(4)
Article Type: Column
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Rediscover the Power of Love! In trying to keep up with today's hectic style of living, it can be easy to lose sight of what is at the very heart of your life as a believer- God's love for you and His command that you reach out in love to others. Bestselling author Joyce Meyer points out, "You can't give away something you don't have! Many people who are trying to walk in God's love are doing so in their own strength. They can't demonstrate God's love because they never stop to receive it themselves. In this powerful book, Joyce Meyer provides biblical insights and draws from her personal experiences to illustrate how God changed her life and to introduce you to a life filled with God's love- love that not only blesses you, but also motivates you to love others. Because God is love (1 John 4:16), loving and being loved is what makes life worth living. Once you learn how to truly accept God's unconditional love for you and walk in love like Jesus did, you will discover the sweet peace, deep joy, and unfailing strength that come with being willing to say, "Lord, Reduce Me to Love!"
Customer Reviews:
This is a life changing book.......2007-03-28
I have read this book about 5 times now, and there is just so much in there you cant possibly get it all with just one read. This book as well as some other Joyce Meyers books have really changed my life. She is a top notch teacher and writer.
Great read...Recommended to all!.......2006-08-28
Overall this book is outstanding...the lessons taught in it are directly from the BIBLE so you can't go wrong!
There are basic rules of the universe,yet nowadays in our society there's very FEW who follow them...very few who give out unconditional love to ALL people at all times(especially without a selfish motive)and even FEWER who seek GOD and follow in the footsteps of GOD's will.
This is definately a book to be re-read over and over through the years and especially taught to our children as to make the next generation at PEACE rather than WAR.If only EVERYONE followed this simple advice and lived through SPIRIT rather than EGO,we would NEVER be at war again...Not with family,friends,spouses,children,and especially NOT with the WORLD and NOT with our own selves!...because GOD IS LOVE AND LOVE CONQUERS ALL!! GOOD WILL ALWAYS OVERCOME EVIL!! The more people that practice it, the closer we will be to finding peace on earth!:)
CAVEAT:The only thing I found "wrong" with this book is how she mentions that we shouldnt be part of any clique/group/religion because that "DIVIDES" us, yet then she continues to state how '"we Christians" are powerless as long as we are filled with prejudice'and "We Christians" etc. yet NOT ALL WHO READ THIS BOOK ARE CHRISTIANS! So I found that to be DIVIDING in itself!!(hypocritical) The BIBLE was NOT written only for the Christan people, It was written for ALL MANKIND,as majority of this book was taken from Psalms in the BIBLE. Therefore,I had to take 1 point off for that!
But besides that,the book is a wonderful read and I recommend it to all!
High Praise for Joyce Meyer !!!.......2004-03-08
"One morning as I got up and went downstairs to make coffee, I felt God tug at my heart to make Dave a fruit salad. To be honest I did not want to make a fruit salad. The Lord spoke to my heart that serving God was actually serving him. I obediently made the fruit salad."
Reduce Me To Love is one of Joyce Meyer's favourites that I've heard being talked about for some time now. It is no wonder that when I was blessed by a dear friend with his book as a gift, I was on cloud nine, and anxious to finish everything I was reading just to start this book.
This book teaches us in great detail about love; a small word with such a deep and profound meaning.
It is the new commandment which Jesus gave his disciples: to love one another and by doing so, prove their discipleship.
Mrs. Meyer draws on her personal experiences as she demonstrates the many respects of love and it's purest motives.
What stays indelibly in my mind was how Jesus uses himself as an example in today's world. Whatever good deeds we do for one another, we actually do for Him and in the same light if we treat our brother with disdain we do it also to Him. We cannot get away from it, Jesus convicts us in the very name of love as he encourages us to walk in the Spirt. I would like to encourage all of those who love reading Christian literature to find this book fast and get back to loving God; the One who first loved us, before the foundation of the world.
Bless someone soon with this brilliant book.
Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE)
You cannot give away what you do not have!.......2003-08-05
That was one of the key lessons I learned when reading this book. I am in a relationship with a man who never recieved unconditional love. If anyone has tried to love a difficult man you know it takes a special anointing. This book helped me to unerstand how to best love others. The important thing Meyers stresses is putting the value of people above the value of replaceable objects. She teaches that love requires one to exhibit forbearance and preferential treatment toward others. Love will cause you to take a step back in order to put someone else's need before your own, yes even those difficult to love people. This book will challenge you to look at the way you show love and teach you how to live love.
New Life.......2001-02-08
I bought this book over a week ago. When I started reading it I just did not want to put it down, and when I was finished I was wishing there was more. So, I started reading it over again. Joyce Meyer has truely made a difference in my life since I started following her ministry and this book adds more flavor to the pie. Love, is one thing i needed in my life, to show to others and she really lays out the road map here. Thank you Joyce Meyer for making the right choices in your life so that people like me can change theirs.
Book Description
In interesting times, love can be a weakness, hatred an illusion, order chaos, and ten tigers not enough. The TARDIS crew have seen many times. When they arrive in China in 1865, they find banditry, rebellion, and foreign oppression rife. Trying to maintain order are the British Empire and the Ten Tigers of Canton, the most respected martial arts masters in the world. There is more to the chaos that mere human violence and ambition. Can legends of ancient vengeance be coming true? Why does everyone Ian meets already know who he is? The Doctor has his suspicions, but he is occupied by challenges of his own. Sometimes the greatest danger is not from the enemy, but from the heart... This adventure features the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki.
Customer Reviews:
Shui Boshi.......2007-01-16
This was definitely a very enjoyable departure from my usual reading. But lately I've been rediscovering my fondness for the show and decided, why not? The story is set sometime between episodes 12 and 13 ("The Romans" and "The Web Planet") and finds the Doctor and company in the midst of all the chaos and tumult of late imperial China. The combination of vintage BBC science fiction and Hong Kong cinema may seem implausible, but the author crafts the story in such a way that it works wonderfully. Most importantly, his grasp of the characters is superb, and he brings William Hartnell's Doctor as well as Ian, Barbara, and Vicki alive on the page--having recently watched several of the episodes from this milieu on DVD, I was especially struck by this and by how well the spirit and mood of the series at that time is evoked (although free of budgetary and technological restraints, of course).
The portrayal of 19th-century China is pretty good, too. I have seen science fiction/fantasy writers really drop the ball in their depictions of East Asia, but this author has clearly done his research history-wise. He paints an extremely credible picture of China at this time and has a fairly good grasp of Chinese culture, involving all of this seamlessly into the adventure; and--without giving away any plot spoilers--the sci-fi scenario he develops is intricately involved with Chinese history and Taoist alchemy in intriguing ways (among other things, this means that China is much more here than merely an exotic backdrop for a story that could've been set anywhere). There are a few minor glitches, of course: The few mentions of Japan are on much less firm ground and are even bizarre at times, and the Chinese characters every so often act and speak in ways that seem just a tad culturally uncharacteristic. These are minor points, though, and don't really detract from the story in any serious way. All in all "The Eleventh Tiger" succeeds nicely as a well-crafted adventure.
Good reading.......2007-01-13
This book is filled with mystery, interesting characters, and action. This is great example of classic Doctor Who.
Enjoyable Read.......2006-04-21
I originally passed over this First Doctor adventure, then decided I'd like to get to know this edition of the TARDIS crew. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the setting in ancient China, but it was a new place to see Who and I thought it was respectful of the culture. The story has a flavor of good martial arts cinema with an exotic dash of Who. The TARDIS crew was interestingly rendered and I particularly enjoyed the First Doctor's characterization. It makes me want to go buy William Hartnell DVDs.
Book Description
From its ancient roots in Hebrew and Aramaic, to its development as the common language of Jews in medieval Europe, and its blossoming as a language of literature, scholarship and a lively press in the nineteenth century, the story of Yiddish mirrors the history of the Jewish people in Europe and beyond. In Words on Fire, leading Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz recounts the sweeping history of this evocative and multifaceted language.
Drawing on thirty years of research, Words on Fire traces the steps of a language once derided as "jargon" and identified with women and uneducated men from medieval times onward, and relates how efforts to raise its prestige were often met by opposition from the powers that be. Katz highlights the rise of literary Yiddish in the Renaissance-widely-read translations of knightly epic poems and guides for daily living-particularly by and for Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, journalism, and scholarship.
From the rise of the Hasidic movement to the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer, from its complex relationship with the Zionist movement to its appearance on the Internet, Words on Fire argues that Yiddish represents a high point in Jewish civilization. Six decades after the Holocaust, the once-thriving secular Yiddish culture is in deep crisis, but Katz shows that-far from being a dying language, as many claim-Yiddish is making a resurgence among religious Jewish communities and will still be thriving well into the next century. Words on Fire is a definitive account of this remarkable language and the culture that created and sustained it.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent and Insightful.......2007-06-13
For political reasons, a serious study of Yiddish language and culture has been ignored and shunted aside. Because of the stress on Israel and modern Hebrew, the world of the Ashkenazi Jew has been consigned to a double death in the aftermath of churban Europe (the holocaust). This has created a skewed and distorted view of Jewish history, culture and mores. It has even had a devastating impact on the modern synagogue, which has been stripped of its Ashkenazi roots, and consigns the traditional Cantor and choir of Eastern European tradition to the ash-bin of history. This book goes a long way to correct the common-place distortions and misapprehensions. Along the way, Dovid Katz presents an eminently readable, insightful and interesting account. It also points the way for future fruitful studies.
excellent if biased.......2005-09-27
The book is perhaps the best available introduction to the fascinating story of the Yiddish Language. Although scientifically rigorous, it is directed to the general public, interpretative rather than simply factual, and presents many highly subjective views of the author (which only makes it more interesting). Language politics (Hebrew/Yiddish dichotomy) within the modern secular Jewish world are frankly discussed. One obvious problem with the book is the hypertrophied "litvak patriotism" of the author. This results in skewed choices of literary figures individually presented (almost without exception from the Northern Yiddish dialectal area), with flagrant disregard to details when it concerns other Yiddish dialects and areas. Northern Yiddish toponimics is meticulously presented up to the tiniest of the shtetls, whereas Kishinev (Chisinau) is repeatedly spelled "kishenev" and the birthplace of Sholem-Aleichem is not spelled out at all (compare to any litvak author in the book). Equally biased is his dealing with the contemporary secular Yiddish writers of the younger generation and with the Soviet Yiddish literature (which produced many of the former). Having said all this, no better review of all things Yiddish seems to exist.
A readable account.......2005-06-28
This book is highly readable and the scholarship is excellent; it also examines that great question of Yiddish scholarship, asked since the end of the Second World War: Is Yiddish dead? The author's answer is yes and no. Secular Yiddish literature seems to be breathing its last (somewhat elongated) breath, while Yiddish remains alive among the ultra-orthodox and haredim, but with several qualifications. What is the Yiddish among the haredim like? What are its qualities and what is its future? Questions like this are explored with a marvellous insight: is the Yiddish used in contemporary religious communities at all co-equal to the great age of Yiddish as a secular vernacular? The book also explores characters in Yiddish literature and culture that are little examined, even by scholars in the field, suggesting that there is much vital work to be done in this area. Perhaps most interesting of all is the author's dogged determination to show the "triliteratity" of Askenazi European Jewish culture. All the great Yiddishists were also excellent Hebraists and could read Aramaic. The three languages of European Jewry were constantly informing each other: the scholarly division that most academics pursue in this area, the author contends, does little to illustrate the complex interactions of European Jewry's three languages.
Immense, meticulous, veritable--and much more.......2004-11-25
Any reader in the world with an open mind will find much of value (about culture, civilization, even something of psycholinguistics) in this history of Yiddish by Dovid Katz. His scholarship is immense, meticulous, and veritable as he traces the emergence of Yiddish from its Semitic roots, the assimilation of medieval German dialects, the conjunction with Slavic around 1300, and its complex life continuing into the 21st century.
Knowing nothing about Yiddish and very little about early Jewish history in Europe, I was surprised by many descriptions, such as this one--
"While West Europe was butchering the `Christ killers,' much of Eastern Europe was shaping up as a multicultural pluralist haven in which a Jew had a good chance of living out his or her life in peace and quiet, and adhering to Jewish traditions without being abused, killed, or expelled because of them. Eastern Europe, which moderns often associate with lagging progress, was far ahead of the West in not slaughtering, torturing, or expelling people of a different faith or race."
I find the enduring story of women and Yiddish to be fascinating. Katz points out, "Men had up to three languages to choose from. Women usually had only one." Well before the Modern Age, Yiddish provided Jewish women "a form of intellectual liberation" where their prayers were "a significant genre." Furthermore, "No Jewish law says, `Don't enjoy a good story in your native language.'" It was "revolutionary that a work written by a woman would appear with her name as the author." The poet Toybe "is a woman talking sternly to God in a time of community crisis, not afraid to take on God and argue with him." Toybe was published in the 17th century.
Not only gathering a universe of facts, Katz is telling a larger story, one that reads with the vivacity and mystery of a novel with narrative twists, intrigues, ascents of light-hearted eloquence, descents of starkest sorrows. But beyond analytical insights, any reader with an open heart stands also to gain still more from this book--more of the youth and joys that the adventures of this people bring about, and much more of the tragedies.
A forceful movement becomes evident in the chapter "A Yiddish-Kabbalah Partnership." Katz observes "The relationship between Yiddish and the Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism] is mysterious," and yet concretely "Kabbalah became a motivating factor in the enfranchisement of women and unlearned men." This paradigm shift dates to the late 17th century. In the 18th century comes Hasidism, "stressing the capacity of every person to communicate with God ... a grassroots movement for the empowerment of the masses of simple people, women and men."
With gathering momentum, the story of Yiddish arrives in the 19th and 20th centuries and the New World. Katz describes how classical Judaism "gave way to the modern Jew .... In many individual cases, it happened sometime close to the moment that an ancestor got off the boat at Ellis Island, had a look around the Lower East Side of New York, and was never the same again." Still, as ever the case throughout Yiddish history, there is continual bifurcation: "By the late nineteenth century, Yiddish was becoming characteristic of two different Jewries, one at the extreme cultural right, the other on the far cultural and political left."
All growth of Yiddish culture and civilization, of course, is gathered in the singularity of the Holocaust. I learned much from Katz's approach: "The simple and unalterable truth is that the Yiddish-speaking heartland of Eastern Europe, where Yiddish would have survived safely for the long-term future, was annihilated." Thus, a "culture that was one of the most nonviolent and pacifist in human history" was found to be in a state of "linguistic, cultural shame."
Katz explains the complex dynamics of Yiddish and Zionism which found a need for "rejecting the traditional Jewish image." As well, "The general attitude of the American Jewish establishment and the majority of American Jews was often negative toward Yiddish." This was true both because of and despite of the fact that in America Yiddish literature "was born as an unpretentious workers literature out to inform and sustain tired, underpaid, poor, and exploited workers, many of them in one or another branches of the garment industry."
While Katz finds that an anti-Yiddish bias in Jewish education "continues apace today," he also describes a language "becoming more and more popular" after the fashion of Fiddler on the Roof. As to the future, Katz observes "a major historic moment in the unfolding story of Yiddish, a moment of profound sadness and, at the same time, a moment of exceptionally promising vistas for the coming centuries." He summarizes his thought with this "Coda"--
"The irreplaceable words, and spirit, of Yiddish are inherently incandescent with history, civilization, satire, irony, compassion, and the inner strength to be cheerful amid troubles. There is nothing about the language that is better or worse, more or less truthful or beautiful, than any other language. But its uniqueness and inimitability as the special living embodiment of a psyche is absolutely indispensable for a genuine grasp of East European Jewish culture, and, more generally, the current living stage of the uninterrupted ancient natural line of Jewish languagehood. That line stretches over thousands of years. In traditional Jewish historical geography, the path led from Babylonia to the Land of Israel, to Egypt and back, to Babylonia and Persia and back, to wide swaths of the Middle East, to Central and then Eastern Europe. Coming down the Hebrew-Aramaic-Yiddish language chain, these words have their own special fire, a kind that cannot be purposefully injected or logically translated, or, for that matter, mechanically revived. It is a fire that comes from the natural transmission of language over vast stretches of time in a closely knit and highly, yes, separate society."
As a poet myself, I am most grateful for what Dovid Katz has made available in this work--not only the inherent humor of Yiddish, its recognition of the human foibles which it names and celebrates, but also the fiery nature of words and "sparks that fired the muses of thousands of writers."
Thus, I will close these comments with a stanza from the poem with which Katz opens his book, a poem by his father Menke Katz, titled "A Yiddish Poet"--
My mother tongue is unpolished as a wound, a laughter, a love-starved kiss,
yearnful as a martyr's last glance at a passing bird.
Taste a word, cursed and merciless as an earthquake.
Hear a word, terse and bruised as a tear.
See a word, light and lucent, joyrapt as a ray.
Climb a word-rough and powerful as a crag.
Ride a word-free and rhymeless as a tempest.
Books:
- Mountain Time : A Novel
- Mr. Ives' Christmas
- Mr. Sampath--The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (Everyman's Library)
- My Old Sweetheart
- Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love-Life (Norton Paperback Fiction)
- Our Kind: A Novel in Stories
- Patience and Sarah
- Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel
- Quicksilver & Shadow
- Ravishing of Lol Stein
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., Volume 1
- History: Fiction or Science
- A Box of Dreams: Original Trade Paper
- Armies of Ivan the Terrible: Russian Troops 1505-1700
- Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship
- Fluid Mechanics, Third Edition
- Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
- Business as Unusual: The Triumph of Anita Roddick
- Aid: Understanding International Development Cooperation
- Smart Things to Know About Growth
Mergers
Chicago Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
A Shortcut in Time
Alice on Her Way (Alice)
Heart of a Soldier
