A Rhetorical Conversation : Jewish Discourse in Modern Yiddish Literature [1 ed.] 9780271078144, 9780271036304

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a rhetorical conversation

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Jewish Discourse in Modern Yiddish Literature

jordan d. finkin

A Rhetorical Conversation : Jewish Discourse in Modern Yiddish Literature, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. ProQuest

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a rhetorical conversation

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jordan d. finkin

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a rhetorical conversation Jewish Discourse in Modern Yiddish Literature

the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Finkin, Jordan D., 1976– A rhetorical conversation : Jewish discourse and modern Yiddish literature / Jordan D. Finkin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: ‘‘Describes the role of traditional Jewish texts in the development of modern Yiddish literature, as well as the closely related development of modern Hebrew literature’’ —Provided by publisher. isbn 978-0-271-03630-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Yiddish language. 2. Hebrew language—Influence on Yiddish. 3. Yiddish literature—Hebrew influences. 4. Yiddish language—Infinitive. 5. Yiddish literature—History and criticism. 6. Bilingualism. I. Title. PJ5116.F56 2010 439⬘.1—dc22 2009037203 Copyright  2010 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48-1992. This book is printed on Natures Natural, which contains 50% post-consumer waste.

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To Sarah, simply and utterly, my love

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*Far di tate-mame, Matthew and Eleanor

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contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction 1 1 The Case of the Tautological Infinitive 17

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2 The Language of Jewish Discourse 31 3 Jewish Discourse and Modern Yiddish Poetry 49 4 Conversational Orchestration in the Tsenerene and Sholem Aleykhem 81 5 Y. L. Perets’s Conversational Art in Yiddish and Hebrew 109 Coda 147 Notes 155 Bibliography 183 Index 193

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acknowledgments

This book has undergone much pruning and tending, and, to extend and mix that metaphor of husbandry, I feel very lucky to have been one sheep with so many shepherds, many more than can easily be acknowledged here. I owe unending gratitude to a group of truly brilliant scholars, and friends, for all of their many efforts on my behalf and for their care and attention to helping me develop the ideas presented here. What is good I owe to them; any mistakes are my own. To Chana Kronfeld for her tireless grace and loving encouragement, immense personal and intellectual generosity, not to mention her inspiring passion for the poetry she-ya’ase et ha-basar chiddudin chiddudin; to Daniel Boyarin for his avuncular good humor and for planting the seed of the idea that ultimately sprouted this project; and to James Matisoff not only for teaching me balshanut she-be’al pe and balshanut she-bikhtav, but also for his allo-bono-petitivity. My work benefited immensely from the thoughtful and meticulous suggestions of an enviable cohort of colleagues at Berkeley: Naomi Brenner, Allison Schachter, and Robert Adler-Peckerar. While at Berkeley I also had the opportunity to learn at the feet of Eli Katz, z’’l, an experience I look back on with great fondness and the rewards of which I continue to reap. My thanks must also go to the Berkeley Yidish-krayz, to its most gracious host Yael Chaver, and to its members, including Bluma Goldstein, Naomi Seidman, and Sarah Bailey, for invaluable discussions of Yiddish language and literature, many fruits of which have found their way in some form into what follows. I must also express my appreciation to Andrew Simpson for being such a resonant sounding board and for offering advice with good nature and aplomb. Several of the chapters of this book, and many of its ideas, took shape with the help of the astute comments of the attendees of the conferences and workshops at which they were presented and discussed. These are to

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acknowledgments

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me continual reminders of the power of the constant give-and-take of the marketplace of ideas. My many supportive colleagues at the University of Oxford deserve acknowledgment for providing a forum for fine-tuning these ideas and whipping them into their present shape. For their particular encouragement I must thank David Rechter, Joseph Sherman, z’’l, and Glenda Abramson. For all kinds of administrative, financial, and moral support, large and small, I am indebted to the faculty and staffs of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Unit of the University of Oxford. I cannot here name them all, but the business of academic life is so often thankless that it is worth taking time periodically to recognize and appreciate the efforts that go into making its conduct possible. The Penn State University Press has been a study in professionalism and helpfulness, and Patrick Alexander, Kathryn Yahner, John Morris, Jennifer Norton, Laura Reed-Morrisson, Patricia Mitchell, and doubtless many others deserve their just accolades. Finally, to my brother Ezra and all of my friends for their love and cheerful support, I cannot but be eternally grateful. My parents, Matthew and Eleanor, who set me on my path, and my wife, Sarah, who keeps me honestly upon it—thanks are not enough, but I offer them with love.

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introduction

For someone who has seen the film The Producers, it is impossible to forget Zero Mostel’s inimitable delivery of the line ‘‘Shut up! I’m having a rhetorical conversation!’’ This statement operates on more than a single comic level. Of course, it plays on our understanding of the ‘‘rhetorical question’’ as not a question meant to elicit a response, but rather an indirect speech act:1 in this case, a question that makes a statement. But for these two New York Jews, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, a ‘‘rhetorical conversation,’’ a conversation that makes a statement, is rooted in the context and nature—the pragmatics—of this cultural interaction. What is most telling and most funny is not the neologistic compound ‘‘rhetorical conversation’’ but the ‘‘Shut up!’’ that precedes it. Max’s tirade is anything but a soliloquy; it makes absolutely no sense without Leo’s interruption that prompted it. The idea of a Jewish contextual understanding of conversation is one of the roots of this project. This conversational kernel is key to the observation that, in the linguistic development of Yiddish, not only do certain tendencies of Yiddish discourse bear a distinct resemblance to features found in Talmudic and rabbinic texts, but they owe their development to the complicated contact situation between these texts and Yiddish-speakers. These are elements of a system where the patterns and logic of conversation are the dominant organizing principle. This cultural-historical context has been described as ‘‘the way of SHaS’’

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a rhetorical conversation

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(derekh hashas).2 Traditional community life in Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe was organized around the centrality of rabbinic law and lore, codified in the six so-called Orders (shas, an acronym for shishah sedarim) of the Mishnah, which form the core of the Talmud (also referred to as shas). ‘‘The way of SHaS’’ is a shorthand summary of the cultural nexus that those texts occupy. This nexus—the image of a cultural switchboard—usefully emphasizes its function as both juncture and point of departure; the sacred literature is both an end in itself and a powerful source of fresh cultural creativity. Naturally, language was an area of cultural life where these texts had a deep impact. The literary scholar Benjamin Harshav pithily distills the character of that impact in asserting that when the patterns of Talmudic and sermonic Hebrew (and Aramaic) ‘‘discourse were absorbed by the language of conversation, Yiddish, . . . a mode of talkative behavior emerged in which association reigned supreme, analogy was paramount, and anything could be symbolic of anything else.’’3 He goes on to maintain that typically, such religious and moral discourse—and Yiddish conversation deriving from it—advances not in a straight line, through affirmative statements or the logic of a problem presented in a hierarchical argument, but through many kinds of indirect or ‘‘translogical language.’’ . . . All these modes of translogical discourse common in Yiddish communication have three major principles in common: (1) associative digression; (2) resorting to a canonical textual store; and (3) assuming that all frames of reference in the universe of discourse may be analogous to each other.4 This is one broad and general characterization. I hasten to add that it applies, however, only to the complicated aftereffects on Yiddish itself and the selfperception of its speakers, not on how Talmudic language and argumentation themselves actually work. In many ways, the two are apples and oranges. Yet when it comes to precisely those perceptions about language, the rhetorical conversation begins to look less alien. For this conversational model to be effective, there needs to be a way of linking these texts to a social environment that allows for their diffusion, especially beyond their legal and didactic functions. Though the broad assertion of ‘‘absorption’’ is doubtless accurate, it calls for some elaboration. The

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primary linkage is through the idea of language contact.5 Briefly put, language contact involves the often complicated effects of languages on one another in the speech of multilingual individuals or groups of individuals. I say ‘‘complicated’’ because though certain effects are partially predictable, a great many variables influence the direction, degree, and areas of impact, including the social prestige of the languages in question, the amount of time they were in contact, the purposes to which they were put in the multilingual environment, and so forth. Two additional factors make the situation I am outlining for Yiddish more difficult. First, because of the long-standing stigma of Yiddish (as well as Yiddish speakers’ inferiority complex with regard to their language) as merely a bastardized or workaday language, direct data concerning the nature of spoken Yiddish are rare until relatively late. Second, I am undertaking a kind of hybrid analysis straddling the divide between spoken and written language. The standard accounts of language contact focus primarily on spoken languages. I am, however, describing the literary effects of a contact situation between a spoken language and a textual or literary language. Although there has been little work on this kind of contact, it is essential for understanding the development of a modern Yiddish literary language. In this contact environment, the multilingual individuals I am referring to at this stage are Yiddish-speakers who can read and intellectually manipulate the rabbinic texts. These are the so-called textual bilinguals. In the Ashkenazi culture of Yiddish-speaking Central and Eastern Europe, the set of truly bilingual individuals was small; it was made up of the scholars, who generally stood on the highest tier of social prestige. These men—and they were exclusively men—were by and large the only ones with true access to the holy texts in which they were fluent. In the study house, however, those Hebrew and Aramaic texts were studied and debated in Yiddish. This complicated linguistic situation, the prolonged and continual discussion in one language of texts written in another, involved important ‘‘extra-linguistic factors.’’6 The statement that these men were fluent in the sacred texts needs some clarification. They were native speakers of Yiddish, but their proficiency in the textual language is less clear. Doubtless they were able interpreters of those texts, but it is not at all likely that they would have used those languages in many contexts other than debate about the texts they were written in. This specialized use of the textual language meant that only certain aspects of those languages were

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ever likely to have an effect on, or be absorbed by, the spoken language. The fact that that spoken language permitted itself to deploy those aspects ubiquitously accounts for some of Yiddish’s notable vitality. The way that those textual languages were learned, too, had an impact on how they were assimilated. Jewish primary school education took place in the local classroom school, known as the kheyder, which was almost exclusively available only to boys. Lessons primarily involved rote memorization of biblical texts with word-for-word translations into Yiddish. This was the educational terminus for most Jewish males. Those who went on to the yeshivah, the academies for training of scholars in the Talmud, would learn the textual languages through learning the texts. This added to the degree of specialization mentioned above. Finally, the social attitude toward the status of the languages involved had a direct influence on the course of their linguistic impact. The attitude toward the textual languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, was reverential; they were referred to collectively as loshn-koydesh (the holy tongue). It is more difficult to gauge attitudes toward Yiddish. However, as mame-loshn (the mother tongue), as the language first learned and the one used for almost every other aspect of daily life, it inspired some feeling of intimacy. Encomia to Yiddish, for example, would become a staple genre of Yiddish poetry from the late nineteenth century onwards. As we will see, Yiddish became a crucible of intense cultural expression and creativity, especially among those who were not given access to the status-giving texts. In the social context of Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe, the scholar’s idiom that developed, rife with Hebrew and Aramaic calques and borrowings (in a broad sense) from the Jewish canon, became a prestige idiom,7 and its influence on the common language was consequently strong. Strong, too, was the cultural weight placed on individual study and textual intimacy. As mentioned earlier, I am primarily dealing with a model of language development applicable to complicated situations of specifically literary language contact:8 here, Yiddish speakers in extended, continual contact and intercourse with Hebrew and Aramaic texts as mediated through the prestige scholarly idiom. These are, however, the preexisting conditions of the bilingual individuals. How the textual languages and Yiddish ‘‘interfere’’9 with one another, how they are either subtly or starkly altered in this contact, would be the subject of a very interesting but very different study. I am interested, rather, in what

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has happened postinterference. The period of bilingual contact extends far back into times from which there are few or no data for descriptive analysis. Therefore, from the point of view of a purely descriptive linguistic analysis, there is little we can know about the specific linguistic interference with the speech of bilinguals; we only know the ‘‘extra-linguistic factors.’’ My concern is twofold: first, with what happens as a result of these bilinguals’ coming into contact with unilingual Yiddish speakers (that is, unilingual with respect to the textual languages, since Yiddish-speakers would have been conversant in at least one of the coterritorial spoken languages, such as Russian or Polish); and second, with what ultimately happens when the inheritors of that cultural dynamic write in Yiddish. In this respect, the bilinguals were vehicles for the acculturation of various features of Hebrew and Aramaic discourse, already mediated in the study-house activities. Once unilingual speakers begin to use these features, they are subject to what I call ‘‘nativization’’ into Yiddish. The observations of Max Weinreich and Benjamin Harshav cited earlier both note and describe the outcome of this linguistic situation, but in general they do not examine how it functions nor the mechanisms involved in it. Therefore, I am accepting the premise of constant, prolonged, and intimate contact between Yiddish-speaking culture and the study of these texts10 as a linguistically significant historical feature of Yiddish. In the process of this investigation, I will touch on which features were transferred and internalized, from the more discrete lexical and grammatical elements to the more nebulous styles of thought, logic, and argumentation; what were the primary mechanisms for any assumption of such patterns of discourse into Yiddish; and what filters they may have passed through. Of particular concern are those features influenced by Talmudic discourse and more importantly the scholar’s language that developed from it. In other words, how did this ‘‘nativization’’ take place? I am not saying that Talmudic discourse was not ‘‘native’’ to Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities; it was part of a fundamental constitutive element of Jewish life. Rather, in relation to the development of Yiddish language, that discourse had to be assimilated to become what I am calling Jewish discourse. Much more important, though, is the recognition of that assimilation, particularly by the authors of much of modern Yiddish literature. This project is more than an attempt to see whether there is a way of formulating how such conversational logic gets normalized in Yiddish. It is a demonstration that that normalization takes place precisely in Yiddish literature. The develop-

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ment of a distinctly modern Yiddish literary language builds upon the recognition and manipulation of these patterns and norms. As the analysis enters the modern period, one further complication presents itself. The emergence of a modern Yiddish language consciousness entailed the recognition of Yiddish as a language in its own right, one that was not, despite its ‘‘poverty’’ in certain areas, a corruption or bastardization of some other more ‘‘legitimate’’ language or (in a more benign formulation) a mere dialect. This recognition, which today might be called language pride, was part of a larger and more complicated discourse on the role of language in the construction of the idea of the modern nation. Part of what it meant to be a nation was to have a particular language. This ideological development went hand in hand with the early twentieth-century proliferation of scholarly investigations into both the history of Yiddish language and its contemporary reality. In addition to interest in the languages of other peoples that Jews also spoke and used in other ways, much energy was focused on internal multilingualism. This is to say that no matter what the Jews’ mother tongue might be in a given society, ‘‘Hebrew’’ (loshn-koydesh) would always be present, occupying prescribed social, communal, and especially religious spaces. Despite the notable heterogeneity of what is referred to as ‘‘Hebrew,’’ this condition is very often referred to as ‘‘bilingualism.’’ Thus the programmatic title of the literary critic Shmuel Niger’s (pseudonym of Daniel Tsharni, 1888– 1959) important study The Bilingualism of Our Literature.11 The broad divergence of socialist Yiddishism from Zionist Hebraism imposed an either/or dichotomy on what had been in many ways an organic symbiosis. The postHaskalah success in both renovating Hebrew and cultivating Yiddish into versatile media for modern ‘‘European’’ literary production dug new belletristic trenches for these ideological conflicts. This is not to say, however, that within the contentious world of Jewish national literary theory there were not those who focused on the symbiotic perspective. A representative exponent was the literary critic Bal Makhshoves (pseudonym of Izidor Elyashev, 1873–1924). In his famous essay ‘‘Two Languages—One Literature,’’12 he describes how ultimately, despite the different linguistic media, in pre–World War I Europe they were the same authors writing in effect the same works, some in Yiddish and some in Hebrew.13 This is an essential characteristic of Jewish literature in the diaspora: ‘‘[Jewish literature] is one and its name is one. But it comes to the reader in two forms, and like the scales of a balance they sway, one opposite the other . . . so the

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Jewish writer must know at least two languages with which he may create freely’’ (italics in original).14 Although multilingualism as an inherent feature of Jewish writing was later ideologically suppressed, it is certainly not controversial to assert it as a nearly universal property of Yiddish-speaking communities prior to the second World War. Despite Hebrew and Aramaic being largely the preserve of religious and other circumscribed portions of communal life, the perception that ‘‘at least two languages’’ made their home in the language consciousness corroborates the assertion of Yiddish’s openness to all of the languages with which it was in contact. In fact, there is a Yiddish term komponentn-visikayt (component consciousness), which indicates the consciousness among Yiddish speakers of what source language the words they use come from. The presence of such a concept lends support to the importance of both internal and external multilingualism. For Bal Makhshoves the only qualitative difference between the Hebrew and Yiddish literary realities was in what he refers to as the ‘‘spirit’’ of the languages. This nebulous characteristic of language is a function of place (that is, where a work is written) and time (the language’s historical baggage). Hebrew, according to Bal Makhshoves, has both a past and a present. Yiddish, on the other hand, ‘‘only has a present. Making a synthesis of ‘Tsenerene,’ Ayzik Meyer Dik, Aksenfeld, Etinger, Shomer, Yiddish folk songs, Elyakum Zunser, the Zionist and Bundist brochures, and the American literature will probably occur to no one.’’15 This is the gauntlet I am picking up. First of all, though Yiddish is clearly not as ancient as Hebrew, it is obvious to us now that it has more than a ‘‘present,’’ as it did even at the time when Bal Makhshoves composed his essay. His point was ideological rather than chronological. Second, and more importantly, it is the notion of Jewish discourse that offers one possible analytic vantage point from which to conceive just such a synthesis. Bal Makhshoves himself points in this direction when he mentions one of the ideal ‘‘inheritors’’ of Jewish bilingualism, namely the yeshivah student, continuously and simultaneously absorbed not only in multiple texts in multiple languages but also in single polyglot texts. This creative youth will feel ‘‘first of all as though it is necessarily natural that the Jew had to speak two languages all along.’’16 The self-perceived ‘‘naturalness’’ of this internal linguistic synthesis is mirrored back onto Yiddish. That is the foundational perception of this book as a whole. Niger offers a useful simile to understand this synthetic perspective. After maintaining the essential link between the loshn-koydesh corpus and the spirit

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of Yiddish literature, he goes on to characterize the subsequent literature itself:

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We learn that the role of Yiddish literature was, as I have written, in fact similar to the role of the zogerke [the prayer-leader in the synagogue women’s section]. What was her role? To assist unlearned Jewish women in reciting their prayers, their tkhines, their Yiddish Bible. The literature in ivri-taytsh [the archaizing Yiddish used for translating sacred texts] did something similar: it came to help those who were not able to study, just as the old zogerke helped those who were not able to pray. She was a literature—a zogerke. In any event, so she seemed. In truth she said her own words and introduced a good many things. She was, nevertheless, quite attached to the old, Hebrew-Aramaic literature. She stuck to it even when it differed from her. And one really could think that she wanted nothing more with her ivri-taytsh than to recite aloud, to translate, and to interpret—according to the tastes of the Jewish woman—everything, or nearly everything, she might find in the holy (and in the not-quite-so-holy) books in loshn koydesh and in Aramaic.17 That Niger would have chosen a woman in a traditional woman’s sphere as the metaphorical mediating force is no accident. Both the oral and the gendered dimension of the diffusion of Jewish discursive patterns cannot be overestimated (as we will see later in the discussion of the Tsenerene). Neither can the importance of such contact zones between sacred and everyday cultural life. Many things need to happen between such putative sites of discursive mediation and the development of modern literature. This is a story that will eventually need to be told. It is, however, a story that seems doubtless to be true. There is arguably a general concern over the validity for a language of claims based on predominantly literary evidence. In one sense the problem does not have a solution. However, the argument that I am making is ultimately about Yiddish as a literary language, or better, the varieties of literary language in Yiddish, and how that literary language developed. One of the important features of that literary language, particularly in the Eastern European context, is that it was in constant contact with the spoken language. Not only that, but the distinctly oral context in which the literary language contact with the traditional texts took place brought to bear an additional layer of

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‘‘spoken’’-language contact. I am not saying that all varieties of literary Yiddish were at all times modeled on the spoken language. What I am saying, however, is that, particularly after the seventeenth century, they all reacted to it in some way.18 These constantly intersecting contact situations over time make any attempt at isolating direct lines of descent futile. In fact, a model in which the notion of direct lines of ‘‘descent’’ would seem preferable to indirect and complicated ones is particularly inadequate for the description of the contact situation outlined above. One has to begin with the textual evidence and work out from there. What is so fascinating, and one of the reasons why this project was so attractive to me, are the points of contact between the language constructed as literary and what that language itself focuses on as ‘‘spoken.’’ The conversational nexus again rears its head. I need to emphasize that my approach here draws on an interdisciplinary outlook. This approach, though, was suggested by Uriel Weinreich. In his words: ‘‘It is thus in a broad psychological and socio-cultural setting that language contact can best be understood. . . . This involves reference to data not available from ordinary linguistic descriptions and requires the utilization of extra-linguistic techniques. On an interdisciplinary basis research into language contact achieves increased depth and validity.’’19 Weinreich lists the important contributions of such extralinguistic analysis, including geography and ethnography, sociology, jurisprudence, education, and psychology. To this I add literary analysis as no less important to understanding the development of Yiddish language. The scope of the field in which this project is situated is immense and complicated, far broader than a single study could hope to encompass. Rather, I have conceived of this work as several rays from a prism. It is a multifaceted exposition based on closely defined points of access to that larger field. However, based on the paucity of sources and the kinds of data that are simply unavailable, this approach is the best one suited to deal with the information we do have. Those are the concerns that led to the interdisciplinary orientation to the material, and from there the structure suggested itself. In broad relief, the first chapters are more linguistically oriented, while the final chapters deal to a greater extent with literary topics. But just as these two categories are intimately connected within Yiddish, none of the chapters wholly excludes either side. I hope that, taken in sum, they will offer a synthetic perspective on the

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relationship between the two, particularly since, especially on the literary side, Yiddish literary studies often fail to pay heed to the important researches of Yiddish linguistics. Despite the relatively brief flowering of modern Yiddish literature— roughly from the mid- to late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries—a remarkably large and varied body of works was produced. The few works—a paucity belying plenty—that I have chosen to focus on do not offer any kind of a survey of that literature. Pursuing the didactic literature of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, for example, would have been far less fruitful because the conscious literary patterning of that literature on a much different set of models included an expurgation of precisely those discursive features, which were then perceived as oral, conversational, and lowbrow. Though some features may have escaped the cleansing submerged, they are more clearly represented by a different set of texts on which I will focus. As was said, the present study has a set of defined points of access to a much larger topic; though a systematic literary survey is generally desirable, it would be distracting to the express goals of the project. Instead, the texts to be discussed were selected to be as relevant and interesting as possible to the subject. Not only do they very well exemplify individual discursive features, but they also demonstrate a consciousness of that discourse (one might call them metadiscursive). In this way the final chapter may seem particularly narrow or circumscribed. However, the central text of that discussion is a perfect example of how almost all of the features discussed throughout this book work together organically and reinforce one another. Beginning with the linguistic approach, the central issue is to try to understand the peculiar relationship between the literary language and the spoken language. The linguist James Matisoff has claimed that ‘‘everybody knows (but linguists have usually forgotten) that the real communication that goes on during interpersonal exchanges often has very little to do with the actual words that are spoken.’’20 In literary language the situation gets turned around: all of the cues beyond the ‘‘actual words that are spoken’’ are absent. As a result, the Yiddish literary language developed a way of graphically coding that ‘‘psychosemantics.’’ It made particular use of those elements that could be gotten down graphically, as opposed to those elements, such as intonation, that, though very important in Yiddish speech, were far more difficult to convey in the written language. This is one of the reasons why it is important to look at the vocabulary used specifically for Talmudic and rabbinic

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debate that entered Yiddish. As those debates were themselves debated, intonational patterns and resonances, as well as even gestures, gradually became associated with them. For creative authors, a sonic world could then be instantly evoked by relatively brief and simple references. Not only that, but this situation influenced the development and diffusion of features latent in the language itself. This is the subject of the first chapter, which explores an exemplary case of the effect of literary language contact, the ‘‘tautological infinitive,’’ an infinitive put at the beginning of a clause, based on the conjugated verb in that clause. For example: shraybn shraybt er, ober nisht azoy gut ([with regard to] writing he writes, but not well). This feature is a grammatical potential in the Germanic stratum of Yiddish, but is seldom encountered in German, whereas in Yiddish it is quite common. I argue that its Yiddish use is promoted and bolstered by the existence of a similar feature in rabbinic texts as well as by the presence of a comparable construction in the coterritorial Slavic languages. This is a process I have dubbed ‘‘similative buttressing.’’ Rather than a uniform notion of linguistic ‘‘genetics,’’21 the complex system of contacts taking part in the development of Yiddish argues in favor of a heterogeneous conception of language change. In the case of Yiddish, this involves a set of texts and a way of thinking that elegantly account for the proliferation of this particular grammatical feature. Once this proliferation has taken place, such a feature becomes ripe for the kinds of literary stylization mentioned above. The authors who fashioned the modern literary idiom, including the so-called classical trio of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (also known as Mendele Moykher Sforim, 1836–1917), Sholem Rabinovitsh (also known as Sholem Aleykhem, 1859–1916), and Yitskhok Leybush Perets (1852–1915), were sensitive to the spoken resonance of the tautological infinitive and often used it as a notational representative for authentic folk speech. It stands to reason that if a grammatical feature such as the tautological infinitive is borrowed, then the more likely borrowing of lexical material from the same source took place as well.22 Dictionaries have been compiled of just the Hebrew-Aramaic (loshn-koydesh) elements of Yiddish, and numerous scholarly articles, conferences, and much thought have been devoted to the meaning and significance in general of this stratum to Yiddish as a so-called Jewish language. (In fact, one definition of what makes a Jewish language insists on the presence of an Hebraic component.) Because of the importance of lexical borrowing to the analysis of contact situations,23 I have focused my

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attention on one particular subset of that stratum, namely Talmudic discourse connectives found in Yiddish. This semantic subfield is significant not only because of its profusion, which on its own would have been good evidence for considerable literary language contact with the rabbinic corpus, but also because its size and diffusion give some indication of the internalization of the logical and discursive system of which it is a visible and representative part. Looking at the historical semantics of many of these words and phrases reveals how deeply integrated they have become in Yiddish, to the extent that some are by and large the most common and unmarked way of saying certain ordinary things. For example, the common adverb ‘‘probably’’ is in Yiddish mistome, which is an Aramaic term found in the Talmud, where it is used to indicate something ‘‘of a general nature’’ and without reference to a specific authority. From the sense of likelihood surrounding the truth of such situations, one can see where the association of probability arises.24 The next two chapters aim to integrate aspects of this lexical analysis into a larger discussion of the development of a modern literary idiom. Yiddish writers were keenly aware not only of the component stratification of Yiddish, but also of this particular subfield, and so one can and does find them selfconsciously thematizing the ‘‘nativization’’ of Jewish discourse. In the second chapter I outline a linguistic framework for understanding that process of nativization in general. Briefly put, when the dialogical structure of the texts is mapped onto the dialogical nature of the study of those texts, it is conversational logic that becomes the fundamental organizing principle of Jewish discourse. The intuitive understanding of this structure, particularly among the modernist authors, is stylized in striking ways. This is the subject of the third chapter. Reading closely certain works that foreground these intuitions— including some of the poems that Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886–1932) wrote making use of the fictional character Zarkhi in his collection Di goldene pave (The Golden Peacock) as well as poems by Yankev Glatshteyn (1896–1971)— allows for a close examination of how these authors are able to play off of the resonances of this style of thought as thoroughly internalized elements of Yiddish language. This conversational principle is the core of the fourth chapter. I begin with a discussion of the Tsenerene, including an analysis of an exemplary excerpt. First published in the early seventeenth century and perhaps the most popular and widely read book in traditional Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, the Tsenerene was a loose Yiddish Bible translation and commentary. Its author,

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the scholar Yankev ben Yitskhok Ashkenazi, weaves together various traditions, commentaries, folktales, and similar literature into the Yiddish translation of the biblical text, forming a new encyclopedic and digressive narrative. He was writing for those who had no access to the Hebrew sources, and more accurately, those who were denied access to those sources due to gender or social status, or both. And since he meant it to be understood by those groups, he wrote it in a style that self-consciously accommodated that intention. Of particular concern for an analysis of the development of the modern literary language is the structure of how those various commentary and narrative elements fit together. The organizational patterns of the Tsenerene’s discourse and topical development capitalize on the perceived conversational norms of rabbinic texts. That is, the movement from topic to topic follows certain principles that can also be observed in spoken conversation. This observation is picked up to powerful effect by modern authors as a touchstone for their narrative rhetoric. Sholem Rabinovitsh’s (Sholem Aleykhem’s) famous story ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (The Pot) is a paradigmatic example. The story certainly demonstrates the strong affinities of these two texts’ norms of ‘‘speech.’’ More importantly, though, the unmistakable resemblance between how its protagonist, a typical small-town Jewish wife who goes to her rabbi ostensibly for advice on a matter of ritual law, talks through a series of topics, and how the Tsenerene makes its associative connections between various issues is immediately striking. Sholem Aleykhem’s decidedly humorous account is dependent on exactly that similarity; it is the hook on which the humor hangs. After all, the one text this woman would certainly have read was the Tsenerene. The central observation here is that developing norms of a modern literary idiom for Yiddish involved not only the imitation of Yiddish speech, but a distinct stylization of it. The final chapter takes up this idea and applies it to the work of Yitskhok Leybush Perets, an author who was intimately concerned with Jewish folk culture, which he both lauded and lampooned. What makes Perets so appealing when we look at his process of stylization is that he wrote many of his stories in Yiddish and then translated them into Hebrew. In that transformation one can see two distinct and different sets of concerns being played out, one having to do with Yiddish and the other with Hebrew literary norms. One aspect of Jewish Eastern European folk culture in which Perets was particularly interested, and with which he is now most often associated, was

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Hasidism. Over a number of years he produced a series of stories revolving around Hasidim and Hasidic themes. Within the narrative framework of a single story, Perets creates a spoken literary medium based on the discursive linguistic stratum of Yiddish, that is, the language and structure of rabbinic debate. By contrast, his Hebrew translation is an attempt at a more unified style in tone and language, which at the same time allows for subtle irony and critique, far from the unequivocal valorization of Hasidism usually associated with these stories. The story in question—‘‘A Conversation’’ (‘‘A shmues’’ in Yiddish) or ‘‘A Conversation of Hasidim’’ (‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ in Hebrew)—presents a minimally mediated account of a conversation between two old Hasidim. The Yiddish version imitates and stylizes the Talmudic, study-house language and talkative behaviors of these Hasidim in order to create a specifically literary conversational style. This is an analogue to what Abramovitsh tried to devise in Hebrew with what came to be known as the nusach. Hebrew literature in the mid-nineteenth century, being driven by a need to imitate European literary trends, was constantly confronted by the problem that it had no living spoken idiom upon which to base such things as literary dialogue. Nusach—a term based on the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik’s (1873–1934) description of Abramovitsh’s literary innovations as nusach mendele, or ‘‘Mendele’s style’’—refers to the development for Hebrew of a flexible literary ‘‘style,’’ consisting of a plaiting together of the various historical strata of Hebrew, which was therefore better able to depict a more modern literary reality. In an analogous way, Perets’s Yiddish parallels the diction of the nusach, employing a stylized ‘‘imitation’’ of the norms of Yiddish speech in what I refer to as a ‘‘Yiddish conversational nusach.’’ By contrast, Abramovitsh’s nusach offers a counterpoint with regard to Perets’s own Hebrew version of the story. In that version, Perets has not exactly achieved an anti-nusach style. (‘‘Anti-nusach’’ refers to the various other attempts at creating a Hebrew literary language—particularly in response to, and divergent from, Abramovitsh’s nusach, which had become dominant in Hebrew letters. This usually involved attempts at a less consciously stratified and more unified, or naturalistic, language. Anti-nusach writers were often more modernist in their approach to depicting an individual’s perceptions of reality.) The antiharmonic, anticlassicist attempts at capturing a more ‘‘realistic’’ psychological portrayal that characterized those Hebrew authors usually associated with the anti-nusach were not the central

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features of Perets the incipient modernist. Rather, his was a more naturalistic style, a kind of integrational nusach, organized around the rabbinic stratum as the unmarked foundation of the language, and using allusions to the canonical literature in freighted and often subversive ways. Unifying the language around a rabbinic center of gravity is a modern and modernizing move, and ought to be considered in truth proto-anti-nusach in the history of Hebrew literature. I will conclude this introduction by returning to the notion of conversation at the heart of this investigation. In the philosopher Ted Cohen’s book Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, he cites the following exchange as emblematic of Jewish study:

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‘‘Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘A gimmel? It isn’t.’’ ‘‘Why shouldn’t ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘That’s what I’m asking you—Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’25 The pivotal notion of cooperative exchange—the assumption that both sides of a conversation are trying to be as helpful as possible with regard to being understood, maximally meaningful and minimally confusing—is central to learning both as an experience and as a way of understanding the world.26 Every single contribution to the exchange just quoted contains a question. The patterns of Yiddish linguistic expression—in which, for example, we see the coding of questions as statements and statements as questions—developed out of a worldview in which that exchange is both amusing and uncontroversial. In what follows, I look at why that is the case.

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the case of the tautological infinitive

Often when contemporary literary critics talk about other languages, Yiddish included, the more complicated or opaque grammatical structures get far shorter shrift than the sexy bits: the notoriously ‘‘untranslatable’’ word or phrase, the weighty wordplay, the rhyme that presents an entire cultural landscape in microcosm. These are certainly important sites of cultural creativity, and ones to which I will return later. I begin my study, however, with one of the decidedly less sexy pieces of grammar, the tautological infinitive, and I do this for an important reason: features such as this are the workhorses of literary language and deserve greater attention. The importance of the tautological infinitive has to do with the reliance of the Yiddish literary language on its popular orality to authenticate its literariness. The present chapter does not offer an exhaustive history of the tautological infinitive in the various stages of Yiddish linguistic development. That would take us far afield from the central point of the book and entail a much more detailed investigation than is appropriate here. Rather, I am presenting a case study of the relationship between the tautological infinitive and the development of certain norms of the literary language. The underlying importance of the tautological infinitive is as a site for the complicated interaction between social strata, linguistic communication, and the relationship between the oral and the written. Despite this importance, very little has been written on the subject, likely, in part, because this feature was so tightly bound to the

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cadences of Yiddish communication that it was simply taken for granted. Whether that is true or not, and the paucity of material notwithstanding, this mundane grammatical detail can serve as an elegant introduction to the relevance, importance, and integration of Jewish discourse in modern Yiddish literary culture. In linguistics, the term ‘‘topicalization’’ refers to the process of highlighting, emphasizing, or focusing on the topic of a sentence or statement by moving it to the beginning. This initial study is in effect a topicalization of topicalization. As such, it outlines one of the most widespread grammatical features of Yiddish to have been modeled on Hebrew/Aramaic literary-language contact: the tautological infinitive. The term refers formally to a fronted infinitive—in certain cases back-formed especially for this use—of either the whole verb or of the root of the verb used in that clause.1 For example, geyn gey ikh (literally ‘‘[as for] going, I go’’) or geyn bin ikh gegangen (literally ‘‘[as for] going, I went’’), and so forth. By saying ‘‘modeled on,’’ I emphasize that this contact was not the sole influence on the development of the tautological infinitive in Yiddish. Rather, its profusion can be best accounted for by that contact. In offering this corrective to univocal notions of language contact and influence, I am suggesting one methodological tool (which I call buttressing) to help account for certain trends in the course of Yiddish literary language. Scholarly attention to the phenomenon of the tautological infinitive began with a mention in a German study of Yiddish language from 1902.2 Since then in the history of Yiddish linguistics, this feature has received relatively little coverage, which is understandable given that it is uncontroversial in form and meaning. The debate, where it has been joined at all, is over ideas about its origin. There are three basic camps on the issue: those who see in the tautological infinitive a calque of a Biblical Hebrew feature; those who see in it a Talmudic Aramaic feature; and those who see it as solidly Germanic. In what follows I will describe what the tautological infinitive is and give an account of the theories about where it came from. All these theories claim single genetic ‘‘sources’’ for a feature that actually has multiple roots. Instead, I will propose a different way of understanding the place and relevance of this feature within the Jewish discursive framework of this book. The biblical hypothesis in effect maintains that the Yiddish tautological infinitive is a ‘‘translation from the Hebrew,’’3 specifically the Biblical Hebrew infinitive absolute. The infinitive absolute consists of constructions such as

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‘‘moˆt yuˆmat ha’ıˆsˇ’’ (Numbers 15:35; in Robert Alter’s poetic rendition, ‘‘The man is doomed to die’’)4 and ‘‘ta¯ro¯f to¯raf yoˆsef’’ (Genesis 37:33; ‘‘Joseph has been torn apart!’’), where the infinitive adds the sense of doom or fate in the former case, and the exclamation point in the latter. This feature, though recognizable, does not proliferate in the biblical corpus, and its functions are especially varied. Given the much narrower range of meanings in Yiddish, as well as traditional textual study habits, which make a direct link with biblical language more tenuous, this idea was rather quickly dropped as an unappealing locus of origin.5 The Talmudic hypothesis instead posits Talmudic Aramaic as the source of the Yiddish. In the words of Yitzhak Avineri, the foremost proponent of this idea, ‘‘It seems to me quite clear that the source of the aforementioned usage is the language of the Gemara.’’6 Though he does not offer a detailed account of the reasoning that makes this ‘‘quite clear,’’ the appeal of this hypothesis over the biblical one is based on a range of meanings closer to those found in Yiddish as well as a very dense field of examples from the text. The most detailed and thoughtful treatment of the parallel feature not only in Aramaic but also in many other Semitic languages is Gideon Goldenberg’s ‘‘Tautological Infinitive.’’7 Goldenberg turns his attention briefly to Yiddish, and, casting aside both of these Semitic-origin hypotheses—classical Hebrew or Talmudic Aramaic—he states, ‘‘Oddly enough, it has been presumed by most Jewish scholars8 that this idiomatic mode of expression, which runs current in Yiddish literature as well as in everyday speech, should be a loantranslation of the Biblical Hebrew construction with the paronomastic infinitive absolute. . . . Another preposterous suggestion made was that the Yiddish ‘tautological infinitive’ should have originated from the Aramaic idiom of the Babylonian Talmud.’’9 Goldenberg maintains that the tautological infinitive is simply part of the German stratum of Yiddish: ‘‘That this construction was genuine dialectal German was already stated explicitly in 1926 by Professor Jevgenij Kagarov of Leningrad in an article written in Yiddish.’’10 What is immediately striking about all three of these hypotheses is that, despite whatever their individual merits may be, they are so monolithic in their conception of language genealogy and language contact. It is either uniformly biblical, entirely Talmudic, or purely Germanic, without the possibility of interlinguistic motivation. Few things in human life, and even fewer in language, are so uniform or homogenous. The appeal, however, to ‘‘genuine dialectal German’’ as a guarantor of

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authenticity—attacking the issue with Occam’s razor—belies the problematic nature of those data themselves. Kagarov opines that ‘‘more accurate would be seeing in [the tautological infinitive] a German folk construction: Kriegen kriegt er schon (Berlin), und dauern dauert das wohl (Berlin), in Peter Rosegger: Aber tun tue ich’s nit (‘Erdsegen’).’’11 Both Kagarov’s and Goldenberg’s evidence for the Germanic hypothesis is almost exclusively from Berlin or the Prussian dialects,12 but these are dialect regions that differ significantly from those in which Yiddish developed. In point of fact, according to Erich Hofmann’s account,13 most of the German data come from North German, Low German, and Prussian, where there was likely a strong influence from the neighboring Baltic and Slavic languages, which have a much more robust tautological infinitive.14 The neat and tidy appeal to a genealogical explanation is again made messy by the complexities of the language-contact situation. I am not discounting the Germanic hypothesis. The point, however, is that based on such evidence, if a feature of ‘‘genuine dialectal German’’ of a speech community neighboring those in which Yiddish was spoken is of substantive influence on Yiddish, how much more so, a fortiori, for a feature of more robust attestation in the language(s) of co-territorial speech communities, particularly Slavic ones. What is uncontroversial is that, given the rigid word-order constraints of Yiddish (and, for that matter, of German), according to which the conjugated verbal element must occupy second position in the main clause, in order to topicalize the verb itself—topicalization in Yiddish being most commonly achieved by moving that element to the front of the clause (i.e., ‘‘fronting’’)—a stand-in for the verb, the infinitive, is placed in the fronted position.15 Hence a ‘‘tautological’’ or ‘‘paronomastic’’ infinitive.16 As has been remarked, this infinitive is ‘‘particularly common’’ in Yiddish.17 The Yiddish linguist Yudl Mark says it is found ‘‘very often’’ in both ‘‘spoken and written sentences’’ (confirming Goldenberg’s observation), but later goes on to assert that it is more prevalent in the spoken than the written language.18 Hofmann points out, however, that since such an infinitive is not so uncommon in colloquial speech,19 one should expect literary or written attestations to be more difficult to find. What makes these last statements so useful is the emphasis they place on the spoken resonance of the tautological infinitive. That is a key observation when examining the tautological infinitive’s reincarnation as a powerful emblem in the constitution of a modern Yiddish literary language.

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Part of this emblematic quality derives from how this feature is found to reflect the ‘‘folk’’ or cultural creativity within the language. Yiddish’s particular innovation, and further evidence of the vitality of the tautological infinitive, is the back-formed infinitive. For certain verbs—namely zayn (to be), gebn (to give), visn (to know), and veln (to want)—the infinitive used in the tautological construction is not necessarily the citational form just mentioned. Rather, it can be an ‘‘infinitive’’ back-formed from the conjugated form of the verb. Thus, taking the first-person singular as an example, for the expected zayn bin ikh ([as to] being, I am) we also find binen bin ikh;20 for gebn gib ikh we find gibn gib ikh; for visn veys ikh we find veysn veys ikh; and for veln vil ikh we find viln vil ikh. An excellent example of this innovation can be found in Y. L. Perets’s story ‘‘Yoykhenen melameds mayselekh’’ (Tales of Yoykhenen the Teacher). In part of Yoykhenen’s extended prelude to the stories, he addresses his ‘‘audience’’ as follows: ‘‘raboysay! ikh hob, borukh hashem, opgelebt a shtik velt. binen bin ikh geven melamed in derfer un in shtetlekh, un in groyse shtet!’’ (Gentlemen! I have, thank God, lived a long time. I have been a teacher in villages and in towns and in great cities!).21 This whole passage is quite idiomatic. Here Perets foregrounds the complicated meaning of the tautological infinitive. It not only entails a stylistic element—avoiding two successive sentences beginning with ‘‘I’’—but also a literary element, giving a heightened sense of the ‘‘orality’’ of Yoykhenen and his storytelling. Along with these there is also an important emphatic element, pointing out that Yoykhenen has had a long life, been many places, seen many things, and therefore knows what he’s talking about.22 This innovation points towards and emphasizes the more imaginative space carved out for the tautological infinitive in the language, at least more so than its being a mere element of dialectal German would indicate— especially since I could not find this particular innovation in any of the German dialects. The conjectural speculations rattling around the genealogical approach to the tautological infinitive involve various ideological attitudes toward language that inform such an understanding. The approach, though, to the tautological infinitive’s functions is generally more descriptive. The most straightforward use is one of verbal topicalization, ordained mechanically by the dictates of syntax. I will take a couple of literary examples from Sholem Aleykhem:23 lernen hot er gelernt beser fun ale kinder (literally ‘‘learning he learned better than all the children’’). This is to say not simply ‘‘he learned

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better than anyone,’’ but rather ‘‘when it came to learning, that he did better than they.’’ Elsewhere we find: fardrisn fardrist mir nor eyn zakh (literally ‘‘annoying annoys me but one thing’’). Instead of a bald categorical assertion, such as ‘‘only one thing annoys me,’’ the infinitive construction picks out the focal element in this way: ‘‘if we’re talking annoyances, there’s only one thing that really gets to me.’’ Such is the flavor of this feature on its own. Of equal concern, though, is how it is described in context. That is, the primary descriptions of its function situate the tautological infinitive as a device set in the course of a discourse. Thus, in the Yiddish linguist Noyekh Prilutski’s short but illuminating discussion,24 he maintains that the primary function of the tautological infinitive is that of a ‘‘binder’’ (farbinder) between two sentences: ‘‘between that in which it is located, and an earlier one in which the same verb is used in another form’’—presumably he means the inflected form—‘‘thereby the logically most important element in both sentences and in the whole text is particularly strongly emphasized.’’25 This ‘‘binding’’ property of the tautological infinitive more closely integrates the utterance as an element of the larger discourse of which it is a part.26 To put this in the language of modern linguistic pragmatics: ‘‘A major function of topic marking is precisely to relate the marked utterance to some specific topic raised in the prior discourse, i.e. to perform a discourse-deictic function.’’27 The precise nature of this ‘‘binding’’ is of course more complicated, but a useful and efficient scheme has been devised to account for much of the principal functional load. In Hofmann’s discussion of the ‘‘strengthening infinitive’’ (der versta¨rkende Infinitiv), he divides the tautological infinitive into two basic functional categories: (1) ‘‘contrastive’’ or ‘‘oppositional’’ (Gegensatz) and (2) ‘‘intensive’’ (Intensiv). Hofmann never made reference to Yiddish, but his description is echoed by Yudl Mark. In one discussion the point for Mark seems to be one of some kind of emphasis. He describes the three functions of the tautological infinitive as picking out the verbal meaning, emphasizing verbal action, and permitting the reader to linger longer on the verb. He goes on to say, however, that it is particularly common in cases of ‘‘opposition’’ (antkegnshtelung) or when the speaker wants to add a particular emotional coloration to the verb.28 Taken together, this is in neat parallel to Hofmann’s ‘‘oppositional’’ and ‘‘intensive’’ functions. Yet even when Mark is giving us his basic examples of the tautological infinitive in Yiddish,29 he in effect lays bare the underlying strength of the oppositional function. Mark says:

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If we compare the two sentences: 1a) er arbet, ober es kumt keyn zakh nit aroys. 1b) arbetn arbet er, ober es kumt keyn zakh nit aroys.30 we immediately feel how the tautological infinitive31 helps us to pause and better seize on what the verb is telling us.32 Not only that, I would add, but the tautological infinitive picks out and intensifies the ober (but), the token of opposition, as a key element of the sentence.

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The Talmudic Origin Hypothesis For the sake of argument, let me resurrect the Talmudic origin hypothesis, which takes the use of the tautological infinitive in the Talmud as the putative driving influence on its development in Yiddish. It is instructive to look at an example of the feature in the Talmud to see if there is anything useful to glean from a comparison. Goldenberg cites numerous examples, but the one below is perhaps the paragon example insofar as it is cited in a number of sources and is unproblematic in form and meaning: ‘‘meitav kulei alma la pligi deyatvinan le-man de-amar shvi’i le-sukah brukhei namei mevarkhinan le-man de-amar shmini la-ze ve-la-ze brukhei la mevarkhinan33 ‘as to sitting [in the sukka on the eighth day]—all do not differ [i.e., all agree] that we should sit; they differ as to the blessing. According to him who says, [The day is] the seventh with respect to the sukka, blessing, too—we bless; according to him who says [It is] the eighth with respect to both, blessing—we do not bless.’ Sukka 46b–47a.’’34 Avineri condenses it into the more common formula ‘‘ ‘meitav yatvinan brukhei la mevarkhinan’ (Sukka 47),’’35 which, he goes on to assert, would be translated into Yiddish as zitsen zitst men, nor bentshen bentsht men nit (sitting we sit, but blessing we do not bless).36 What becomes clear from both this example as well as from the sea of examples found in the Talmud as a whole is that while the Talmud also uses the uninflected infinitive as a means of unmarked topicalization, it employs this device primarily (1) to frame graphically the issue of debate or contention, and (2) to set up the expectation for the consequent act, or very often its frustration. This frustration is one side of the ‘‘oppositional’’ force described earlier. In fact, look at how the Talmudic formula operates when set alongside its Yiddish translation. The opposition that is engaged in the Talmud simply

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by the juxtaposition of the two clauses is set up in the Yiddish by the disjunctive ‘‘but’’ (nor). The oppositional force of the Aramaic form is one of the potential meanings activated through syntax. And it is a parallel construction in the Yiddish, whose equivalent semantic value is activated through concentration on the intervening particle. The next question to ask is how this situation operates within modern Yiddish literary language. In an article on Sholem Aleykhem’s use of verbal forms, Mark cites the following sentence from Tevye: ‘‘melken melkt zi zikh, ober keyn milkh git zi nit’’37 (as to milking, she is milked [or better yet, ‘‘she lets herself be milked’’], but no milk does she give). Why use the tautological infinitive in the place of an unmarked declarative sentence? The answer is in the interplay of logic, syntax, and semantics. Our expectation of the outcome of milking a cow is the effluence of milk. The use of a fronted infinitive sets up this expectation explicitly, while at the same time emphasizing that expectation’s ultimate frustration. It is not by accident that this feature, used for such a literary effect, is found in Sholem Aleykhem. Known so famously as a kind of diarist of the Yiddish folk, Sholem Aleykhem was one of the most able developers of the Yiddish literary language. He engineered a literary realization of folk speech, heard not only here in the mouth of Tevye, one of his most popular creations, but elsewhere as well. In addition to the use of such homespun markers of a particular kind of speech so characteristic of him, Tevye is always portrayed as a manipulator of the sacred texts. Knowledge of these texts, however, does not come from study as a participant in the study-house culture, the upper tier of society, but rather from his participation in the workaday culture of Yiddish Eastern European country life. That is the filter through which he absorbs that textual culture. Tevye is the very figure of the contact zone, where all things enter and are processed together. With this human emblem of the contact zone in mind, I return to the tautological infinitive as an emblem itself of a different conception of linguistic ‘‘genetics,’’ one that replaces a homogeneous model of origin with a heterogeneous one, or what Thomason and Kaufman refer to as ‘‘multiple causation.’’38 This is a way of mediating between contentions of exclusively internal versus exclusively external motivations for language change by appealing to simultaneous clusters of complicated linguistic, social, and cultural factors that operate in concert. To this end I advance the notion of ‘‘similative buttressing’’ as a key process involved in the maintenance and

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expansion in the use of the tautological infinitive in Yiddish. That is to say, there is a species of analogous patterning where a ‘‘native’’ feature in one language—here Yiddish, with particular emphasis on the Germanic component—bears certain similarities to a feature in another language whose influence, prestige, intimate contact, etc. enable and facilitate the diffusion of that feature. In Yiddish, one can use the tautological infinitive as a potential available within the repertoire of the Germanic component; later on, it is reinforced by the multilingual environment, where the surrounding Slavicspeaking peoples are heard using an analogous feature, and more importantly, where the holy, learned, and prestigious ‘‘indigenous’’ texts abound with another analogous feature. Thus, the tautological infinitive is buttressed, maintained, and used in the language in multiple pragmatic contexts. One needs, of course, to be careful about the details of access to sources, the precise locations and constitutions of these various communities, their particular cultural habits of study, reading, and speech, etc. The constant problem one encounters is a paucity of the kinds of source material one would wish to have available. We are therefore at present unlikely to be able to give precise chronologies in the history of the tautological infinitive. However, insofar as this account is less a history than an exploration of the ‘‘ethos’’ of the tautological infinitive, I will briefly sketch this similative buttressing process. As was said, as a latent feature of the Germanic foundation of Yiddish, it no doubt to some extent occurred in the spoken language. The presence of a recognizably parallel feature of some profusion in the Talmud doubtless had an effect on the oral culture of the study house, and through that culture on the ‘‘elite’’-inflected Yiddish of the Jewish street. I stress again that these are conjectures about oral culture. Our lack of data, for example, from West Yiddish sources could mean that this feature did not take off among those dialect communities (particularly given their increasing reliance on German as the prestige language), or it could mean that it was simply not a feature of the written discourse. In the East, however, the eventual ubiquity of the form in written sources needs to be accounted for. The presence of a tautological infinitive in the Slavic languages with which Yiddish speakers had close contact, and from which a good deal of vocabulary was borrowed, adds the final stabilizing buttress in this account. Germanic, Talmudic, and Slavic are all essential interlocking elements. As this feature diffuses into the literary language, the oral and the Jewish discursive resonances combine, as we will see, to interesting effect.

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There have been other attempts to come to terms with analogous ‘‘similative’’ processes in Jewish languages. For example, Ghil’ad Zuckermann advances the notion of ‘‘phono-semantic matching’’39 —that is, in the words of one reviewer, ‘‘words made up of Hebrew (or Semitic) roots that are patterned after the sound of foreign equivalents’’40 —as a key historical mechanism for building the Israeli Hebrew vocabulary. A good example is Israeli Hebrew she´let, meaning ‘‘signboard.’’ The meaning of this word in the biblical corpus from which it is taken is something like ‘‘shield.’’41 Now, given German Schild and more importantly Yiddish shild, both of which also originally meant ‘‘shield’’ but came to mean ‘‘signboard’’ as well, we can get a sense of the phonetic and semantic influences involved in Zuckermann’s argument.42 There are similarities between ‘‘phono-semantic matching’’ and ‘‘similative buttressing’’; the latter is the organic counterpart of the former. I say ‘‘organic’’ because when one looks at Zuckermann’s data, one sees the active, intentional force behind ‘‘matching’’ and ‘‘patterning,’’ the basic vocabulary used to describe this process of modern Israeli Hebrew. Very many of Zuckermann’s examples, she´let included, involve a self-conscious process of reviving latent elements of the classical lexicon deliberately mined for various similarities, or of neologizing from manipulable roots. How else does one account for de´leg-rav (literally ‘‘much jumping’’) for ‘‘telegraph,’’ or mishkafayim (glasses) from a relatively infrequent biblical root having to do with hanging over or looking down, but where the phono-semantic match involves the Greek root of ‘‘scope’’? Such learned or academic neologizing, clever as it is, is of a different class from the kind of process that I am describing as ‘‘organic.’’ Ultimately it is precisely that organic stamp that allows for the literary use to which it is ultimately put. For the Yiddish case, the focus is therefore on those elements of the language that are still vivid and are maintained, not created, by both cultural and literary contact. Having singled out this naturalistic dimension, let us return to Sholem Aleykhem. Beyond his effectiveness as a satirist of folk speech—and it is important to bear in mind that a key element of satire is a kind of fidelity to the object of the satire—is his sensitivity to the sociolinguistic dynamic. Again, Tevye is an inveterate manipulator of the learned idiom. As we have seen, one of the Talmud’s uses of the tautological infinitive was as a logical operator in the making of legalistic and juridical claims. Since it is the case that in addition to its ‘‘simple’’ role of topicalization the tautological infinitive can also be activated as an element of the loshn-koydesh echo chamber, the

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satirical edge and humor of the earlier milking quote can be even more sharply defined. The above quote excerpted by Mark—‘‘As to milking, she lets herself be milked, but no milk does she give’’—is found in the story ‘‘Dos groyse gevins’’ (The Great Winnings), one of Sholem Aleykhem’s very first stories about Tevye the dairyman. In it Tevye ‘‘rescues’’ a couple of wealthy women who have become lost on a stroll around their summer dacha. Tevye drives them back home on his cart and is very richly rewarded by the grateful family, who have ushered him inside their home for refreshments. Afterwards, on sending him off with money and food for his family, the lady of the house approaches him and makes the following offer: ‘‘ ‘Stay a moment, Reb Tevye, from me you’ll get quite a special gift. God willing, drive back tomorrow. I have,’ she says, ‘a dairy cow, it was once a dear cow, used to give 24 glasses of milk. Now from an evil eye she stopped milking. That is, as to milking she lets herself be milked, but she doesn’t give any milk.’ ’’43 This is an odd moment as the climax of a gift-giving sequence. After all, what use is a milkless cow to a milkman? It is the phrasing, though, that gives away the pathos. The humor of the scene depicting the interaction between Tevye and the wealthy family rests in the obvious difference in social class and status. The family goodnaturedly though slightly patronizingly heaps gifts on a stunned Tevye, while for his part Tevye wants to seem as worldly and couth as possible. For him this means slightly altering his speech patterns. First there are such highfalutin Germanisms as his greeting a gutn obend aykh (Good evening to you, with the German-sounding obend instead of the Yiddish ovnt). But more important is the more-than-normal (even for Tevye) stream of citations and glosses from the textual tradition. This is meant as proof of his erudition and therefore his belonging to a higher social position than he might appear to belong to. The wealthy woman’s offer of the cow includes the tautological infinitive, a mark of the common tongue. Not to make too much of it, but in an important sense she is speaking to him on his own terms, on his own level. In this way the offer of a hand-me-down cow might be softened and shown in a wellintentioned light. Not one to look a gift cow in the mouth, Tevye of course more than gladly accepts the cow and insists he’ll be able to get her milking good as new. Thus, at a pivotally communicative moment in the story, the wealthy woman tries to convince Tevye to take the gift. To show that she’s on the level or well-meaning, she marks her speech with the most noticeable marker of

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folk speech. (It is also worth noting that not only is this the only tautological infinitive in this particular story, but it is put in the mouth of a female character.) Tevye, on the other hand, ‘‘upgrades’’ his speech by intensifying his quotational discourse. The point is that both of these elements of Yiddish language come from the same storehouse of traditional language and thought but are used in the literary language to very different effects. Sholem Aleykhem deftly orchestrates them together in the same scene, simultaneously playing on these resonances. Moving back to ‘‘similative buttressing,’’ this notion was advanced to account for both the prevalence and the significance of the tautological infinitive in Yiddish. This is not to say, however, that that is the only, or the most important, process involved in the influence of the language of the holy canon on Yiddish. This is but one potential avenue. The story of a given language’s development through contact with other languages is always complicated, often opaque, and almost never completely systematic. Even a cursory glimpse at the literature on the subject makes that abundantly clear. The example of the tautological infinitive is meant to point out one particular structural, linguistic link between Yiddish and the language of loshn-koydesh texts while at the same time remaining vigilant with regard to the principle of ‘‘multiple causation.’’ More broadly, both this discussion of the tautological infinitive and this project in general examine a specific kind of language contact, namely literary language contact. Prolonged, constant, and intimate contact with a group of texts that (1) occupy the center of religious, cultural, and social life and (2) are written in a distinctly different set of languages than the spoken language creates a dynamic situation of potential linguistic influence. Where literary language contact has been specifically addressed, it is usually in a ‘‘genetic’’ context. So, for instance, Hans Henrich Hock’s discussion of the special relationship ‘‘between a language and its linguistic (near-) ancestor.’’44 Central to that discussion is the notion of the ‘‘ancestor’’ language’s prestige. And it is not coincidental that the majority of cases cited revolve around sacred texts: modern Slavic languages and Old Church Slavic, colloquial Arabic and classical (Quranic) Arabic, Indo-Aryan languages and Sanskrit, Romance languages and medieval (church) Latin, etc.45 The loshn-koydesh sacred corpus is certainly prestigious. There are, however, no ‘‘genetic’’ or ‘‘ancestral’’ connections between its languages and Yiddish. The effects of contact are therefore more subtle, subject to different forms of analogical consideration and ‘‘cre-

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ative’’ verbal playfulness echoed in the textual culture itself. It is because of this ‘‘multiply causative’’ dynamic that the idea of buttressing can be useful. It can dislodge any fixation on the notion of origins while at the same time focusing on those areas of contact that are culturally sensitive, especially those that feature and function within the literary idiom. Yiddish after all had no ‘‘standard language,’’46 at least none beyond the archaizing idiom of Bible translations, which is already a mediating vehicle between Yiddish and loshnkoydesh. This lack of standardization, in conjunction with that ‘‘openness’’ vis-a`-vis the influence of other languages in contact, both written and spoken, that is such a marked characteristic of Yiddish, have produced the intense and vibrant complexity dealt with here. Though this one feature, the tautological infinitive, gives us some hint of the textual influences involved, it is still only that, a hint. Thomason and Kaufman provide the methodological proviso that ‘‘instead of looking at each subsystem separately, we need to look at the whole language. If a language has undergone structural interference in one subsystem, then it will have undergone structural interference in others as well, from the same source.’’47 This proviso is the linguistic underpinning for the larger project here: mapping those lexical, rhetorical, and semantic ‘‘subsystems’’ influenced most strongly by contact with loshn-koydesh texts as reflected in Yiddish literature and as expressed in the development of Yiddish literary language. The tautological infinitive and the idea of similative buttressing proposed to account for it serve as a good introduction to the process of literary language development in Yiddish. Use of conversational discourse as a literary model is certainly not unique to Yiddish. It is a literary potential in all languages. Rather, Yiddish’s reliance on this discourse is buttressed by its depth and strength within the traditional texts, texts with which the authors of this literature were intimately and sensitively familiar.

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the language of jewish discourse

In looking at the tautological infinitive, one gets a taste of the intimacy that exists between text and culture. The complicated set of forces at work on a single grammatical feature provides some indication of the dynamic environment of Yiddish linguistic development in general. It is but one reflection of the nature and dissemination of Jewish discourse in Yiddish. An equally rich and diverse storehouse of linguistic cultural creativity is the lexicon, the words themselves. These are the first things one encounters in the language of a text and the front door to the issues of discourse at the heart of this project. The present chapter opens that door not only by giving an account of the Yiddish lexicon that pays particular attention to those words and phrases from the rabbinic texts that are used to regulate the logical conduct of discussion and argumentation, but also by providing a linguistic framework for situating that vocabulary in the literature and the conversational structures of which that literature makes such consistent use. These discourse ties are important because they encode precisely the patterns of conversation that have come to mark so much of Yiddish language. In the next chapter I will show how that works in the language of literary texts themselves, where this vocabulary can be found in many styles and genres. One of the defining features of the Yiddish lexicon, certainly one of the first features to be noted in many descriptions of the language, is both its component stratification and the general consciousness of it among Yiddish

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speakers.1 One can broadly group Yiddish’s word stock into five general language categories: Romance, Germanic, Semitic, Slavic, and International. As in English—another language with significantly diverse component strata— these arrays of words are fully integrated into Yiddish. For example, the unmarked word for ‘‘moon’’ is levone, a Semitic word (from rabbinic Hebrew levanah); the unmarked verb for ‘‘to read’’ is leyenen, a Romance word (ultimately from Latin legere);2 the unmarked term for ‘‘cloud’’ is khmare, a Slavic word (from Ukrainian xmara); and so forth. The vitality of this layering is on full display in the description of the angry wife who curses her gambling husband as der hunt, der kelev, der sabake,3 that is ‘‘dog’’ in Germanic, Semitic (Hebrew), and Slavic (Russian) respectively. While in English, however, this integration is more or less, for lack of a better word, automatic—that is, where the source languages are not alive in the system—there is among Yiddish speakers traditionally a higher degree of what has been called komponentn-visikayt (component consciousness).4 This refers to an awareness of the source strata of particular words, where such an awareness is often used in tandem with the connotational force of those strata. As a brief example, the word cited above for ‘‘moon,’’ levone, is the neutral and unmarked term, even though it is from the Semitic component, which often (though certainly not always) has a loftier connotation. The synonym from the Germanic component, mond, is quite marked and connotes a Romantic or ‘‘lyrical’’ tone.5 The orchestration of these connotations can be fairly complicated (a feature more easily overlooked in English). Just because a word comes from the Hebraic component, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean, as is sometimes believed, that it always has an elevated or sacred status. Though this is often the connotation, some Hebraic words are quite neutral, as in levone above. Elsewhere, given the propensity of Yiddish for ironic or humorous conflations of the exalted and the profane, Hebraic words can appear in less than flattering contexts. In West Yiddish, for example, the ‘‘community’s mezuzah’’ (kals mesusse) refers to a loose woman, that is, one ‘‘who, like the mezuzah, is kissed by everyone.’’6 Or vice versa: the Aramaic word nafke means ‘‘prostitute,’’ as it often does in Yiddish, too. In card games, however, it can also refer to the queen; and in that context a ‘‘bordello’’ (nafke bayis) can indicate four queens.7 Understanding a Yiddish text involves coming to terms with a dense set of cultural and linguistic resonances. The subject of the present chapter is one set of these resonances, focusing

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on one of the component strata, and one significant subset in particular. The stratum that has arguably received the most attention in Yiddish is what I referred to above as Semitic. Also referred to as Hebraic, Hebrew-Aramaic, or loshn-koydesh (literally ‘‘holy tongue’’), the latter especially among Yiddishists, this component—generally those Hebrew and Aramaic words and phrases taken from the sacred and canonical sources of Jewish culture, including the Bible, the Talmud, midrash, and the liturgy—is a marked feature of Yiddish (as it is of most Jewish, or ‘‘Judeo-,’’ languages).8 The size of this component is not easy to ascertain, nor is it a simple matter to determine the core, central lexemes likely to be found in the active vocabulary of an average speaker. There have been estimates of anywhere from two thousand to five thousand words and phrases. This problem is made more complicated when we consider the size of the corpus being drawn from. Steven Jacobson asserts that seemingly all Hebrew words are potentially part of Yiddish, given both the ‘‘openness’’ of Yiddish and the nature of traditional Ashkenazic education.9 Thus, for example, Ave´-Lallemant’s Ju¨dischdeutsches Wo¨rterbuch (Judeo-German Dictionary) looks much more like a dictionary of Hebrew than of the loshn-koydesh component of Yiddish, let alone ‘‘Judeo-German’’ generally.10 However, Jacobson goes on to point out that ‘‘there are some, even many, Hebraic words that are never used in Yiddish’’—this is to say nothing of those Hebraic words whose meanings have changed once adopted by Yiddish— ‘‘perhaps because the non-Hebraic component of Yiddish is adequate in every respect to express whatever those Hebrew words express.’’11 While the first observation is certainly true, one cannot greet the second with quite as much approbation. Without much effort, I am sure one can adduce a number of Semitic/Germanic/Slavic near synonyms in Yiddish that nevertheless coexist with little repartition of meaning. (‘‘Jewish’’ languages tend to like synonymy, most likely due to their fusional character, by which there is a kind of builtin synonymy quotient.) Neither Sprachnot nor Sprachu¨berfluß—a need for words and a superabundance of words, respectively—is a deciding criterion for admittance to, or rejection from, the Yiddish lexicon.12 Turning to the specific semantic realms of loshn-koydesh: though I am primarily concerned with East Yiddish, I will begin with its largely neglected (at least in American Yiddish studies) sibling, West Yiddish. What we refer to as West Yiddish consists of that cluster of Yiddish dialects in what are now Germany, Switzerland, France, and the Low Countries (and, earlier, parts of

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Bohemia and Hungary), which were largely unaffected by the Slavic influences that had such a strong impact on the language of the Jews who moved east, and which developed along a somewhat different trajectory.13 In the relatively small corpus of texts and materials on and in West Yiddish, the size of the loshn-koydesh component is significant. In fact, I have not found a single area of semantic space that is free of loshn-koydesh infiltration; there is no field of life or thought into which loshn-koydesh words are not integrated. Though a systematic survey of East Yiddish would be a massive undertaking, there is little doubt that, a fortiori, there is at least just as great a density of loshnkoydesh in East Yiddish. One can easily see why there might be an abundance of such vocabulary in certain fields. And so it is for Jewish cultural terminology for the socioreligious aspects of Jewish life, particularly Yiddish-speaking, Ashkenazic Jewish life. This includes words for the divine and the demonic; the calendar, with particular emphasis on holiday and festival observances; the holy texts, liturgy, and prayer; belief and practice; rites of passage, including marriages, funerals, bar mitzvahs, and so on; and the community, with all of its social structures, institutions, and relationships. Yet no matter the specific field they pertain to, these words all generally code sociolinguistic features of some importance. This brings us to a central, dominant aspect of Ashkenazic Jewish culture: the idea and the very world of study and the sociological position of the scholar in that world. In the noticeably layered social stratification of traditional East European Jewish life, the very highest tier was reserved for the possessors of learning, the scholars.14 An abundance of near synonyms does not always correlate to importance, but in Yiddish this does seem to be the case. As Zborowski and Herzog note, ‘‘the Yiddish language is rich in terms for referring to a learned man: lerner, or studious one; ben Toyreh, son of the Law; baal Toyreh, master of the Law; lamdn, erudite one; talmid khokhem, wise scholar, erudite one; masmid, one who is always bending over his books; kharif, the acute; iluy, genius, superior or accomplished person; oker horim, ‘uprooter of mountains,’ one who excels in competitive scholarly pyrotechnics; gaon, genius. These are only a few of the terms used in everyday speech.’’15 The object of that learning was the sacred texts, first and foremost the Talmud, along with the Bible and midrash. The barometer of that learning was not only a mastery of these textual sources, but equally the degree of mental acuity in navigating them (being a ‘‘Leviathan in the sea of the Tal-

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mud,’’ as one says in Yiddish). However, the organizing principle of the activity of study was communal. One did not study alone, but rather bekhavruse, that is, in pairs as a kind of small study group (a Studienklatsch). There are two key aspects to note in regard to this cooperative situation. First of all, given the high social status of the scholar (really the highest rung in the social ladder), and given the central cultural position of the texts and ideas that formed the objects of these scholars’ study, the language of that group—a Yiddish permeated with textual references and allusions, with the verbal apparatus of debate modeled on that of the rabbinic period—became the prestige language in these communities. This prestige becomes an important feature when talking about the set of vocabulary in this discussion. To quote Uriel Weinreich, ‘‘if one language is endowed with prestige, the bilingual is likely to use what are identifiable loanwords from it as a means of displaying the social status which its knowledge symbolizes.’’16 Second, and perhaps even more crucial, is the dialogical context in which that language is framed. Not only was the central text (the Talmud) a collection of disputes, arguments, and conversational refinements, but the very mode of studying it—bekhavruse—was argumentative (in a forensic sense) and conversational. The scholars’ language was hinged both to the texts and to speech, to conversation. This dialogical context itself becomes part of the linguistic code. As Moshe Shtarkman notes, ‘‘Yiddish idiomatics was formed in the process of translating the core texts of the nation: Bible, Midrash, Mishnah, Gemarah, and moralistic literature.’’17 We must take this ‘‘translation’’ very broadly.18 For even though not everyone studied these texts, those who did were conduits for a constant enrichment of Yiddish. When Benjamin Harshav says that ‘‘it seems that, in its popular forms, Yiddish internalized and schematized some essential characteristics of ‘Talmudic’ dialectical argument and questioning, combined with typical communicative patterns evolved in the precarious, marginal, Diaspora existence,’’19 the key is the notion of ‘‘popular.’’ To be so thoroughly internalized, the semiotics that Harshav describes could only have come from early and intimate contact. However, it was not simply language that featured in this code. The behavior of that language, so to speak, became part of it as well. Shtarkman goes on to describe the primary aspects of this behavior. ‘‘Yiddish gets spoken with a special tune. When one listens to the tune of spoken Yiddish, one hears in it the permutation of the Gemarah-tune. The hand movements of Yiddish

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speakers and the dreyen mitn grobn finger [‘turning with the thumb’] came into Yiddish greatly through the wrangling of the scholars, through their argumentation over many subjects from the Talmud.’’20 What Shtarkman describes is indicative of the performative and pragmatic aspects of language use.

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Gru¨belichkeitstrieb and Discourse Vocabulary Bringing all these elements together as the linguistic constellation of the wider firmament of East European Ashkenazic culture is what Max Weinreich termed di shprakh fun derekh-hashas (the language of the Way of SHaS).21 His account is quite thorough, and I take it as a point of departure. In speaking specifically of the effects of the culture of study outlined above, Weinreich states: ‘‘The linguistic effect of the study material was immense. Each thought, each sentiment that aspires to expression via words seeks an appropriate form. And here hundreds of patterns were at hand in an easily quotable Hebrew version. All the scholar has to do is put out his hand, and he actually samples them liberally.’’22 This intuition about the study-house language informs the larger discussion about some of the parallel cultural ‘‘forms’’ and ‘‘patterns’’ that are central to Yiddish literary language. These include vocabulary, as will be discussed below, but it is nevertheless important to bear in mind that the forms and patterns extend into areas of language and thought well beyond the purely lexical. In order to frame the discussion linguistically, it is helpful to invoke an older schematization of language communication composed of two complementary ‘‘drives,’’ as discussed critically by Gustav Stern. The first of these is the Bequemlichkeitstrieb (drive for convenience). This is largely for the sake of the speaker, to enable him to speak efficiently and with a minimum of ‘‘needless’’ prolixity. The second is the Deutlichkeitstrieb (drive for clarity). This is for the sake of the audience, in order to maximize comprehension and minimize confusion. Stern justifiably criticizes this scheme as inadequate insofar as it ‘‘misses the function of speech for symbolization, expression and impression,’’ etc.23 Nevertheless, one critical aspect of the distinction may be revived, though certainly not as an exhaustive summation of linguistic reality. If we adopt the ‘‘directionality’’ of the scheme, namely the speaker–audience axis— and excerpt the ‘‘aesthetic’’ aspects of speech as well as the desire for ‘‘symbol-

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ization, expression and impression’’—there is a middle ground that becomes important for the vocabulary under discussion. With regard to this discourse vocabulary, one may speak of a third ‘‘drive’’ that is intimately bound up with the notion of Jewish discourse. In this model there is a ‘‘Jewish reality’’ in which words and texts occupy a position equal to the central objects in the Western conception of ‘‘reality.’’24 The Jewish text par excellence—that is, the exemplary text of this Jewish reality—is the Talmud. Its ‘‘narrative’’ is not unidirectional but rather anecdotal, ‘‘additive’’;25 the ‘‘logical’’ mode in such a text is associative, rather than strictly syllogistic as it is in Western traditions. It is this essentially dialogic mode that is ‘‘absorbed into Yiddish language and folklore.’’ Not only were texts studied dialogically or argumentatively, but the structure of the text, the Talmud, was itself dialogic. More than anything, this was the central perception—in its way analogous to similative buttressing—motivating the shift from text to study of the text and ultimately to influence on the development of the Yiddish language. Piggybacking on Stern’s descriptively Germanic terminology (Bequemlichkeitstrieb and Deutlichkeitstrieb), I have tentatively called this third ‘‘drive’’ the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb (drive for one-upping the argument). The dialogic structure of the Talmud carried with it a natural concomitant, namely, the importance of argumentation. According to Harshav, the ultimate activity in discussion, the verb nonpareil, which spilled over from Talmudic debate into daily life, was griblen zikh, which is to say: ‘‘to look for a counter-argument; to upturn every meaning; to be inquisitive; to look for hidden meaning; to question.’’26 The German cognate of Yiddish griblen—gru¨beln—suggested itself not only playfully from the symmetry with the names of two other drives, Deutlichkeitstrieb and Bequemlichkeitstrieb, but also to the following discussion: This penchant for questioning was recognized in psychoanalytic circles as well. Peter Gay quotes Isidor Sadger’s talk at the Wednesday Psychological Society in Vienna in 1907: . . . the disposition of Jews to obsessive neuroses is perhaps connected with the addiction to brooding—Gruebelsucht— characteristic of them for thousands of years. —Peter Gay, A Godless Jew, p. 135

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It seems to me that GRUEBELSUCHT here, as pronounced by a Galician Jew, is not in its German dictionary sense (‘‘brooding’’) but in its Yiddish meaning, where ZIKH GRIBLEN is almost a technical term for ‘‘Talmudic inquisitiveness,’’ the exaggerated tendency to delve deeply, dig and upturn any piece of ground, uncover hidden motivations and alternatives.27 This Gru¨belichkeitstrieb is the drive to look for a counterargument for the sake of neither the speaker nor the audience, but rather for the sake of the argument, the discourse, itself. It is the drive, in a parodic formulation, of the yeshivah bokher who has a wonderful teyrets (solution to a Talmudic difficulty) and is eagerly looking for a kashe (formulation of a Talmudic difficulty) to fit it: ‘‘Once a yeshivah bokher entered the study house and saw one of his friends running around back and forth, holding his head in his hands, and yelling: ‘Oy, vey! Good, fine! Oy, vey!’ He asked him: ‘Shmerke, what’s with you that’s good and fine; why are you yelling?’ Shmerke said: ‘Oy, good brother! Do I have a teyrets! Gold! Genius! Only one thing is wrong: I don’t have the kashe!’ ’’28 Not only the humor but the entire sense of a story like this depends completely on understanding the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. Otherwise it’s pretty much meaningless. What is more, taken as it is from a collection designed to be read and enjoyed by a secular Jewish audience, it presumes that enough of the important cultural understanding and competence will have been maintained for the stories still to be funny in an unmediated way. This drive is an outgrowth of what became perceived as organizing principles of Talmudic discourse. It is what the scholars brought with them in their Yiddish when they left their study houses and returned to their families and to the conduct of everyday life.29 Max Weinreich notes that in traditional study of rabbinic scholarly dialogue conducted in Yiddish, ‘‘it is possible to challenge a fellow student’s thesis even though he be a greater scholar or older; one may even indulge in the saying omer abaye iz nokh nit keyn raye (the mere citing of [the rabbinic sage] Abaye is no proof). Abaye may be one of the leading Amoraim, but reference to an authority does not replace the necessity of adducing logical proof. There is no dogmatic yes—no in many instances.’’30 But again, this ‘‘logic’’ is not a syllogistic ‘‘Western’’ one; rather it is organized on the principles of conversation itself. The conversational pattern of one world bled into the patterns of the other. One way of gaining access to this universe of discourse is through linguistic

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pragmatics, namely the study of the use and meaning of language in the context of its utterance. So, for example, suppose I were to say in a room full of people, ‘‘Brrr, it’s cold in here.’’ The ‘‘meaning’’ of what I said would change noticeably if I were known to be a complainer or chronically chilly; or if there were a heater in the room that no one had turned on; or if there were an open window to which I didn’t have easy access; or if someone had just made a caustic remark.31 It is the specifically discursive context of this drive that is important here. In addressing discourse vocabulary generally, the linguist Stephen Levinson describes how

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there are many words and phrases in English, and no doubt most languages, that indicate the relationship between an utterance and the prior discourse. Examples are utterance-initial usages of but, therefore, in conclusion, to the contrary, still, however, anyway, well, besides, actually, all in all, so, after all, and so on. It is generally conceded that such words have at least a component of meaning that resists truth-conditional treatment. . . . What they seem to do is indicate, often in very complex ways, just how the utterance that contains them is a response to, or a continuation of, some portion of the prior discourse.32 The Yiddish version of this discourse vocabulary, derived largely from rabbinic texts, is the central feature of the present discussion. The very fact that such a sizable number of these discourse ties were adopted underscores the influence not only of the source texts, but also the functional contexts of their original use.33 And the fact that in Max Weinreich’s short list of fourteen examples of this vocabulary at least half are expressions of possibility is further evidence of Gru¨belichkeitstrieb at work.34 These observations deal with a process of linguistic and cultural naturalization that took place over a long period of time and largely away from the written record. Though the technical function of this discourse was at some remove from the conduits of that nativization, namely the unlearned everyday speakers of Yiddish, it should not be assumed that the discursive world of this textual logic was necessarily for them an ivory-tower concern (though its technical application and details certainly were). Quite the contrary. It was an operative principle in everyday life. A story will serve as an example: We had in our shtetl a coachman whose name was Dovidke. When one would call him ‘‘coachman’’ he didn’t like it at all. As he used to say: ‘‘I

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am no coachman! I have a wagon and a horse, and I drive; and whoever wants to ride along, let him ride! But I am not a coachman.’’ And as for driving he used to drive with wisdom.35 One night there was a big storm. And just that night he departed on a long journey. Some days later they asked him how he got through that night. So he says: ‘‘It was a difficult journey. But I drove with great acuity.’’36 So they ask him: ‘‘What does that mean, ‘drove with acuity’?’’ So he says: ‘‘I drove by means of a kalvekhoymer and a gezeyre-shove.37 So listen up. Having set out several miles that night a wheel of my wagon gets it in its head to fall off. So what do I do? I drive with a kal-vekhoymer! If38 a little cart on two wheels can go, then my wagon with three wheels will certainly be able to go!39 So I drove on. I hadn’t gone two minutes when another wheel fell off. So I gave it a thought and found a gezeyre-shove: just as a little cart goes on two wheels, so I will go with two wheels!—And I drove on. Another misfortune, and a third wheel fell off! Do you think I got rattled? Perish the thought! I drove on with a kal-vekhoymer: if a sled without wheels can go, how much more so40 will my wagon with only one wheel surely go! So I drove on! The fourth wheel then also up and fell off. So what is one to do? I drove on with a gezeyre-shove: just as a sled goes without wheels, so will my wagon go without wheels! And I drove! Don’t ask what became of me and my passengers and my wagon; but I drove!41 This amusing text is significant in a number of ways. It vividly demonstrates how knowledge of the language of textual discourse is a practical consideration. Through a virtual embodiment of logical structures they are seen as active worldly forces. It is not that the logical arguments actually changed the reality on the ground, but they convinced the coachman to keep going. That the joke itself is contextually dialogic as opposed to strictly narrative emphasizes the spoken resonance of these terms and this way of thinking. But even more telling is the fact that the recounting is put in the mouth of a coachman.42 In the ladder of social stratification of traditional Jewish life in Eastern Europe, certain kinds of laborers, particularly tailors and coachmen, occupied some of the lowest rungs. That is certainly true in the popular literary imagination, and emphasized further by the coachman’s sensitivity to his title in the introduction to the story. Such a person would have had very little access to the kind of formal scholarly education enabling such technical manipula-

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tions. The fact, however, that he does essentially get the form right is evidence of not only the lexical but the discursive integration into the quotidian patterns of Yiddish speech. The humor derives, of course, from the misapplication of that formal structure. In that way it is both an implicit criticism of yeshivah thinking in the popular imagination as well as a reflection of how almost grammaticalized these patterns are in the language itself. The full effect of the passage can only be achieved when it is read aloud with the appropriate intonation patterns, emphasizing the logical structures with the traditional study-house ‘‘melodies.’’ After all, there is a reason Jewish discursive patterns in Yiddish are described as involving talkative behaviors. The discourse vocabulary is part of the larger pragmatic context mentioned above, and there are two important concepts that inform this discussion: (1) speech acts, specifically indirect speech acts, and (2) conversational logic, specifically conversational implicatures.43 I will take each of these in turn. First, however, I will outline the general principle from which they flow. This principle is part of a conception of language communication developed by the linguist H. Paul Grice in a seminal paper.44 Briefly put, when dealing with the part of language involved in the communication of information,45 we adhere to a cooperative principle: ‘‘Make your contribution such as is required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.’’46 That is to say, a conversation is at heart a two-sided event, and each participant is supposed to act according to that recognition. The cooperative principle cannot be put into action without a number of extralinguistic interpretations. One important concept involved in this interpretative structure is the speech act. This term refers generally to the linguistic activity whereby the doing is in the saying. Thus, in the paradigmatic example, when a duly constituted official (either civic or ecclesiastic) utters in the appropriate context the words ‘‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’’ the happy couple have, through that utterance, actually become wed. One relevant species of speech act—particularly vexing in linguistic theories—is the indirect speech act, a concept formulated and discussed extensively by John Searle: ‘‘In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer.’’47 To return to an earlier example, when one utters the expression ‘‘It’s cold in here,’’ the surface mean-

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ing is a statement concerning the temperature of the room. However, in a certain context it enacts a request to close the window. An even better example for the present purpose might be ‘‘Can you reach the salt?’’ Searle notes that for this and similar questions ‘‘it takes some ingenuity to imagine a situation in which their utterances would not be requests.’’48 This is because, according to the cooperative principle cited above, answering only ‘‘Yes’’ would be a violation. Let us look momentarily at a Talmudic example. The Aramaic expression haynu hakh (literally ‘‘this is that,’’ or ‘‘this one is that one’’;49 and idiomatically, ‘‘it makes no difference’’) indicates the apparent equivalence of two statements. Often, though, it has another distinct logical function: it flags a potential problem in that two ostensibly ‘‘equivalent’’ statements would therefore seem to make one of them redundant, a distinctly undesirable state of affairs for a system one of whose working assumptions is the maximum meaningfulness of the text. The formally declarative ‘‘this is that’’ is therefore an indirect speech act that enacts a request to resolve a redundancy. Let us take two examples in action. The first is from Tractate Shabbat 19a. It is set within the context of a debate about what are permissible and impermissible activities on the day before the Sabbath in order to ensure that one will not, even inadvertently, have caused work to be done on the Sabbath: Our scholars learned: one may place food before a dog in the courtyard; should he take it and leave one has no obligation to [prevent him from leaving with it, since it is possible that the sun will have set by then]. Similarly, one may place food before a gentile in the courtyard; should he take it and leave one has no obligation to [prevent him from leaving with it]. Why do I need this as well? [i.e., aren’t the two cases saying the same thing?] This one is that one [haynu hakh]. You might say: this one is incumbent upon him, but that one is not incumbent upon him. [The Tanna] imparts a legal tradition to us50 [i.e., that they are both incumbent, but the latter case for extra-legal considerations, such as fellowfeeling]. The first thing to note is the formulaic response to the challenge of redundancy, namely ‘‘you might say,’’ introducing the formulation of the problem, followed by the resolution introduced by ‘‘[the Tanna] imparts a legal tradition to us.’’ Secondly, we notice that the substance of haynu hakh is made

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literal in the preceding question, ‘‘Why do I need this as well?’’ Though it seems to make the haynu hakh extraneous, the following example dispels that notion. We find, in Tractate Berakhot 14a, a discussion of two analogous situations of consuming something unclean and the consumption of the terumah offering. Following the two situations, we read: ‘‘This one is that one. You might say: this one is common, that one is not common. [The Tanna] instructs us [i.e., that that is not the case].’’ We note both the formal similarity and the solo force of the haynu hakh (that is, without the question ‘‘Why do I need this as well?’’). The point is that the operative principles of pragmatics, including these indirect speech acts, are not irrelevant to Talmudic discourse. In fact, they offer a useful way of describing not only parts of that discourse but also analogous elements in Yiddish. A key idea in the operation of these indirect speech acts is that of conversational implicatures. In accepting the cooperative principle, Grice maintains, we follow certain rules, called maxims of conversation, that ensure that information is conveyed both thoroughly and efficiently.51 These maxims can be thumbnailed as follows: (1) Quality: tell the truth to the best of your ability; (2) Quantity: say enough but not too much; (3) Relevance: be relevant; and (4) Manner: be clear. The implicature, then, is what we understand about what someone says by assuming these maxims are being followed. And if the maxim is not being followed, we understand by this (1) that the maxim is being broken consciously—it is being ‘‘flouted’’ (in Grice’s terms) on purpose—and (2) that meaning is being conveyed by that willing contravention. So, for example, were I to be asked the time, and were I to respond, ‘‘It looks like the sun is directly overhead,’’ my response would not have been irrelevant. Rather, it would have indicated both that I didn’t know the exact time (perhaps I had no watch) and that it can be reasonably presumed to have been around midday. It has been noted that though the ‘‘basic conversational principles are universal and apply to verbal exchanges of all kinds, the way they are articulated in situ is culturally and subculturally specific.’’52 This cultural articulation is the conceptual link between the linguistic features just described and Jewish discourse. Let us begin with an example. The element of Jewish discourse par excellence,53 the one most commonly cited, is the tendency to answer a question with a question. In the customary, and humorous, greeting exchange ‘‘Vos makht a yid?’’ ‘‘Vos zol a yid makhn?’’ (‘‘How are you?’’ ‘‘How should I be?’’),54 the respondent is not being irrelevant. Rather, though seeming irrele-

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vant, he flouts the maxim of relevance in order to communicate different information. In the cooperative exchange he is not asking for a response to the surface meaning of the question. Instead, there are two complementary interpretations of this implicature. The first is that he is challenging his interlocutor to back up any claim that something might not be as it ought to be (‘‘How should I be? Have you heard that I shouldn’t be well?’’). The second interpretation reinforces the first and is on a slightly stronger footing. This reading focuses on the ‘‘Jew’’ (yid) in the idiomatic formulation. The responding question really is ‘‘How is a Jew expected to be?’’ As such, it participates in a Jewish ‘‘culture of complaints,’’55 which reflects habitualized linguistic responses of an oppressed people to the reality of their lives. A slightly different sarcastic exchange—‘‘How are you?’’ ‘‘You tell me.’’—is not part of Jewish discourse in the same way because it does not participate in a shared cultural understanding of what a Jew expects of the world from the linguistic techniques used to encode a response to that world. In addition to the implicature involved in the response ‘‘How should I be?’’ the respondent also demonstrates his participation in the culture of questions, the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. A proper and appropriate response does not answer the question directly but rather turns it back on the questioner while at the same time maintaining the conversational exchange. It is a call-andresponse formulation in which the response is at the same time a call. The greeting example, of course, is not perfect insofar as it has itself become frozen. But it is emblematic of the process that brought it to its concretization, namely Jewish discourse from the Talmud and into Yiddish. This is precisely the cultural context in which the earlier exchange about eretz being spelled with a gimmel fits: ‘‘Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘A gimmel? It isn’t.’’ ‘‘Why shouldn’t ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’ ‘‘That’s what I’m asking you—Why should ‘eretz’ be spelled with a gimmel?’’56 The fact that not only is each response a question, but each of these questions looks almost identical yet focuses on a slightly different element, ultimately leading back to the original unresolved question, makes the exchange a Jewish discursive microcosm.

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The orality of the preceding joke and the application of the concept of an ‘‘exchange’’ reemphasize the conversational underpinnings of Jewish discourse. That is why a conversational methodology is potentially useful in analyzing the role of that discourse in Yiddish literature. Conversational analysis is generally treated as part of the field of discourse analysis, which is briefly put ‘‘the analysis of language in use.’’57 Though most often dealt with in linguistic contexts, and of particular interest to sociolinguists, syntacticians, and semanticists, among others, the relevance of this branch of study continues to gain in importance interdisciplinarily. Its primary unit of analysis is the ‘‘utterance,’’ either written or spoken, which involves active work and participation on the part of both the writer/speaker and the reader/listener. This essential contact situation is dynamic, with a number of constantly moving parts (contextual information, personal history and experience, various frames of reference, etc.). In isolating three dominant aspects intrinsic to the utterance itself—‘‘thematic content, style, and compositional structure’’— Mikhail Bakhtin has noted that ‘‘each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres.’’ The central intuition in forwarding such a category is that despite the ‘‘extreme heterogeneity of speech genres,’’58 they are nevertheless a comprehensible matrix according to which we understand and negotiate those larger social and cultural structures that arise through language. The relevance of Bakhtin’s model here is that the texts to be discussed throughout in some way participate in a kind of speech genre, where the structure of Jewish discourse itself offers just this ‘‘stability.’’ This is why what is repeatedly referred to as an ‘‘oral’’ or a ‘‘conversational’’ framework for analysis works so well. And what is more, it is the stability and flexibility of the conversational structure—as a speech genre—that makes it a dominant feature of Jewish discourse and one of the foundations of modern Yiddish literary stylistics. The oral dimensions of this broad field are the focus of conversational analysis, where sophisticated tools have been developed for getting down and dealing with conversation and at the same time revealing, despite the roughand-tumble of actual intercourse, its own ‘‘relatively stable types.’’ Quite understandably, the language of conversation scholarship often emphasizes the social aspect of conversation, describing the ‘‘negotiations’’ involved in the manipulation of social, cultural, and linguistic codes for mutual comprehension.59 The sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit assumption regarding the

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conversational situation is that it is a more or less spontaneous verbal interaction between conversants. Whatever one might say about the relationship between a book or a written text and its reader, about how he or she ‘‘negotiates’’ its meanings, that relationship is not exactly a ‘‘spontaneous verbal interaction.’’ However, when the object of conversation analysis is described as ‘‘the interactional organization of social activities,’’60 one can see a potentially useful model for understanding the discursive structure of Yiddish literature. A common focus in the scholarly literature is on those analyses according to which ‘‘words used in talk are not studied as semantic units, but as products or objects which are designed and used in terms of the activities being negotiated in talk,’’61 which is to say, how they work as speech acts. However, that is not the sole benefit of conversation analysis, nor is this discussion an arm of speech-act theory. Rather, this line of inquiry puts together the intuitions summed up by Bakhtin as well as a broader understanding of these ‘‘activities being negotiated’’ in the production of Yiddish literary texts in contact with the dialogical ethos of the rabbinic canon. There are potential similarities between an understanding of how conversation works and the presentation of the conceptual flow of topics in a given text (which will be discussed in more detail later with regard to the Tsenerene). Generally speaking, analogous to word order as a determinative feature of sentence grammar, we can look at ‘‘order’’—including the topic shift mentioned above—as a function of the perception of the participants, moored in particular social, cultural, and societal contexts. They are mutually understood because what they say has been produced in order to be understood by them.62 Within the social setting of the conversation, this involves what is known as ‘‘conversational coherence,’’ which is the idea that each utterance in a conversation follows from something said previous to it (though not necessarily immediately preceding) such that it is understood within that conversation by the participants;63 otherwise it is ‘‘incoherent’’ and therefore ‘‘incomprehensible.’’64 This is why what in Yiddish literary texts sometimes appears on the surface to be a ‘‘haphazard’’ organization is actually anything but. Indeed, more than ‘‘haphazard,’’ such topical development is a potentially useful index for analyzing Jewish discursive patterns in Yiddish literature. Wallace Chafe describes ‘‘the inevitable restlessness of focal consciousness. Whether we are speaking or engaged in silent thought, it is easy to observe that our focus of consciousness is constantly shifting from one thought to another . . . the flow of thought exhibits directionality.’’ Ultimately, ‘‘what

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keeps language moving is, then, essentially the introduction and development of topics. The question to be asked next is what guides the focus of consciousness as it navigates through a topic.’’65 Chafe goes on to describe three ‘‘trajectories’’ of topical navigation. The first is narrative; the second is contrastive dialogue, that is, the ‘‘interplay between two interlocutors’’ whose interaction is meant to clarify their understanding of one another; the third is a combination of the two, which is the meaning of ‘‘polyphony’’ in the article’s title.66 The point is that because of its manipulation and juxtaposition of sources, set within a ‘‘dialogical’’ framework that asks questions, poses problems, etc. about those sources, Jewish discursive patterns present just such a polyphony. Returning from the cultural and linguistic context to the discourse vocabulary itself, let us look again to Levinson for a useful conceptual framework. Levinson is at pains to account for Searle’s indirect speech acts in terms of a viable linguistic theory. One theory he cites is the ‘‘inference theory,’’ which in effect says that an utterance has both its ‘‘literal force’’ and potentially a ‘‘conveyed or indirect force . . . by virtue of an inference that is made taking contextual conditions into account.’’ He goes on to outline a set of principles governing this theory. The most relevant to the present purpose is the one that asserts, ‘‘For an utterance to be an indirect speech act, there must be an inference-trigger, i.e. some indication that the literal meaning and/or literal force is conversationally inadequate in the context and must be ‘repaired’ by some inference.’’67 In many cases the discourse ties taken from the Talmud— the connective tissue of rabbinic debate and the Jewish discourse that derives from it—are just such triggers. And it is with this packaging within the overall discursive context that they enter Yiddish. There is therefore a ready-made notational system for ‘‘getting down’’ the associative logic as absorbed into Yiddish, where the mode of discourse becomes enshrined in its notational figures. This technical vocabulary is part and parcel of the Talmud, and it is this vocabulary, the so-called discourse ties, as embedded in the literature, to which this discussion now turns. It is certainly true that a goodly number of these terms may retain some of their original technical meanings. This is to be expected in a culture in which Talmud study is pervasive. But, as with any vocabulary borrowed from a technical realm into more or less daily life, and thus used by those who do not engage in Talmud study and who have no direct access to those texts, there are elements whose developments are doubtless unpredictable.

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jewish discourse and modern yiddish poetry

All belletristic authors are concerned with language; that is banal to say. However, given the preceding discussion, Yiddish authors had an additional set of linguistic resonances and resources to draw on. This is not universally applied; it is one of many possibilities in the literary cultural treasure-house. But it is nevertheless a powerful and important potential. The present chapter pursues an analysis of the interpretation of certain elements of this discourse vocabulary in a literary context. This interdisciplinary approach has the direct benefit that in all of the examples chosen the discourse ties are more than just integrated and naturalized lexemes; their use is a conscious activation of their Jewish discourse resonance.1 In this way the analysis avoids the methodological fallacy that because a given lexeme is found in a poem or work of literature, it therefore is at the heart of that work and every occurrence is noteworthy. This discussion is also confined largely to certain works of modernist poetry. Though many of the modern authors or genres would supply ample material, this choice is not arbitrary. These texts were chosen whose Jewish discursive element is not submerged but rather worn upon the sleeve, putting the issue in very sharp relief. Yiddish modernism’s dizzyingly creative preoccupation with talking about language itself makes it an ideal candidate for analysis of the issues outlined above. The first chapter introduced some issues of Jewish discourse on a smaller scale, through a narrow grammatical aperture. As in the last chapter, however,

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the focus will continue to be on vocabulary as the most accessible entry point to the larger principles of Jewish discourse—especially the conversational framework—particularly as they relate to that literature. This is also why the focus will be on poetry. Poetry is so often the literary space where writers not only self-consciously reflect on the language itself but also play, or even experiment, with what they perceive to be their language’s resonant elements. This is clearly the case for Yiddish. Again, however, this is not an exhaustive survey of modern Yiddish poetry, both for reasons of space and of scope. The Jewish discursive element is an intimately perceived potential of the language, one that a writer can choose not to realize in a given work. For a sensitive writer of English not to use the subjunctive, for example, is a conscious act which in no way prejudices his or her appreciation of the elastic grammatical and semantic realities of the language. Just so the Jewish discursive element in Yiddish. The texts selected here are therefore those that are intimately concerned with that resonance in Yiddish. Through a close reading of these key poems, and their concerted deployment of Jewish discourse vocabulary, I hope to shed some light on how these sensitive poets understood how their own language worked. The high-water mark of modern Yiddish poetry—roughly from the late nineteenth century to the early 1930s—was achieved on two separate continents. Different sets of cultural, economic, social, historical, and aesthetic forces were at work on the writers of America and of Eastern Europe. In a very broad and schematic overview, the European theater was dominated by the realities of wars, anti-Jewish violence, political and economic instability, not to mention a strong revolutionary attraction which drew universalizing ideology into the forefront of the literature. In America, on the other hand, these tensions and instabilities were tempered, to no small extent, by the oceanic buffer. New York, the hub of the American Yiddish literary wheel, was not a hotbed of Symbolist mysticism, or apocalyptic Expressionism, or flamboyant Futurism. Though many of the writers were not squeamish about wearing their political ideologies on their sleeves like their transatlantic brethren, they were at the same time digesting the poetics of Anglo-American modernisms while coming to terms with the American cult of the individual in novel ways. All of these factors made the American milieu more conducive to the development of a particular way of using and talking about language itself that was not as prevalent among the writers of Europe, where particular ideologies, affinities, and commitments contributed to a different but no less strik-

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ing and accomplished body of work. In a word, American individualism allowed for intimate investigations of Jewish discursive language, while European universalism tended to obscure or submerge precisely that. For this reason this discussion focuses on authors from the American sphere.

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Moyshe-Leyb Halpern and the Poetics of Possibility Given, in the context of traditional study, the importance of exploring the possibilities of meanings and inferences—the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb—it is not surprising that the vocabulary of possibility itself is robust in Yiddish’s Jewish discourse. That by far the most common word for ‘‘maybe’’—efsher—is from the Talmudic corpus is of itself quite telling. Furthermore, Max Weinreich lists the following synonyms: tomer (perhaps); s’ken gemolt zayn (it is possible) (literally, ‘‘it can be pictured’’); a svore, (possibly); efsher (perhaps), and efsher take (perhaps indeed); and s’iz a ha´vemı´ne (there is a possibility).2 The Germanic possibilities are fewer: meglekh and es ken zayn (both meaning ‘‘possibly’’) are the two most likely, though they are nowhere as thoroughly internalized as efsher.3 This rich vocabulary of possibility, as representative of a particular way of looking at the world, is a recognized and recognizable element of Yiddish, as we shall see. Since poetry is one of the most important arenas where culture gives full sanction to serious exploration of language an sich, and since Yiddish poetry is in many ways the diwan, the storehouse, of modern Yiddish culture, it is most appropriate to focus on that as a site of sensitive consideration of the issue of ‘‘possibility.’’ One important feature to note is the borderland occupied by the word efsher itself. As pointed out in the two semantic options offered by the Groyser verterbukh (Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language), there is both a positive valence—‘‘a tendency for a positive answer’’—and a more negative one.4 ‘‘Maybe’’ is a liminal marker between certainty and doubt. It is this feature that we see on vital display in Moyshe-Leyb Halpern’s cycle Zarkhi baym breg yam (Zarkhi by the Seashore), which makes up the final section of Di goldene pave (The Golden Peacock, 1924),5 his last book to be published in his lifetime. Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886–1932) is generally recognized as one of the most brilliant poetic lights in the Yiddish firmament. Born in Galicia, Halpern began his poetic career with the publication of several German poems in Vienna, where he lived for a decade, and moved to the United States in 1908.

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Like many of his fellow poets in America, he lived in perennial poverty, working in various menial jobs to support his writing and his family. Nevertheless, he managed to produce some of the most technically adept manipulations of genres and themes in contemporary Yiddish poetry as well as some of the most disturbing images of the dislocation of the Yiddish poet in the modern urban landscape.6 The image of the golden peacock, which Halpern uses as the title of this collection, is taken from the Yiddish folk tradition. As an emblem not only of Jewish tradition but also specifically of Yiddish poetry and lyricism,7 it was most famously used by poets such as Itsik Manger and Anna Margolin, but can also be found as a cultural motif to this day (for example, as the logo of the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library of the National Yiddish Book Center). Halpern uses the image of the golden peacock as a way of understanding the tensions between that tradition and modernity. His book is a tense working out of the relationship between tradition, in its many forms, and the precarious position of the poet in the modern world. As Ruth Wisse notes, ‘‘Throughout this disturbing book of Halpern’s, the displacement of the Jew, the immigrant, the poet, unveils the dislocation of man in the universe, an ontology of homelessness.’’8 But because of the welter of sources he assembles and the nature of his orchestration of them with regard to the poet, it is often less a study of being than, as we shall see, one of ‘‘maybe-ing,’’ a metontology. The so-called Zarkhi poems particularly occupy a prominent place in this system. Halpern constructs a number of poetic personae embodying certain thematic motifs, psychological traits, social attitudes, etc. as vehicles for his ruminations.9 One of these personae is the avuncular Zarkhi.10 Once planned to be the main character in a novel,11 Zarkhi becomes the enigmatic composite of mock folk bard (he fecklessly plays his makeshift banjo of an old tin pan and alternately rubber bands or string made of his wife’s old garters), contemplative old man, and mediator or transmitter of Jewish tradition. Images of each percolate into the others. What is noteworthy is the liminal position that Zarkhi occupies in all of his incarnations. The cycle ‘‘Zarkhi by the Seashore’’ starts out as follows: Oh, Zarkhi, Zarkhi, you cannot make A bridge be built Over the sea there and back,

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And your longing yet stays on that side With red-uplifted paws, and cries out Like a village lass, who needs to have a man, To have a man, To have a man.12 This cycle stands parallel to the previous, much shorter cycle ‘‘Moyshe-leyb baym breg yam’’ (Moyshe-Leyb at the Seashore),13 where Moyshe-Leyb is yet another of Halpern’s personae.14 In Zarkhi’s cycle, though, Zarkhi stands on the seashore looking out at the water. The narrator’s address to him unfolds a series of borderland, liminal images of which the seashore is the graphic, concrete representation. The bridge, a potent symbol in modernist poetry, and certainly in New York,15 is an image of the thwarted attempt to link the two extremities. Yet it is a ‘‘bridge to longing,’’ where longing is the psychological residue of presence; but the longing itself is absent, remaining on the other side, unattainable because of the impossibility of building the bridge. Then, finally, there is the triple representation of the village lass’s romantic needs, an eroticization that retrieves ‘‘longing’’ and brings to mind a more concrete meaning of the term. This repetition is also reminiscent of the repeated refrain of a folk song. This folksiness is a recurrent element of the Zarkhi persona.16 In addition to the genre echo of the folk song, there are two other echoes in the diction. The first is to such English collocations as ‘‘a sea of longing’’; though this is not an idiom in Yiddish, Halpern may be trying to come to terms with his English-speaking environment (he has by this time been in New York since 1908). The second echo is ‘‘on that side’’ (af yener zayt), bringing up the ultimate liminal relationship—death—where the Yiddish expression ‘‘in that world’’ (af yener velt) refers to the world to come. This is a premonitory nudge toward the menace later in the poem, which includes beating nails into his head, ‘‘decapitating’’ a cloud-cabbage, and a hanged and hanging corpse. Ultimately, by the end of the first poem Halpern leaves us unsure of what to do with this unflattering but lyrically sympathetic character. As he concludes: But you, Zarkhi, are apparently a wise man, Apparently a wise man, Apparently a wise man.17

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The ambiguous assessment of Zarkhi’s character is mirrored in the ambiguity of the word khokhem, which can mean both ‘‘wise man’’ and ‘‘fool.’’ Zarkhi is the perennial sophomore. The Zarkhi poems are also a bridge to the textual traditions of Jewish culture and specifically to Yiddish’s incorporation of rabbinic discourse ties. The word efsher occurs at least once in twelve of the thirty-eight poems, for a total of thirty-five times.18 ‘‘Maybe’’ is not necessarily the most lyrical or poetic of vocabulary options, but its relatively dense employment in these poems is telling. Julian Levinson has noted that in Halpern’s poem ‘‘Azoy iz undz bashert’’ (So It Is Our Fate), ‘‘rather than seeking a consoling truth amid misfortune, the poem becomes a frenzied search for the correct simile, undermining each one with the word efsher (maybe). Each image underscores the ideas of solitude, purposelessness, and victimization. But the crucial point seems to be that no single image suffices.’’19 On top of this analysis, I would argue that the concatenative power of the possible metaphors is reinforced by the Jewish discursive resonance of offering a rapid-fire series of alternative scenarios. Levinson continues, ‘‘The modern poet can generate multiple possible similes—indeed this kind of multiplication becomes the essence of the poem’’;20 what he marks as modern is similatively buttressed by this discursive tradition, whose token is efsher. This point, though submerged in ‘‘So It Is Our Fate,’’ is vital to the Zarkhi poems. Halpern often uses Zarkhi as a vehicle for an engagement with Jewish tradition,21 and more properly the Jewish textual and philosophical tradition. David Roskies has noted that Halpern ‘‘returns Hebrew-Aramaic to its Siztim-Leben [sic], the study house and shul, in order to parody the form and substance of the Jewish intellectual tradition. Whole chapters of the Zarkhi cycle are written in the language of lernen, of Torah study, and they are wickedly funny.’’22 Doubtless this is true. The point, however, is that if parody were but an element of the overall effect, then its absence would neither damage the whole nor significantly alter the meaning. I am arguing that without the Jewish discursive stratum, the Zarkhi poems would make little if any sense at all; that this indicates how fundamentally integrated Halpern felt that discourse to be in his own Yiddish language. One can get a sense of the schizophrenic tension that undermines a purely parodic reading by putting Yosl Kotler’s two original black-ink illustrations side by side. They are composed of the same basic elements: a foregrounded figure before the sea full of fish with a boat in the distance. In Moyshe-Leyb

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at the Seashore,23 the figure in solid black is recognizably male, wearing a hat, smoking a cigarette, with arms curiously outstretched. The fish, too, are solid black, giving the day a somber or even ominous character. A ship in the distance has the unmistakable smokestacks of a steamer, both giving us an image of the modern industrial reality and hinting at the possibility of its being another shipment of immigrants. The man’s posture in this somber scene is less likely a sign of welcome than of warning. In Kotler’s Zarkhi by the Seashore, these elements are permuted.24 The figure is an angular assemblage of black-and-white geometrical forms giving the impression of a person leaning on his elbows with his chin in his hand, staring out over the sea. The sea itself is illuminated by a radiant sun half-risen from the ocean while fish—this time not inked in—frolic in the waves. Instead of a steamer ship, there is a sailboat in the surf, its white sail full of wind. The brightness of the sun—likely also a gesture to Zarkhi’s own ‘‘bright’’ name—

fig. 1 Yosl Kotler, Moyshe-Leyb at the Sea Shore. From Moshe-Leyb Halpern, Di Goldene Pave (New York: Farlag Grupe Idish, 1924), 179.

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fig. 2 Yosl Kotler, Zarkhi by the Sea Shore. From Moshe-Leyb Halpern, Di Goldene Pave (New York: Farlag Grupe Idish, 1924), 213.

and the whiteness of the compositional elements contrast with both the darkness of the Moyshe-Leyb scene and the ambivalences of the Zarkhi poems themselves. Hardly romanticized, Zarkhi’s graphic image adds a contemplative subtext for the ‘‘logical’’ operation of the Jewish discourse it embodies. Zarkhi’s own orientation in these poems is so engineered that he becomes a transatlantic filter for those traditional Jewish ideas and practices being projected over from their original environment. For example, the seventh poem of the cycle (which is also the seventh poem of the initial sequence entitled ‘‘Zarkhi tsu zikh aleyn’’ [Zarkhi to Himself]) runs as follows: Rubber bands three on a pan of tin And with the glasses out to the sea. Zarkhi is weeping out maybe [efsher] his longing— What do we know, dear brothers. And it is maybe [efsher] not Zarkhi at all who is weeping But a tree that burns and is not burnt up25 And that weeps with its branches just like with hands— What do we know, dear brothers.

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And it is maybe [efsher] also not a tree that is weeping But the silent lament of an eye and a hand Of one who dies at the threshold of his land26 — What do we know, dear brothers. And maybe [efsher] it is not one who dies But a blind giant of a thousand years back Bewailing his shorn hair27— What do we know, dear brothers.

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And it is maybe [efsher] also no giant who is weeping But the simple foolish instrument Which weeps between Zarkhi’s old hands— What do we know, dear brothers.28 We are presented initially with two loaded images. First there is the makeshift instrument, an ersatz lyre for the surrogate troubadour to harp and carp (‘‘tsu zingen un tsu zogn’’). The recurrent image of Zarkhi’s instrument is a repeated foregrounding of Halpern’s notion of the Jewish poet in the modern world, encoded as an image of a battered Jewish minstrelsy. This is a powerful image in Jewish art, beginning with King David at his lyre—and called into question with Psalm 137:1–2—and continuing through the shpilman notion of Jewish folk poetry.29 The second image is the disembodied pair of glasses facing out to sea. We infer from the earlier ruminative poem that this is Zarkhi, but there is a striking distance placed between the perceiver and the organs of perception by these spectacles: they are not only a representation of intellectualism but also of poor vision, of an incapacity30 to see things as they ‘‘really’’ are,31 physically and figuratively. The job, though, of playing out the possibilities of what could be is thrown onto us, the reader, with the apostrophe ‘‘dear brothers,’’ by the obscure editorial voice of Zarkhi’s world. Though we have been introduced to Zarkhi’s instrument, we have not heard it until its music is introduced obliquely through offering the possibility (efsher) that it is the expression of Zarkhi’s longing. This is followed by the poem’s refrain: ‘‘What do we know, dear brothers.’’ It is an epistemological quandary; its repetition is a constant harping on even the possibility of knowledge. Yet at the same time it is expressed in the form (without question mark) of a statement, not a question. As such, it is a rhetorical question of sorts.

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Calling one’s certainty into question is presented as the standardized response to the possibilities presented by efsher. In the second stanza we are made to question whether the weeping is coming from Zarkhi at all. Because of the traditional orientation of our idea of Zarkhi, considering this possibility is not poetical musing but rather de rigueur; there is no other way to weigh an assertion or possibility than by not only considering the alternatives but questioning the assertion itself. The wailing of the tree that is burning but is not burnt up (or ‘‘consumed’’ in the more biblical-sounding rendition) presents a series of carefully modulated images. First, the ligature between the two possibilities for what is burning—Zarkhi or the tree—is the anthropomorphic presentation of the tree’s branches as hands. These become the vehicles for weeping just like Zarkhi with the instrument between his hands (it is a tree ‘‘that weeps with its branches just like with hands’’). The initial resonance here is with the idiom makhn/redn mit di hent (to speak with one’s hands) as a typical behavioral marker of Jewish discourse. Indeed, speaking and emoting with hand gestures is a stock characteristic in descriptions of Yiddish communication.32 Even more precisely, there is also the Yiddish idiom brekhn di hent (literally ‘‘to break one’s hands,’’ meaning ‘‘to wring one’s hands’’), which is representative of the traditional activity while weeping or moaning.33 This is the resonance of a tree’s weeping with its hands. This is also the physical analogy that enables the biblical allusion. Second, however, one cannot but notice the transposition of a biblical bush to a New York tree. The conflation of two systems is striking: the textual allusion mapped onto (1) the reality of the scene by the seashore and (2) the prevalence of the tree (certainly in comparison with the bush) as a motif in Jewish East European folk poetry. On the literal level of the scene, the tree is likely illuminated by a particularly glowing sunrise. The illustration by Yosl Kotler that opens the cycle shows a brilliant half-sun on the rise over an oceanic horizon.34 On the level of the allusive mapping, however, the sands of the beach at Coney Island are aligned with the sands of Sinai. This deflation turns the beach into a mock sacred place (one takes one’s shoes off there, too, but for a very different reason),35 and Zarkhi is made to receive a mock epiphany. The poem presents the realization of a marginal figure in the traditional text and the imagining of its suffering, namely the bush itself, whose endless

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burning agony is figured alongside Zarkhi’s longing as pseudo-prophet. But once again, all of this is called into question by the antiepistemic refrain. The third stanza calls the tree into question and instead posits ‘‘the silent lament of an eye and a hand’’ as the source of the weeping. Again the hand is the analogical motivation of the image, but the body parts now belong to Moses. ‘‘The one who dies at the threshold of his land’’ is another overmapping of two scenes, one involving Moses and the other involving Zarkhi. The first scene is the biblical allusion to Deuteronomy 34:4–5. God first shows Moses all the land that He promised (‘‘I have shown you with your eyes’’— this is the echo in the poem’s ‘‘the silent lament of an eye’’—‘‘and thither you will not cross over’’). However, Moses then immediately dies in Moab, having been prohibited by God to enter into the promised land. The second and third stanzas, with their respective images of Moses’s prophetic call at the burning bush and then Moses’s ignominious death, present the endpoints in the period of Moses’s prophetic career. Mapped onto the Mosaic image is Zarkhi himself. He is at the seashore in New York, the ultimate liminal city, the threshold to America, the New World; but he stands gazing back, on the oceanic threshold back to Europe, where he came from. It is at the same time a prefiguration of his own death. The verb shtarbt (dies) can also be rendered progressively, ‘‘is dying.’’ The thirty-third poem of the Zarkhi cycle is in point of fact ‘‘Dos geshrift af zarkhis matseyveshteyn (nifter gevorn bishnas nayntsendrayuntsvantsik bekak36 nyu-york zikhroynoy livrokho)’’ (The Inscription on Zarkhi’s Tombstone [Deceased in the year Nineteentwentythree in the H(oly) C(ommunity) of New York, May His Memory Be a Blessing]). The refrain, then, overturns our pretensions to knowledge once again, rejecting even the definitiveness of death. The fourth stanza adduces another possibility by analogy. This time, however, it is not the image of weeping that prompts the analogy, but rather the mention of dying. Death becomes a category not for men alone but for giants. The reference is to Samson (Judges 16), whose hair held his power; when that hair was shorn, he was rendered impotent. The stanza juxtaposes two images of Samson. The first is brought in obliquely by use of the verb ‘‘dies.’’ Samson’s death is a heroic image: he stood bound to the pillars of the temple of Dagon—standing on yet another threshold—and brought the temple down, by the force of his regained strength, on the Philistines and himself. This famous image is then undermined by the overt description of Samson

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‘‘bewailing his shorn hair.’’ The hero has been made an infantile figure. Instead of bemoaning the loss of his power—the traditional context of the Israelite hero in Israel’s early history—he complains of the loss of his adorning locks. This is something of a subversive take on Jewish history. The biblical hero as martyr is undermined at the moment of his death by the image of his vanity. Zarkhi’s poetic image, onto which Samson is mapped, is therefore that of an antihero. What is linguistically interesting is that the shift from topic to topic is motivated by an association of the actual wording of the text, its ‘‘verbal cue.’’ This is the subject of the third chapter, but it is important to note how it works here. Even though the lexical cue motivating the topical shift to the Samson image was the verb ‘‘dies,’’ we nevertheless are brought back around to our original verbal cue veynt (weeps) via the verb baveynt (bewailing). And the poem takes exactly that cue with the beginning of the fifth and final stanza: ‘‘And it is maybe also no giant who is weeping.’’ Maybe it is just Zarkhi after all, playing on his ‘‘simple, foolish instrument.’’ We have come back full circle after a digressive chain, prompting the suggestion that the original possibility was indeed correct, but only once all of the possibilities had been probed. It is, however, not quite as simple as that. The instrument is described as a ‘‘simple’’ (poshete) one. The echo is of the pshat, that is, in the traditional scheme of interpretative techniques, the simple, surface meaning and interpretation of a text. This word frames for us the underlying tension of the situation. By a series of associative moves, sanctioned by tradition, the poetic possibilities of the Jewish historical epic have been lyricized, only to be brought back to some false poet, some quirky minstrel-type, playing some fake instrument. We are asked what is the place of the poet in the modern world, and what is the status of his traditional material? But then again, what do we know? The engine, the motive force, of ‘‘Zarkhi to Himself’’ is the word efsher and its appropriate associated mental behaviors. That one word engenders a profound epistemic questioning, especially about the relationship of a modern Yiddish poet to his cultural tradition. The eighteenth poem of the cycle, which is the second poem of the sequence ‘‘Zarkhi zogt toyre’’ (Zarkhi Expounds on the Teaching), presents yet another consideration of that tradition. The persistent grappling with these themes from every possible angle is Halpern’s poetic version of the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. In fact, ‘‘Zarkhi vegn di

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zibn royte berd’’ (Zarkhi About the Seven Red Beards), the final poem (poem 16) of the immediately preceding sequence, ends as follows:

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And you don’t let your ancestors lie in their graves And you call on them to rock themselves on the seashore, To sing out your sorrow with the old tune Omer abaye— — — Omer abaye— — — Omer abaye— — —37 ‘‘Omer abaye . . .’’ (Abaye said . . .) refers to the adage quoted earlier in this chapter: ‘‘ ‘omer abaye’ iz nokh nisht keyn raye’’ (‘‘Abaye said’’ is still not proof). The sleeping dogs that Zarkhi, as the addressee of the poem, cannot let lie are precisely the patterns of traditional life and language. The emblem of those habits is the phrase ‘‘omer abaye,’’ which becomes an incantational tune meant as a consolation, or even a lullaby, since the ‘‘rocking’’ that the ancestors are called on to do is the same verb—vign—used for rocking a baby in a cradle, or in the word for lullaby itself, viglid (rock-a-bye). The second poem of ‘‘Zarkhi Expounds on the Teaching’’ opens: ‘‘Quoth Rabbi Zarkhi—Rabbi Zarkhi says.’’38 Harshav gives the context succinctly when he describes ‘‘quoth Rabbi Zarkhi’’ as ‘‘a typical opening of a saying by a sage, rendered in the traditional form of Jewish teaching: a word or phrase from the Hebrew sacred text is followed immediately by a Yiddish literal translation.’’39 Zarkhi is cast in the role of the rabbinical sage, both transmitting tradition, mediating the sources, and parabolizing that material in a way, as we shall see, that is consistent with the poetics of possibility I have been describing. The poem consists of two structurally equivalent halves presenting two parallel situations. Each half begins with the formula Quoth Rabbi Zarkhi—Rabbi Zarkhi says: In the Book of Barhandi Put together by the greatest wise men In chapter seven A story is told of . . .40

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It is an attempt to find a way of talking about tradition by making this avuncular persona Zarkhi an element of that tradition. The question underlying this formulation is what is the authorization for interpretation, particularly individual interpretation. The warrant at the beginning of each half is composite: (1) the Rabbi Zarkhi maintaining a chain of tradition through his rabbinical authority, and (2) the Book of Barhandi. There is of course no such book. But it sounds properly constituted. Harshav notes both the ‘‘stance from Eastern philosophy,’’ which was so influential at the time, and the ‘‘quasiPersian name’’ (perhaps Barhandeh would be better).41 Nevertheless, it is the heterogeneity of source legitimacy that is the most salient feature. In each half of the poem what follows this introduction is the tale itself. One is of a murderer who while in the midst of a robbery slays a mother but is stopped from continuing on to her infant by the hand of the infant itself. The other tale is of a tsadik, a pious spiritual leader, who while walking by a monastery is set alight by a burning coal cast from within, and who then while dying ruminates on his condition in the universe. The stories are made to look parallel, and that is how we are initially meant to take them, as parallel parables informing one another; but the first story—beyond its shocking brutality—provides language and imagery for the second, the verbal cues that give it its motivation.42 The infant plays with the knife dripping the blood of his just slain mother, Until the spots of blood on his little shirt Looked like flowers in morning light At the shine of that torch Which lit his way to slaughter.43 The three elements whose permutations should be kept in mind are (1) the torch, (2) the flecks of blood, and (3) murder, along with its ‘‘redemptive’’ possibilities. The second story, after the ‘‘attestation’’ in the very same chapter of the Book of Barhandeh, reads as follows: A story is told of a tsadik. Walking by a monastery44 at night A glowing coal was thrown from the window, His head and garment were set alight

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Just like a torch (upon him). The tsadik raised his eyes to heaven, And dying he spoke thus: —For blind fools the stars are zodiacal signs, For wicked men they are nothing; But in truth they are God’s light maybe [efsher],45 Which merely appears to us through His heaven— The old hole-ridden umbrella from over the world, And it is not more—some great favor For someone upon whom His light falls, like a fire, And takes him to Himself.46 The image of the torch is the most concrete point of contact between the two stories, even using the same word (fakl). The menace of the first story is fully realized in the second. Where a torch merely lit the way to murder, in the second story the tsadik has himself become the torch, murdered in a version of the stock martyrological imagery of the burning auto-da-fe´. The second contact image is that of the flecks of blood. In the second story they have become transformed into stars. The kabbalistic undertones of this vision—points and shards of light meant to be brought together for the reparation and perfection of the world—are given scant room to be valorized before being washed away. Those who believe such things are self-deluded, nothing but ‘‘blind fools.’’ Evil people don’t make philosophical speculations. What is left is the truth. And that truth is not very encouraging. The stars themselves are ‘‘God’s light maybe’’ (‘‘gots likhtikayt efsher’’). This startling line can be read in two ways. The first reading is that the stars are ‘‘perhaps God’s light.’’ The second, though, is that the stars are ‘‘God’s light, Maybe,’’ which nominalizes the word efsher, in apposition to ‘‘God’s light.’’ In this way it constellates ‘‘maybe’’ as a companion to the zodiacal signs.47 But more importantly, it establishes possibility, in the sense that I have been developing, as an essential characteristic of the Godhead; God is the maybe. It is resonant with one of God’s many traditional names: der kivyokhl (literally something like ‘‘The As It Were’’ or ‘‘The As Though It Were Possible’’). Though this is the resonance, it is central that the word is efsher, since it puts dubiety alongside the ubiquity and mundanity of this word; skepticism becomes an essential feature of the object of faith.

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How then does this ‘‘maybeing’’ of God relate to the scene described? Through a cosmogonical vision: the light of God’s possibility shines as though the sky were ceiled with a tattered umbrella and the stars were but its holes. It is a view of the world as a work of substandard craftsmanship. Not only that, but ‘‘some great favor / for someone upon whom His light falls, like a fire, / and takes him to Himself.’’ These are, remember, the words of the dying tsadik. The light that fell on him was not ‘‘like a fire,’’ but was a fire; that ‘‘someone’’ was himself. His ignition is described with undiluted sarcasm: here he burns, the result of an anti-Semitic act, and the very possibility of God alone should be a great favor, an act of kindness (khesed), a consolation in his moment of agony. Thus the third image, the murder, is put both in the hands of the Christian firebrands and in the hands of God. At the conclusion of each of the stories there is a refrain of sorts:

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Shavrulim ledarrkhi peruma48 —hidden light in the darkness, The lament of a murderer.49 And maybe [efsher]—who knows? Maybe [efsher] it means completely something different, God forbid, And my tongue will roast in hell, Because it did not interpret exactly as one should?50 The section begins with ‘‘a mock-Aramaic, pseudo-Talmudic text in need of explication.’’51 It is gobbledygook, but meaningful gobbledygook nonetheless. In the interpretative framework of Jewish reading, a problematic text is adduced for explanation, often in fanciful and creative ways. This text is tortuously opaque, which means our efforts need to be redoubled. However, the stylization of this practice of textual ‘‘commentary’’ is evidence of both its integration in Yiddish literature and the consciousness of it in Yiddish in general. Olsvanger, for example, presents the following story, which hinges on a biblical passage ‘‘in need’’ of explication: ‘‘tizal katal imrossi’’ (‘‘my speech shall drip like dew’’; Deuteronomy 32:3). Though it is an actual biblical passage—unlike the one from Halpern’s poem—on its own it is opaque in vernacular Yiddish. Much of the story’s humor is carried by the fact that the glosses have nothing to do with the words they intend to translate, ‘‘but the affixes are rendered correctly, so that there is a delicious plausibility about the translation’’:52 Have you heard the explanation of tizal katal imrosi? So I’ll tell you: tizal—should swell up; katal—like a mountain; imrosi—my motherA Rhetorical Conversation : Jewish Discourse in Modern Yiddish Literature, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

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in-law. You might ask, why is tizal ‘‘should swell up?’’ But what should my mother-in-law do, if not swell up? So you’ll ask again, why should katal mean ‘‘like a mountain?’’ If she’s going to swell up, what should she swell up like? Like a pear? Of course like a mountain! What’s that? You ask why is imrosi ‘‘my mother-in-law?’’ But you tell me—who should swell up, if not my mother-in-law?53 Returning to Zarkhi’s lemma—‘‘shavrulim ledarrkhi peruma’’—Harshav and Harshav provide a useful run-through of the possibilities.54 The most useful element for our discussion is the second word, ledarrkhi. It looks like an Aramaicized version of the name Zarkhi, where Hebrew ‘‘z’’ is often (though not always) cognate with Aramaic ‘‘d.’’55 In this case, Zarkhi becomes a figure in his own text (‘‘quoth Rabbi Zarkhi’’), an object for his own interpretation. There is also the curious duplication of the ‘‘r’’ in the middle of his Aramaic avatar. This could be simple obscurantism, but it is likely also a gesture to a self-conscious poeticality. Declamation of poetry tends to stress certain sound elements. Yiddish declamation (possibly under the influence of German or Russian recitation practice) tends to stress a front-trilled ‘‘r,’’ even for dialects that have a uvular-trilled ‘‘r.’’ So this might add some kind of emphasis, drawing further attention to Zarkhi’s name itself. Particularly in light of the second story, the concatenation of efshers is arresting. The theological implications of the prior accusation make engaging in the activity of efsher, the probing of potential meanings, almost silly. For if the meaning is after all something completely different, Zarkhi asks, then won’t we burn in perdition for having speculated so heretically? Yet the very idea of authority is challenged by asking who gets to decide what the phrase ‘‘exactly as one should’’ means. The answer that Zarkhi would want to say, but spends much of his time throughout the cycle deliberating about, is the poet. Ultimately the importance of that response is appreciable by teasing out the Jewish discursive technique, without which the poem would make no sense at all.

Reyzen, Perets, and Glatshteyn: Shifters of Gravity The previous discussion focused on the notion of possibility. Part of what made Halpern’s use of efsher so effective was that on the one hand it picked up on the everyday commonness of the word, a word whose technical origin

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is submerged in Yiddish, and on the other hand it reactivated part of that technical resonance. For some of the discourse vocabulary, however, it is not as easy to play off of these two potentials. For these items the technical resonance is immediate. This provides an author a different set of echoes to play with and manipulate. A perfect example is the phrase may ko mashme lon, which in the Talmud has the sense of ‘‘What does he give us to understand?’’56 i.e., ‘‘what do we learn from that?’’; ‘‘what can we deduce from that?’’; ‘‘what does it teach us?’’57 The technical function of this phrase in the Talmud is to act as a phrasal cue for the introduction of a particular kind of textual problem; it is used to introduce a situation in which a rule, which is known, is repeated, seemingly contrary to the stricture against redundancy. This phrase asks for the point of the repetition. In this way ‘‘What does he give us to understand?’’ may be read with slightly more technical precision as ‘‘What new piece of information is he giving us to understand from the repetition?’’ It is this sense—not readily apparent in the surface meaning of the phrase, but immediately understood in Talmudic practice—that becomes the center of gravity of the phrase as used in Yiddish. Avraham Reyzen’s famous poem ‘‘May ko mashme lon,’’ for example, seems to veil this dimension with its plaintive lyricism. Reyzen (1876–1953) was an active editor and publisher as well as a very popular and prolific poet. Many of his verses were easily adapted as songs because of their musicality, including this poem, which ‘‘soon became one of the most popular songs in the repertoire of professional vocalists, and was sung wistfully in many homes.’’58 The artfulness of the poem is the structural orchestration of both this ‘‘folksy’’ lyricism and a sensitive understanding of the Jewish discursive resonance. Indeed, the poet Yankev Glatshteyn characterized the ‘‘Jewish’’ content of Reyzen’s poetry in general by referring to ‘‘that great may ko mashme lon that he [Reyzen] always brought into his thematics’’ as well as to his ‘‘may ko mashme lon-y Jewishness.’’59 The poem proceeds in four numbered stanzas, each beginning with the titular question, as if the yeshivah student were applying rabbinic logic to his own sorrow: 1. May ko mashme lon der regn? Vos-zhe lozt er mir tsu hern?— Zayne tropns af di shoybn

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Koyklen zikh, vi tribe trern. Un di shtivl iz tserisn, Un es vert in gas a blote; Bald vet oykh der vinter kumen— Kh’hob keyn vareme kapote . . .

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2. May ko mashme lon dos likhtl? Vos-zhe lozt es mir tsu hern? S’kapet un es trift ir kheylev Un s’vet bald fun ir nisht vern. Azoy tsank ikh do in klayzl, Vi a likhtl, shvakh un tunkl, Biz ikh vel azoy mir oysgeyn In der shtil, in mizrekh-vinkl . . . 3. May ko mashme lon der zeyger? Vos-zhe lozt er mir tsu hern? Mit zayn gelbn tsifer-bletl, Mit zayn klingen, mit zayn shvern? S’iz an ongeshtelt keyli, S’hot keyn lebn, keyn gefiln, Kumt di sho, do muz er shlogn, On zayn rotsen, on zayn viln. 4. May ko mashme lon mayn lebn? Vos-zhe lozt es mir tsu hern? Foyln, velkn, in der yugnt, Far der tsayt fareltert vern. Esn ‘‘teg’’ un shlingen trern, Shlofn af’n foyst dem hartn, Toyten do di ‘‘oylem-haze’’ Un af oylem habe vartn . . . [1. May ko mashme lon the rain? What does it teach me?

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Down the windowpane the drops Roll down like dismal tears. And my boots are torn And the street is getting muddy; Soon, too, the winter will come— I have no warm coat . . .

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2. May ko mashme lon the candle? What does it teach me? Its tallow drips and trickles And soon it will disappear. So I flicker here in the study house, Like a candle, weak and dim, Till I will thus go out, In the quiet, in the eastern corner . . . 3. May ko mashme lon the clock? What does it teach me? With its yellow dial, With its ringing, with its swearing? It’s an appointed instrument, It has no life, no feelings, Come the hour it must strike, Without its desire, without its will. 4. May ko mashme lon my life? What does it teach me? To decay, to wither in its youth, To grow old before its time. To eat ‘‘days’’60 and swallow tears, To sleep upon my hard fist, To die here in ‘‘this world’’ And to wait for the world to come . . .]61 Beginning with rain, running through a candle and a clock, and ultimately concluding with life, this poem presents the somber rumination of a poor

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young man in a little synagogue about his gloomy, abject condition, at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The repetition is central. What new piece of information, the opening questions ask, does each object give us? (1) Rain: it is like his tears; it makes things muddy, and he only has a shredded pair of boots; it is a harbinger of winter, and he has no coat. (2) Candle: it melts and comes to nothing; like him it is weak, of poor light, and flickering, soon to go out. (3) Clock: it is yellow-faced, lifeless, unfeeling, and when the time comes it must ring against its will. (Never send to know for whom the bell tolls . . .) (4) Life: his youth is decaying into a premature old age; his penury has made of him a beggar; not long for ‘‘this world,’’ he waits for ‘‘the world to come.’’ The image itself is a familiar one in critiques of traditional religious decay and obscurantism, most classically depicted in the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik’s famous poem ‘‘Ha-matmid’’ (The Diligent Student), about a similarly introspective and sorrowful yeshivah student. But where Bialik’s poem is phrased in a more elevated diction of a renovated Hebrew, the despair of Reyzen’s pious young man is expressed in the only vocabulary that he knows capable of probing the depths of a problem. It is as if the reveries he has while studying are expressed in the language of what he was in the middle of studying. Talking about rain is like talking about any other mundane thing, like a candle, a clock, even his own life; they are redundant and futile. It is a desperate call for some kind of meaning in all these things, some kind of appreciation not only for life’s details but for life itself. That is why the clock-like intonation of the Talmudically resonant may ko mashme lon is so compelling and so devastating. Emblematic, however, of the bleeding-through of Talmudic language into Yiddish culture is not only the phrase may ko mashme lon itself; the context also adds to the rich effect. It is all couched in the form of a folk song. In folk songs, as in other folk genres such as fairy tales, there is often an admixture of archaic or archaic-sounding language, reflecting either the age of the work or the desire to give the work the impression of age. Where elsewhere this colors a work with recondite undertones, in Reyzen’s poem those tones are meant to be erudite; after all, these are the thoughts of a sullen scholar. However, folk songs are meant nonetheless to be understood and carried around in the mouths of the folk, expressing in their own language their cultural concerns and preoccupations. These are the elements Reyzen dovetails so smoothly. It is not just in Reyzen’s poem that we find the phrase surrounded by such

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pathos. May ko mashme lon is similarly used in Perets’s story ‘‘Der nayer nign’’ (The New Tune) outside of any legalistic context. This heartrending story tells of a poor young widower who, with his little son, stands begging immediately after the conclusion of Yom Kippur for the means by which to break the fast. Not understanding this nor the fact that there is no food at home, the young child pesters his father to go home. In his mounting frustration the father shoots back: ‘‘ ‘Foolish child, why are you in a hurry to get home?’ ‘To eat! I’m hungry!’ ‘No doubt! Of course you’re hungry . . . you fool! What’s so new about that? [may ko mashme lon?] Why are you telling me that you’re hungry . . . otherwise what should I think, that you fasted through a whole Yom Kippur and you’re not hungry?’ ’’62 What has been taken up in the expression is the rhetorical cue of the original. This is an important example of one kind of sense change that can accompany the discourse vocabulary in general. The phrase may ko mashme lon is in a way a notational device, signaling the kind of interpretational problem that the ‘‘editor,’’ the ‘‘silent voice’’ of the Talmud, will attempt to resolve through various means of support, bringing together the words of diverse sages in ‘‘staged’’ debate. Yet it is the submerged point of the notational device, somewhat obscured on the surface, that then becomes the focal meaning of the phrase as it develops in Yiddish, and that gives the episode in Perets its particular effect. From the sense ‘‘What (new piece of information) is he giving us to understand?’’ we have moved to the use, reflected in Perets’s story, ‘‘What’s so new about that?’’ which focuses on the intraparenthetical content of the previous question. At the further end of the spectrum one might also easily render it something like ‘‘Yeah? And?’’ or ‘‘Tell me something I don’t know,’’ which is already very different from Reyzen’s use. In Perets’s story ‘‘ ‘Toyre’ (a khsidisher monolog)’’ (‘‘Torah’’ [A Hasidic Monologue]) he glosses may ko mashme lon thus: ver zogt andersh? (Who says different?).63 This is another good example of a Yiddish author’s creative refreighting of material unmoored from the original context. In the nativization of may ko mashme lon into Yiddish we have seen a ‘‘shift in the semantic center of gravity’’64 from requesting what is new about a statement to asking (rhetorically) why it’s new. Sometimes, however, these shifts are not so unidirectional. Some words have split personalities. This is the case for the common Yiddish adverb meyle. And it is significant that Perets makes much of these words, since an important feature of his literary project,

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as will be discussed in chapter 5, is the thematics of Jewish discourse and the semantic density of its vocabulary. The functional discourse tie meyle (meaning in Yiddish ‘‘never mind, forget it; no matter; so be it; anyhow; granted’’) is an element of Talmudic language most likely ultimately originating in the Aramaic word milla (word, thing) and is used there as the adverbial ‘‘of itself.’’ Its move and nativization into Yiddish involved a significant expansion of its semantic potential.65 Perets’s use of the word in the Yiddish story ‘‘A shmues’’ (A Conversation) shows that he is keenly aware of this trajectory. In this brief story, the word meyle is used four times.66 This is not fortuitous. Each use in some way underlines the various resonances. This story will be analyzed at length and in detail later on (in chapter 4). Briefly put, it tells of two old Hasidim—Shakhne (a Kotsker) and Zerakh (a Belzer)—who go for a walk during Passover and proceed to have a pseudorabbinic conversation on various Passover-related topics. One can see how well this context might serve an interest in the resonances of Jewish discourse vocabulary. The first instance of meyle introduces Shakhne’s explanation of the ‘‘simple meaning’’ of a scriptural quote he has just adduced. Here is what Shakhne says: ‘‘Well, the plain meaning is simple’’ (‘‘meyle, der pshat iz dokh poshet’’). A technical reading might be ‘‘On its own, the plain meaning is quite simple.’’ This is certainly plausible, and it is this neutral sense that is itself the ‘‘plain meaning’’ of the sentence. The ‘‘psycho-ostensive’’ dimension, however, is revealed in the context of conversation.67 Shakhne made his comment after feigning indifference to Zerakh’s dismissal of Shakhne’s position on an issue concerning matzah balls. The technical reading maintains this indifference. The psycho-ostensive reading would be ‘‘In any case [meyle],68 the plain meaning is, as you surely ought to know [dokh], simple.’’ In effect, this simple sentence telescopes the endpoints of the word’s semantic history in Yiddish. It is this intuition of Perets’s that is at the heart of the ‘‘representational’’ aspect of his story. The second occurrence is in the middle of a discussion of the apparent duty to consume matzah balls. Zerakh effectively rebuts Shakhne by saying that he derives no pleasure from matzah. Shakhne then counters by adducing another stricture commanding gustatory enjoyment of the holidays, asking Zerakh how he can then fulfill that obligation. Zerakh responds: ‘‘I know? If raisin wine pleases him—so be it! I for my part take great pleasure in the

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Haggadah’’ (‘‘ikh veys? oyb rozinke-vayn shmekt im—meyle! ikh aleyn hob vild hanoe fun der hagode’’). There is clearly no technical resonance here, even though it is used in a refutation of sorts. Coming as it does in a sentence introduced by the quite colloquial ‘‘I know?’’ it immediately signals the register. What is even nicer is the fact that immediately following it is an interesting disjunction, ‘‘I for my part’’ (‘‘ikh aleyn’’); the meyle highlights an imagined distinction between the mechanical desires of the body, which are what they are, and a somehow separate ‘‘I,’’ conscious of its own pleasures. The third meyle is found barely a page later, in the midst of Shakhne’s story of a boorish Belzer butcher bellowing his Haggadah: ‘‘One could hear every word at the rebbe’s house! In any case, being a butcher, he made like a butcher; all around [our] table one laughed’’ (‘‘men hert yedes vort baym rebn in shtub! meyle—a katsev zetst er vi a katsev; lakht men arum tish’’). Again there is no technical valence here; it is purely conversational. The function, though, is different again from either the first or the second instance. Here it is used to redirect the course of the narrative (such as it is). In effect it functions to say, ‘‘That being what it is, the point is X.’’ In addition to this redirecting function, it has an almost affective resonance. A possible translation might be, ‘‘What do you expect?’’ We all know what butchers are like, he says, so that’s what he was like. The final instance is the most affective of the four. Zerakh has asked for the textual support for a position that Shakhne has quoted his rebbe as taking. Shakhne then takes much glee in presenting the midrash that constitutes that support. Shakhne reaches the crescendo of his presentation with a scriptural citation from Psalms: ‘‘ ‘And His mercy is on all of His creations,’ as it is written!’’ (‘‘verakhmov al kol maasov, ksiv!’’). The exclamation point is the key. The emphatic delivery of this quotative particle (ksiv) is meant to underscore the finality (at least as Shakhne supposes) of his argument, a kind of verbal QED. It is to be his coup de graˆce. Zerakh’s response—just that lone word: meyle—is his attempt to undercut the sting of Shakhne’s jab. One possible reading is ‘‘all right!’’ ‘‘fine!’’ or ‘‘granted’’ as an annoyed and grudging acquiescence. Yet it also has the sense, as I translated it earlier, ‘‘and there you have it,’’ indicating a sarcastic and dismissive recognition of what is, for Zerakh, a typical Kotsker argument presented in a typical Kotsker way. In brief, these four uses of the word present in effect five different functional options, which can all be traced to an original technical meaning. The other options are feigned indifference, disjunction, refocalization, and sar-

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casm. This is indicative of the expansive potential of Yiddish as an open language and highlights the central influence of the study of source texts on the development of the language. On the one hand, maintenance of all of the resonances together in the language indicates the intimacy of the continuous traditional literary contact; on the other hand, maintenance of all of the resonances together in a single work of modern literature underscores the central location of Jewish discourse in the course of modern Yiddish literary development. Etymologically and semantically related to meyle is the Yiddish word mimeyle (which means ‘‘of itself, as a matter of course, naturally; automatically, perforce; therefore, as a consequence’’). This word is a central feature of Yankev Glatshteyn’s poem ‘‘Red tsu mir yidish’’ (Speak Yiddish to Me).69 (More will be said about Glatshteyn in a moment.) This poem is a coming to terms with the state of Yiddish in light of the ‘‘victory’’ of Hebrew as the ‘‘national’’ spoken idiom of Ashkenazic Jewry, both in the wake of the Genocide and in the establishment of the state of Israel. Janet Hadda has described it as a ‘‘sly chiding of Israeli contempt for Yiddish,’’70 which it surely is as well. The poem appears in the collection Di freyd fun yidishn vort (The Joy of the Yiddish Word; 1961). The first stanza reads as follows: Red tsu mir yidish, mayn yidish land, un ikh vel tsu dir redn ivrit mimeyle. avrom mit soren kumen mir antkegn fun der meores-hamakhpeyle. [Speak Yiddish to me, my Yiddish/Jewish land, And I will speak to you in Hebrew naturally.71 Abraham and Sarah come towards me From the Cave of Machpelah.]72 The first thing to note is the use of the collocation yidish land (Yiddishland). Traditionally this is understood as part of the cultural consciousness of Yiddish-speaking Jewry as a deterritorialized people, for whom, without a land of their own, their language becomes their landscape; Yiddishland is the terrain of Yiddish speech and culture.73 Yet the ambiguity of the word yidish itself, which signifies both ‘‘Yiddish’’ the language and the adjective ‘‘Jewish,’’ is central. This ambiguity is emphasized graphically by the separation of the

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two words: it is yidish land, not yidishland, simultaneously Yiddishland and ‘‘Jewish land,’’ that is, Israel, the so-called Jewish state, a territorial realization. The narrator calls upon his ‘‘country’’ to speak to him in Yiddish, and his ‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘effortless’’ response, his first-language reaction, will be in ivrit, that is, specifically modern Hebrew (as opposed to hebreish, which refers to Hebrew in general in its various premodern forms). However, the initial impression of despair or fatalism in this account gives way to a second reading. ‘‘And I will speak to you in [modern] Hebrew naturally [mimeyle]’’: the modern Hebrew response that Glatshteyn orchestrates is the word mimeyle itself. Modern Hebrew, after all, has the word mimeila, whose meaning was expanded through the mediation of Yiddish mimeyle. Glatshteyn is making a point of emphasizing Yiddish’s residual effect on Hebrew, its ‘‘afterlife.’’ The specific semantic value of the word that the narrator takes as paradigmatically Hebrew is in point of fact taken from Yiddish. The kernel of linguistic and cultural understanding is preserved in the language itself. Grandfather Abraham does understand Hebrew:

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Avrom geyt shvaygndik di gas ariber. nem zikh nit tsum hartsn yankele, zogt sore, er iz meyvin kol diber. [Abraham walks silently across the street. Don’t worry, Yankele, Sarah says, he understands every word.] This is highlighted by the collocation ‘‘he understands every word’’ (‘‘er iz meyvin kol diber’’), which is traditionally the way one indicates both that a gentile within earshot understands some Yiddish and that one should therefore put as much Hebrew as possible into one’s speech in order to impede that gentile’s understanding. However, speaking optimistically: S’vet kumen a tsayt . . . az ale ivrit-kinder veln oyfhern yidish shvaygn. [There will come a time . . . when all Hebrew children74 will stop being silent in Yiddish.]

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By the end of the poem, the repetition of the opening two lines is more a consolation than a maudlin comment. Mimeyle, in its ‘‘naturalness,’’ is a twoway street, as reflexive in Hebrew as in Yiddish.

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Yankev Glatshteyn and the Orchestration of a Modern Jewish Discourse Yankev Glatshteyn (1896–1971) is another of the true virtuosi of modernist Yiddish poetry. Born in Poland, he came to New York in 1914. With a group of like-minded poets he began the literary movement known as Inzikh (Introspectivism), an intellectually vibrant and poetically sophisticated trend devoted to experimenting with and exploring the depth of Yiddish poetic language. His early poetry in particular is remarkably adept and playful. He was a brilliant stylist whose technical fireworks are reflected by an equally sensitive approach to Jewish literary tradition. Many of his poems highlight parts of the central thematics of Jewish discourse in the form of high modernist poetry. One such poem is his ‘‘Tsu a fraynt vos vil zikh nisht brekhn dem lokshnbret vayl es iz azoy oykh shver tsu geyn af yagd ven di biks iz shtumpik un di libe iz tsertlekh vi an alte koldre’’ (To a Friend Who Wouldn’t Bother to Strain His Noodleboard Because Even So It Is Hard to Go Hunting when Your Rifle Is Blunt and Love Is Soft as an Old Blanket) from his 1937 collection Yidish-taytshn (cleverly translated by Benjamin Harshav as Exegyddish).75 As Harshav points out, a charge was leveled against Glatshteyn’s previous collection, Kredos (Credos; 1929), that his poems were often marked by riddlelike incomprehensibility. The noted short-story writer Lamed Shapiro asked, ‘‘Who wants to break his head on them?’’ using the Yiddish idiom brekhn dem kop (to rack one’s brains; literally ‘‘to break one’s head’’). Quite taken with the language of the charge—as one can see in the playfulness of the title—Glatshteyn meant this poem ‘‘to confront hard life with absolute incomprehensibility which doesn’t plague your head anymore because breaking your head won’t help anyway. From this confrontation, I wanted to extract as much music as possible.’’76 Among many other things that this poem accomplishes, it is an affective (and effective) rumination on the nature of comprehensibility itself. Equally important to this discussion is the fact that key elements of the language used to give voice to that rumination are exactly within the lexical and stylistic fields of Jewish discourse.

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Let us enter the verbal world that Glatshteyn conjures through the first seven lines of the poem: un es iz shver tsu fanandern alts in vertertuml fun royshiker ivri fun taytsh un zog un meyn un farkert mit stiresdiker eynshtimikayt ven a blat iz poshet grin un kuperroyt in vinter-onzog fun velttsoyber.

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[And it is hard to tell one Thing from another in the worduproar of the noisy Bible of meaning and saying and verse And reverse with contradictory uniValence when a leaf is simply green And copper-red in wintereve Of worldmagic.]77 The first thing to note is that it is presented as a single continuous thought, graphically part of a single continuous sentence, which Glatshteyn maintains throughout the poem’s 102 lines; it is a run-on thought. Each element is strung to the one preceding with acceptable grammatical ligatures. The Danish linguist Kristoffer Nyrop, in a discussion of catachresis (that is, use of a word in a contradictory or ‘‘incorrect’’ meaning), remarks that ‘‘we understand a sentence always according to its sense and never according to the individual words.’’78 Glatshteyn in effect turns this turn-of-the-century notion of ‘‘sentence meaning’’ on its head. The only recourse we have for making sense of the poem is to the individual words and phrases. The sense is in the non-sense; it is Glatshteyn’s catachretic aesthetic. One of the bywords of the poem is umfarshtendlekh (incomprehensible, unintelligible).79 In a Glatshteynian move, we can say that the shift of emphasis in the notion of intelligibility is from umfarshtendlekh (incomprehensible) to arumfarshtendlekh (approximately comprehensible).80 Take, for example, the phrase ‘‘iz er a martirer mit / a monumant in hant’’ (then he’s a martyr with / a monumand in hand).81 This is typical of Glatshteyn’s sound orchestration and recalls his intent ‘‘to extract as much music as possible’’ as being the only way of extracting the

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comprehensible from incomprehensibility. Monumant is a pseudo-dialectal conflation that offers ersatz ‘‘familiarity’’ for a non-thing.82 The nonsensical masquerading as the sensical is, paradoxically, a way of making sense of it after all. One is led to ask, what is a monumant, a hand-monument? Biblically speaking, God’s stated reward for those who keep his laws—the ultimate expression of which is ‘‘sanctification of the name,’’ that is, martyrdom—is the bestowing of a yad va-shem (literally, a ‘‘hand and name’’), which, associated as it is in Isaiah 56:5 with the architectural aspects of God’s house, is a monument.83 This is only one potential semantic trajectory. The thematic assertion of the poem in general is that we can never really be sure. Returning to the first seven lines, we are presented not with the impossibility, but rather with the difficulty, of verbal apprehension. First of all, the poem begins in mitn drinen, in medias res, with the coordinative ‘‘and,’’ as if continuing an ongoing monologue. Then we are immediately caught in the difficulty of comprehension by the neologized verb funandern (from the adverb funander, ‘‘apart’’; thus ‘‘to apart’’), which is applied to the next line’s neologism vertertuml (worduproar; literally, word-tumult). Of course, this difficulty of segmenting the tumultuous din of language is exactly what Glatshteyn is giving us an example of in his poem itself. The din he is referring to is that of the ‘‘Bible of meaning and saying and verse / And reverse with contradictory uni- / Valence.’’ These are the traditional verbal and textual activities and behaviors of the study house, where pulling apart and putting together of words and meanings is central. The first thing that he ‘‘aparts,’’ though, is ivri fun taytsh, that is, he separates ivri from taytsh. The Yiddish collocation that Glatshteyn graphically and thematically dissects is ivritaytsh, namely the archaizing Yiddish traditionally used for biblical translations. In severing the two elements of the compound, Glatshteyn forces us to take them on their own, where ivri is ‘‘Hebrew’’ and taytsh means ‘‘meaning, translation’’ but is etymologically equivalent to ‘‘German.’’ This is also exactly what Glatshteyn is playing on in the title of the collection in which this poem is found, namely Yidish-taytshn. It is the ‘‘wordtumult’’ not only of the internal multilingual society as well as its polyglot texts, but also of the external multilingual urban society in which Glatshteyn finds himself. The full line, ‘‘Bible of meaning and saying and verse’’ (‘‘ivri fun taytsh un zog un meyn’’), can be less poetically but more literally glossed as ‘‘Hebrew from German/translation and saying/teaching and meaning/intention.’’ The

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significance of the units ivri and taytsh has already been mentioned. As for zog, it is a nominalization of the verb zogn (to say, tell). This verb, as we saw in the title of one of Halpern’s Zarkhi poems,84 is also used in the collocation zogn toyre, which means expounding on the meaning of the Torah (the Teaching).85 The word meyn can mean ‘‘meaning’’ or an ‘‘intention,’’ but it is related to the verb meynen (to mean or to be of the opinion) and the derived noun meynung (opinion), which puts a more subjective spin on ‘‘meaning.’’ The point is not only that ‘‘it is hard to ‘apart’ ’’ this particular constellation of nouns, or nominalized activities, but also that this analysis is nevertheless desirable, even essential. Coasting on the trajectory of the third line, we are cast abruptly on farkert (reverse). The ‘‘tumult’’ is therefore not just the jumble of the lexicon but of the forms of logic and argumentation. The concept of farkert (it’s the opposite)86 —probing the validity of an assertion whose wording is reversed—is central to the culture of Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. This is only heightened when Glatshteyn asserts that that trait has something to do with eynshtimikayt (univalence or unanimity). A meaning and its opposite are neither univalent nor unanimous. Much as in a rabbinic debate that when it loses steam joins a separate train of thought, Glatshteyn then pulls back momentarily from that conundrum when he contextualizes the idea by adding ‘‘when a leaf is simply green.’’ This is not a reduction like William Carlos Williams’s ‘‘no ideas but in things’’;87 rather, ‘‘no ideas but in words.’’ After all, the very premise of rabbinic debate is that nothing is ‘‘simply’’ anything. The word used is poshet,88 which underlines the simple denotational aspect of language but also brings to mind the associated higher levels of meaning and interpretation. Of course a leaf is not simply green, Glatshteyn says, since it is also ‘‘copper-red in wintereve / of worldmagic.’’ A leaf cannot be simply both green and copper-red at the same time except in the landscape of incomprehension, whose moment of experience is the ‘‘wintereve’’ (vinter-onzog). Despite Harshav and Harshav’s poetic ‘‘wintereve,’’ a more precise rendering would be ‘‘winterannunciation.’’ An onzog is an ‘‘announcement’’ or even a ‘‘portent.’’ The initial echo is of the zog earlier in the poem, an element of a traditional way of coming to understand the world. The vinter-onzog is contextually the moment of a green leaf turning sere. That moment is marked as a verbal activity, namely the annunciation of winter. In a very striking synaesthesia—‘‘when a leaf is simply green and copper-red in winterannunciation’’—the color of a physical object (‘‘a

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leaf’’) is temporally (‘‘when’’) associated with a verbal activity (‘‘annunciation’’). As the poem unfolds, however, it becomes the winterannunciation ‘‘of worldmagic,’’ yet another element calling for a completely new interpretation and a new train of thought. Although this poem as a whole clearly calls for a much more complete and sensitive reading, let us instead shift focus to a different portion of the text. Continuing a previously mentioned section: iz er a martirer mit a monumant in hant un a krants in un dos teater yatert un dos bukh vil dafke alts in toto analizirn

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[Then he’s a martyr with A monumand in hand And a wick in his And the stage is a stench And the book wants regardless To analyze everything in toto.]89 At the core of this passage are the lines ‘‘And the book wants regardless [dafke] / To analyze everything in toto.’’ The book, whichever book it is, cannot itself want to do anything. But the thing that this book is personified as wanting to do is to analyze everything in toto. What kind of analysis could this be? There is a parallelism of technical vocabulary here: dafke means in Yiddish ‘‘exactly, precisely; precisely the opposite; positively, absolutely; only, necessarily; none other than, nothing short of.’’90 One of the most important meanings it developed in Yiddish was as a definitive assertion of the opposite of a preceding statement (thus, ‘‘precisely the opposite’’). In this logical and ‘‘combative’’ form it is a living embodiment of the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. Such a seemingly ‘‘unpoetic’’ word, and a feature of Talmudic debate, is yoked to in toto, a strange-sounding Latin phrase, at least to Yiddish. If a book is going to do anything, then the use of dafke points out (1) that the book’s ‘‘activity’’ is contrary to one’s expectations about reality, and (2) that the book is certainly going to engage in the Jewish intellectual tradition, the vocabulary of which

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Glatshteyn employs in this poem as one avenue of making the world intelligible, or better yet, making the world legible. In parts of the poem to follow he engages other intellectual traditions for the same purpose, ultimately, according to Glatshteyn, to no avail, since by the end we are once again left hanging in midsentence, umfarshtendlekh. Dafke is everywhere in Yiddish literature, a common and useful word. Glatshteyn in his inimitable way cuts right to the core of dafke’s Yiddish phenomenology. But this dafke has an afterlife. Like many of these Talmudic discourse ties, dafke as a loshn-koydesh word passes through the Yiddish prism and refracts back into modern Hebrew; the same material, but a different configuration. The meaning of the modern Israeli version of this word— davka—relies on the Yiddish semantic development. One of the more common uses of davka in modern Hebrew, alongside the asseveration of the opposite, is as a token of spite. To use the word a great deal means that one is frequently contradicting the statements of others. This contrariety— summarized in the neologized Hebrew noun davka’ut (davka-tude)—is a badge of honor worn by some who relish in a prickly reputation; is characterized by spiteful words or actions, or dogged or stubborn adherence to a position despite all comers. Such a person is the davkay, the person with davka ever on his or her lips. Such semantic arabesques in the discourse vocabulary will be addressed later, but they are important to bear in mind when considering both the extraordinary breadth and long reach of this relatively small set of words.

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conversational orchestration in the tsenerene and sholem aleykhem

Vocabulary is one of the more apparent indices to language contact and change.1 As was shown in the previous chapters, the pervasive presence of Talmudic logical vocabulary, both integrated into the unmarked everyday language and strategically deployed in the modern literary language, is an indicator of the presence and potential of Jewish discourse in Yiddish’s linguistic systems. However, lexical borrowing is but one element of that discourse’s deeper integration. The tautological infinitive is an example of a grammatical element. Another important element is the centrality of Yiddish’s perceived orality. If Jewish discourse is indeed discourse, then the conversational context, both literally and figuratively understood, will be an essential component, as indeed it was in the development of the modern literary idiom. In the history of Yiddish literature, the Tsenerene, the so-called women’s Bible, sits astride an important intersection of linguistic influences. Given its popular educative aims, it was at the very least reflective of developments in the spoken language. And given its unprecedented popularity and dissemination, it exerted a good amount of influence on the development of that language based on the particular patterns of discourse found in the texts it drew upon and the way they were brought together and analyzed. It was an outgrowth of a tradition rooted in the patterns of rabbinic conversational dis-

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course, which were a major influence on the development of Yiddish literary language. Not only did the Tsenerene engage a discursive tradition, but it was itself a popular work with an underlying oral character. All of these threads are woven together in a very tight cord: spoken language contact and literary language contact cohere in the development of a style of writing that will ultimately mark the formative period in modern Yiddish letters. An analysis of Sholem Aleykhem’s well-known story ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (The Pot), a representative sample of this kind of literature, reveals how it exhibits ‘‘canonically’’ exactly these traits of conversational structure and associative digressive patterns of discourse that are found in the Tsenerene, and that are reflective of it. The very success of Sholem Aleykhem’s story relies precisely on that reflection.

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Premodern Yiddish and the Tsenerene When dealing with the earlier periods of Yiddish, the first thing to note is that our knowledge is immediately circumscribed. We simply do not have enough of the kinds of texts that would allow us access to the full extent of the spoken registers of the language. When we talk about Yiddish in the premodern period, we are talking about some kind of literary Yiddish, insofar as the evidence consists entirely of written documents. Whatever might be said about the spoken language must be conjectural.2 This is not to say that nothing meaningful can be said, rather that only so much can be inferred from an Ozymandian leg in the sand. Despite this note of caution, the literature we do have yields important information. Like any textual corpus, Yiddish texts are polysystemic compositions, a polysystem being in effect a system of systems, intersecting one another in various ways, but one that nevertheless ‘‘function[s] as one structured whole, whose members are interdependent.’’3 All languages are paradigmatic cases of polysystems. The goal of the first part of this chapter is an analysis of the particular configuration of systems involved in the Tsenerene. The Tsenerene, at least its early extant editions (the first of which appeared in Basel in 1622),4 is sometimes referred to as a ‘‘translation’’ of the Bible into Yiddish by the scholar Yankev ben Yitskhok Ashkenazi of Yanov (1550–1628), about whom little is known except for his works. The Tsenerene, however, is

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really an expanded and integrated digest of traditional commentaries, verse by verse, on the Pentateuch and Haftarot. For a number of reasons, the Tsenerene makes an interesting and potentially instructive test case. First of all, it is a prose work, or rather it is specifically not a work of poetry. Unlike the texts of the Cambridge Manuscript or Elye Bokher’s Yiddish epics, the Shmuel-Bukh, and the Melokhim-Bukh, which are all works of poetry, the Tsenerene is neither rhythmically, metrically, nor rhymically composed. As a result, the inherent problems of poetic language can be put aside when looking at it. The Tsenerene does, however, have a particular topic-comment-digressive style, which can be considered distinct from common definitions of prose. Secondly, there is the issue of audience. Much has been written on the gender politics of Yiddish and Hebrew.5 The Tsenerene is no minor actor in that drama. It was in one sense a ‘‘women’s’’ Bible translation, at least it certainly very quickly came to be so, where the original Hebrew was reserved for men. The title, Tsenerene, is taken from the command ze’enah ure’enah (go forth and see) from the Song of Songs (3:11), addressed to a group of women.6 In premodern Yiddish literature the intended audience was often signaled by ‘‘the common title page dedication ‘for women and uneducated men.’ ’’7 The Basel edition, too, expresses this intended readership. Encoded in this presumption of readership is an assumption about that readership’s overall mental acuity. A ‘‘translation’’ was required because the original was considered too difficult. The specific form of the language used for this translation—that is, the target language—must be one that this common folk would understand. Despite the very real aspects of literariness to be found in the work, it had to some extent to reflect the language ‘‘comprehensible’’ to the Yiddish-speaking unlearned masses. This brings us to the third reason for this choice, namely its reception. An intensely and unprecedentedly popular book, it is ‘‘often considered the greatest Yiddish best-seller of all time.’’8 It enjoyed broad popularity not only among women, but among a significant number of men as well. Its editions have been said to run anywhere from 126 to over 300.9 With this kind of large, relatively diverse, and sustained readership, it would not be a great logical leap to assert that it must have had some effect on the development of Yiddish. As a mediating force—a kind of literary zogerke, in Shmuel Niger’s construction—its importance was both active and passive, both affecting the future

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generations of its readership and reflecting, at least in part, the language habits of its readers. The trajectory of this influence has had no dearth of commentators. In fact, the polyphony of modern evaluations of the nature of the Tsenerene, of what the Tsenerene actually gives us, reflects the pervasive influence it exercised on the popular imagination. Yankev ben Yitskhok Ashkenazi eschewed producing a translation that followed the dominant literalizing trend in Bible translations of the period. It was more than a translation (iberzetsung); it was, in Yankev Shatski’s memorable phrase, a ‘‘trans-poetification’’ (iberdikhtung).10 The key aspects of this idea were folkishness and simplicity. In both of these aspects it seems that the Tsenerene’s popularity rested on its antirecondite posture: ‘‘The Tsenerene . . . introduced something which at that time was completely new: folkishness [folkstimlekhkayt]. Without posturing. Not haughty. With unusual simplicity. This simplicity—approaching an authentic folkishness—had already by the beginning of the 17th century come from Eastern Europe.’’11 Echoing this sentiment, Shatski remarks on the Tsenerene’s ‘‘soft, rhythmic language. This is the hearty language, the melodic prose, which acts by its intimacy, folkishness, clarity, and simplicity’’;12 it was ‘‘juicy, pure in nuances, folkish and simple.’’13 As a result, citing the historian Shimen Dubnov, ‘‘the Tsenerene became the best-beloved book [seyfer] of the Jewish woman who drew from it her introductions to religion, morals, and history’’;14 and citing the critic Max Erik, ‘‘the Tsenerene has a large part in the cultivation of the well-known, pious Weltanschauung of the Jewish woman of times past.’’15 This influence was more than cultural or moral. As Yankev Glatshteyn notes, with rather broad strokes, this influence was linguistic as well: the Tsenerene ‘‘was so much closer [than the Bovo-bukh] to the lively construction of the Yiddish language. Every Jewish woman became educated in Yiddish, her language became refined, she spoke taytsh-khumesh Yiddish during the week. Taytsh-khumesh sanctified her lips, and in her weekday conversation she improvised in her Sabbath melo-declamation [melo-deklamatsye].’’16 One thing this pastiche of voices from the Tsenerene’s modern reception history—which includes ideologues, artists, and historians; Marxists, socialists, and folkists—does show is how firmly established this process of linguistic acculturation had become in the minds of Yiddish speakers and writers across the intellectual spectrum. Having been maintained for a very long time as a ritual text in the folk culture, to be read aloud every Sabbath, the Tsene-

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rene continued its life on two paths. The first was on the level of the spoken language. Citing Yisroel Tsinberg, ‘‘the style of taytsh-khumesh became a model, the model, for Yiddish dialectics.’’17 This will be a central concern of the present analysis. The second path was on the level of the written language, which in many respects developed in tandem with the spoken language. The Tsenerene became ‘‘a key book for modern Yiddish literature.’’ It took an important role in the creation of ‘‘the most modern Yiddish writing style, and most certainly in the linguistic symphony of the highly developed Yiddish belletristics. When Perets (the seeker), Pinski (no master of language), Glatshteyn and Manger (virtuosi, concert-performers of Yiddish belletristics and essay) want to make their narrative juicier and to introduce hierarchy into their world of ideas, their belletristics would be more substantial were they to let themselves into the wine-cellars of taytsh-khumesh.’’18 Dovid Katz has made the important observation (echoing the sentiment of Max Erik) that ‘‘Jacob ben Joseph [sic] of Yanov [the Tsenerene’s author] has rightly been called the Martin Luther of Yiddish. He used the vernacular of his people and the Bible to raise the level of creativity and stature of the spoken language to bring serious knowledge to anyone who could read.’’19 The stress is on the comprehensibility of the work. The point of invoking Martin Luther (lehavdil)20 is to bring to mind not only the German dialectal hybrid that he devised for his own German Bible translation,21 but also the goal of that hybridity, namely diffusion through popularity, and popularity through comprehension. These terms—‘‘the vernacular’’ and ‘‘the spoken language’’—must refer not only to Yiddish in a general sense, but to an understandable and colloquially resonant language for what was to be ‘‘an easy-to-read book.’’22 Finally, and perhaps most critically, there is the issue of textual contact. What makes the Tsenerene such an important work in considering the effects of literary language contact is that the mediation is not solely through translation. The King James Bible, for instance, no matter what its political goals, was still a translation. And given the prestige of the translated text and the high literary skill of many of the teams of translators, it became a popular and ultimately influential work, at least from the point of view of the English language itself. Yet it was a perceived transcendent otherness of the Bible that the translators attempted to capture in sublime but highly artificial and wrought language. The Tsenerene, on the other hand, is only in part and very loosely a translation; the better part of the text consists of interpolated

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distillations of commentary and instructive storytelling from a variety of traditional sources. It is not a translation of a single source but a system of sources, a juxtapositional encyclopedia of sources, and it becomes a stylistic translation and transition as well. I am bringing in stylistics here, initially, because of the notion that literature, broadly construed, is made up somehow of a different kind of language.23 To be sure, the points and patches of contact between ‘‘natural’’ language and literary language are many and often intimate; yet they are still separable. Between these two poles a given text is a dynamic actor. In many ways, that is why we read literature at all. And it is between these poles that the Tsenerene is situated in the current analysis. What, then, is this stylistics for this text? It is, for lack of a better term, a species of commentary stylistics (if not a commentary itself). It was this topiccomment-digression stylistics that would become—and to a certain extent had already begun to become—one of the central features of Yiddish idiomatics. (The humor of the tizal katal imrossi story quoted earlier depends upon it.) The popularity of the Tsenerene was a driving engine of that dissemination. The relevance of this line of inquiry will become clear through a brief passage from Abramovitsh’s novel Masoes binyomin hashlishi (The Travels of Benjamin the Third; 1878). The novel describes the ‘‘adventures’’ of Benjamin and his sidekick Senderl, a kind of Jewish Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. This dialogical duo is presented as a rabbi and his pupil as much as they are as an adventurer and his squire. The linguistic worldview encapsulated in that relationship is embedded in the very structure of the text. ‘‘All my days,’’ so says Benjamin the Third himself, ‘‘all my days I was exalted in Tuneyadevke; my whole life, that is, till my great journey, I was praised in Tuneyadevke; there I was born, there I was brought up, and there at an auspicious moment I got married to my wife, to my pious missus, Mrs. Zelde, long may she live.’’ Tuneyadevke, the little shtetl in a distant corner, well beyond the highway, so nearly cut off from the world that once when someone happened to come to town, windows and doors would open and people would look at the newcomer amazed. Neighbors, looking out through their open windows, would ask each other questions [kashes]: So, who could such a person be? From where did he so suddenly and unexpect-

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edly set out to come here? What can he need? Does he have some kind of purpose? It can’t just be that someone up and comes here! There’s probably something that one can find out. . . . In such a way everyone wished to demonstrate his wisdom, his experience; wild suppositions fell like rubbish.24 Mendele’s great comic novel begins with an autobiographical statement by the main character. Less important than the substance—which might as well have been the biography of the majority of pale-dwelling Jewish men—is the form. From the first word it is coded as erudition, that is, it starts off in Hebrew. However, it turns out almost immediately to be a false erudition. The word Benjamin chooses—nisgadl—which he thinks means to grow up, actually means to be praised or exalted, and can also mean to praise oneself or to boast. The root of this verb deals with greatness as well as with growing up or rearing; not, however, in the form Benjamin uses. Benjamin’s mistaken conflation instantly casts him as a comic figure who pretends to a kind of learning he has not mastered. This half-knowledge will be the driving force behind the scrapes he gets himself into. More than this comedic mock-erudite setup, the entire opening is an orchestration of the topic-comment stylistics prevalent in Jewish discourse. In this passage there are three such sequences. (In the actual text they are slightly intertwined, but this analysis presents them disentangled.) In the first there is a Hebrew text: ‘‘All my days’’ (‘‘kol yomay’’), followed by a Yiddish gloss: ‘‘my whole life’’ (‘‘mayn gants lebn’’), followed by a commentary: ‘‘that is, till my great journey’’ (‘‘dos heyst biz mayn groyser nesie’’). Then in the second sequence the train of thought returns to the Hebrew text: ‘‘I was exalted in Tuneyadevke’’ (‘‘nisgadalti betuneyadevke’’), followed by a Yiddish gloss: ‘‘I was praised in Tuneyadevke’’ (‘‘bin ikh nisgadl gevorn in tuneyadevke’’)—using exactly the same verb (nisgadalti and nisgadl), as if Benjamin wasn’t quite sure what it meant in Hebrew so he simply used the same word in Yiddish—followed by a larger commentary: ‘‘there I was born, there I was brought up’’ (‘‘dort bin ikh geboyrn gevorn, dort bin ikh dertsoygn gevorn’’).25 The third sequence, in which the narrative voice of the novel is introduced, begins with its own commentary, this time starting with the word ‘‘Tuneyadevke’’ as its ostensible ‘‘text.’’ That particular commentary stresses the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb of the community. It’s not just that they can’t stop asking questions;

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after all, they ask one another and not the newcomer himself, indicating that it’s not necessarily just information they are after. Rather, their activities are meant ‘‘to demonstrate their wisdom, their experience’’; ‘‘wild suppositions’’ (boykh-svores, literally ‘‘belly opinions’’) are much more important than any actual answer could be. This is significant because, as the autobiographical commencement of the novel makes clear, Benjamin himself feels that his having lived his whole life in Tuneyadevke is determinative of his character. As the novel stretches its legs, we will see that unlike Don Quixote’s adventures, the ‘‘great journey’’ of Benjamin and Senderl takes them almost nowhere. That is, this Jewish Don Quixote doesn’t actually get anywhere except embroiled in a series of escalating verbal gaffes. The action of the novel is talking. As readers we are aware of this because of the Jewish discursive structure set out from the very beginning. And as we will see, some of the key elements of that structure, on display in this passage, are in evidence certainly as far back as the Tsenerene. Returning, then, more specifically to the Tsenerene, this particular stylistics is a rich participation in a cultural form—namely, conversationally orchestrated commentary—whose aim, beyond the purely practical (though certainly not trivial) concern for comprehension, is additive rather than definitive; the goal of the participation is the participation itself. Jean Baumgarten says of Ashkenazi’s commentary that it ‘‘is not so much a series of citations as a text that—while based on the recognized authorities (rarely explicitly described)—nonetheless has a rhythm of its own. . . . The style oscillates between a respect for the forms proper to midrashic literature and the creation of a new language that can already be designated ‘literary.’ ’’26 Beyond this literariness, the relatively novel element for the Tsenerene is the solicitation of a new audience. One result was the absorption of linguistic forms and behaviors by that audience. That relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the Tsenerene beyond the basic acknowledgment of its cultural significance is a surprising lacuna.27 There have been only a handful of mostly partial translations into English and German (and interestingly one into Latin from 1660). Consideration of the text itself has been largely concerned with two aspects: (1) source analysis, that is, where Ashkenazi got his material, and (2) philological analysis, especially of the various versions as indices of language shift. This textual history of the Tsenerene has been ably detailed elsewhere, most thoroughly and accessibly by Khone Shmeruk.28 The present discussion will

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not concern itself with those particular issues. However, elements of that analysis are central to establishing the Tsenerene as a focal text for study of Jewish discursive patterns in Yiddish literature. After all, as one of the aptest distillations of the observations at the heart of Shmeruk’s work has put it, ‘‘the various early editions show few linguistic differences, but in the eighteenthcentury editions these became so numerous that Ze’enah u-Re’enah became a kind of laboratory for the Yiddish language.’’29 This analysis will concentrate on the 1622 Basel edition, the only edition we have from the author’s lifetime.30 The focus will thus be not only on some of the earliest written forms of Jewish discourse in Yiddish literature, but on the stable core of that discourse, found in that edition and all along a trajectory ending in the twentieth century. Shmeruk’s overarching claim is that the earliest versions of the Tsenerene were written in ‘‘a special style which was not identical to the spoken language,’’ namely taytsh-khumesh,31 which was used by publishers as a pan-European Yiddish idiom. In large part due to the realization by Eastern European Yiddish publishers in the late eighteenth century that there was a sustainable Yiddish reading public, one consequence was a renewal ‘‘of the written language with a particular tendency to bring it closer to spoken Yiddish.’’ The thesis is that analysis of the process of making the literary language more ‘‘spoken’’ requires being able to distinguish between those texts originally written and translated in this Eastern European vein and those based on the earlier models.32 The caveat here, as was mentioned at the beginning, is that the evidence upon which to base broad positive claims about the nature of spoken Yiddish from the late sixteenth to the mid- to late eighteenth centuries, is fairly thin. The types of evidence usually used to support these claims—such as colloquial dialogue reliably recorded in non-Yiddish sources, reported speech in nonfiction sources, prescriptive grammars, or linguistic descriptions33 —do not exist in suitable profusion to avoid scholarly hesitance. This is not to say that the conclusions are not likely. Rather, at the risk of seeming to split hairs, I would prefer to insist on the stylistic changes still being referred to as literary, though of a kind better described as reflecting, not necessarily reproducing, the spoken language.34 This was a language clearly undergoing dynamic shifts in syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics. Within this dynamic polysystem one can highlight Yiddish literature’s receptivity to spoken-language trends. Not only that, but its concern for the demands and needs of its readership in both theme and

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language is not to be downplayed. These social structures, in nascent form in the early editions, will only gain in cultural importance through the years as the Tsenerene builds on its status as a foundational cultural text.

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In the Beginning Let us look, then, at that text. And where better to begin than in the beginning? The Basel edition begins its gloss on Genesis by citing the first seven Hebrew words of the Hebrew text (‘‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’’) and then in Yiddish: ‘‘In the first creation (of) heaven and earth the earth was waste and empty and darkness (was) over the abyss and the throne of Honor35 of God stood there in the air above the water and why did the Torah start with the (letter) bet(?) It teaches us . . .’’36 The first thing we notice (beside the conventional lack of punctuation) is the grammatical compactness, a virtual elimination of those elements that are made clear through context. This stylistic concision is likely bolstered by a similar stylistic tendency in the Hebrew source material. It is not, however, a general linguistic economy but rather one of a specific kind. Were we to expand the tripartite scheme (word V translation V meaning)37 to the larger level of connected text, the quoted material above would occupy the secondary position, that is, as the intermediary between sign and semantic content. In this capacity, it is of subsidiary importance in the discursive scheme. Initiation of this semantic level is clearly indicated by use of the introductory cue ‘‘it teaches us . . .’’ (‘‘er lernt uns . . .’’). This little phrase is important in that it shows two key features in the development of Yiddish discourse. The first of these is the use of notational figures themselves. The Talmudic text presents discussions among the various rabbis, which were then edited together. The scholars’ arguments usually follow certain well-defined discursive parameters,38 such that a particular line of reasoning or explicative strategy can be deployed and understood simply by making reference to it. In this way it introduces not only a conclusion or new proposition but also the reasoning behind arriving at it or adducing it. In the passage from Genesis the phrase ‘‘it teaches us’’ does serve an explanatory function. However, it also accounts for the seeming non sequitur of the question that precedes it.39 There are a number of Talmudic notational figures that contain some form of the Aramaic verb ‘‘to teach, state’’ (from the root t-n-y), corresponding to the

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Yiddish lernen. These terms often introduce rabbinic teachings (baraytot) that are outside of the compiled Mishnah, used for any number of purposes. The Genesis passage—which continues, ‘‘it teaches us how a bet has three sides and the fourth wall is open; so, too, is the world: three sides did God close off . . . ’’40 —presents narrative material outside of the Genesis text, offering an analogous and supportive parallel creation. ‘‘It teaches us’’ is a recurrent phrase in the text, used in the same way, and gives some clue to the stylistic importance of notational figures and discourse connectives. And lest the preceding discussion seem too abstruse to be applicable to modern Yiddish literature, an example may suffice. Abramovitsh coined a humorous verb, tonurabonenen—literally ‘‘to engage in tonu-rabonen (‘our sages taught’)’’—meaning ‘‘to study the Talmud.’’41 This verb is a good example of the power of notational figures: only through the noteworthy repetition of the phrase could it be enshrined as a representational motif of the activity during which it is uttered. The second feature this phrase (‘‘it teaches us’’) highlights is what might be called meta-tuition, or a teaching about teaching. This is to say that instead of information merely being described or presented, the material is set forth in the context of instruction. This suits some of the educative goals of the ethical literature of the period, a literature in some of whose currents the Tsenerene travels. But more than that, the tuitional environment of the traditional study of the core Jewish texts is recreated in the language of the Tsenerene. One is not ‘‘informed,’’ rather one is ‘‘taught’’; one does not ‘‘come to know’’ or ‘‘understand,’’ rather one ‘‘learns.’’ It is this kind of atmospheric situation that is so subtly influential. As is commonly mentioned, all translations are also forms of interpretation, some more or less blatant than others. The Yiddish gloss here of the initial line of text already passes that text through a filter. For example, the very word for God (though certainly not the concept) is completely left out. Fidelity to the source text is not, presumably, at a premium. A sense suitable both to the spirit of the text and to the interpretative program of the author is all that is required. Often no translation at all is attempted. So, for example, we find running commentary, as in: ‘‘So it says: ‘And the earth was formless and void’ [in Hebrew, Genesis 1:2a], the earth will be laid waste, for the Shekhinah will remove itself in the Destruction [of the Temple], and so God says ‘And the spirit of God hovers over the surface of the water’ [in Hebrew, Genesis 1:2b], this shows us even when we will be in exile the Torah will not

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be removed from us.’’42 The presumed familiarity with the biblical story is clearly high, but so is the presumption of familiarity with some degree of Hebrew in order to match up the unglossed Hebrew text with the appropriate interpretative structure.

Genesis 1:6

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Given such a rich, dense text, individual points such as the ones just described could be multiplied extensively. Shifting gears, let us consider a rather longer pericope, presented in full, with which to outline some of the broader structural features of an exemplary ‘‘argument’’ in the Tsenerene. These features ultimately become important for the kinds of influence at the core of this discussion. Here is the Tsenerene’s presentation of Genesis 1:6: (And God said, ‘‘Let there be an expanse’’ etc.) God says, ‘‘Let the heaven be strengthened between the water.’’ For on the first day the heavens were weak, so the Holy One admonished [them].43 The next day the heavens strengthened themselves from fear of the Holy One.44 (‘‘In the midst of the waters’’) The heavens made a distinction between the water, for there was water above heaven just as on the earth. And the water was as far above the heaven as the distance is from the heaven to the earth.45 And above the heaven water hung in the air by order of the Holy One.46 And the waters protested and said, ‘‘We, too, want to be above the heavens; and why should we be below on the earth?’’ So the Holy One promised the waters upon the earth that no sacrifice would be brought to the altar except when salt is with it, and salt comes from water. And every day the Holy One inscribed ‘‘for it was good’’ and on the second day ‘‘for it was good’’ was not inscribed; since the creation of the second day was not completed, then there was no ‘‘for it was good,’’ for the water was not completely created on the second day but rather it was on the third day that the Holy One finished creating the water. Thus the Holy One two times said ‘‘for it was good’’: one time when the waters had been properly created; the second time when the earth was completed on the third day.47 And there are some sages who say that there is no ‘‘for it was good’’ on the second day because hell was created on the second day. And there are some sages who say that quarreling began on the second day since the

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waters quarreled with one another. Therefore ‘‘for it was good’’ is not [written] for the second day, since nothing good comes of quarreling. And because quarreling was created on the second day, thus hell was also created on the same day; for whosoever quarrels falls into hell, just as happened to Korah48 as the Gemara relates in the chapter of ‘‘He Who Sells a Boat.’’49 Rabba bar Bar Hana says, he was once walking in the desert when a merchant approached him and said to him, ‘‘I wish to show you how Korah was swallowed into the earth.’’ There he saw the earth split open and smoke was coming out; then he took a spear and put a piece of wool on it and stuck the spear with the wool over the cleft. Then the wool got singed from the fire that was in the cleft. Then he heard someone crying out from that same cleft: ‘‘Moses is truth and his Torah is truth and we are deceitful liars!’’ And every thirty days they turn back around the fire in hell to await their afflictions. And they cry out, ‘‘Moses is truth and his Torah is truth!’’ Therefore every person should be warned on account of quarreling. And some sages say that one should start no work on Mondays since no ‘‘for it was good’’ was inscribed on a Monday. And from Monday on and thereafter every day there was a quarrel. On the third day we encounter a quarrel, that the Holy One ordered the earth to bring forth a tree which was to have a flavor like the taste of apple.50 And the earth did not do so but rather the tree was of wood and the apple had a different flavor. And on the fourth day there was also a quarrel: the moon said, ‘‘Why should the sun shine?’’ She wanted to shine herself. So the Holy One made her and her light small. On the fifth day there was also a quarrel: the wife of Leviathan had been killed and salted for the righteous in the days of the Messiah. On the sixth day (Adam the First) sinned and was driven out of (the Garden of Eden). Now one can see that from the second day on all quarrels began. ˜[d ˜çywwx lmyh ayd ˚yz ˜qr[fç laz z[ fwg fgaz r[ (òmwgw [yqr yhy μyhla rmayw) ∑ ˜ayrçyg ˜a hbqh fah ad ˜z[wwyg πlç lmyh ayd ˜draww gf ˜fçr[ μa ˜[d ∑ ryçww (μymh ˚wtb) hbqh fkraw ˜wb fq[rfçyg lmyh ayd ˚yz ˜bh ad gaf ˜rydna μ[d ˜wb lmyh rbya ˜yyz ç[ ˜[d ryçww μ[d ˜çywwx fkamyg dyyçrfnwa ˜yya ˜bah lmyh ayd ˚yylg lmyh ˜[d rbya ˚wh wza ˜yyz ryçww ayd ònwa ∑ ˜dr[ r[d πywa za ˚yylg ryçww ˚ywa ryçww ayd ˜gn[h lmyh yd rbya ònwa ∑ dr[ r[d πywa zyb lmyh ˜wb fzya ad za fyyww wza fgazyg ˜bah ònwa fgyrqyg ˚yz ˜bah ryçww ayd ònwa ∑ hbqh ˜wb fabyg fym ˜fpyl ayd ˜ya r[d πywa ˜yyz ˜fnwa rym ˜laz μwraww ònwa lmyh ayd rbya ˜ybwa ˜yyz ˚ywa ˜yl[ww rym ˜gn[rb ˜brq ˜yyq lwz ˜m çd ˜dr[ r[d πywa ryçww ˜[d fgazyg wx hbqh fah ad ˜dr[

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∑ ryçww μ[d ˜wb fmwq ≈laz çd ònwa ˜bah ayybrd ≈laz zwm ˜m frayyn jbzm μ[d πywa fyn fyfç gaf ˜rdna μ[d ayyb ònwa (bwf yk) ˜byrçyg ˜a hbqh fah gaf yla ayyb ònwa ˜z[wwyg çywa dag fyn fzya gaf ˜rdna μ[d ˜wb çnp[çyb ayd lyywwr[d (bwf yk) ˜byrçyg ˜draww ˜ypçyb zywa fk[r fyn gaf ˜rdna μa ˜yyz ryçww yd ˜[d (bwf yk)fyn fyfç μwrd lam ayywwx hbqh fah ad ryçww yd ˜ypaçyb zywa fah hbqh zd gaf ˜fyrd μa frayyn flwm rdna çd ∑ ˜ypaçyb çywa ˜draww ˜yyz ryçww ayd çd flam ˜yya (bwf yk) fgazyg ˜gaz yd μymkj ykylf[ ònwa ∑ gaf ˜fyrd μ[d ˜a fkyr raw ˜ydraww zya dr[ ayd çd ˜gyg ˜draww fzya μnhyg zd lyywwrd gaf ˜rdna μ[d ayyb (bwf yk) fyn μwrd fyfç z[ ˜a ˚yz ˜bwwh gyrq ayd ˜gaz ayd μymkj ykylf[ ònwa ∑ gaf ˜rdna μ[d ˜a ˜ypçyb fyn fyfç μwrd ∑ fgyrqyg rdnna fym ˜bah ryçww yd ˚yz çd gaf ˜rydna μ[d ˜bwhyg gyrq ayd lyyww ònwa gyrq ˜wb çfwg fçyn fmwq z[ ˜[d gf ˜rdna μ[d ayyb (bwf yk) ˜a μnhyg zd ˜ypçyb ˜draww ˚ywa zya μwrd gaf ˜rdna μ[d ˜a ˜ypçyb ˜draww ˜yyz ˜h[çyg zya (jrq)za μnhyg zd ˜ya flp rd fgyrq ad r[ww ˜[d gaf ˜gybl[z μ[d ˜yya raww d[ hnj ˜w hbr fgaz r[ (hnypsh ta rkwmh qrp) ˜ya fyg armg yd za lyww ˚ya μya wx fgaz ònwa rjws ˜yya μya wx μaq ad rbdm r[d ˜ya ˜gngyg flwm dr[ ayd ˜h[zyg r[ fah ad dr[ r[d ˜ya ˜dnwlç rw ˜draww fzya jrq çd ˜zyyw ryd laww πywrd fgyl ònwa sypç ˜yya r[ μan ad ˜gnagyg çywrh fzya ˚ywr ònwa ˜flpç wx fgn[z raw laww ayd raww ad ∑ ˜flpç ayd rbya laww r[fym sypç ˜[d fl[fç ònwa çywa fayyrç ˜m ayww fr[hyg r[ fah ad ˜flpç r[d ˜ya zya ad çd rayyw μ[d ˜wb yçlaw ˜yyz rym ònwa tma zya hrwt ˜yyz ònwa tma fçya hçm ˜flpç ˜gybl[z ˜[d ˜fraww rd μnhyg μya ayz rw rayyw çd μwa ˜m fr[q gf gysyyrd yla ònwa ∑ rnygyl μwrd ∑ tma zya hrwt ˜yyz ònwa tma zya hçm ˜ayyrç ayz ònwa ˜bah twrx ˜ym ˜ywa ayz ˜yyq laz ˜m μymkj ykylf[ ˜gaz ònwa ˜blh gyrq ˜yyz fnrawwyg çn[m çkylfya laz ˜wb ònwa ∑ gfnam μa (bwf yk) ˜byrçyg fyfç fyn lyywwr[d gfnwm μa ˜byh ˜a hkalm gyrq rym ˜dnypyg gaf ˜fyrd μa ∑ ˜drawwyg gyrq gaf yla zya rfyyww ònwa ˜a gyfnam μ[f ˜yya ˜bah laz r[d μywb ˜yya ˜hyx çywa laz dr[ ayd ˜çyyhyg fah hbqh çd fzya μywb r[d frayyn ˜a fyg wza fyn fah dr[ ayd ònwa fq[mç lypp[ r[d zla ˜z[wwyg gyrq ˚ywa fzya gaf ˜dryw μa ònwa ∑ μ[f ˜rydna ˜yya fah lypp[ r[d ònwa ≈lah fah ad ˜fkyyl ˜yyla flaww ayz ˜fkyyl ˜wz yd laz wx waww fgazyg fah hnbl ayd ˜z[wwyg gyrq ˚ywa fçya gaf ˜fpnyp μa ∑ fkyl yrya fym fkamyg ˜yylq ayz hbqh μyqydx ˜[d wx ˜yxlazyg ˜yya ayz fah ònwa ˜tywl μ[d ˜wb byyww çd ˜galç rd fah ˜m fzya ònwa ˜a fyg hryb[ ˜yya (˜wçarh μda) fah gaf ˜fçq[z μa ∑ jyçm ˜g[f ˜ya ad ˜a gaf ˜rdna μ[d ˜wb çd ˜h[z ˜m ˜aq ˜wn (˜d[ ˜g) μ[d zywa ˜byrf raw ˜draww :gyrq ayd yla ˜gnapyg ˜a ˚yz fah The first thing one notices in an extended passage such as this, once the sources are pointed out, is the extent to which there is an anthological diversity of sources, biblical, Talmudic, midrashic, as well as a significant amount

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of commentary culled from Rashi.51 These are juxtaposed with very little differentiation of importance or authority. The hierarchies of the traditional sources are subordinated to an encyclopedic legitimacy, a structure of simultaneous authority. More important, however, is the conceptual flow of the presentation. It appears at first glance haphazard, but ultimately shows itself to proceed in a conversationally congruous way. In the linguistic literature there is some debate about how to define and characterize the ‘‘topic’’ or ‘‘topics’’ of a conversation.52 Ultimately, analytically speaking, that debate is less fruitful than observing how speakers (or authors) navigate from what is perceived by them as one topic to the next, what linguists call ‘‘topic shift.’’53 Textual and oral methods of shift naturally differ, with more or less emphasis placed on such things as syntactic features, word choice, especially adverbial connectives, intonation, and so on. And as we saw in the representation of Jewish discourse, there is also the important category of Talmudic discourse ties with its ramified cultural associations in Yiddish literature. In the present analysis of the Tsenerene these primary topical units are being referred to as ‘‘rubrics’’ since within them subtopical eddies get spun out before the clear shift occurs. Individual topical rubrics ranging from simple comments to larger narratives are linked, or better, associated, by a number of ligatures. The ligatures described below are not a systematic scheme, but rather a descriptive tool for understanding not only the author’s linguistic sensitivity but also his concern for a kind of oral presentation. The ligatures here include topical (where the shift mirrors the shift in the biblical text), exemplificational (where the shift coincides with material introduced as an example of the previous topic), linguistic (where the shift hinges on a specific word or wording, a sensitivity to which is usually strongly emphasized in Jewish discourse),54 and analogic (where the shift is motivated by a perceived analogy between two topical situations). Based on this discussion of topical shifts, what follows, therefore, is a sketch of the preceding passage from the Tsenerene outlined according to its topical organization. In this scheme what appears between the square brackets is a description of an individual topic’s elaboration in the text, including the flow of subtopics indicated by horizontal arrows. The arrow pointing downwards between each set of square brackets indicates a ligature to the next topic. For each ligature there is a brief description of the nature of the association between topics, that is, how the author orchestrates that movement.

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distinction of waters, above and below distance of waters manner of waters’ placement protestation of waters promise of God vis-à-vis Temple sacrifice parenthetical explanation ligature: topical, i.e., what happened on the “second day”55 “for it was good” is lacking as a designation for the second day implied “why?”56 explanation based on completion as a criterion for “goodness” ligature: topical (adversative), i.e., “goodness” vs. “lack of goodness”

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two ancillary views for lack of designation (1) hell was created (2) quarreling was created57 adopts second option because hell < quarreling ligature: loose exemplification, and linguistic58 exemplification: Korah from the Gemara Rabbah bar Bar Hana’s story exhortation against quarreling ligature: analogy, i.e., an exhortation based on a sage’s story and a recommendation of the sages not to start something on a Monday

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another view of the sages, namely concerning Monday ligature: topical stories of four more days of creation and the quarreling engendered on each ligature: topical and confirmation of the sages’ view

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conclusion: from Monday on there was quarreling

This schematized diagram of topic development is meant first and foremost to emphasize the conversational flow of the text. This is because the Tsenerene is a ‘‘conversational text’’: produced by a scholar who was part of the traditional Ashkenazi study-house culture, whose sources were central elements debated within that culture, whose language was designed to resonate with the contemporary spoken language (reflected in the changes made over time to the many, many editions), and which ultimately itself became part of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European oral culture. One interesting methodological confirmation of the conversational relevance of the system of ligatures used to describe the passage above from the Tsenerene is the ‘‘move system’’ as outlined by the linguist Julia A. Goldberg. This system presents a descriptive model for assigning to an element of conversation one of four types of ‘‘moves’’ by which any utterance may be described as related to a preceding utterance.59 ‘‘Only after a move has been assigned to each and every locution does the analyst have a base from which to isolate the finer mechanisms by which interactants reveal how they intend to manipulate the course of the exchange or how their contribution should be heard as relating to that exchange.’’60 This is to say that the move system is a tool for scholarly analysis of conversation. This has the benefit of being a structurally streamlined way of accounting for conventional ‘‘movement.’’ The system of ligatures outlined above, which is by no means exhaustive, is one of these ‘‘finer mechanisms,’’ and a reflection of Yiddish conversational participation in Jewish discourse. The Tsenerene’s structure fits very neatly into a conversational model, which not only confirms that intuition, but will be echoed later in the literary language.

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Associative Digression and the Role of Orality One of the central features of literary contact influence on the development of Yiddish, as can easily be seen in the passages from the Tsenerene, is the ‘‘associative-digressive’’ pattern or stylistics. Benjamin Harshav characterizes Yiddish conversation as ‘‘advanc[ing] not in a straight line, through affirmative statements or the logic of a problem presented in a hierarchical argument, but through many kinds of indirect or ‘translogical language.’ ’’ He goes on to enunciate three communicative principles common to this kind of language: ‘‘(1) associative digression; (2) resorting to a canonized textual store; and (3) assuming that all frames of reference in the universe of discourse may be analogous to each other.’’61 It needs to be stressed that this is not a categorization of how Talmudic language actually works. Rather, this is in part the product of a perception about that language on the part of those who had no direct access to it. This is to say that for those whose reading practices are confined to a more or less literary tradition, what might seem irrelevancies, non sequitur meanderings or musings, or even what might be called almost stream-of-consciousness excursions are in fact meaningful utterances that are to be made sense of by employing a different set of conceptual guidelines.62 As a simple example, take the Yiddish idiom ruf mikh knaknisl (literally, ‘‘call me ‘nut’ ’’), which means something like ‘‘like it or lump it.’’ Because of its opacity, Olsvanger glosses it as ‘‘I did wrong? So call me ‘a nut’—what do you want then?’’63 A more detailed articulation of the process can be observed when Harshav disembeds the following ‘‘common expression’’: ‘‘ ‘Was your father a windowpane maker?’ implies: ‘Did he make you from glass?’ hence: ‘Do you think I can see through you?’ instead of the direct ‘Why are you standing there and obstructing my view?’ ’’64 This is a very good example of the kind of conversational implicature encountered so often not only in Yiddish literature but in everyday speech, as indicated by its being called a ‘‘common expression.’’ It is a feature of the language in which the ability swiftly to peel away several layers of conversational logic is presumed. The fact that similar kinds of expression, including the latter example, also exist in Russian, for instance, adds further support to the notion of similative buttressing. There is a similar implicature in a television commercial described to me in which a man is shopping and a salesman accompanying him habitually stands in front of the object in which the customer is interested, obscuring it

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from view. The customer ultimately responds to this situation by telling the salesman, ‘‘You make a better door than you do a window, Bob,’’ thereby requesting him to move. That is, unlike a window, which is transparent, a door must be opened before one can see through the aperture. The critical point is that whereas the functional context in which this remark operates is one of humor and sarcasm and is consequently a marked utterance, the Yiddish expression65 functions in a context in which such a rhetorical question as speech act is an expected and accepted part of conversation—not in itself necessarily humorous—and as such is an unmarked utterance. This unmarked character is, again, important for understanding the relevance of these pragmatic considerations (conversational implicatures, speech acts, etc.) to the linguistic ideology of the Tsenerene. Mary Louise Pratt, in ‘‘Ideology and Speech-Act Theory,’’ defines her goal as investigating ‘‘the normalizing and naturalizing work of ideology . . . that is, its action of specifying within a discourse what is given or normal or natural, and what is problematic or abnormal or unnatural.’’66 Her ultimate end is to offer a critique of current linguistic theories—replacing a speech-act theoretical framework, in which positive or assertive communicational norms are dominant, with a more ‘‘adversative’’ model that revolves around a ‘‘literary’’ assumption about the way people use language.67 In advancing this model she calls for ‘‘a theory of linguistic representation which acknowledges that representative discourse is always engaged in both fitting words to world and fitting world to words; that language and linguistic institutions in part construct or constitute the world for people in speech communities, rather than merely depicting it.’’68 What is important in her description for the present discussion is that the textual ideology of traditional Jewish culture as inherited and developed by Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews is internalized in the language of those Jews, namely Yiddish. And that ideology is constitutive, that is to say, the linguistic institutions in many ways do constitute their world. (Derekh hashas and ‘‘Yiddishland’’ are clearly more than convenient labels.) This becomes a relevant frame for looking at Yiddish ‘‘talkative behaviors’’ as a suture line between linguistics and literature. These were clearly important concerns for the ‘‘classical’’ Yiddish writers. In an article on Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh’s autotranslations from Yiddish into Hebrew, Menakhem Perry has noted that ‘‘cases of syntactic calque are also detectable in the text. The syntactic structure of sentences in the Hebrew text imitates the syntactic structure of spoken Yiddish.’’ This specific focus on

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spoken Yiddish is an especially important comment for the overall argument here because Abramovitsh’s Yiddish itself was a literary product, not merely a stenographic reproduction of ‘‘spoken Yiddish’’; therefore, the ‘‘spokenness’’ or the ‘‘orality’’ of the language is still a literary construct. Perry continues: ‘‘This structure imitates in particular the positions in which parenthetic clauses, that are so common in Yiddish, and rhetorical questions, are inserted. This phenomenon encourages Yiddish intonation in the Hebrew text. Such sentences occur not only in the dialogue but also in the segments of the narration where they form skaz or free indirect speech.’’69 (The importance of Perry’s characterization of Abramovitsh’s stylistic structure as skaz will become apparent presently.) This specifically literary line of inquiry brings us to that access that literary analysis grants to the development of styles of thought-in-language. The discussion up to this point was designed to show how that works in the Tsenerene. Now we will move forward to the period of intense ferment in Yiddish belles lettres and one of its most productive and innovative stylists. Sholem Rabinovitsh (Sholem Aleykhem, 1859–1916) was a tireless chronicler of the anxieties and crises of the Yiddish folk passing from traditional cultural life into modernity. He gave voice—sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter, and often both at once—to these tensions in a literary language styled and stylized on the diverse speech patterns of living Yiddish, to which he turned a keenly attuned ear. One of the genres that puts these perceptions front and center and that Sholem Aleykhem manipulated with great dexterity was the monologue. And it is the monologues of Sholem Aleykhem that offer a new and useful avenue for looking at the influence of the Tsenerene, and Jewish discursive orality, on Yiddish. In an important article on the subject,70 Victor Erlich looks at Sholem Aleykhem’s monologn (monologues) as model examples of a particular kind of literary monologue, the ‘‘oral’’ as opposed to the ‘‘written.’’71 To embroider briefly on his point, the monologue, particularly into the modern period, involves some idea of realism. But what is ‘‘real’’ for the oral monologue, in contrast to certain novelistic brands of realism, is not in the description but in the manner of description, that is, language, especially spoken language. This is also distinct from the psychologistic manners of description, such as one can find in Joyce or Proust or Musil; it is a specifically linguistic brand. In emphasizing the ‘‘oral’’ quality of the monologue,72 Erlich relates the ‘‘literary manner’’ of this form to the Russian literary concept of skaz. He

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quotes Hugh McLean’s definition of skaz as ‘‘a stylistically individualized inner narrative placed in the mouth of a fictional character and designed to produce the illusion of oral speech.’’73 This is not to say that the Tsenerene is skaz. However, superimposing one system over the other offers some tantalizing points of contact between them. Two of these points will offer precisely the access we need to Sholem Aleykhem’s monologues. First of all there is the notion of ‘‘inner narrative.’’ Often the examples used to exemplify skaz, including Erlich’s of the monologn,74 involve some sort of ‘‘interlocutor’’ who says either nothing or a minimum number of vocables to maintain the skaznik’s momentum. Though not a dominant feature, the first-person qualification is interestingly an element of the Tsenerene, where ‘‘we’’ or ‘‘us’’ operates at once in the traditional rabbinic collective medium as well as the first-person level of discourse. Secondly, and more importantly, there is the element of orality. As was noted earlier, Shmeruk himself goes out of his way to underline the ‘‘spoken’’ character—the self-consciously spoken character—of the language of the Tsenerene. This is no accident. And for the notion of skaz it is all the more interesting in that the Tsenerene involves a literary language in a literary medium wrought to spoken, oral dimensions. As a literary product, though, what we are actually encountering is the ‘‘illusion of oral speech.’’ The firstperson plural tuitional environment, which has been described earlier (for example, ‘‘we learn,’’ ‘‘it shows us,’’ ‘‘it teaches us,’’ etc.), operates on the oral level. The Tsenerene was either designed to be, or very quickly came to be, recited out loud in a familial or communal setting and in fact became, as was said, a fixed feature of traditional Sabbath postprandial oral culture.75 As Sheila Jelen remarks in an interesting evaluation of the Tsenerene as a discursive model in the works of the Hebrew writer Dvora Baron (1887–1956), ‘‘the discourse presented by texts such as a Tsenerene is modeled upon orality.’’76 The differentiation between discourse and text is the key, in that ‘‘the illusion of oral speech’’ can be seen to be at work in the Tsenerene as it can analogously both in works of skaz and, more importantly, in the monologn of Sholem Aleykhem. Taking Erlich’s description seriously, according to McLean ‘‘orality’’ and ‘‘individualization’’ are ‘‘the sole indispensable ingredients.’’77 Again, clearly, and uncontroversially, the Tsenerene is not skaz. However, given both points of contact described above, from the point of view of the later literature itself, what we find in the Tsenerene can be described as a dialogic proto-skaz: a

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point of departure for the development of those features of Yiddish that come to be seen as characteristic of Yiddish spoken language, especially as reflected in the ‘‘classic’’ literature. This general intuition is certainly not free of problems. First of all, the Tsenerene is not fiction, nor is it part of a belletristic production to which a literary term such as skaz is normally applied. At the same time, the selfconscious ‘‘orality’’ of its language cannot be overlooked. Secondly, as Erlich points out, another key element of both his and the traditional understanding of skaz is the use of the vernacular.78 Here the question again is whether the Yiddish of the Tsenerene is a vernacular, that is, a specifically non-literary language.79 For the original text, this is difficult to say. Earlier reservations notwithstanding, beginning with Shmeruk’s influential work, subsequent scholarship clearly indicates that that was the case, especially as the text was ‘‘edited’’ in Eastern European publishing houses.80 Ultimately it is probably impossible to disentangle the slow process of mutual influences of literary style on spoken language and of spoken language on literary style. But the conclusion that such influences were at play here is surely inescapable, particularly given how strategically located the Tsenerene is in the development of both the literary and the spoken language. As Dov-Ber Kerler has maintained, ‘‘the shift from the old to the modern literary language is, from the perspective of Yiddish speakers in Eastern Europe, a consistently growing set of correspondences between the written and the spoken language. . . . Modern Literary Yiddish arose largely from conscious attempts to write in a language primarily based on the contemporary vernacular.’’81 Thirdly, there are the nuts and bolts of the ‘‘stylistic ingredients’’ of skaz, namely ‘‘the relative formal incoherence and ‘sloppiness’ typical of ordinary discourse, ‘slangy’, substandard expressions, dialectal peculiarities, inane misuses of language characteristic of the uneducated or semi-educated speakers.’’82 These are, again, the specific difficulties posed by the idea of ‘‘individualization’’ dealt with above, not underlying structural incompatibilities between the two models being placed side by side. The solution I offer to these various difficulties is based on one of Erlich’s own formulations. He says that ‘‘the problem of fictional monologue as a narrative focus is closely bound up with the narrator’s position vis-a`-vis the world ‘he transforms into language.’ ’’83 From the point of view of the Tsenerene, the ‘‘problem’’ of the ‘‘world transformed into language’’ has already been addressed insofar as that world has already been transformed into lan-

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guage. That is the textual world of the Bible, the Talmud, and the midrash. It is a ready-made world for the Tsenerene, which, in Sheila Jelen’s words, ‘‘presented an undifferentiated synthesis of biblical and rabbinic literature.’’84 This is an exact correlate of Harshav’s notion of the text, developed in the Ashkenazic study-house culture, as the ‘‘associative chain of brilliant explications and anecdotes’’ set within a ‘‘universe of discourse to which all meanings and interpretations are subordinated.’’85 It is this situation that allows us the ability to associate some of the important literary principles raised by Erlich’s article with a seemingly exterior text, the Tsenerene. Coming at this idea from a different direction, let us take a look at Sholem Aleykhem. I will begin momentarily with Tevye, but I will come back to focus on one of the monologn in more detail. Michael Stern attempts to give an account of Tevye’s often-mentioned quotations (or ‘‘misquotations’’ as some maintain) as being a central thematic feature of Tevye’s worldview.86 In doing so, Stern starts out by describing the two dominant views on the nature of his quotative activity. The first is Dan Miron’s that the ‘‘quotations are often comically distorted and even when they are correct, his translations and interpretations of them are hilariously wrong. In any case, they never truly suit the context to which they are applied.’’87 The second is that of Dov Sadan and Ruth Wisse, namely that ‘‘Tevye is in complete control of his material, using his quotations for humorous effect.’’88 Both assessments, the Mironian and the Wisse-Sadanian, are in their way valid. However, the central linguistic point stressed here is untouched by either of them. That is, the humor—that nearly universal element in the appraisal of this aspect of Tevye’s idiolect89 —is a function of the central and intimate location of the activity, the talkative behavior, in which Tevye is engaged within the cultural life of that community. It is funny precisely because it is so recognizable and familiar.

‘‘Dos tepl’’ Returning to the monologue, Sholem Aleykhem provides a pivotal example of these ideas in his ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (The Pot). This monologue, written in 1901, opens as Yente the poulteress addresses an unnamed rabbi, ostensibly with a question on ritual law (shayle). For seventeen pages she talks, endlessly digressing from one topic to another until ultimately the rabbi faints from this ‘‘onslaught.’’90 As Dan Miron has characterized Yente’s speech, in an

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interesting new interpretation, ‘‘she weaves a narrative web, labyrinthine, anecdotal, always digressing from the point, always turning to what is irrelevant.’’91 Yente’s speech is ‘‘associative’’ and ‘‘digressive,’’ there is no doubt about that. But it is nevertheless not ‘‘irrelevant’’; its relevance is precisely in those attributes themselves, a point I will return to shortly. Despite this skeletal ‘‘plot,’’ such as it is, what is important is the structure of her ‘‘conversation’’ with the rabbi. Yente’s monologue is broken up into a series of thirteen discursive units,92 each with the same basic structure. Each begins with a refrain of the same composition, namely the question ‘‘yo, akegn vos (zhe) iz dos gekumen tsu reyd?’’ (Yes, how did that come up?).93 Each of these is followed in turn by the same response—‘‘akegn dem, vos ir zogt’’ (about what you said)—and then by a phrasal ligature, ostensibly a quote by Yente of something the rabbi said, though in point of fact this is virtually impossible given that she never lets the poor man get a word in edgewise.94 The ligature functions by taking some thematic or linguistic element from the preceding discursive unit, topicalizing it, and then turning it into the initial topical element in the associative chain of the subsequent discursive unit. This is both the structural engine of the monologue and the organizational logic of Yente’s speech. This analytic model is grounded on the one hand in the basic intuitions of Julia Goldberg’s ‘‘move system,’’ particularly how it was applied to the Tsenerene, and on the other hand in Benjamin Harshav’s analysis of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern’s ‘‘political talk-verse.’’95 The fact of this conversational model of literary production’s being ‘‘hard-wired’’ in the language is further supported by its so clearly being at the core of such disparate kinds of texts, including not only works by the ‘‘classic’’ authors but also by the modernist poets in New York and elsewhere. As Ken Frieden points out about this series of phrasal ligatures, ‘‘This linguistic reflex characterizes the speaker and, at the same time, gives her monologue a semblance of coherence precisely while emphasizing its digressiveness.’’ While Frieden interprets the function of this digressiveness either as a kind of storytelling or as a ‘‘means of postponing the legalistic decision she fears,’’96 the monologue hinges much more crucially on the formal digressions themselves. That verbal activity represents Yente’s own conceptual organization of reality; it is actually how she understands her world, not a way of avoiding it. Let us take the first discursive unit as an example of how this works:

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Rebbe, I want to ask you a shayle, I do. I don’t know whether you know me or whether you don’t know me. I’m Yente, I am, Yente the poulteress. I deal in eggs, I do, in chickens, in geese, and in ducks. I’ve got my steady customers, I do, two or three households; they support me, may God grant them health and everything good, for should I still have to pay off interest I wouldn’t have enough for challah for the ‘‘Ha-motzi.’’ So I take a three-groschen coin, I do, once here, once there, take here, give there, give there, take here—how one spins, alas! Of course, what you would think were my husband, olev-hasholem, alive today—te-tete! . . . Although, come to think of it, life with him was no peach, since a provider, he should pardon me, he wasn’t, only sitting and studying, sitting and studying, while I toiled; and toiling I’m used to since childhood, while still with my mother, oleyha-hasholem, Batye was her name, Batye the chandleress. She was a chandleress, used to buy up tallow from the butchers and made candles, tallow stoppers. One didn’t yet know then about kerosene or lamps with glass globes that crack all the time. Just last week one of my glass globes broke, and two weeks before that a glass globe. . . . Yes, how did that come up? About what you said: ‘‘died young.’’ . . . When my Moyshe Bentsiyen, olev-hasholem, died he was all of twenty-six years old.’’97 The flow of this discursive unit can be schematized as follows: Yente addresses the rabbi by saying how she has a ritual question V her personal introduction V how she makes a living V her husband didn’t work V she toiled and still toils V just as it used to be in her mother’s house V her mother V she was a chandleress V no kerosene or dripping lamps with glass globes then V recently a glass of hers broke V Refrain: ‘‘Yes, how did that come up?’’ V Phrasal ligature: ‘‘About what you said: ‘died young’ ’’ V death of her husband at age twenty-six. The internal ‘‘logic’’ of a paragraph such as this is associative, digressive, and oral; that is to say, it proceeds in exactly the way conversations do. As each unit runs its course, the refrain brings the conversation back to a ‘‘central’’ topic. The thematic motivation, for example, in the unit just outlined is an

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associative similarity between the agentless destruction of a ‘‘new’’ (or better, ‘‘newfangled’’) object and the death of her ‘‘young’’ husband.98 The linguistic motivation is presented by Yente as a wording uttered by the rabbi (‘‘about what you said’’). However, when we take all of the phrasal ligatures together,99 there is no internal coherence to what the rabbi could have said based on those thirteen phrases. As Erlich puts it, ‘‘such a phrase is usually but a by-product of Yente’s irrepressible emoting, a perfunctory summing up by the rabbi of her preceding harangue.’’100 The context of a dialogue is essential not only to the humor,101 but also to how the narrative functions. Yente is not a crazy woman, nor are these internal mental meanderings recorded in an ad hoc narrative frame. This is a representation of speech modeled on a way of talking familiar to its readers, only exaggerated in certain ways. And those exaggerations themselves are telling in that they point out exactly those aspects that we have been talking about. This monologue was also used in an article by Hana Wirth-Nesher (which also takes Erlich’s piece as a point of departure) in which she attempts a thematic literary analysis, unlike this ‘‘topical’’ (or formal) approach.102 Wirth-Nesher’s ultimate point is that, in the monologues which she deals with, the ‘‘rambling’’ spoken quirks of the monologist are a means of mediating difficult emotional experiences. Let us take just two of her observations and put her conclusions into the context of the present discussion. At one point Wirth-Nesher states with regard to Yente: ‘‘In other such instances [i.e., the buildup to one of the ‘refrain—phrasal ligature’ moments described above] she goes from the death of a friend’s wife, and an obligatory aside to the rabbi about God giving and God taking, to mention of her only son.’’103 The question that naturally arises is: What is the nature of this obligatoriness? The subject of the aside—which is what Wirth-Nesher is referring to—is obligatory because of the culturally contextual importance of the Jobian theme of the Lord giving and taking away.104 Because of the particular development of Yiddish discourse patterns, it is the aside itself, as an aside, that is obligatory. The second exemplary observation to be noted is one in which WirthNesher remarks: ‘‘Their [i.e., the monologists’ in the monologues ‘Dos tepl’ (The Pot) and ‘An eytse’ (A Piece of Advice)] speech is an indicator of constant avoidance of such personal pain, for in each to face the psychological problem would entail admission of personal weakness.’’105 This is a psychologistic explanation for the ‘‘rambling’’ phenomenon, which elsewhere she char-

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acterizes as ‘‘illogical’’ or an ‘‘illogic.’’106 It is not, however, illogical if you appeal to the ‘‘logic’’ of conversational structure addressed earlier in this chapter. Rather, it is a phenomenon that is ultimately linguistic. It may very well be true that this is part of the emotive project of these monologues of Sholem Aleykhem. But the humor107 and/or pathos is specifically and intentionally piggybacked on the discursive structure described. Dan Miron’s psychological argument, on the other hand, is more nuanced and persuasive. In effect, he outlines a three-tiered model of humor, tragedy, and anger in Sholem Aleykhem’s monologists. The latter elements of Sholem Aleykhem’s ‘‘dark side’’ make these texts both more complex and more compelling. Scratch the surface of the humor of ‘‘The Pot,’’ Miron argues, and what is revealed is the tragic world of a woman forced into the role of a man by the weak and ineffectual men in her life, venting anger at the representative (the rabbi) of that traditional system that deprives such a woman of the agency that that role should entail.108 Sholem Aleykhem’s humor, then, is more than just putting a good face on misfortune and tragedy. It is an essential ingredient of how that tragedy is processed; Yente’s is a comic syntax structuring the vocabulary of pain. To this sensitive reading must be added the very strong parodic quality of her emotive flood. That the stylistic orientation of her ‘‘folksy’’ speech should be so highly evocative of Jewish discourse—actually similatively buttressed by it historically—becomes in effect a subconscious indictment of the traditional world it represents; it is a world against which she is powerless and as inescapable as her own language. Bringing this discussion to a close, a couple of further details about the language used in this monologue as it relates to the other lexical observations in this project need to be pointed out. The first is the use of the tautological infinitive no fewer than four times. This is a standard feature certainly of the ‘‘classic’’ Yiddish authors for representing colloquial spoken Yiddish. We also find the following words: lemay (and lemay zhe), meyle, mistome, teyrets, avade, and tomer. These are all from the loshn-koydesh component of the language—as well as important markers of the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb—but are fully merged into the everyday speech of a common Jewish woman. Their relative frequency here lends some punctuating counterbalance to the quotidian topics under discussion while under the guise of asking a ritual question. And what’s more, there is a crucial element of gendering involved. Yente, by activating the exterior trappings of Talmudic language, namely these discourse connectives, essentially ‘‘masculinizes’’ herself, the sole breadwinner of her

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family, and especially in her world filled as it is with weak male figures: a husband (now dead) who never worked, a chronically ill son, a lodger whose wife beats him, and of course a rabbi so overcome at the end of the story by her verbal torrent (the verbal arts usually the preserve of rabbis) that he can do nothing but faint.109 This brings us to the role of the initial question itself. As was mentioned, it is not just a question but a shayle, a question on a ritual religious matter. In a normal state of affairs, why else would she be coming to see a rabbi? In this way it starts out like the setup to any number of jokes.110 Ultimately, however, what becomes clear is that Yente’s repeated refrain becomes the shayle, that is, the metalinguistic question itself is the engagement in a ‘‘ritual’’ activity. This is exactly that ‘‘talkative behavior’’ mentioned previously, fully integrated into the rhythms of everyday life. The point in bringing ‘‘Dos tepl’’ to bear on a discussion of the Tsenerene is to show on the one hand how embedded this conversational logic is as a potential and unproblematic feature of the literary language, and on the other hand to point out the textual-contact origins of patterns of ‘‘natural’’ speech, reflected and amplified in Sholem Aleykhem’s story. This is not to say that this particular story treats the discursive pattern neutrally. Sholem Aleykhem effectively uses it as a tool for making certain critical claims, particularly about the roles of women and men in shtetl culture. Rather, what it shows is the underlying naturalness of these patterns already apparent in the Tsenerene.

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y. l. perets’s conversational art in yiddish and hebrew

Yitskhok Leybush Perets (1852–1915) is usually grouped along with Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh and Sholem Rabinovitsh as one of the three ‘‘classic’’ Yiddish authors. The latter two are often referred to metaphorically as grandfather and father, respectively, leaving Perets as something of a black sheep. This sometimes protomodernist and sometimes neoromantic defies the kinds of categorization that can seem so easy (though admittedly unjustly) to apply to the others. Whatever one might say about the erstwhile socialist activist and literary impresario, whose imprimatur, avidly sought by a generation of young writers, could make or break their careers, it is beyond dispute that much of his own writing displays a fine linguistic sensitivity and inventiveness. That sensitivity reflects critical aspects of the nature and development of both Yiddish and Hebrew literary languages. Among the many kinds of stories Perets wrote, those that involved Hasidic themes, characters, and motifs have received much attention, both scholarly and popular, in the century or so since their original publication. These stories have been remarkably prone to nostalgic readings that replace a complicated,

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subtle, and modern art with a hackneyed and sentimental worldview. As the literary critic Shmuel Niger has noted about this trend: ‘‘How it happened that people started looking at Perets as someone who returned back to Hasidism and called on all of us to return back to Hasidism is something I cannot understand.’’1 However, what makes Perets’s Hasidic stories so interesting and important is their place in the van of a new stylistics for both Yiddish and Hebrew letters. In what follows, these innovations will be outlined through a close reading of one paradigmatic example of these stories—‘‘A shmues’’ (A Conversation)—in both the original Yiddish version and Perets’s own Hebrew translation of it. What is revealed is a vibrant if complex relationship to the Jewish discursive tradition that lies at the core of both parallel literary projects. There are drawbacks and benefits to narrowing the focus to a fine-toothed combing of a single story. It is difficult if not impossible to give a sense of the scope and breadth of an author’s work, let alone of a literary period, in one short story. Nor is that the goal. Rather, as the core of the concluding study of this book, this story offers a tantalizing constellation of nearly all of the features of Jewish discourse that have been discussed individually up till now. As such, it presents the opportunity to see these features in concert, in dynamic interaction. Much of Perets’s work, and certainly most of his Hasidic stories, are saturated with elements of Jewish discourse. In ‘‘A Conversation,’’ however, that discourse is also the subject. Perets’s Hasidic oeuvre consists of a number of Yiddish stories written between the late 1880s and the first decade of the twentieth century. The majority were written in Yiddish first, and many were subsequently translated by Perets into Hebrew, though in a handful of cases a story was originally produced in Hebrew. These stories were neither written nor conceived as a collection; rather, only after they were published individually were they collected together thematically. The very designation, therefore, of a Hasidic oeuvre is a retrospective operation, though one performed by Perets himself. As one might well imagine, there are many affinities between the stories. However, though I will refer to Perets’s possible project among these stories, this reference should be taken with a grain of salt and indicates more a shorthand method of grouping linguistic and stylistic tendencies. The two collections, Yiddish and Hebrew, bear two distinct titles: Khsidish (the Yiddish adjective or adverb for ‘‘Hasidic,’’ ‘‘a` la Hasidim,’’ or ‘‘Hasidically’’) and Chasidut (the Hebrew abstract noun for ‘‘Hasidism’’). The differ-

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ence in titles seems to point to the overarching divergence of linguistic and stylistic concerns in the two sets of stories. Where the Yiddish is in many ways a portrayal not only of the Hasidim but in the manner of the Hasidim, the Hebrew can often be seen more as a response to the social, literary, and cultural-ideological trend of ‘‘neo-Hasidism’’ in full bloom at the time of the composition of these stories.2 In this response, Perets’s critical stance is not to be downplayed. As so often is the case for Perets, in these stories and elsewhere he enjoys straddling the fence between praise and criticism. Shmuel Niger for his part uses the two terms khsidish and chasidut to make a different distinction.3 For him khsidish represents a cultural ethos, whereas chasidut is a religious-theological system. His point is ultimately that Perets was solely concerned with khsidish as an open mine of cultural ore and raw materials, where chasidut was a closed sociological object and thus not part of an artistic project. The confusion in labels—a system of thought and belief on the one hand and the name of a collection of Hebrew translations on the other—should not obscure the significance of either. Interest in neo-Hasidism was not the only stimulus for these stories. Many of them were written against a particular literary-historical backdrop. For these stories, and particularly for the story ‘‘A Conversation,’’ the figure of S. Y. Abramovitsh (1836–1917) looms large. In both Yiddish (where he is known as the so-called grandfather of modern Yiddish literature) and Hebrew, to varying degrees, his works lay down a foundational stylistics—in Yiddish with his satiric realism, and in Hebrew with his nusach (style).4 A term first employed in this context by the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik, the nusach refers to Abramovitsh’s attempt to fashion a distinctly literary style out of the various historical layers of Hebrew and freighted allusions to Jewish canonical sources. It was designed as a flexible medium for literary communication, an attempt to devise a way of representing ‘‘naturally’’ in a nonvernacular language; it was to become one of the dominant modern Hebrew literary styles, whose long shadow was cast well into the twentieth century. In addition to his own project and aesthetics, then, Perets was in part reacting to Abramovitsh’s vocabulary. In an article on Abramovitsh’s autotranslations from Yiddish into Hebrew, Menakhem Perry provides a useful programmatic frame: ‘‘because it is possible to treat auto-translation, particularly if it contains considerable shifts, as a re-writing by the author, one should check whether these shifts are really the consequence of the act of transferring from one literature to another, or whether they are changes that occurred in

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the poetics of the writer himself, changes that are also discernable in his works within the frame of one language.’’5 In Perets we can observe just such ‘‘poetic’’ changes. The details of this are the substance of much of what follows. Generally speaking, where in many respects Perets’s Hebrew may be seen as anti-nusach, that is, bucking Abramovitsh’s formula in favor of a more integrated, ‘‘organic,’’ and nusach-subversive stylistics, Perets develops for Yiddish what we might call a Yiddish nusach, a modernization of the literary style based on a conscious stylization of particular linguistic features. To be sure, these moves can often be subtle, but they are nevertheless important steps in re-forming both Hebrew and Yiddish letters. It is important to understand the critical scholarly context for this set of works. Not infrequently in the scholarly literature one finds Perets’s Hasidic stories and sketches referred to as ‘‘neo-Hasidic.’’6 Aside from the fuzziness of many ‘‘neo-’’ terms—I have failed to find a single reference to ‘‘paleoHasidic’’ literature, for instance—the term ‘‘neo-Hasidic’’ is something of an empty vessel, to be filled with whatever cluster of meanings seems appropriate in a given context. It seems that the term first applied to modern reinterpretations of the meaning and significance of Hasidism. According to one formulation, ‘‘modern or neo-Hasidism (specifically Berdyczewski and Buber) attempted to discover in Hasidism ethical values and a positive popular force’’ and to interpret ‘‘the values of Hasidism in secular terms.’’7 David Jacobson takes this specifically into the realm of the literary by maintaining that: when toward the end of the nineteenth century Hebrew writers became disillusioned with the teachings of the Haskalah, including its early opposition to Hasidism, a decisive trend was established in Hebrew literature, beginning in the 1890’s, in favor of the positive evaluation of Hasidism which had begun among the later maskilim. This trend, which has come to be known as neo-Hasidism, included essays, stories, retold versions of Hasidic tales, anthologies, and historical studies in which writers turned to Hasidism as a source of values which might serve as the basis for meeting the cultural needs of the present.8 No doubt this is accurate. Jacobson’s concern and focus, however, are the Hebrew stories of Perets. What’s sauce for the goose in this case is not necessarily sauce for the gander; what applies to Perets’s Hebrew stories does not automatically apply to his Yiddish stories even when the latter were autotranslations. Even use of the word ‘‘translation,’’ as we shall see, is somewhat

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misleading insofar as the projects involved in the two versions of any given story are often widely divergent. What makes the Hebrew version of a story ‘‘neo-Hasidic’’ may be quite different from what makes the Yiddish version so, if at all. This is an issue a reader must address when looking at both versions. Ken Frieden, in his analysis of Perets’s use of the neo-Hasidic genre (again, if there is such a thing), links this use to two contemporary trends, namely, an increased fascination with ethnography and a growth in Jewish nationalism.9 Hasidism fit the bill on both accounts, being both an authentic folk ‘‘movement’’ and a recasting of the spiritual and ethical concerns of the ‘‘nation,’’ a Great Awakening of East European Jewry. Of course, the forms which Perets devised to capture this vision were often retrospective and revisionist. Frieden remarks that Perets came to the genre after the onset of his ‘‘disillusionment’’ with socialism.10 In this view socialism, which could satisfy some kind of Jewish nationalism, was perhaps too cosmopolitan to reflect concerns of a traditional folk culture. I would argue to the contrary. The attractiveness of Hasidism—and for this retrospectivist trend it is precisely the original, early period of Hasidism that is the object of recovery—was based in exactly those elements that made socialism attractive, namely egalitarianism and nonauthoritarianism. What makes the stories ‘‘neo-Hasidic’’ is Perets’s passing through the crucible of socialism and ‘‘returning’’ that product to the folk. Inasmuch as Perets was himself never a Hasid, and his stories are fictions—or at least the imaginative recastings of folk materials by a secular writer—the difference between Perets’s ‘‘Hasidic’’ stories and Perets’s ‘‘neo-Hasidic’’ stories is ultimately cosmetic. Shmuel Niger would be even more forceful. In his reading, ‘‘Perets had no intention to idealize or even to ‘rehabilitate’ ’’ and as such ‘‘Perets was no Hasid, nor a ‘Hasidist,’ nor a ‘neo-Hasidist.’ ’’11 Rather, ‘‘his ideal Hasidim and Hasidic rebbes were not an acceptance and certainly not a ‘glorification’ of the real Hasidim; they were figures of art, products of Perets’s creative imagination . . . and that means that his artistic khsidish one can in no way identify with the chasidut from life.’’12 The connection to the reality of Hasidism was most often a pointed critique. In an important essay on Perets’s Hasidic material, the Yiddish writer Dovid Bergelson (1884–1952) characterizes that critical stance in strong terms: In general everyone labors under the misapprehension that Perets is the poet of the Hasidic-heavenly intimacy; when one takes the content of

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his work into consideration, one must say that Perets only desired to sing about the forms. The so-called imitators and followers of Perets fell into a particularly grave error; they copied or rehashed the Hasidic legends in the naı¨ve goal of becoming kinds of little Peretses. Perets, rather, in his reproduction of the old Hasidic images, secularized them in order to subvert them and to provoke outrage.13 This critique, especially of the authoritarian core of what Hasidism became, is echoed again by Niger: ‘‘The newness of the Hasidic way lay in the renewal of the belief in the great power of the tsaddik, in the miracle of his secret personality. Hasidism [chasidut] was, very really, a folk-movement, but its internal world, its kernel, its inner light, was the longing for the individual, for the great man, for the religious leader, for the redeemer.’’14 That is why, to the extent that ‘‘neo-Hasidism’’ can be understood as any kind of uncritical valorization, Perets’s stories should not be seen in this light. Terminological differences aside, when attempting to get at the mechanism of Perets’s approach, we need to highlight the centrality of stylistic and linguistic features in these stories. Perets clearly observed that Hasidim speak in certain ways,15 and he tried to capture, represent, manipulate, and stylize those linguistic behaviors to convey what he wanted to convey in his stories. The central concern in what follows is twofold: (1) to understand Perets’s linguistic manipulations in his Yiddish Hasidic stories, and (2) to chart the semantic transformations in their translations into Hebrew.

‘‘A shmues’’ Let us begin by unpacking one of his Yiddish stories, ‘‘A shmues’’ (A Conversation).16 A given story can be taken as paradigmatic insofar as the collection of these stories and their designation as Hasidic was ‘‘imposed retrospectively’’ by Perets.17 The choice of this particular story has a number of benefits. First of all, it is compact, which makes it easier to take in as a whole. Second, it is a dialogue; as such it gives us a representation—at times an overtly stylized one—of the spoken language of Hasidism, a central element in Perets’s reconstruction of this world. Finally, it is a conversation between two Hasidim of ‘‘opposing’’ courts. In Perets’s particular construction, it is not only a dialogue but a dialectic, and as a result it engages head on the traditional modes

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of Jewish discourse and argumentation. Gershon Shaked notes of Perets’s Hebrew stories—though it is often valid for the Yiddish ones as well—that ‘‘another . . . structure that Peretz also used to good effect was antithesis and paradox: two persons reacting in opposite ways to equivalent situations.’’18 The ‘‘disputation’’ that Perets engineers between the two Hasidim revolves around just such antitheses in a self-consciously ‘‘Talmudic’’ way. Ruth Wisse has argued with regard to this story in particular, but also to much of modern Yiddish literature, that the dialogical, argumentative structure was a way of exerting a kind of internal symbolic control over the modern world’s singularly negative reaction to Jews.19 However, Wisse’s argument—two Jews in search of a conversation—treats the dialogical model solely as a technique. This model, however, is actually much more than that; it is linguistic, part of the code itself, which is how Perets himself treats it. The original, Yiddish version of the story begins in the narrative present— ‘‘it is a warm, goodly-holiday day’’20 —and we are made the acquaintance of two old Hasidim just setting out on a walk in the country.21 We are introduced to the tall, thin Shakhne, ‘‘ ‘a survivor and refugee’ of the old Kotsker Hasidim.’’22 This phrase, ‘‘a survivor and refugee,’’ immediately sets up the emotional dynamic of the piece. On one level of the lexicon it means, as we find in Harkavy, ‘‘anyone,’’ as in the sentence ‘‘es vet nit blaybn keyn sorid upolit’’ (there will not remain anyone); only on a literal level does it mean ‘‘a remnant and fugitive.’’23 It is the literal level that Perets is activating. This is the level of the collocation’s biblical origin,24 where the reference is usually to the surviving remnant of a military engagement. This is the initial resonance to which the reader is meant to attune himself. The second resonance is the language of pogromology. The sorid upolit was the refugee of violence and destruction. In either case, the remnants are of those ‘‘battles’’ between Kotsker and Belzer Hasidim. The Hebrew version goes even further, presenting the two opposing camps in a mock epic struggle: ‘‘Formerly Zerakh had been commander of the host of Belz in its struggle against the students of Kotsk, and Shakhne had stood at the head of the brave soldiers of Kotsk in their war with the Hasidim of Belz.’’ Again, the high–low conflations are in both cases central, though brought about by slightly different means. It should be added here that though the language is being dealt with in earnest, the story itself is quite funny. The various conflations of high and low registers, the comic juxtapositions of Talmudic debate with mundane objects,

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and the context of two elderly fuddy-duddies playing out old feuds combine to risible effect. In addition, Perets no doubt was having some fun with familiar types, since as a child he had a Kotsker teacher and had attended a Belzer synagogue (shtibl).25 The other interlocutor is the equally thin but short Zerakh, ‘‘a ‘remnant’ of the old Belzer Hasidim.’’26 The word ‘‘remnant’’ does double duty. First, it reemphasizes the resonance of the first biblical phrase, in that nisher (‘‘remnant’’; literally, ‘‘the one who remains’’) is roughly synonymous with sorid and is used in similar contexts.27 Second, the interlocutors’ interpersonal history is given dimension: these two veterans have made a truce in their old age. This intimation, which is gestured at cleverly in the first sentence, is made explicit in what follows. ‘‘In youth they were enemies, mortal enemies.’’28 Times change, and age brings obsolescence. They left the struggle to the younger generation; as a sign of the changing of the guard, ‘‘in the study house, in winter, by the stove, they made peace. And now, during the interim days of Passover, on the first beautiful day, they are going out for a walk.’’29 In the span of half of a page we have been taken, with economic language, freighted though it is, from the immediate present back to these men’s youth and then once again to the immediate—now pastoral—present.30 This pastoralism is itself polyvalent. It is one important stream in early modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature. The elevated position of nature in post-Enlightenment and quasi-Romantic Jewish letters is often remarked upon, so no elaboration is necessary here except to note the midrashic-mythological shading it is given: ‘‘The sun is shining in a remote blue sky. The blades of grass free themselves from the ground; one can see quite clearly how an angel stands by each blade of grass and strikes [it saying]: ‘Grow! Grow!’ Troops of birds flit about, seeking last year’s nests.’’31 It is at this point, in mid–natural description, that Shakhne breaks in and addresses Zerakh. The staging is something like one of the bucolic Erasmian colloquies. In many ways that is exactly what follows, a Hasidic colloquy on neutral natural turf. Shakhne, the Kotsker, starts in: ‘‘Kotsker [Hasidim], you see—I mean true Kotsker; it’s not worth talking about today’s—only true, old Kotsker put very little stock in the Haggadah.’’32 The pastoral scene has been abruptly broken into. Despite the idyllic vernal setting, and despite the truce worked out between the two old men, Shakhne cannot help but justify his clan; his very first words are ‘‘Kotsker Hasidim, you see’’ (or equally well ‘‘Kotsker Hasidim, you must understand’’), introducing a proposition in which he not only

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believes, but apparently takes some pride. And as if anticipating some pedantic objection from his companion—as well as commiserating on their mutual lot in a decaying order—the proposition he is to assert is prefaced by a clarification of exactly which Kotsker his comment applies to. This is the first instance of the formal structure of their colloquy.33 As it grows and develops, it becomes clear that this simple conversation is a veritable Talmudic debate. To this proposition on the Kotskers’ disdain for the Haggadah Zerakh chimes in: ‘‘ ‘But in the matzah balls?’ smiles Zerakh,’’34 using the verb ‘‘to smile’’ as if it were a verb of speech (‘‘he said smilingly’’). This coy remark questions Shakhne’s premise and effectively takes up the gauntlet so offhandedly cast down. Shakhne, as one might well expect, finds this no smiling matter: ‘‘ ‘Of kneydlekh,’ Shakhne answers earnestly, ‘don’t make fun! Do you know the significance of ‘‘Do not return a slave to his masters’’?’ ’’35 First of all, the word translated here as ‘‘significance’’ is sod (literally ‘‘secret’’).36 What is being engaged, however, is the fourth and final tier in the traditional system of biblical interpretation known by the acronym pardes, to wit: (1) pshat: the exoteric and simple meaning; (2) remez: the allegorical or symbolic interpretation; (3) drash: the sermonic or homiletic interpretation; and (4) sod: the secret, hidden, or esoteric interpretation. The latter figures prominently in kabbalistic descriptions of the universe and the Godhead. Given the mystical orientation of Hasidism and the centrality of the Kabbalah to its worldview—sociologically kabbalism was a central tenet of the language of Hasidism—the resonance of sod is quite strong here. More important, though, is the fact that, much as it seems a non sequitur to Western ears, Shakhne adduces a textual example in support of his proposition. In a rabbinic context the ostensible irrelevance is an important feature in its own right, not only for the aesthetics of such debates but also as a demonstration of the cognitive and analytic acumen of the participants; and in the Yiddish context it is part of the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. Whereas this is the technical apparatus the old men use in their speech, the scene certainly presents a parody of it. The humor is in part a product of this high–low conflationary yoking of formal discursive patterns with two old men talking about matzah balls. Furthermore, with the introduction of matzah balls into the discussion of the Haggadah, Perets has turned his literary tables. The story at this point has itself become a literalization, or a clothing in a real-world situation, of a Yiddish idiom, ‘‘men meynt nit di hagode, nor di kneydlekh’’37 or elsewhere ‘‘er

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redt di hagode, nor er meynt di kneydlekh’’38 —‘‘he recites the Haggadah, but he means the matzah balls’’—meaning basically that while one may profess the spiritual, one desires the material. This linguistic turn of literalizing set metaphors is an important feature of Yiddish modernism in general,39 and, as we will see, it is even more important for Perets the protomodernist’s Hebrew versions. Its effect on the story, however, is another comic deflation of the presumably privileged position. The third-person narration in itself becomes a mediating force in the story. Zerakh’s response is set over against the scholastic and mystical dimensions of Shakhne’s statement: ‘‘ ‘For me,’ the Belzer says with a proud humility, ‘it is enough to know the meanings [or: devotional intentions] of the prayers.’ ’’40 Zerakh defiantly plays up his own strain of folk piety, eschewing Shakhne’s pedantry in favor of a simple understanding of the ‘‘meanings’’ of the prayers as sufficient for a good Hasidic life. However, even the word rendered here as ‘‘meanings’’—kavones—is itself yet another element in kabbalistic philosophy and prayer (in those contexts usually rendered in English as something like ‘‘devotional intention’’). With that sense echoing in our minds, we may see Zerakh asserting the authenticity of his particular system of piety and the Hasidic philosophy at odds with that of Shakhne and his Kotskers. His humble ideology is, after all, still a ‘‘proud’’ one. It should be noted immediately that this ‘‘proud humility’’ is an oxymoron introduced superdialogically, which is to say that though the vast majority of the text is recorded speech, the few narrative hitching posts (‘‘so-and-so said X,’’ ‘‘so-and-so said Y’’) are predominantly neutral. This one, however, is anything but neutral. The subtle critique is introduced through the narrator’s ironic back door, but it is still a critique insofar as the very anchor of the authenticity is described in terms of a kind of hypocrisy. Shakhne ignores this assertion and launches into a long homily on the cited biblical passage. ‘‘Well, the plain meaning is simple,’’41 Shakhne begins. The first thing to note is that he is beginning his disquisition just where one would expect according to the interpretative structure noted above, namely with the pshat, the plain meaning.42 Second, and more important, is this function word—meyle—at the beginning of the sentence. It is one of a number of Talmudic discourse ties adopted by Yiddish and expanded in its usage, not to mention a recurrent feature of Perets’s diction.43 Its basic sense is something on the order of ‘‘so be it,’’ ‘‘anyhow,’’ ‘‘in any event,’’ or ‘‘granted.’’ This is one level of its meaning in the story, too. In one sense it is a verbal cue to

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indicate Shakhne’s feigned ignoring of Zerakh’s comment. On a second level, however, it has a more technical application. In this sense it has the meaning ‘‘of itself’’ (related etymologically to mimeyle, which also has this meaning). This usage highlights both the independence of the pshat as being of distinct interpretative value on its own as well as Shakhne’s awareness of his own technical knowledge—but also his unawareness of its deflation through being applied to dumplings. By means of these subtle linguistic shades, elements of more or less ‘‘standard’’ Yiddish in their own right, Perets is demarcating the conceptual space of his story. Shakhne continues with the pshat of his text: ‘‘When a slave, a servant, or a peasant runs away, one is forbidden, according to the Torah law, to capture him, bind him up, and give him back over to his master, to his householder. The assumption is that when a person runs away he can no longer bear it [i.e., his condition] . . . that it is a mortal danger!’’44 This is an expansion of the pshat since it provides explanatory material not explicit in the text itself. The key for our purpose is the word minastam (the assumption is that). This is another element of technical Talmudic vocabulary that entered Yiddish and expanded its semantic endowment. In the ordinary language it is one of the words for the adverbial ‘‘probably,’’ alongside the Aramaic equivalent mistame (Yiddish mistome). In the technical sense it is used to voice a pronouncement of the anonymous rabbinic authority that ‘‘just is’’ (stam). That is to say, it indicates that what it modifies is generally applicable, from a position of nonspecificity. One can see how it developed the meaning ‘‘probably,’’ since what is generally applicable is most probably applicable in a more specific case. The points to stress, though, are twofold. First, that a word of technical provenance in a given set of texts of cultural, legal, and religious import should be borrowed and amplified such that it is of general and universal usage is, though not extraordinary, certainly noteworthy. Second, that Perets is once again very carefully constructing his language, using words and phrases whose semantic load is multilayered. In this way a simple conversation can also be an imaginative, humorous, and half-poetic re-creation of a Talmudic debate. Shakhne goes on: But the esoteric meaning45 is equally simple: the body is in the category of a slave—it is a slave to the soul! The body is a sensualist: it sees a piece of pork, another man’s wife, [an object of] idolatry, or what have

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you, and it just about leaps out of its skin. But the soul says: ‘‘Thou shalt not!’’ It must quiet down. And [equally so for] the opposite: the soul wants to do a good deed—and so the body must do it, dead tired though it may be; the hands must work, the feet run, the mouth speak. . . . Why? Because the master, the soul, so commands!46 What is much more transparent in the Yiddish than in any English version is the telescopic quality of the language. The argument—now clearly taking shape—advances through short, inelaborate pieces of thought and a compact, unadorned allegory. One situation is offered up for contemplation, and no sooner is it uttered than the opposite—farkert—is also given, a palpable exercise of the Gru¨belichkeitstrieb. Shakhne’s claim is certainly not legalistic in nature. Rather, it follows a kind of conversational logic of the aggadic literature, a reflection of the linguistic absorption of cultural and literary behaviors and modes of thinking. Even the sybaritic categories are illustrative. The three (eating pork, adultery, and idolatry) are not simply the infractions of a voluptuary; they are three of the most egregious sins, and the rabbinic phrases for two of them, namely ‘‘another man’s wife’’ (eyshes ish)47 and ‘‘[an act of] idolatry’’ (avoyde-zore, itself the name of a Talmudic Tractate), themselves entered Yiddish parlance. Shakhne continues: ‘‘And nevertheless: ‘Do not return!’48 Wholly giving the body over to the soul is also forbidden. The fiery soul would burn it up, turning it into ash. And if the Master of the Universe had wanted souls without bodies, He wouldn’t have created a world!’’49 The effect that Perets is working toward is becoming more and more apparent. We have here a solid example of the principle of griblen zikh,50 upturning meanings and seeking counterarguments, as one of the essential activities in textual debate; the process itself is of greater importance than the product. The linguistic cue is ‘‘nevertheless’’—un fundestvegn. This word, taken from the Germanic layer of the lexicon, both integrates the logical content of the argument into the multicomponent structure of the language and at the same time softly deaccentuates the Hebrew-Aramaic technical garb. In addition, the ‘‘nevertheless’’ serves to reintroduce the lemma in an abbreviated form. ‘‘Do not return’’ (loy tasgir), as both a notational abbreviation for the full ‘‘Do not return a slave to his masters’’ (loy tasgir eved el adoynov) and the name for the commandment itself, is in accordance with the common study-house way of making multiple references to a citation;

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economy of language is almost an aesthetic criterion. This further adds to the effect of Shakhne’s speech sounding authentic, freighting form with content. Shakhne now moves to the implication of his assertion: ‘‘And therefore, the body, too, has its privileges . . .51 ‘He who dwells on fasting52 is called a sinner.’53 (He who fasts a lot is called a sinner)54 —the body must eat! Whoever wishes to travel must feed his horse!’’55 Any residual doubt as to the stylistic well from which Perets is drawing is now gone. The move from element to element in the argument is governed by the conventions of conversation and the implications of contiguity, not by any formal logical criteria. The body’s rights are asserted in the conclusion from the immediately preceding discussion; to the leading question ‘‘Why would God have created bodies only utterly to negate them?’’ the answer is certainly ‘‘God didn’t,’’ meaning that the body, the physical, has some kind of prerogative. This is also a summation of one of the key tenets of Hasidism. And it is simultaneously a critique of a perceived kabbalistic tendency toward excessive or indulgent fasting, a critique that Perets offers elsewhere in his work.56 Perets supports this critique by deflating the force of Shakhne’s argument. In his folksy analogy, Shakhne lines the body up with the horse. The word for ‘‘horse’’ (ferd), however, is one of several words for farm animals that are also used in colloquial Yiddish for ‘‘idiot.’’ The dieresis that follows the word skhiyesn (privileges) is interesting. Ruth Wisse cites as ‘‘typical’’ stylistic features of Perets’s work ‘‘the compressed shorthand style that never stops to explain or to amplify’’ and ‘‘the unfinished sentence, trailing the three dots that became known as the Peretz trademark.’’57 No doubt this is the case. But it may also be true that—certainly for this story—there is an affinity between this and elements of rabbinic style, perceived by Perets, and made into a ‘‘modernized’’ literary version. Again, the resemblance is not fortuitous, but rather templatic. The dieresis in this context is not necessary. It may even be somewhat humorous. There is nothing untoward traditionally in close juxtaposition of a quote to the discussion preceding it. This may be an indication of a breath or pause; but again, it would be unnecessary. Another possibility could be the graphic separation of two elements (in a gesture to a readership now familiar with the Peretsian style)58 as a false start to highlight their actual semantic contiguity. Whatever the case, the spontaneous adducing of a citation that on its face appears irrelevant may be considered as a specific variety of conversational implicature. The maxim of relevance is flouted, but what is implied is Shakh-

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ne’s exegetical argument, to be laid out presently.59 Of additional significance is the almost mandatory topic-comment stylistics described earlier: a text is given a Yiddish gloss followed by a commentary or interpretation. This set element of traditional East European Jewish pedagogy, with its line-by-line and word-for-word rote repetition of the source text along with its Yiddish translation, not only was a deeply ingrained style of learning but became a deeply ingrained cultural and linguistic pattern.60 Not to have found it in this context would have been startling. Shakhne’s long lecture culminates as follows: ‘‘When another holiday or day of leisure61 comes around—you should rejoice as well! Take a drop of brandy, celebrate—your body, too! And your soul will enjoy itself, and your body will enjoy itself: the soul—because of the blessing; the body—because of the drop! Passover, the time of our liberation—come on, body, grab a kneydl! And it will be thereby exalted, made great! It is on the order of joy in religious fulfillment! Of kneydlekh, brother, don’t make fun!’’62 Shakhne’s conclusion comes full circle, bringing us around once again to the subject of kneydlekh and why, though the Haggadah itself may be of no great importance, the consumption of matzah balls certainly is, a matter even of metaphysical dimensions. More germane to our purpose is the structure of the following sentence, which is presented here much more literally in order to capture the condensation of language: ‘‘And the soul has joy, and the body has joy: the soul—from the blessing, the body—from drop!’’ First, the two-way distinction is expressed by repetition of the verbal phrase instead of coordinating both subjects together. This is done, as in the model texts, in order to take each subject in turn. Second, the notational-sounding quality of the explanation is heightened by the use of the article: ‘‘blessing’’ is determined as it is essentially the implicit made explicit, whereas ‘‘drop’’ (i.e., of brandy) is not determined because it is mentioned explicitly two lines before. The technical effects here, as well as through the use of carefully chosen rabbinic vocabulary, intensify the comic effect of a long-winded justification for the duty to consume matzah balls on Passover. The story continues as follows: Zerakh admits that the matter is deep and quite plausible;63 but he eats nothing soaked!64 [Shakhne says:] ‘‘You, then, derive pleasure from matzahs . . .’’ ‘‘Who gets full from matzah?’’ smiles65 Zerakh, ‘‘And

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anyhow, where does one get the teeth for matzah?’’ ‘‘How, then, do you fulfill [the apparent commandment] ‘You will rejoice in your festival’66 with regard to your body?’’ ‘‘I know? If raisin wine pleases it—so be it! I for my part take great pleasure in the Haggadah. I sit and recite and count out the plagues, and count and double them, and then double them once more.’’67 This little chunk of dialogue is a beautiful illustration of conversational logic at work. We do not have recorded for us Zerakh’s initial comment, only a report of it; our momentary removal from the immediate auditory context allows the content of Zerakh’s words to stand somewhat apart. His eating of nothing ‘‘soaked’’ becomes a ‘‘textualized’’ rebuttal of the matzah ball conclusion. It has been commented that one of the more recognizable features of Yiddish talkative behavior is the answering of a question with another question. In the event, that is the operative mechanism in this section of dialogue. Shakhne’s implied question, by saying ‘‘You derive pleasure from matzah,’’ hinges on the assumption that, his previous conclusion being applicable, Zerakh’s body must somehow take pleasure in Passover food. Zerakh’s halfhumorous response—‘‘Who gets full from matzah?’’—presumes that pleasure from eating only occurs through satiety. The question casts a doubt on Shakhne’s point. Zerakh makes a double doubt by saying that even were one to be able to get full on matzah, no one has the dental fortitude to carry it off. Uncomprehendingly, Shakhne questions the legitimacy of Zerakh’s point, given the fundamentally biblical character of the commandment he has derived for the body to consume matzah balls. This coding of assumptions into the questions themselves is how this style of debate operates; but it is also much of what has become ultimately Yiddish conversational style. And as the lines of inquiry get played out, the conversation takes abrupt turns and wanders down altogether different paths, as we shall see. ‘‘Boor!’’ [says Shakhne to Zerakh] ‘‘Boor? For so many miseries and harsh afflictions . . . for such a long exile of the shekhinah?68 —I think one should start a custom of saying [the recitation of] the plagues seven times, [and] seven times the ‘Pour out Your wrath’!69 The main thing— the plagues;70 I take such delight in them! And I would also like to open the doors during the plagues . . . they should hear! What should I

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fear?—They understand Hebrew?’’71 Shakhne is quiet for a while; then relates in the following words:72 ‘‘Listen, such a thing once happened by us! I won’t exaggerate [when I say that] ten houses away from the rebbe, may his memory be a blessing, lived a butcher. I oughtn’t sin by saying so—he is already in the other world—[but he was] a boorish butcher, a butcher among butchers! A neck like an ox, brows like brushes, and hands like logs! What’s more—a voice! When he speaks, it seems like distant thunder, an army firing! He was, I think, a Belzer Hasid.’’ ‘‘Is that right,’’ grumbles Zerakh. ‘‘Upon my word!’’ answers Shakhne with sangfroid, ‘‘He used to pray with strangely wild gesticulations, with all kinds of cries and whispers. When he came to ‘tizkeru,’73 it seemed as though water were being sprayed on a fire!’’ ‘‘Please, enough!’’ ‘‘Now, imagine it! What a tumult it became when such a fellow sits down (to read) the Haggadah! . . . You can hear every word at the rebbe’s house! Ah well, being a butcher, he made like a butcher; all around [our] table people laughed. The rebbe, of blessed memory, hardly moves his lips; but you can sense that he was smiling. . . . Later, however, when ce gentilhomme74 began to count the plagues; when they began to fly from his mouth like bullets, with him also banging the table as with a hammer, so that one could hear the glasses dinging; then the rebbe, of blessed memory, would fall into a gloom, into sadness . . .’’ ‘‘Into sadness—a holiday—Passover? What are you talking about?’’ ‘‘People actually inquired [about that]!’’ ‘‘And what did he respond?’’ ‘‘ ‘The Master of the Universe Himself,’ he said, ‘fell into sadness with the Exodus from Egypt!’ ’’75 What follows the ‘‘in the following language’’ (kehay lishno) is itself a Hasidic folktale clothed as an aggadic passage. Let us take these two elements in turn. First off, the essential feature of the Hasidic folktale as a genre, starting with the original exemplars in Shivchey ha-besht—tales of the life of Yisroel Baal Shem Tov (or Besht), the founder of Hasidism—and the stories of Nakhmen of Bratslav, is the presentation and glorification of saintly men, be they rebbes, the leaders of Hasidic ‘‘courts,’’ or tsadikim, pious men and even miracle workers. Shakhne presents Zerakh with a tale of the saintliness of his rebbe along with the necessary contrapuntal dig at the wild performative piety of the Belzer butcher. In the process this portion of Perets’s story becomes in effect a Hasidic folktale of a Hasidic folktale. The Kotsker rebbe’s didactic

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‘‘portrayal’’ of the Belzer butcher to his assembled audience is meant ultimately to produce a moral message; just as Shakhne via his portrayal of that story (and its dynamic situation) to Zerakh means to be morally instructive. It is this metaliterary (and metagenre) turn that allows for whatever critical or ironic readings which Perets may give it. The ironic move is subtle. A told tale might indeed be instructive; the didactic story used as a vehicle for criticism is not. But irony is a cagy creature. Ken Frieden orients part of his analysis of Perets’s Hasidic stories around the use of irony: ‘‘ ‘Irony’ is broadly defined as dissembling speech, ‘saying one thing and meaning another.’ Perets’s ironies unsettle his narrators’ overt expressions, and several of the major chassidic tales revolve around narrators whose own implicit ambivalences are essential to their meaning.’’76 There is an important methodological observation here, in that Frieden orients the analysis to stylistic and linguistic features, which is also my intent. A critical note should be made with regard to this understanding of irony. In Frieden’s discussion of the story ‘‘Kabbalists,’’ for example, he states: ‘‘But these dimensions [i.e., sentimentality and neoromanticism] are subtly counterbalanced by implicit irony and a critical thrust.’’77 This comment hedges the bets; ambivalence is not irony. It is not immediately clear what ‘‘implicit irony’’ would entail, unless as in our case above we are speaking of subtle irony. Insofar as the intent of Frieden’s analysis is to point up this ‘‘counterbalance’’ and selfsubversion of the stories, the tension presumably set up is between implicit irony and explicit irony. One way of understanding this dichotomy would be to say that such an opposition might serve to thematize the style and language of Jewish scholarly debate. This view makes sense since, at least as far as the story ‘‘A Conversation’’ is concerned, this thematization is central. The second, stylistic point has to do with aggada, as was mentioned above. Aggadic stories were mined in the canonical literature for all possible interrelations of meaning. Very often this was carried out by probing and subtle linguistic investigation of the passage in question, with an eye particularly for anomalies or nuances of diction, vocabulary, syntax, etc. By prefacing this quasi-aggada with the phrase ‘‘in the following wording,’’ Perets (the ‘‘redactional voice’’ of the tale) is foregrounding the language of the anecdote. As the story goes on to make clear, with the context being the Haggadah, and Zerakh’s ‘‘proposition’’ being a new institution of a more intense recitation of the ten plagues at the seder (it would seem to be something the Belzer Hasidim might hold near and dear), the specific use of the word ‘‘sadness’’

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becomes key. Zerakh is incredulous. The rebbe’s response to his own Hasidim’s similar incredulity is to say that God felt ‘‘sadness,’’ using the exact same Hebrew word (atsves), when the Jews fled Egypt. Now we see the aggadic stylistics at work, insofar as it is through the word ‘‘sadness’’ in the rebbe’s explanation that the topic shifted from the ten plagues to the Exodus.78 How is this shift achieved? The story continues with Zerakh’s question:

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‘‘Where did he take it from?’’ ‘‘A midrash! When the children of Israel crossed the sea, and the water covered and drowned Pharaoh and all his army,79 the angels began to sing a song; seraphim and ophannim flew about in all of the seven heavens with a song, with the good tidings! All the stars and constellations began to sing and dance! And the heavenly spheres,—can you imagine what a joyous thing it was, the impurity had been sunk! But the Master of the Universe stopped everyone; from the throne of glory a voice was heard: ‘My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you sing a song?’80 —My children are drowning in the sea and you rejoice and sing!81 For [even] Pharaoh and all his army, the power of impurity itself, God also created . . .’ And His mercy is on all of His creations,’82 as it is written!’’ ‘‘And there you have it,’’83 sighs Zerakh. He is quiet for a while and then asks: ‘‘If there is already such a midrash, what did he [i.e., the rebbe] achieve?’’84 This section begins in a very interesting way. Zerakh asks: ‘‘Where did he take it from?’’ In one respect this is quite predictable. Given the self-conscious modeling on rabbinic debate, the citation of another ‘‘authority’’ ’s opinion should almost automatically elicit the question of where that authority got his own evidence. Two points, however, need to be made. First, Perets presents Zerakh’s question in Yiddish, not using any one of several set Aramaic phrases ready-made for this context. As we have seen, Perets’s presentation of Hasidic Yiddish—not to mention a significant percentage of more standard Yiddish vocabulary—does not shy away from employing technical vocabulary. This was likely done precisely to avoid the wanton technicalism that might be perceived as a result—not to mention that Zerakh in general is less given to Talmudicisms than is Shakhne—as well as the fact that those particular collocations may be less integrated features than others. Second, the use of ‘‘to take’’ (nemen) in this context is purely idiomatic and the unmarked way of referring to the activity of adducing sources. This is a good example of how a Talmudic locution is internalized and then calqued,

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becoming part of simply ‘‘how one says that’’ in Yiddish. And the fact that Perets, in a story so saturated with jargon and technicalisms, should opt for the Germanic Yiddish ‘‘equivalent,’’ goes far in supporting this hypothesis about how the language was perceived by its users (particularly its linguistically sensitive ones) and what was considered to be simply Yiddish. To Zerakh’s question Shakhne presents a midrash on a midrash. It is a patchwork of textual justifications, which is interesting on its own as a good example of its genre. What is illuminating of the perceived nature of Jewish discourse is Zerakh’s very simple response. He asks, in effect, ‘‘If all the rebbe gave us is a midrash, and not an argument, then what exactly did he do?’’ The answer, as we might expect given Shakhne’s kabbalistic proclivities and orientation toward the ‘‘secret’’ meaning, will ultimately revolve around them. What is more relevant here, though, is the notion of ‘‘achievement’’ (as the verb oyfton has been translated here, or as glossed by the Wisse translation, ‘‘accomplishment’’)85 through argumentation, through making a new point, and not necessarily midrash. Certainly at least for Zerakh the key to ‘‘success’’ is specifically rational, intellectual illumination as against Shakhne’s more elemental, inspirational illumination. It is possible to see Zerakh as a stand-in for the Litvak misnaged in the traditional Hasidic-misnagdic polemic. This, though, is not an essential element in the present discussion, rather another stratum in the densely multilayered depiction that Perets paints for us. The story concludes in the following way: Shakhne stops and says in earnest: ‘‘First, Belzer fool, no one is obligated to innovate:86 ‘There is neither earlier nor later in the Torah.’87. . . The old is new, the new is old . . . Second, he revealed to us the secret of why one reads the Haggadah in a sad Sinai-melody, which is quite thoroughly moistened with sadness. And—third, through it he interpreted a [biblical] verse. ‘Do not rejoice, Israel, like the rejoicing of the nations.’88 Boor, don’t rejoice crudely: you are not a peasant! . . . Vengeance is not a Jewish thing!’’89 The polemic mentioned a moment ago is again gestured at here. Shakhne dismisses out-of-hand the Belzer’s ‘‘obsession’’ with the khidesh, the ‘‘innovation’’ or the giving of a new interpretation. The implicit Yiddish calque of this concept—oyfton—is made explicit when Shakhne refers to it as mekhadesh zayn, ‘‘making an innovation.’’ There is more than one way to make an achievement.

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More important is Shakhne’s second point. Aside from his continued emphasis on the ‘‘secret’’ meanings, what must be pointed out is his method of getting to his conclusion. It is a Yiddish version of argumentatio ex praecisione, a so-called dyuke (literally ‘‘precision’’). Simply put, the dyuke is an argument form of an Amora (that is, a sage after the redaction of the Mishnah), such that inferences may be reasonably made based on the precise wording of a statement of a Tanna (that is, a sage prior to the redaction of the Mishnah). According to Daniel Boyarin, the dyuke is ‘‘the fundamental building block of Talmudic logic and interpretation and functions in Talmudic logic just as the syllogism functions in Aristotelian logic.’’90 What, then, is Perets doing? If we map the formal scheme onto our story—this is not strictly speaking necessary insofar as the argument form itself is the point, yet since Perets is focusing our attention on exactly this kind of relationship, it is certainly not out of place—Shakhne is our Amora and the rebbe whom he describes is our Tanna. Reviewing the story, we see that the only recorded speech of the rebbe himself is: ‘‘The Master of the Universe Himself . . . fell into sadness [atsves] with the Exodus from Egypt!’’ This is our would-be Tannaitic statement. Shakhne’s inference on the statement—his second point—is the reason, really the ‘‘secret’’ (sod), that preoccupies Shakhne’s thought, ‘‘why one reads the Haggadah, even the plagues from the Haggadah, in a sad Sinai melody, which is quite thoroughly moistened with sadness [atsves].’’ The structure presumably has to do with this ‘‘sad Sinai melody.’’91 That is how one is to recite the ten plagues, and not as a sevenfold triumphant recitation before an open door. Throughout the preceding analysis, such a short story has yielded a trove of information on Perets’s thematology, stylistics, and language. They are all intimately bound up with one another. I have tried not to neglect the salient features of each, even though it is Perets’s language that is the particular focus here. What we can say generally is that the nature of Perets’s project is a kind of stylization of reality. Through his portrayal of these groups’ language, it becomes a story about the discourse using that discourse, in a carefully crafted ‘‘meta-Talmudicity.’’ What makes this possible and what makes it so effective is that the constellation of features that Perets has chosen to stylize in the construction of his characters’ dialogue—and it is important to note again that the content of ‘‘A Conversation’’ is almost entirely a conversation—is in many respects simply how one would say it, at least as literary mimesis. It is as if the mask of the stylization were made of glass: the mediation of what lies beneath is transparent, but nevertheless a mediation.

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The Hebrew Version: Preliminary Remarks Perets’s Hebrew version can only very broadly be considered a translation. The story’s contours and much of the detail remain consistent. However, not only the feel of the story but also its ‘‘meaning’’—to the extent that stories have meanings—are altogether different. The reasons are opaque. When addressing the issue, though, one needs to say what often goes without saying, that one version is written in Yiddish and one version is written in Hebrew; and there is a reason for that. To say, for instance, that the reasons were idiosyncratic—‘‘I, for my part, write for my own pleasure’’92 —is to sidestep an accounting for the differences. The historical trajectories of Hebrew and Yiddish literature are quite different. The remarkable thing, when one focuses particularly on the belletristic production from the mid-nineteenth century and into the period of modernism, is that these two literatures were often written by the very same authors. Characterizing the particulars of this divergence is not the immediate concern here, particularly as it has been well documented and studied. The important point is that the concerns of a literature in a language without a speech community are very different than those of a literature in a language with a very large, vibrant, and diverse speech community.93 Linguistic innovation and experimentation are ‘‘easier’’ in Hebrew than in Yiddish insofar as the conventions and expectations of a spoken language differ from those of a ‘‘purely’’ literary language. Take the example of the letters of He´loı¨se and Abelard. Certainly they both spoke some kind of French, yet their love letters—to be sure an intimate correspondence—were composed in Latin. This is not an exact parallel to our case, but certain issues are shared. Had the letters been written in French, for instance, the risk was run that they might slide into convention or even triteness. Opting for a literary language allowed for a kind of freedom and flexibility that might sound stilted or odd in a vernacular tongue. Something similar applies for the Hebrew-Yiddish case. Revisiting the earlier discussion of neo-Hasidism, one often encounters the idea that Perets’s conceptual orientation to Hasidism was in some sense Romantic (or even broadly nationalist). David Roskies characterizes Perets in his later work as ‘‘the great rehabilitator of Hasidism.’’94 This notion of rehabilitation is a telescopic version of neo-Hasidism (in Niger’s words: ‘‘Perets had no intention to idealize or even to ‘rehabilitate’ ’’).95 The danger in a reconstruction of this

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rehabilitation rests in a muddy conflation of projects and ends, particularly for a writer and autotranslator such as Perets. The conclusion of Ken Frieden’s chapter on Perets’s Hasidic stories, a very good analysis, steps into this muddy water. He says: ‘‘By reappropriating this [i.e., Nakhmen of Bratslav’s stories recorded in Hebrew and Yiddish] and other sources in his pseudo-chassidic stories, Peretz combined cultural depth and social commentary. A delicate parodic balance holds in suspension nostalgia and criticism, archaic Hebrew diction and everyday Yiddish cadences.’’96 This summation seems to be saying that despite the obvious tensions between the Yiddish and Hebrew versions, when taken together they are complementary. It would be logical to ask whether they were meant to be taken together (putting aside Perets’s own assertion that he wrote for himself alone). Composing a Venn diagram of readership, if possible, might well show a relatively narrow intersection. Readership aside, it is immediately apparent how different the versions are. Complementarity is not necessarily the most precise model. Jacobson’s generalization—‘‘Peretz . . . saw Hasidism as a source of the aesthetic vision which guided the direction he sought for the development of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in his day’’97—also follows this path. First of all, a statement such as this gives the individual author, no matter how great, perhaps a little too much agency in the ‘‘development’’ of a heterogeneous set of literatures. Second, and more importantly, ‘‘aesthetic vision’’ is exactly the monolithic notion that is at odds with what Perets was actually doing. Another access point to this discussion may be taken from Menakhem Perry’s article cited above. In speaking of Abramovitsh’s work, Perry asserts that: The auto-translation of Mendele brings together two systems of literary norms which were actually competing with one another. The works could serve the two literary models because: (a) the translation involved shifts and the works changed their character in some respect; (b) each one of the two literary traditions perceived Mendele’s text differently, created a different hierarchy of components in the work, centered different elements. The actual differences between the text in Yiddish and the text in Hebrew are smaller than the modes in which the text is perceived in each of the two literary traditions.98 With regard, though, to Perets, who is a scion of those traditions, the goal of this discussion is to demonstrate how considerable those ‘‘actual’’ differences are from the linguistic-stylistic point of view.

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Up until this point it has been essentially a matter of convenience to label Perets’s Hebrew stories as neo-Hasidic. It is worth a moment to refine the idea before moving on. For the majority of his Hasidic stories Perets’s Hebrew versions were translations of the Yiddish. This was accomplished in the cultural context of neo-Hasidism, and this context is the garb that Perets gives some of his stories (ultimately to critical effect). These stories, however, often undermine the neo-Hasidic genre, being not exactly parodies as much as subtle subversions, crafty and nuanced. To this extent Frieden is very clever in labeling these stories ‘‘pseudo-chassidic.’’ The term ‘‘pseudo-neo-Hasidic’’ would even highlight this issue further. The notion of nostalgia needs also to be addressed for a moment. Despite the fact that Frieden used the term ‘‘nostalgia’’ in the statement noted above, it should be taken in a more technical sense, especially in light of his noteworthy observation that ‘‘these chassidic tales have, too often, been misunderstood as sentimental retellings of folk traditions.’’99 Sentimentality and nostalgia (in that sense) are seldom part of Perets’s Hasidic stories, neither in Hebrew nor in Yiddish. And should one be able to tease such things out of a reading of the stories, they must be read as being thoroughly doused with irony and criticism. The overlay of such ideas in contemporary sentimentalist criticism does a disservice to the complexity and originality of Perets’s stories. Before we turn to Perets’s Hebrew version of the story, it will be useful to sketch the basic contrasts of the project and language of Perets’s Hebrew and Yiddish Hasidic stories. In literary terms, if the orientation of the Hebrew stories is (neo)romantic, that of the Yiddish stories is realist, to the extent that the situation and ‘‘linguistic’’ realizations are meant to seem real, authentic, or genuine, though at the same time parodic. If we feel compelled to retain the term ‘‘neo-Hasidic’’ as a shorthand to refer to the Hebrew stories, it might be appropriate to coin the term ‘‘aletho-Hasidic’’ to refer to the Yiddish ones with reference to issues of language. First of all, the terms ‘‘neo-’’ and ‘‘aletho-’’ are set together to activate the conceptual meaning of ‘‘neo-’’ as against its chronological one. But more importantly, it encapsulates the difference at the heart of the discussion. The project of neo-Hasidism involved a romantic idealization of Hasidism as pure folk culture and the necessity of its ‘‘rehabilitation.’’ The root ‘‘aletho-’’ has the sense of ‘‘true,’’ ‘‘authentic,’’ or ‘‘genuine’’; and ‘‘aletho-Hasidism’’ can therefore be taken as a depiction of Hasidism that is neither idealized nor romanticized, but rather shows it as a living reality, something to be described not imagined, and essentially human, entailing positive as well as not-so-positive elements.

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The effects of language use are striking. In the Hebrew version, the defamiliarization of Hebrew idioms allows Perets the freedom of novelty while at the same time stressing the self-consciously literary contours of the stories, as will happen using a strictly literary language. His Hebrew is not the language of Abramovitsh’s nusach, namely the hodge-podge quilt of multilayered and heterogeneous languages of the canonical sources (biblical, Talmudic, rabbinic, etc.) stitched together in an ‘‘as-if’’ Hebrew-speaking reality.100 Even though in the nusach itself the rabbinic layer was heaviest, there is nothing self-consciously ‘‘as-if’’ about the world of Perets’s Hebrew stories. His Hebrew is unapologetic in that regard. The Yiddish stories involve a different kind of linguistic ‘‘nativization.’’ As we have seen, the Yiddish of Perets’s Hasidim is good colloquial, Hasidic, Talmud-colloquy Yiddish. This is not to say that there was not some degree of stylization involved. After all, as Roskies notes, ‘‘the fact that Peretz met a hasidic rebbe only once in his life, in the offices of the Warsaw Jewish community council, gave him freer rein than Dubnow, who had to mediate historical documents, and Berdyczewski, who had to reconcile his personal experience. Peretz’s hasidim were free to dance and sing to their hearts’ content.’’101 But then again, Roskies goes on to point out that ‘‘folk speech was for him the language of the Zamosc study house, which is why his preferred folk narrators were still mostly rebes (teachers of boys) and rebeim (hasidic leaders).’’102 The two statements are not in and of themselves contradictory. We need to stress the underlying representative nature of the language project as a whole. The point is that Perets singled out a specific set of real, existing features to stylize, and thus what he chose to single out is telling of itself. It is this ‘‘realist’’ structure that allows for avenues and outlets for irony, comedy, criticism, and literary ‘‘playtime’’ that are altogether different in Perets’s Hebrew. To sum up, where the Hebrew project was described (albeit inaccurately) as one of ‘‘rehabilitation,’’ the Yiddish project was one of ‘‘rehabilimentation.’’ This is not to claim for Perets alone the laurels of innovation. Use of a Hasidic dominant stylistics with a strong Yiddish substrate certainly predates Perets. As Ken Frieden has pointed out, Joseph Perl’s (1773–1839) parodic novels—most notably Megale tmirin (The Revealer of Secrets) from 1819— masterfully pioneer precisely this terrain. Ultimately Perl would succeed in ‘‘recombin[ing] the most effective features of mishnaic, medieval, and Hasidic-style Hebrew to forge some of the most natural-sounding Hebrew from the early nineteenth century.’’103 Perets for his part was working under

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slightly different conditions. Not tied as strictly to maskilic goals as Perl, Perets steered away from the more strident satire of Perl’s generation. Additionally, like Perl contending with the stylistic trends of his time—the purple and atrophied prose of many maskilim—Perets’s divergence from the nusach was a prescient step. His verbal dexterity and inventiveness put him squarely in the upper tier of a tradition beginning with Perl.

‘‘Sichat chasidim’’

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We have looked at length at the reclothing; let us turn to the ‘‘rehabilitation,’’ to Perets’s Hebrew version of ‘‘A Conversation,’’ entitled ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (A Conversation of Hasidim).104 The mise-en-sce`ne, though informationally consistent between versions, is indicative of the tonal distinctions found throughout. For the sake of consistency in what follows, the Hebrew version will be set on the left and the Yiddish version on the right. On the first day of the interim days of Passover Shakhne and Zerakh went105 out in the heat of the day to talk a little.106 Shakhne is lean of flesh and tall of height, really a man of some size, but his head is bowed so that he might not encroach, God forbid, upon the feet of the Shekhinah; and Zerakh is also lean of flesh, but short of height, and when Shakhne speaks to him he raises himself up upon his toes and lifts his head. Shakhne is of the old remnants of the Hasidim of Kotsk,107 and Zerakh is of the old remnants of the Hasidim of Belz.

It is a warm, goodly-holiday day and Shakhne—a tall, thin Jew, a survivor and escapee of the old Kotsker [Hasidim]—and Zerakh, also a thin, but a short Jew, a remnant of the old Belzer [Hasidim]—set off beyond the town, out for a walk.

The first noticeable difference is in length. The Hebrew version is nearly twice as long, where a faithful translation would have been shorter in Hebrew

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given Hebrew’s synthetic nature. We are allowed to dwell on the characters’ physicality and whiffs of possible moral associations. The story’s ultimate privileging of Shakhne and his position is foregrounded here, where the Yiddish submerges it completely. The second difference is in the manner of presentation. The Yiddish is a simultaneous gush of information. Within the span of a single sentence the narration proceeds as a succession of aside comments to the main sentence: the day V Shakhne’s stature V Shakhne as Kotsker V Zerakh’s stature V Zerakh as Belzer V go for a walk. This is conversational style, the exterior projection of a mental process, fluid and digressive, as opposed to an orderly, regulated, and methodical progression. As Yudl Mark noted of Perets’s Yiddish, ‘‘the language of Perets is that of a conversationalist.’’108 The Hebrew version is the exact opposite. It is an orderly topic-comment presentation, a series of three paragraphs, the first two of one sentence each: (1) the day V Shakhne and Zerakh go for a walk; (2) stature of Shakhne and Zerakh; and (3) Shakhne and Zerakh as Kotsker and Belzer, respectively. It is in this way a conventional narrative. But unlike the Yiddish, it does not foreground the conversational theme that is at the heart of the Yiddish version. One might say that where the Hebrew gives us a conventional mise-en-sce`ne, the Yiddish sets up its own mise-en-the`me. On the level of specific locutions, there are also significant differences. First is the fact that in Yiddish, as was discussed above, two separate biblically resonant expressions were used of Shakhne and Zerakh, ‘‘a survivor and escapee’’ (‘‘a sorid upolit’’) and ‘‘a remnant’’ (‘‘a nisher’’). Both in the Hebrew are described as ‘‘survivors’’ (‘‘sridim’’). This dimension is telling. First of all, in the Hebrew Perets was making a self-conscious departure from the nusach. ‘‘Sorid’’ would be an unmarked term in the way that ‘‘sorid upolit’’ would not. In addition, in the realm of Hebrew poetics there was not as much of an onus on verbal repetition as in Yiddish. Use of the phrases ‘‘of the old remnants of the Hasidim of Kotsk’’ (‘‘mi-sridey ha-zkeynim lachsidey kotsets’’) and ‘‘of the old remnants of the Hasidim of Belz’’ (‘‘mi-sridey ha-zkeynim lachsidey belz’’) merely sets up an unmarked descriptive parallelism, rather than focusing on the differences. Second, in the amplification of the discussion of Shakhne’s stature in the Hebrew Perets toys with an idiom. Shakhne’s considerable height is mentioned, ‘‘but his head is bowed so that he might not encroach, God forbid, upon the feet of the Shekhinah.’’109 The idiom in Hebrew is ‘‘dochek et ragley

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X’’ (literally, ‘‘to press the feet of X’’), which means something like ‘‘to encroach upon someone’s place,’’ ‘‘to take someone’s place (by force),’’ or ‘‘to usurp.’’ As is common among Jewish modernists for whom language was such a central concern,110 idiomatic expressions are set material for literalization. With Shakhne being so tall, for him to stand fully erect, literally setting his head against God’s feet—as God says in Isaiah 66:1, ‘‘The heaven is my throne and the earth is the footstool for my feet’’—would be an unseemly act of hauteur and encroachment.111 Keeping his head bowed, then, was a demonstration of humility and piety. The Hebrew story is framed at the outset by a literary artifice quite distinct from that which we find in the Yiddish. The use of foot imagery is an interesting topic on its own. Feet appear once in the Yiddish version but five times in the Hebrew. The reader’s attention is focused on the podal extremities of the characters. So, for instance, Zerakh ‘‘lifts himself up a little on the toes of his feet’’ (‘‘mitnasey ketsat al behonot raglav’’) in order to talk with Shakhne; the two Hasidim are said to walk ‘‘heel to toe’’ (‘‘okeyv betsad agudol’’) during their conversation; and in the description of the butcher, ‘‘his legs were like the legs of a bull’’ (‘‘ve-raglayim lo ke-ragley hapar’’). Not to make too much of it, we may nevertheless note that the first introduction to the foot imagery is in the very idiom above—‘‘to press the feet of.’’ Aside from the idiomatic importance of this phrase, it establishes an erotic undercurrent in the story. First, the literal image of the idiom in the line ‘‘lest he press, heaven forfend, upon the feet of the Shekhinah’’ is certainly erotically charged—which is why the ‘‘heaven forfend’’ is pivotal, particularly in light of the traditional female gendering of the shekhinah (which makes ‘‘pressing upon her feet’’ all the more erotic). Remember the care with which the seraphim covered their ‘‘feet,’’ meaning their genitalia, from the sight of a human in Isaiah 6:2. How much more so, a fortiori, the Shekhinah itself might take offense at human encroachment in that region. The language of the story provides a subtle contextual ‘‘atmosphere’’ in which to read this suggestion. When reading lines like ‘‘and here arrived a time of love’’ (‘‘ve-hiney higia et dodim’’) with its reference to the erotically charged Ezekiel 16:8 and indirectly to the Song of Songs, and ‘‘they made peace together, and now they go out from the city to stroll in the day’s breeze’’ (‘‘ve-asu shalom beyneyhem ve-ata hem yots’im et ha-ir la-suach le-ruach hayom’’). Evoking a strong image of an old romantic couple perambulating in some Middle European alle´e, eros is in the air. (There may even be a gesture to Benjamin and Senderl in Abramovitsh’s novel Masoes binyomin hashlishi

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[The Travels of Benjamin the Third], where the friendship between the two male companions is described in terms of marriage, and Senderl is explicitly referred to as Benjamin’s ‘‘wife.’’) The story’s depiction of the feet was certainly not a fetishization a` la Pushkin (heaven forfend), but rather that this humorous eroticization underlines the subversive subtlety and artistry of Perets’s Hebrew style. Returning to the idiom ‘‘encroaching upon the feet of,’’ there is an important additional parallel reading. The idiom is indeed literalized, and the metaphor is visualized. The Shekhinah, the so-called in-dwelling of God, a kind of spiritual (or even mystical) presence of God in the world, is given feet, where in traditional imaginings it is more bird-like, its means of conveyance being wings (that is, pennate, not podate). Through the visualization of the idiom and the concretization of the image, it is not Shakhne’s piety alone that stoops his shoulders, but the weight of God standing on him,112 an oppressive image. This product of Perets’s subtle sensitivity to Hebrew as a literary linguistic medium is typical of the somewhat subversive character of his project in this language. Finally, the name of the town of Kotsk is given in the Hebrew as kotsets, a word whose use in this context is both comic and ultimately subversive. The reference is to a poem by Eliezer Hakalir that begins with the inscrutable line ‘‘as. qoˆs.es. ben qoˆs.es. qes.uˆs.ay leqas.s.es.’’ and the first two lines of which are used idiomatically in Hebrew to mean ‘‘doggerel (in verse . . .); difficult style; incomprehensible phrase.’’113 Before he ever says a word, then, Shakhne becomes a parody, and ultimately his long-windedness and preachy argumentation are predismissed. The technique that accomplishes this, though, is typical of Perets’s subversions. A toponymic pun,114 almost a throwaway gesture, is contextually revelatory for the story as a whole, and we are made to see the ostensibly serious situation through a lens that from the beginning does not let us take it seriously. First, whereas in the Yiddish the two Hasidim are described singly as dar (thin), we read in the Hebrew that they are dal-basar (lean of flesh). No matter what this might mean for their way of life (for instance, they might be mildly ascetic, or too poor to afford enough food, etc.), the resonance is Genesis 41:19, where this is the language used to describe the lean cattle in Pharaoh’s dream. This is clearly not a flattering description; in fact, the cows in Pharaoh’s dream indicate a curse or affliction. Given the two Hasidim’s ulti-

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mate fascination with the plagues of Egypt in the Haggadah, this allusion (‘‘lean of flesh’’) might serve to foreground that obsession. Additionally, the comic image of Zerakh raising himself up on the tips of his toes to talk with Shakhne veils a secondary impression. The verb used for this activity is mitnase, which does mean ‘‘to lift oneself up.’’ However, this verb also has the figurative meaning ‘‘to be boastful, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, etc.’’ In an offhand double entendre, we are introduced to the prideful side of this Hasidic personality. In the Yiddish, we are introduced to it later on when Zerakh is said to respond to Shakhne with a ‘‘proud humility’’ (‘‘shtoltser anives’’). The critique is the same. In the Yiddish it can be explicit. In the Hebrew, though, it must be at least partially submerged, but present nonetheless by dint of linguistic finesse. The pathos of these figures is further heightened in the Hebrew description by the incongruity of the natural setting in which their conversation takes place. We are told that they are going for a walk in nature beyond the city. Now, the commune with nature was in theory a cherished aspect of the Hasidic relationship with the world created by God. However, in practice the shtibl (the Hasidic prayer house) and other communal and religious institutions were the focal points of everyday life. For this story’s colloquy to take place out in nature is a self-conscious gesture at the distinction. Perets makes further use of this setting in descriptions such as: The sun warms the old men’s shoulders with the first fruits of its rays.115

The sun shines in a remote blue sky.

Lining up shekhem (shoulder) with bikurim (first fruits) points to a particular universe of discourse. The shekhem is not only ‘‘shoulder’’ but also that part of the shoulder used for bearing a load. Baskets of the gathered first fruits would be transported on the shoulder. Of course, this would have been done by strong, presumably young field workers. The situation in the story is an inversion of that state of affairs. Once again a metaphor is consciously visualized and its entailment is made literal.116 Another dimension of burden is outlined for these men. Let us take a small section of dialogue to see how some more of the differences operate. Immediately before the initial dialogue begins, the Hebrew has

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a sentence absent in the Yiddish: ‘‘The old men walk slowly, heel by toe, and converse.’’117 The phrase literally translated ‘‘heel by toe’’ is a Hebrew idiom roughly synonymous with the phrase preceding it (‘‘slowly’’) but picks out an ‘‘in-step,’’ ambling quality to their stroll. A possible reading of the idiom, as Alcalay notes in his dictionary, might be ‘‘cheek by jowl,’’118 meaning intimately, which is to say these two men are chatting amiably, at the appropriately intimate distance. In either reading, the more concrete, literal aspects of the idiom are picked up on and emphasized. The conversation begins thus: ‘‘The early Hasidim of Kotsk,’’ Shakhne began by saying, ‘‘the young ones, the aimless wanderers I am not speaking about—but the old ones among the Hasidim of Kotsk, they are not overly fastidious in the recitation of the Haggadah!’’ And Zerakh mocks on thusly: ‘‘Not the Haggadah is the main thing, but the matzah balls!’’ And Shakhne answers gravely: ‘‘Don’t belittle the honor of matzah balls, Zerakh! They are an accepted custom of the Jewish community, and there is something in it!’’ ‘‘Without a doubt—among the rich!—there they are filled with very good things . . .’’ ‘‘And do you know the significance of ‘Do not return a slave to his masters’?’’ ‘‘I don’t study the Bible with Rashi; the intention of the prayers is enough for me.’’

‘‘Kotsker [Hasidim], you see—I mean true Kotsker; it’s not worth talking about today’s—only true, old Kotsker put very little stock in the Haggadah . . .’’ ‘‘But in the matzah balls?’’ smiles Zerakh. ‘‘Of matzah balls,’’ Shakhne answers earnestly, ‘‘don’t make fun! Do you know the secret of ‘Do not return a slave to his masters’?’’ ‘‘For me,’’ the Belzer says with a proud humility, ‘‘it is enough to know the meanings of the prayers.’’

If we sketch the differences in detail, the differences in overall contour come into sharper focus. First off, Shakhne’s initial statement in the Hebrew

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is an impressive mixture of literate register with an attempt at a conversational style. He achieves the latter through a topicalization of ‘‘the early Hasidim of Kotsk’’ followed uninterrupted by ‘‘the young ones,119 the aimless wanderers I am not speaking about—but . . .’’ This topicalized false start, a kind of casus pendens, is exactly the sort of utterance in the state of production indicative of conversation rather than the chiseled poise and cadence expected of literary diction. This somehow feels talkative. However, it is more a flavor than a fullfledged realization. By and large Perets avoids these talkative gestures in the Hebrew text. Though his Hebrew is not highbrow, it is in most ways stylistically literary. In this segment of dialogue, it is Zerakh’s role that is augmented. Instead of his ‘‘smiling’’ activity, a gesture of connotation, in the Hebrew text he mocks on the sly. The adversarial quality of their relationship is its key feature, rather than the amicable competition of friends. Shakhne’s admonition not to disparage matzah balls is explained immediately.120 Eating matzah balls is not to be ridiculed because it is ‘‘an accepted custom of the Jewish community.’’ This is the presumption underlying much of Shakhne’s argument in the Yiddish, and the thing he is determined to ‘‘prove.’’ By making it explicit here, Perets puts the end of the discussion before the beginning, which softens the edge of what will come later. This anticipatory move is not, though, problematic if Perets’s intent in the Hebrew story is not the same as his intent in the Yiddish. The Hebrew leads us step by step ultimately to a moral discovery. The Yiddish leads us step by step through a conversation. Not only does Shakhne give us his underlying presumption about the eating of matzah balls, but he adds defiantly, ‘‘and there is something in it!’’ This is a rabbinic expression indicating the particular significance of a statement. It is not overly common, but Rashi does give us a succinct definition: ‘‘There are here significant things in this matter and one must give them attention.’’121 It is an affirmative assertion, if self-serving to Shakhne’s argument. The adversarial bent of their dialogue is tapped once again when Zerakh a few moments later tries to cut Shakhne off by maintaining that it is not essential to use Rashi’s commentary when studying the Bible. We will return to this in a slightly different connection in a moment. The point is to note the different ends to which the two versions are put. Zerakh’s immediate response is something that would seem rather out of place in the Yiddish version. The class consciousness of his remark that the rich make their matzah balls with expensive ingredients is simply not part of

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the discursive world and vocabulary of the Yiddish story. In the Hebrew it is but one more layer of the overt antagonism between the two camps. Zerakh’s misunderstanding (something of a clever pun) of what Shakhne said privileges Shakhne’s position, at least if erudition establishes privilege. The pun centers on the word dvarim (literally ‘‘words’’ or ‘‘things’’). It is an element of the idiom described above, dvarim bego (literally ‘‘there is something in it’’). Zerakh gives this phrase a literal interpretation, and says that the rich fill their matzah balls with dvarim tovim me’od (very good things), which is to say, they stuff their dumplings with choice fillings. Either he is overly clever—as Perets certainly is—or Shakhne’s intent has gone completely over his head; the latter is more likely given the instructive purpose to which this story is being put. The Yiddish story involves less of this kind of paronomasia. Rather, this is the kind of wordplay that operates in the literary strata of a language. As has been suggested several times, a central feature of Perets’s Yiddish version of the story was to feel around the conversational strata of Yiddish. Though there were concerted attempts at creating such strata in Hebrew (notably the nusach), Perets in his own Hebrew story was far less concerned with a portrayal of speech than with investigating the didactic and critical potential and capabilities of literary Hebrew. Wordplay was absolutely part of that investigation—and no doubt part of his own enjoyment as well— but it was play of a different order. On the notion of class consciousness just mentioned, despite attempts to soften Perets’s socialism, that was surely where his sympathies lay. This exchange about the rich and poor is one good indication of Perets’s concern. Perhaps the most explicit example comes in the explanation of the Biblical source text for the soul/master–body/slave analogy: The plain meaning is simple. If some slave flees, a servant or a worker, it is forbidden, according to the Torah law, to capture him, to bind him in fetters, and to return him to the control of his bosses, to deliver him into the hand of his masters.122

Well, the plain meaning is simple: when a slave, a servant, or a peasant runs away, one is forbidden, according to the Torah law, to capture him, bind him up, and give him back over to the lord, to his householder.

The list ‘‘slave, servant, or worker’’ is key. Beyond the elaboration of who is to be classified in the category of ‘‘slave,’’ a kind of elaboration that is almost

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de rigueur in such explications, the last word in the series immediately focuses our attention, namely ‘‘worker’’ (po‘el). There can be no doubt that for a Hebrew writer to use this particular word at this time is to call up almost reflexively the image of labor in the socialist context. Into Shakhne’s mouth, then, Perets is putting a secondary labor argument in just about as explicit a manner as he could without crossing the invisible line of acceptability in the Hebrew literary aesthetic. Additionally, as the story is a Passover story, the context of freeing working folk from bondage would have been front and center. And what is more, when (somewhat artificially) we juxtapose the two texts side by side, this final element in the Yiddish is ‘‘peasant’’ (poyer), thereby making something of a pun, poyel–poyer differing only in the liquid consonant in the Ashkenazi rendering. The categories in either case are not by and large Jewish, but rather, if not cosmopolitan, then certainly proletarian. The final exchange of this small section of dialogue reveals more about these two men’s interpersonal dynamic. Shakhne asks in the Hebrew, ‘‘Do you know the significance of . . .’’ and in the Yiddish ‘‘Do you know the secret of . . .’’ The significance of the term ‘‘secret’’ (sod) was discussed above. It is not an integral feature of the story; rather, it gives some subtler shadings to the depiction of Shakhne’s character. And coming unmediated after his admonition to Zerakh, it is given a conversationally logical connection to that admonition. In the Hebrew, there is no ‘‘secret’’ meaning, only a matter (inyan) to be explicated and the specific issues involved in a particular biblical verse to be delineated. For Zerakh, who ‘‘does not read the Bible with Rashi’s commentary,’’ that is irrelevant.123 In the Yiddish, there is no mention of how Zerakh studies the Bible. Instead, he is described as responding to Shakhne (that it is enough to know the meanings of the prayers) ‘‘with a proud humility.’’ In this flash of wordplay, we get not only a succinct pre´cis of the means of ‘‘combat’’ between the two Hasidim, but also an implicit critique of their attitude. It is all encapsulated in this enigmatic oxymoron ‘‘proud humility,’’ a virtue as a vice, and vice versa. Taken together, the basic point of all of the foregoing is the difference in the underlying currents of the two versions. It is a matter of the Hebrew’s didacticism (which sets up an aesthetic distance) opposite the Yiddish’s conversationalism; what is made explicit and what is left unsaid. This obviously shapes what is said—that could very well go without saying. What is more, though, is that it shapes how that is said. The length difference between the two versions is not solely a matter of

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additional detail. Those details are in the service of different ends. Take, for example, the list of what the body illicitly yet irresistibly desires: The body is a sensualist: it sees pork meat and opens its mouth to eat; another man’s wife—and it transgresses against ‘‘Thou shalt not covet’’; [an object of] idolatry facing it—and it is pulled after it in bonds of iron.

The body is a sensualist: it sees a piece of pork, another man’s wife, [an object of] idolatry, or what have you, and it just about leaps out of its skin.

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The literary dimension should be fairly clear here. Except for the few, by and large people do not speak in paragraphs, as Shakhne does here in the Hebrew. More than an argument is being made. Or if it is, it is meant to be furthered by rhetoric more than the discursive means outlined previously for the Yiddish. This rhetorical work is played out in the following passage: And the soul says: ‘‘Forbidden!’’ ‘‘Thou shalt not!’’ ‘‘Thou shalt not eat!’’ ‘‘Do not touch!’’ The soul commands and the body is obliged to obey! And thus it is as a positive commandment: the soul desires to establish a commandment of immersion, and the body descends into cold water! . . . The soul wishes the redemption of prisoners, and the body runs its feet ragged; because the legs, the hands, and all the limbs of the body follow the orders of the soul! The body submits because the dust of the ground is in the category of a slave! And to whom does it yield? To its masters; for the portion of God above, for God’s messenger, and for his substitute in this world!

But the soul says: ‘‘Thou shalt not!’’ It must quiet down. And [equally so for] the opposite: the soul wants to do a good deed—and so the body must do it, dead tired though it may be; the hands must work, the feet run, the mouth speak . . . Why? because the lord, the soul commands!

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Clearly this is not just a matter of additional detail or elaboration. It sets up not just hypothetical situations, but imaginative ones. The analogy is even hyperextended. The pivot point in the Yiddish description is the phrase un farkert (and the opposite), which establishes the validity of the original assertion for a case where the factors are reversed; this is to say, we go from a situation where the body initiates an activity which is blocked by the soul to one in which the soul wishes something done and the body cannot but obey. It is a somewhat nuanced play between desire and volition. The Hebrew version is an austere, autocratic version of command and submission. The case in point would be the soul’s bidding: in the Yiddish version the soul wants to do some unspecified good deed (‘‘di neshome vil a mitsve ton’’). In Shakhne and Zerakh’s worldview this is unremarkable, in that a mitsve is an end in itself. The Hebrew reflects a more capricious system. ‘‘And thus it is as a positive commandment: the soul desires to establish a commandment of immersion’’ (‘‘ve-kheyn hu be-mitsvat ase: chaftsa hi ha-neshama le-kayem mitsvat tevila’’). Either the soul simply wants the body to take a bath, in which case the higher-falutin language borders on the comical, or the commandment ordained with no hint of a rationale given—followed by the unpleasant descent into frigid waters—is meant to reflect a much starker worldview. The central figure in this discussion is the polysemous word mitsve/mitsva: (1) ‘‘good deed,’’ (2) ‘‘commandment.’’ There is no doubt which meaning is activated in each case. In this context, we see how in the Yiddish case all of the features point toward a kind of general ethical feeling, whereas in the Hebrew the depiction is of a philosophical system. Again, these two versions are in conversation with each other. Even though the words ‘‘translation’’ and ‘‘version’’ are being used, these are more shorthand designations than fully descriptive terms. It is not simply that Perets ‘‘translated’’ mitsve with itself, cleverly picking out its two different semantic values. Rather, we find two bound constructions: in the Yiddish mitsve ton (to do a good deed), and in the Hebrew mitsvat ase (a positive commandment).124 There is no punning here. The context of expression leaves very little leeway for multiple interpretations. Now that we have explored a couple of passages and how they operate, how they achieve their effects, it might be useful to look at some of the larger patterns of language use. The point to be stressed is that, especially when we take the two stories together, which shows everything in greater relief, it is the foregrounding or backgrounding of the discourse itself that makes the stories

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as effective as they are. Let us take three passages in turn as telling examples of this assertion. First, in Shakhne’s elaboration of the ‘‘simple meaning’’ of the biblical prohibition against returning a slave to his master, he maintains:

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Presumably [mistama] when a man flees he does not flee for no reason, [rather] it is an indication that his masters are cruel, that they do not deal properly with him, that his power to endure has failed, that the waters have reached his life.125

The assumption is that [minastam] when a person runs away he can no longer bear it . . . that it is a mortal danger!

The feature to underscore here is that in both Hebrew and Yiddish, the technical layer of the language is engaged. The Yiddish version’s use of minastam was discussed earlier. Both min ha-stam (Hebrew) and mistama (Aramaic; also the form used in the Hebrew version) exist in Yiddish with roughly the same meaning. Mistome, though, is by far the more common, unmarked form, at least in the sense of ‘‘probably.’’ Using the Hebrew form marks the expression; or at least it does not bring with it the more quotidian usage and associations. It is, or at least it becomes in context a technical expression. This is the level of language use that Shakhne seems to employ in order to privilege the technical merits of his argument. For the Hebrew text, we see the Aramaic form of the expression, mistama. It is technical much in the same way as minastam is for the Yiddish, namely that for a text in Hebrew to use an Aramaic form of an expression for which there is an adequate Hebrew equivalent (here even a calque) is, it would seem, a self-conscious choice. It is both native and foreign at the same time. For the contemporary Hebrew reader, though, a reader who no doubt was also a speaker of Yiddish, there must certainly have been an echo of everyday conversation in the use of that particular word. In this way, the use of this term kills two birds with one stone in the Hebrew version. Second, toward the end of the conversation, Zerakh asks Shakhne for the source of the rebbe’s assertion in the following way: Whence did he derive it [ha mina ley]?

Where did he take it from [vu hot er es genumen]?

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The Yiddish was dealt with earlier. To iterate, the activity of demanding an authority or a prooftext is a fixture of the kind of debate being modeled here by these two Hasidim. Their language, though in many cases rather technical, is nevertheless how one would say such things in Yiddish. There is nothing striking or startling in the question ‘‘vu hot er es genumen?’’ In fact, it feels quite natural. The Hebrew, on the other hand, is another story. The expression used here—ha mina ley—means the same as the Yiddish, but there is nothing ‘‘natural’’ about it. This phrase was not (and still is not, to my knowledge) an element in the active vocabulary of literary Hebrew. It is a technical Talmudic expression, to be sure—such expressions were not uncommon in the literary Hebrew of this period—but it is an expression that is immediately jarring. That may very well be exactly the desired effect. Its use graphically points out the intended parody underlying the story. These two men become somewhat ridiculous in this curious pedantry. It is not entirely brinkmanship, but the nearly canonical feel of their language is outlined in neon by a startling usage such as this. Finally, shortly thereafter in the conversation, after the presentation of the midrash, Zerakh asks: And if it is a midrash—what did he innovate [ve-im midrash—ma chidesh hu?]?

If it is just a midrash, what did he achieve [oyb es iz vayter a midresh, vos hot er oyfgeton]?

For the Hebrew, the discursive element is once again backgrounded. The notion of innovation is a neutral theme. Shakhne reacts somewhat vigorously, yet this, too, is uncontroversial given his goal in the story. For the Yiddish, the implication of innovation is amplified; it is an active accomplishment, a tuung, an actual deed. And the intralinguistic calquing is, again, typical of Perets’s perception of how this language operates. Shakhne reacts similarly in the Yiddish story. Here, however, the irony is not lost, insofar as his ultimate point—‘‘vengeance is not a Jewish thing’’—is in effect a novelty of its own. Robert Alter has described how for the early stages of modern Hebrew literature ‘‘the language of realism’’ is only an approximation of the ‘‘real’’: it is ‘‘only rarely a performance of the vernacular but is typically a complex system of equivalences for the vernacular that includes only local citation of and oblique allusion to actual spoken usage.’’126 What makes this description so interesting in our case is that though the uses to which rabbinic language

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and discourse were put diverge significantly between the Hebrew and Yiddish versions of the story, their point of contact is encapsulated in Alter’s observation. In the first decade of the twentieth century there was an experimental turn away from Abramovitsh’s nusach. Pioneered by such authors as Uri Nisan Gnessin (1879–1913) and Yosef Hayim Brenner (1881–1921), this ‘‘antinusach,’’ as it came to be known, was characterized by a heightened linguistic sensitivity to getting down verbally the characters’ inner psychological states and shifts as opposed to the more stable and balanced narrative structures of the nusach. Perets’s Hebrew works represent a too seldom recognized ‘‘protoanti-nusach,’’ and the Hebrew version of this story develops a more naturalistic style, organized around the rabbinic stratum as the unmarked foundation of the language. This attempt at a more unified tone and language at the same time allows for subtle irony and critique. The proto-anti-nusach here is an important early shift away from Abramovitsh, though focused on a different linguistic center of gravity from the later anti-nusach writers in Hebrew. By contrast, the Yiddish version—through a ‘‘system of equivalences for the vernacular’’—imitates and stylizes the Talmudic, study-house language and talkative behaviors of the story’s Hasidic protagonists in order to create a specifically literary conversational style. This is in parallel to Abramovitsh’s use of this same layer of language in the nusach style that he developed for his Hebrew oeuvre. This ‘‘Yiddish conversational nusach’’ is a similar modernization of the language.

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coda

This has been a book about Yiddish literature. Though this literature may not have come to a conclusive end—and a number of writers do continue to produce and to publish—the living ‘‘Yiddish civilization’’ whose mother tongue was nursed on the Jewish discursiveness I have been at pains to sketch was destroyed. In effect the literature of that civilization is no longer productive. And even though Yiddish language lingers—in small and dwindling pockets of elderly speakers, handfuls of academics and amators, and some communities of ultrareligious Jews whose varieties of Yiddish are often quite different from those used during the flowering of secular Yiddish culture by the writers who strove to mold, fashion, and expand its literature—its secular literary culture is a wraith. The thing about wraiths, though, is that they are still visible, their elegant wispy fingers lingering in the air. Their afterlives, too, are an even more palpable presence. In his seminal essay ‘‘The Task of the Translator,’’ Walter Benjamin notes the following about translations: ‘‘For in its afterlife—which could not be called that if it were not a transformation and a renewal of something living—the original undergoes a change. Even words with fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process.’’1 Though written about the relationship between works and their translations, this is an apt assessment of Yiddish’s power and potential. In one sense that is the point of Jeffrey Shandler’s study

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Adventures in Yiddishland and the vibrancy of what he calls Yiddish’s ‘‘postvernacular culture.’’ Yiddish within English, for example, surely has a circumscribed lexicon. One cannot simply shift words from Yiddish into Jewish-inflected English and expect to be understood. Even so, Yiddish’s afterlife in these contexts often does involve such ‘‘maturation.’’ ‘‘Bubbie’’ comes from Yiddish bobe, meaning ‘‘grandmother.’’ Though this meaning is also possible in English, just as often ‘‘bubbie’’ can be heard as a vocative address to a contemporary, either with sincere endearment or alternately with feigned intimacy for the purpose of cajoling. ‘‘Schmooze’’ is even more interesting. From the Hebrew word for ‘‘gossip,’’ the verb shmuesn in Yiddish is the most common, unmarked word for conversing or chatting. In English, it is almost exclusively used to refer to the activity of flattering one’s way to get (and hopefully keep) someone’s ear. When one ‘‘works a room,’’ it usually entails a good deal of schmoozing. Interestingly, a Yiddish-derived verb schmusen also exists in German (where many Yiddishisms entered the language from the thieves’ cant). There it has a similar set of meanings, but it has the additional more physical meaning of cozying or cuddling up to someone. When a baby nestles nuzzlingly in its mother’s arms, that is schmusen. I was tempted not to mention the Yiddish component in American English. There is an odd and unfortunate reality today of Yiddish being popularly characterized as essentially funny. In public situations such as interviews or lectures, the use of a Yiddish word or phrase, even in the most serious or maudlin of contexts, will cause flurries of laughter or misplaced smiles. This is a negative product of the ‘‘postvernacular’’ condition, because Yiddish at its most basic level is still a language, neither different in that way nor any more inherently risible than any other language. This essentialization as quaint or kitsch misreads the often mentioned irony of Yiddish. When we talk about humor—and you will have noticed how often I took pains to point out the humorous dimensions of the texts I have presented—we need to be careful not to fall into the pitfalls of such a misreading. This doesn’t mean, however, that we have to avoid talking about humor altogether. Rather, humor needs to be fitted into the complicated linguisticcultural systems in which it functions. My concern has been the integration of Jewish discourse into the ‘‘natural’’ rhythms and patterns of Yiddish language and its ‘‘nativization’’ in the literary language. To that end I have on more than one occasion quoted from the collection Ro¨yte Pomerantsen. In

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this I am taking my cue from James Matisoff’s unparalleled study Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expressions in Yiddish, which deftly accounts for Yiddish’s wealth of ‘‘psycho-semantics expressions,’’ namely those set, but still malleable, phrases and expressions inserted into speech that communicate emotional states and attitudes. As was said, Matisoff’s core data are taken from Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, Immanuel Olsvanger’s hand-collected anthology of East European Yiddish folk humor; in other words, it is a collection of jokes. In Matisoff’s characterization, ‘‘Psycho-ostensives abound on every page and occur in well-defined, richly elaborated situational contexts. (The genre of joke-telling requires that a scene be set with precision!)’’2 The choice is inspired. For not only does it emphasize the essential benefit of seeking data in all possible sources as well as staking a claim on genres of humor that were previously viewed only as entertainment, but it has also found a storehouse of reliable data that perfectly illustrates the phenomena under discussion. These joke-telling situations, complete with setup, are precisely the ones in which the richest linguistic context is provided. For this reason the stories of Ro¨yte Pomerantsen are very well suited not only to Matisoff’s project but to mine as well. The use of jokes—taking humor as no laughing matter—is important for another reason. In reappropriating these particular data, Matisoff dislocates them from their anthological context and slips them neatly into his analytical framework. It is in an important sense a defamiliarization of that material; the stale chestnuts have new flavor. This relocation is surprisingly rewarding because within that framework we see not only how the dialogic apparatus that Matisoff describes works, but also why. The dialogic, or even conversational, orientation of the material is likewise of particular relevance to the discursive structures I have been dealing with. In piggybacking on Matisoff’s ‘‘psychosemantic’’ approach, where stress is placed on the individual speaker’s emotional situation in the communal communicative practices of Yiddishspeaking social life, I have wanted to show, as Matisoff has done, that in the speaker’s—and writer’s—creative reformations, and deformations, of the set material there is a vibrant world of semantic structures and interpretive strategies just waiting to be explored. My English examples, therefore, are part of a larger, nonhumorous argument. Beyond the individual semantic adventures of words such as bobe and shmues, and despite the more kitsch cachet that comes with manipulating this vocabulary in certain circles, I am using the idea of afterlives here to empha-

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size what a powerful prism Yiddish was for mediating and translating Jewish discourse—not only by nativizing it in the language itself, a living spoken colloquial language, and not only by then weaving it into an immensely pliant and versatile medium for modern, and modernist, literary expression, but also by refracting it into other languages and cultures. This brings me again to Hebrew. As I just mentioned, this has been a study of Yiddish literature. However, only partisans or ideologues would enforce a strict segregation between the literary and linguistic histories of Yiddish and Hebrew. The last chapter—on the complicated interrelationship between Perets’s Yiddish and Hebrew works and the very different conception of literary stylistics at the heart of each—has hopefully shown just how intimate that integration can be. The stories of multilingual literary stylists are commonly encountered in the history of these literatures. I have throughout been mining but one rich seam, yet we need to remember just how deep the mine itself is. Following this geologic metaphor for a moment longer, just as seismic shifts dramatically alter the direction and composition of such veins, so are historical and cultural sea changes legible in a similarly affected literary record. The creation of a modern secular literary tradition in Hebrew was itself an impressive achievement. However, the political and social upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century irrevocably transformed the context in which that creation was understood. The establishment and growth of a native Hebrew-speaking national culture altered the language itself, in all of its forms and registers. One can trace through the linguistic bedrock a host of new influences, pressures, tensions, and anxieties. The imprint of the Big One is unmistakable. The legacy of Yiddish’s Jewish discursive element can be seen in Hebrew as well. As the example of Perets demonstrated, when the literatures lived in the same house and supped at the same table, that element mutatis mutandis also shared similar resonances. Once that house was destroyed, the resonances grew more distant and dissonant. That is the next chapter in the story I have been telling. It is a complicated and fascinating history that deserves a great deal of attention, but is beyond the scope of the present volume. I will give the briefest foretaste here, in the hope that it will tickle a worthwhile and rewarding interest. This book has described the literary effects of a very peculiar cultural contact with a very particular textual discourse; schematically put, when Hebrew

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‘‘enters’’ Yiddish. The next phase I have just mentioned is in effect what happens when that Yiddish-mediated Hebrew ‘‘goes back’’ to Hebrew. Take, for example, the Hebrew word chakham. The most common and unmarked meaning of this word, from the Bible on down, is ‘‘wise man.’’ In Yiddish, khokhem can and does have this meaning, too. But as we have seen, the penchant among Yiddish-speakers for producing ironic readings whenever possible is quite strong. Should someone walk into a wall, a witness might be heard to comment ‘‘khokhem’’ with a roll of the eyes. In modern spoken Hebrew the cultural trajectory is even more strikingly apparent. Alongside chakha´m for ‘‘wise man’’ one encounters chu´khem, referring precisely to that kind of fool who walks into walls. The change in pronunciation reflects the central dialect (galitsyaner) of Yiddish. This indicates either the predominance of speakers of that dialect as this form entered spoken Hebrew or a pronunciation that differed more markedly from the normative pronunciation of spoken (‘‘Israeli’’) Hebrew, or a combination of these. Whichever is the case, it seems the wandering wise men wended their way back again. Similar peregrinations are also to be found in the language and patterns of Jewish discourse. Though not all ironic, and not always as blatant, the shifts can doubtless be charted in certain recognizable patterns. And even though the course of linguistic contact never did run smooth, we should not be discouraged from pursuing it. Let me take another small example. The Yiddish word kedeboe means ‘‘properly, as it should be.’’ The word is taken from the Talmud, where the literal meaning is something like ‘‘as was asked for’’ or ‘‘as is required.’’ In Tractate Menachot 69a, for example, we find the clause ‘‘sheday bah kideba‘e lah’’ (I planted in it as much as was necessary).3 In Yiddish the word takes on the meaning ‘‘as is necessary’’ and then expands to include the senses of ‘‘as it should be’’ or ‘‘properly.’’ This is how it is most often found in literature. As we have seen, it is not a matter of coincidence that so many of these kinds of words appear in Perets’s work. His stories are ideal environments for seeing this vocabulary in prime form, Perets having deliberately plotted them as linguistic foci. Perets’s story ‘‘Hakhnoses kale’’ (Charity for Poor Brides; 1904) focuses on the very wealthy and piously conscientious Oyzer Hofendshtandt.4 As the story presents a humorous take on the allegory of wealth and poverty, this name can be translated Helper State-of-Hope. Just who is helping whom (and who is hoping for what) becomes the story’s comic crux. Oyzer is sitting at his richly provisioned table ready for a sumptuous meal with his extended

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and (to him) not completely worthy family. In walks unbidden and unhindered Mendl, described as the embodiment of poverty. Indeed, Perets extends the allegorical setup by repeatedly referring to Mendl simply as Poverty (dales). He makes himself quite at home at the table, and when Oyzer’s wife offers him a chicken leg he responds, ‘‘ober gor loy . . . tsu dem vel ikh zikh ersht vashn, kedeboe!’’ (But no . . . for that I will first wash [i.e., my hands], as is proper!).5 Much of the thematic freight of the story is loaded onto that word. As we learn, Mendl ‘‘Poverty’’ sticks Oyzer with the bill for his daughter’s wedding and takes brash advantage of Oyzer’s hospitality because he knows Oyzer’s pious sense of duty obliges him to help. The word kedeboe is a verbal distillation of the proprieties central to Oyzer’s life and worldview. As Mendl knows perfectly well, when ‘‘Poverty’’ utters it, the ‘‘Helper’’ cannot but comply. This same word does certainly occur in modern literary Hebrew. But it seems first to have passed though the Yiddish filter, shedding connotations of necessity and keeping the idea of propriety. Its meaning as given in Alcalay’s dictionary, for example, is ‘‘well, properly, required, comme il faut.’’6 The Gallicism here emphasizes the fault line between the literary and colloquial registers. As we have seen, the nativization of this vocabulary, and the larger discourse of which it is the most visible and recognizable part, is a process of the popular imagination more than anything else. It is clear why the course of this word’s development in Yiddish is in the colloquial direction. In Hebrew, however, the situation is slightly more complicated. Whereas the semantic development is clearly in line with the Yiddish, kideva‘ei is more marked and is used at a much higher, more literary level. Take, for example, the elevated diction of the opening line of Shulamit Hareven’s story ‘‘Haed’’ (The Witness): ‘‘I had not sufficiently prepared myself, as one ought, for Shlomek’s coming to our school, even though I had been preparing the class these many days’’ (‘‘lo hispakti lehitkonen kideva‘ei levo’o shel shlomek el beit-sifreinu, af-al-pi she-et ha-kitah hakhinoti zeh khamah yamim’’).7 Hareven (1930–1993), raised in Warsaw till the age of ten, moved with her family to Palestine at the beginning of the war. Though written in 1980, this is a story about the attempted integration of Shlomek, a young war refugee, into Israeli society. Told from the point of view of Yotam, Shlomek’s schoolteacher, who came earlier to Palestine from Poland, the story presents the anxieties of the protagonists as a complicated slippage between language and identity.8 This opening line, written in high-style literary Hebrew, is a story in miniature,

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showing how the new life of this word, kideva‘ei, in Hebrew still bears the imprint of its semantic transformation just as the new language of the good Zionist Yotam bears the indelible mark of his own origin—reflected in the mirror of his poorly adjusting student. The cultural project described in the story was to cleanse the Jew of the taint of Europe and of the shtetl; to paper over his Yiddish with a masculine Hebrew. As the preceding example shows microscopically—though legions of examples can be found, and hopefully will be pursued—that paper is often very thin indeed. The fact that the language of Perets’s Hebrew stories, for instance, is frequently eerily similar to contemporary Hebrew is testament to the powerful potential of a language given a vibrant cultural context for its stylistic development. As the ideological glue dries and crumbles, we can begin to see more clearly just what is lying right below the surface.

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notes

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introduction 1. I will elaborate on the concept of indirect speech acts, as developed by John Searle, in the introductory sections of chapter 2. 2. Max Weinreich, Geshikhte fun der yiddisher shprakh, 4 vols. (New York: Yivo, 1973); see also Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 3. Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 18. 4. Ibid., 99, 100 (emphasis added). 5. This broad and expanding field was pioneered by the linguist Uriel Weinreich in his book Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems (The Hague: Mouton, 1964). I am relying on that still classic and relevant work for many of the key concepts of the field. 6. Ibid., 71–82. 7. See ibid., 79, 95. 8. This is a modification of the so-called text theory of the origins of the Semitic component in Yiddish. Dovid Katz, ‘‘Hebrew, Aramaic, and the Rise of Yiddish,’’ in Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages, ed. Joshua A. Fishman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 88–92. 9. Interference is described as ‘‘deviations from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language, i.e. as a result of language contact’’ (U. Weinreich, Languages, 1). 10. That is, the canon of religious literature, including the Bible but more importantly the Rabbinic texts, the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash. 11. Shmuel Niger, Di tsveyshprakhikayt fun undzer literatur (Detroit: Louis La Med Foundation for the Advancement of Hebrew and Yiddish Literature, 1941). 12. Bal Makhshoves, ‘‘Tsvey shprakhn—eyneyntsike literatur,’’ in Geklibene verk (New York: Tsiko-bikher, 1953), 112–23. 13. Ibid., 113. 14. Ibid., 114. 15. Ibid., 118. 16. Ibid., 121. 17. Niger, Di Tsveyshprakhikayt, 75–76. 18. See, for example, the discussion of ‘‘domestication’’ in Eli Katz, ed. Book of Fables: The Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich, Frankfurt am Main, 1697 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 19. 19. U. Weinreich, Languages, 4. 20. James A. Matisoff, Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expressions in Yiddish (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 3.

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21. See Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 1–11. 22. See ibid., 65–83. ‘‘This transfer of Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords from rabbinic texts to the study of those texts and then to everyday speech parallels the incorporation of loanwords into other Jewish languages. While many textual loanwords in these languages spread to Jews who have no exposure to rabbinic texts (e.g., davke in Yiddish), others are used almost solely by scholars. Researchers of historical Jewish languages must be careful in their assumptions of who used which loanwords in times past.’’ Sarah Bunin Benor, ‘‘Do American Jews Speak a ‘Jewish Language’? A Model of Jewish Linguistic Distinctiveness,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 99, no. 2 (2009): 245. 23. See U. Weinreich, Languages, 47–62. 24. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 452. 25. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 66–67. 26. This notion of cooperative exchange, particularly as developed by the linguist H. Paul Grice, will serve as one of the conceptual underpinnings of the conversational analysis I begin in the second chapter.

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chapter 1 1. So, for the separable-prefix verb arayngeyn (to enter), the possibilities are either arayngeyn gey ikh arayn (entering I enter) or geyn gey ikh arayn (entering I enter). One occasionally encounters variations, as in Y. L. Perets’s story ‘‘Kores’’ (Premature Death): ‘‘lozt zikh oys, az geyn in gertl arayn geyt der alter nor far yomim noroim un dafke baynakht, un far der ershter slikhe!’’ (as it turns out, regarding entering the garden the old man enters only before the Days of Awe, but only at night and before the first Penitential Prayer!), where the fronted infinitive is broken into its components and the adverbial complement is omitted in the conjugated form. Y. L. Perets, ‘‘Kores,’’ in Khsidish, vol. 5 of Ale verk fun Y. L. Perets (New York: Morgn-frayhayt, 1930), 142. While this latter example is certainly not the norm, it does point out some of the complexities of the nature of the separable prefix element of verbs in their dual nature as adverbs. 2. Jacob Gerzon, Die ju¨disch-deutsche Sprache: Eine grammatisch-lexikalische Untersuchung ihres deutschen Grundbestandes (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1902). 3. Ibid., 36; see W. Hollenberg, Hebra¨isches Schulbuch, 7th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1889), 30. 4. Robert Alter, trans., The Five Books of Moses (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 759. 5. The biblical hypothesis does resurface from time to time, though with little intellectual support. So, for example, the claims made by Philologos are wide of the mark, as I will show. Philologos, ‘‘To Hurt It Can’t Hurt: On Language,’’ Jewish Daily Forward, April 1, 2005, http:// www.forward.com/articles/3213. The article’s observations on modern Israeli Hebrew, however, point to a more fruitful line of inquiry. Additionally, though Solomon Birnbaum leaves the matter unresolved, he is skeptical of the biblical hypothesis because ‘‘the absolute infinitive does not seem to be a feature of post-Biblical H[ebrew]—which is the source of the H[ebrew] element in Y[iddish].’’ Solomon A. Birnbaum, Yiddish: A Survey and Grammar (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 92. 6. Yitzhak Avineri, Yad Ha-lashon (Tel-Aviv: Izreel, 1964), 232. 7. Gideon Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ Israel Oriental Studies 1 (1971): 36–83. 8. I should note that I have not found many instances in which ‘‘most Jewish scholars’’ weigh in on the subject, let alone make the same presumption. 9. Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 39. 10. Ibid.; see Yevgeni Kagarov, Di grund-stikhiye fun yidishn sintaksis, Landoy-bukh, Shriftn

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fun yidishn visnshaftlekhn institut, filologishe serye 1 (Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1926), 425–28. For the contribution of Yevgeni Kagarov to Yiddish research see Avraham Grinboym, ‘‘Yevgeni Kagarov—Yidishist sovyeti nishkach,’’ Khulyot 3 (1996): 271–73. 11. Kagarov, Di grund-stikhiye, 426. For the Rosegger quote, see Peter Rosegger, Erdsegen: Vertrauliche Sonntagsbriefe eines Bauerknechtes (Leipzig: L. Staackmann, 1912), 117. 12. Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 38. 13. Erich Hofmann, Ausdrucksversta¨rkung: Untersuchungen zur etymologischen Versta¨rkung und zum Gebrauch der Steigerungsadverbia im Balto-Slavischen und in anderen indogermanischen Sprachen, Erga¨nzerungshefte zur Zeitschrift fu¨r vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen 9 (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1934). (This source is also cited by Goldenberg.) 14. Goldenberg, for instance, cites the following Russian example as uncontroversial: ‘‘chitat’-to on chitaet, a-pisat’ eshcho ne pishet: ‘as to reading he reads, but as to writing, he does not yet write’ ’’ (‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 38). 15. See Neil G. Jacobs, Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 224–25. See also Wayne Harbert, The Germanic Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 340. 16. Yudl Mark, ‘‘Dos ort fun beygikn verb in dem zats,’’ Yidishe shprakh 6, nos.. 1–2 (1946): 8–9; Yudl Mark, ‘‘Vegn dem infinitiv,’’ Yidishe shprakh 10, no. 1 (1950): 10–11; Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 36. 17. Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 39. 18. Mark, ‘‘Vegn dem infinitiv,’’ 10. 19. Hofmann, Ausdrucksversta¨rkung, 71. 20. Similarly, in the second person, for instance, for zayn bistu we find bistn bistu, etc. For the third person we find ‘‘Izn iz er a so¨ycher un handlen handlt er mit tvue’’ (He is a merchant and deals in grain). Immanuel Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, or How to Laugh in Yiddish, 1947 (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 40. 21. Perets, Khsidish, 65. 22. Stressing the ‘‘existential’’ veracity or authenticity by means of the ‘‘folksy’’ expression is rather like the musical sneeze at the beginning of Zolta´n Koda´ly’s opera Ha´ry Ja´nos, which plays on the belief within Hungarian oral folk culture that if someone sneezes after an assertion then it must be true. 23. Cited in Yudl Mark, ‘‘Gerundiv, partitsip un infinitiv bay sholem-aleykhemen,’’ Yidishe shprakh 25, no. 3 (1965): 79. 24. Noyekh Prilutski, ‘‘Veysn veys ikh, binen bin ikh,’’ Yidishe philologye 1 (1924): 221–23. There Prilutski starts out by citing Gerzon, presumably to establish an academic chain of authority or pedigree. 25. Ibid., 221 (emphasis added). 26. As Prilutski puts it, either ‘‘a dialogue or a monologue’’ (ibid.). 27. Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 88. 28. Mark, ‘‘Vegn dem infinitiv,’’ 10. 29. That is, in the first article, in 1946. The second article, from 1950, pares this presentation down. 30. Translated literally, these are (1a) ‘‘He works, but nothing comes of it’’; (1b) ‘‘Working he works, but nothing comes of it.’’ 31. As an aside, by the 1965 article Mark had switched from using toytologisher infinitiv to the ‘‘slavicised’’ tavtologisher infinitiv in order that there be no confusion with anything having to do with death (toyt) (‘‘Gerundiv, partitsip un infinitiv,’’ 79n20). 32. Mark, ‘‘Dos ort fun beygikn verb,’’ 9. 33. rmad ˜aml ˜nykrbm ymn ykwrb hkwsl y[ybç rmad ˜aml ˜nybtyd ygylp al aml[ ylwk btym ˜nykrbm al ykwrb hzlw hzl ynymç (emphasis added). 34. Goldenberg, ‘‘Tautological Infinitive,’’ 45.

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35. ˜nykrbm al ykwrb ˜nybty btym 36. Avineri, Yad Ha-lashon, 232. 37. Mark, ‘‘Gerundiv, partitsip un infinitiv,’’ 79. 38. Thomason and Kaufman, Language Contact, 57. 39. Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 40. Azzan Yadin, review of Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, by Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 4 (2005): 243–45. 41. See 2 Samuel 8:7, 2 Kings 11:20, Song of Songs 4:4, Ezekiel 27:11, and Jeremiah 51:11. 42. Zuckermann, Language Contact, 103. 43. ‘‘Shteyt nor a vayle, reb tevye, fun mir bakumt ir gor a bazunder matone; mirtshem morgn kumt tsu forn; ikh hob, zogt zi, a maure beheyme, geven amol a tayere beheyme, flegt gebn fir un tsvantsik glezer milkh; haynt hot zi fun a gut oyg ufgehert tsu melkn zikh, dos heyst, melkn melkt zi zikh, nor keyn milkh git zi nit.’’ Sholem Aleykhem, Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem, vol. 5 (New York: Sholem-aleykhem folksfond oysgabe, 1920), 33. 44. Hans Henrich Hock, Principles of Historical Linguistics (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991), 404. 45. See also ibid., 404–7. 46. It is always salutary to bear in mind that ‘‘standardness,’’ or rather its perception, is more a social phenomenon than a linguistic feature. 47. Thomason and Kaufman, Language Contact, 60.

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chapter 2 1. In his analysis of the structure of the Yiddish language, Max Weinreich developed a technical vocabulary that is now more or less standard. That broader set of elements from another language that is potentially adoptable by Yiddish is known as a ‘‘determinant.’’ That part of the determinant that has actually entered Yiddish is called a ‘‘component.’’ Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 29–30; Max Weinreich, Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh, 4 vols (New York: Yivo, 1973), 1:32–33. 2. M. Weinreich, History, 406; M. Weinreich, Geshikhte, 2:61–62. 3. Immanuel Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, or How to Laugh in Yiddish, 1947 (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 40. My thanks to Professor James A. Matisoff for reminding me of this story. 4. M. Weinreich, History, 34, 656–57; M. Weinreich, Geshikhte, 1:37, 2:318–20. 5. See Nokhum Borukh Minkov, Dos sotsyale lid, vol. 1 of Pyonern fun der yidisher poezye in Amerike (New York: Grenitsh, 1956), 15; cited in Marc Miller, ‘‘The Artificiality of German in Modern Yiddish Poetry: A New Perspective on daytshmerish,’’ Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 4 (2005): 126. 6. Werner Weinberg, Die Reste des Ju¨dischdeutschen (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1966), 69. 7. Ibid., 86; Florence Guggenheim-Gru¨nberg, Wo¨rterbuch zu Surbtaler Jiddisch (Zurich: Juris, 1976), 8, 31. 8. See Joshua A. Fishman, ‘‘The Sociology of Jewish Languages from a General Sociolinguistic Point of View,’’ in Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 3–21. 9. Steven A. Jacobson, A Guide to the More Common Hebraic Words in Yiddish (Fairbanks, Alaska: S. A. Jacobson, 1995), 10n14. 10. This dictionary forms a lengthy appendix to his four-volume treatise on the German thieves’ cant. Friedrich Christian Benedict Ave´-Lallemant, Das Gaunerthum in seiner social, politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande, vol. 4 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1862), 319–512.

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11. S. Jacobson, Guide, 10n14. 12. In point of fact, despite more systematic attempts at categorizing meaning change (see, for example, Gustaf Stern’s Meaning and Change of Meaning [1931; repr., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965]) and analyses of the ways in which a language’s semantic stock is altered through language contact (see Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems [The Hague: Mouton, 1964]), one comes away from reading such works with a distinct sense of the asystematicity of semantic change. There is more chaos than order. Trends emerge, to be sure, but there are as many exceptions as rules. My exposure to Stern and the elaboration of his significance I owe to a course taught by Professor James A. Matisoff, Historical Semantics (Linguistics 231), University of California, Berkeley, Spring 2001. 13. C. J. Hutterer, ‘‘Theoretical and Practical Problems of Western Yiddish Dialectology,’’ in The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Folklore, and Literature: Third Collection, ed. Marvin I. Herzog, Wita Ravid, and Uriel Weinreich (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 3. 14. See, for example, Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is with People: The Jewish Little-Town of Eastern Europe (New York: International Universities Press, 1952), 80. 15. Ibid., 72–73. See also M. Weinreich, History, 211 and Geshikhte, 1:219–20: ‘‘The scholars were the prestige group, and they received recognition everywhere in the Jewish world.’’ 16. U. Weinreich, Languages in Contact, 59–60 (see also 79). This prestige situation becomes critical in a later discussion of the Tsenerene. 17. Moshe Shtarkman, ‘‘Gemore-yidish,’’ Yidishe shprakh 13 (1953): 154. 18. Again, the importance of this kind of cultural translation is key for my discussion of the Tsenerene below (see chap. 4). 19. Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 91. 20. Shtarkman, ‘‘Gemore-yidish,’’ 154. In Max Weinreich’s words, ‘‘We do not have as yet the great work presenting the methods of study in all communities of Ashkenaz since the Middle Ages. When we do have it, we shall find that attention was paid not only to the method of study, such as literal interpretation or dialectics, but also to gesticulation, swaying, studying seated or standing. The Gemara chant, consisting of several logically definable variants, is hallowed by tradition, perhaps no less so than the cantillation of the Bible’’ (History, 211). See the important pioneering work in Yiddish intonation, Uriel Weinreich, ‘‘Notes on the Yiddish Rise-Fall Intonation Contour,’’ in For Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 11 October 1956, ed. Morris Halle et al. (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), 633–43. See also the important subsequent studies by Zelda Kahan Newman, ‘‘The Influence of Talmudic Chant on Yiddish Intonation Patterns,’’ Yiddish 10 (1995): 25–33; and Zelda Kahan Newman, ‘‘The Jewish Sound of Speech: Talmudic Chant, Yiddish Intonation, and the Origins of Early Ashkenaz,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 90 (2000): 293–336. 21. M. Weinreich, History, 175–246; M. Weinreich, Geshikhte, 1:184–250. 22. M. Weinreich, History, 213; M. Weinreich, Geshikhte, 1:221–22. 23. G. Stern, Meaning, 178. 24. This model is hinted at in Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language, and briefly suggested by Benjamin Harshav in his book The Meaning of Yiddish as well as in his 2002 Pell Lectures at the University of California at Berkeley. 25. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 17. 26. Benjamin Harshav, The Jewishness of the ‘‘Non-Jewish Jew’’ (Kafka, Freud, etc.), Pell Endowment for Holocaust Studies Lectures, March 11, 2002. 27. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 116. 28. ‘‘A yeshivebocher iz a mol arayngegangen in bes-medresh, un hot gezen, vi eyner zayner a chaver lo¨yft arum ahin un aher un halt zach mit di hent ban kop un shrayt: ‘oy, vey! gut, fayn! oy, vey!’ Ruft er zach op tsu em: ‘Shmerke, vos iz mit dir, az es iz gut un fayn, vozhe shraysstu?’ Macht Shmerke: ‘Oy, guter-bruder! Hob ich a terets! gold! geo¨ynes! nor eyn zach iz shlecht: di kasha felt mir!’ ’’ (Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, 150).

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29. Domestic life was likely the primary, but not the only, potential conduit of this transfer. Communal spaces, too, offered such an opportunity. At weddings, for example, the wedding bard or jester—the badkhn—‘‘had to be familiar with rabbinic literature and had to be somewhat learned’’ in order among other things to parody this discourse. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘‘The Concept and Varieties of Narrative Performance in East European Jewish Culture,’’ in Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, 2nd ed., ed. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 300. Parody works in part because the audience recognizes the object of that parody and understands it sufficiently to see the send-up. 30. M. Weinreich, History, 225, and Geshikhte, 1:231. 31. Pragmatics is also concerned with the speaker’s role in choosing what he or she says. Here, however, the focus is on the interpretive dimension because it is directly relevant to literary analysis. 32. Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 87–88. 33. I digress momentarily with an important note about lexical innovation: ‘‘In such semantic fields as ‘talking’, ‘beating’, ‘sleeping’, ‘tallness’, or ‘ugliness’, there is in many languages a constant NEED FOR SYNONYMS, an onomastic low-pressure area, as it were. Where synonyms are available from another language, they are gladly accepted; the cause of the lexical aggrandizement can be said to be inherent in the recipient language’’ (U. Weinreich, Languages, 58). Based on the specific social and cultural aspects of Eastern European Ashkenazic life, the ‘‘low-pressure area’’ of argumentative discourse was in this way amply filled. 34. M. Weinreich, History, 225; M. Weinreich, Geshikhte, 1:231–32. 35. Note the tautological infinitive. 36. Kharifes (acuity) refers specifically to intellectual sharpness. 37. These are two logical and interpretative categories in rabbinic debate. Kal-vekhoymer is an a fortiori inference, and a gezeyre-shove is an argument by analogy. 38. The Yiddish word is madekh, which marks the protasis of a kal-vekhoymer proposition. See Alexander Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1928; repr., New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research/Schocken Books, 1988), 292; Yitskhok Niborski, Verterbukh fun loshn-koydesh-shtamike verter in yidish (Paris: Bibliothe`que Medem, 1999), 351; Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, 1990), 557; Yehoash and Khayim Spivak, Idishe Verterbukh (New York: Farlag ‘‘Vekher,’’ 1926), 142. The term is composed of the Hebrew form mah (what) and the Germanic dokh (cognate with German doch). It is likely related to the a fortiori Talmudic argument form u-mah . . . ‘al ’ah.at kamah ve-khamah, where u-mah (if, since) is the particle introducing the protasis, and ‘al ’ah.at kamah ve-khamah (all the more so) introduces the apodosis. I italicized this ‘‘if’’ because it would have been intoned in a very particular way, mimicking how such a construction would have sounded when voiced in the study house. 39. Or given the a fortiori semantics: ‘‘If a little cart on two wheels can go, how much more so will my wagon with its three wheels be able to go!’’ The word avade (certainly) often comes in the apodosis, where the Hebrew would have al ’ah.at kamah ve-khamah. U. Weinreich, ‘‘Notes,’’ 640; see also Newman, ‘‘Jewish Sound,’’ 296; and Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen,viii–ix, for another example with a ‘‘melodic’’ rendition (as cited in U. Weinreich, ‘‘Notes,’’ 635). 40. The phrase kal-vekhoymer itself can also be used to introduce the apodosis, ‘‘all the more so.’’ 41. ‘‘Ba unz in shtetl iz geven a balagole, hot er geheyssn Dovidke. Az me flegt em rufn ‘balagole’, hot er es shtark nit gevelt laydn. Vorem er flegt zogn: ‘Ich bin nit keyn balagole! Ich hob a vogn mit a ferdl un ich for, un ver es vil mitforn, fort mit! Ober keyn balagole bin ich nit.’ Un forn . . . flegt er forn mit chochme. Eyn nacht iz geven a gro¨ysser shturem. Un grod di nacht iz er araussgeforn af a langer nessie. In etlache teg arum hot men em gefregt, vi es hot zach em geforn yene nacht? Macht er: ‘Es iz geven a shvere nessie. Nor bin ich geforn mit gro¨ys charifes.’ Fregt men em: ‘Vos heysst, geforn mit charifes?’ Macht er: ‘Ich bin geforn mit a kal-vocho¨ymer un mit a gzeyre-shove. Ot hert zach ayn. Ogeforn etlache vyorsst in yener nacht, iz zich m’yashev

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eyn rod fun mayn vogn, un falt arop. Vozhe tu ich? Bin ich geforn mit a kal-vocho¨ymer! Madoch a vegele af tsvey reder ken forn, iz mayn vogn mit dray reder, vet doch avade forn! For ich vayter. Es geyt nit avek kayn tsvey minut, az es falt dos arop noch a rod. Gib ich mir a tracht, un gefin a gzeyre-shove: azo¨y vi a vegele af tsvey reder fort, azo¨y vel ich forn mit tsvey reder!—Un ich for vayter. Treft zach an unglik, un es darlangt a fal arop a driter rod! Meynt ir, ich bin gevorn tsutumlt? Cholile! bin ich mir vayter geforn mit a kal-vocho¨ymer: madoch a shlitn on reder ken forn, kal-vocho¨ymer mayn vogn mit eyn rod vet doch avade un avade forn! For ich vayter! Nemt der ferter rod, un falt o¨ych arop. Vozhe tut men? For ich vayter mit a gzeyre-shove: azo¨y vi a shlitn fort on reder, azo¨y vet mayn vogn forn on reder! Un ich bin geforn! Fregt nit, vos es iz gevorn fun mir, mit di parsho¨ynen, mit’n vogn, ober geforn bin ich!’’ (Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, 100–101). My translation is slightly more liberal than literal, but it is meant to capture the heightened idiomatic quality of the text. 42. See Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘‘Concept and Varieties,’’ 293–94. 43. See the relevant sections of Levinson’s work for more detailed analyses as well as a thorough bibliography. 44. H. P. Grice, ‘‘Logic and Conversation,’’ in Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, vol. 3 of Syntax and Semantics (New York: Academic Press, 1975). 45. As opposed, for example, to an aesthetic function of language, or Stern’s ‘‘symbolization, expression or impression.’’ 46. Grice, ‘‘Logic and Conversation,’’ 67. 47. John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 31–32. 48. Ibid., 31 (emphasis added). 49. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 376. 50. This phrase’s technical translation is from Sokoloff, ibid., 1159. 51. That is, deutlich and bequemlich, respectively. 52. John J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 96. 53. Take, for example, the poet Malka Heifetz-Tussman’s (1896–1987) poem ‘‘Kelers un beydemer’’ (Cellars and Attics) which includes the telling comment ‘‘In ikh entfer yidishlekh—/ a frage af a frage’’ (And I answer in the Jewish way, / A question with a question). Benjamin Harshav and Barbara Harshav, eds., American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 611 (I have made a minor change to the translation). Or even more famously in one of Perets’s most popular stories, ‘‘Oyb nisht nokh hekher’’ (In Not Higher), which tells of a Hasidic rebbe who regularly disappears at the time of the penitential prayers. Nobody knows where he goes. As the story opens, Perets presents the attitude of the rebbe’s followers: ‘‘Vu ken zayn der rebe? Vu zol er zayn? Minastam in himl!’’ (Where can the rebbe be? Where should he be? Probably in heaven!). Y. L. Perets, Khsidish, vol. 5 of Ale verk fun Y. L. Perets (New York: Morgn-frayhayt, 1930), 136. This presents in a nutshell the story’s entire critique of the Hasidim, that their rebbe is thought to be a divine being, not the charitable human being who actually disappears to do good deeds in the world in disguise. 54. The exchange is quite idiomatic. The literal meaning is ‘‘What does a Jew make? What should a Jew make?’’ Another common rejoinder, which reliteralizes the verb makhn away from ‘‘to fare’’ and back to ‘‘to make,’’ is gelt un kinder (money and children). Professor Daniel Boyarin offered me a different Litvak response: a shlekhtn ayndruk (a bad impression). 55. This term was suggested to me by Professor Chana Kronfeld. 56. Cohen, Jokes, 66–67. 57. Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1. 58. M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 60.

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59. This is a diverse field in which I do not feign expertise, but where I find concepts useful for my analysis. 60. Ian Hutchby and Robin Wooffitt, Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices, and Applications (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 14. 61. Ibid., 14. 62. Ibid., 15. 63. Compare this to the ‘‘discourse-deictic function’’ discussed with regard to the tautological infinitive. 64. See, for example, Robert T. Craig and Karen Tracy, eds., Conversational Coherence: Form, Structure, and Strategy (Beverly Hills: SAGE, 1983). 65. Wallace C. Chafe, ‘‘Polyphonic Topic Development,’’ in Conversation: Cognitive, Communicative, and Social Perspectives, ed. Talmy Givo´n (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997), 41 (emphasis added). 66. Ibid., 42. 67. S. Levinson, Pragmatics, 270.

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chapter 3 1. This semantic field was adopted through literary contact, so it is appropriate that it be analyzed in that context. 2. Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 225; Max Weinreich, Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh, 4 vols (New York: Yivo, 1973), 1:231. 3. It must be noted that in modern Hebrew efshar is not properly used as the adverb ‘‘maybe, perhaps.’’ Rather, it is used only with verbal infinitives to indicate possibility. Use of efshar in modern Hebrew to mean ‘‘maybe’’ is due to Yiddish interference. 4. Yudl Mark and Juda A. Yofa, eds., Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh, vol. 4 (New York: Komitet farn groysn verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh, 1980), 1983. 5. Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Di goldene pave (Cleveland: Farlag grupe idish, 1924). The cycle Zarkhi baym breg yam (Zarkhi by the Seashore) is on 213–301. 6. For some of the more useful discussion, see Chana Kronfeld, On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 159–84, 194–202; Ruth R. Wisse, A Little Love in Big Manhattan (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988); David G. Roskies, ‘‘Coney Island, USA: America in the Yiddish Literary Imagination,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature, ed. Hana WirthNesher and Michael P. Kramer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 78–83; see also Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, In New York: A Selection, ed. and trans. Kathryn Hellerstein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1982). 7. See, for example, David G. Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 91–92. 8. Wisse, Little Love, 136. 9. See Marc Miller, ‘‘Modernism and Persona in the Works of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern,’’ Yiddish 11 (1998): 48–71. 10. Benjamin Harshav and Barbara Harshav, eds., American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 421. As Harshav and Harshav point out, Zarkhi is not a common Yiddish name, though one does encounter the Yiddish name Zerakh from time to time, including the name of one of the interlocutors of Perets’s story ‘‘A shmues,’’ which will be discussed in detail in chapter 5. Zarkhi is a derivative— either adjectival or first-person-singular possessive—of the name Zerakh (‘‘dawning, shining’’), whose most famous biblical incarnation is the son of Tamar and Judah (Genesis 38:30). See Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 280. David Roskies suggests that the resonance of

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‘‘ ‘dawn’ or ‘brightness’ ’’ is designed to be ironic, especially given his characterization of Zarkhi in the poem as a womanizing ‘‘philosopher-beach-bum’’ (Roskies, ‘‘Coney Island,’’ 81). 11. Wisse, Little Love, 138. See Khone Shmeruk, ‘‘Umbakante shafungen fun moyshe-leyb halpern (der zarkhi-mirtl-roman un zayne proze-vandlungen,’’ Goldene Keyt 75 (1972): 212–29. 12. ‘‘O, zarkhi. zarkhi, du kenst nisht makhn, / es zol zikh oyfboyen a brik / ibern yam ahin un tsurik, / un dayn benkshaft shteyt dokh af yener zayt / mit royt-oyfgehoybene lapes, un shrayt, / vi a dorfs-moyd, vos darf shoyn a mansbil hobn, / a mansbil hobn, / a mansbil hobn’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 215). The translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 13. Ibid., 179–212. 14. See Halpern’s first book of verse, In nyu york (In New York), where this persona is first set down, particularly in the poem ‘‘Memento Mori.’’ Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, In nyu york, 1919 (New York: Matones, 1954), 141–42; see Wisse, Little Love, 101–4; see also Roskies, ‘‘Coney Island,’’ 81, where Zarkhi and Moyshe-Leyb are described as more than just two members of a larger cast of characters, but as an essential duality, paired as ‘‘night’’ and ‘‘day.’’ In ‘‘Memento Mori’’ Halpern has ‘‘the poet’’ (ironically portrayed) Moyshe-Leyb standing by the sea pondering the image of his suicide for his readership. 15. For example, Hart Crane’s famous poem The Bridge (1930). 16. Not to make too much of it, but the triple repetition may also be a verbal gesture to the repeated rhythmic breaking of the surf on the shoreline where Zarkhi stands. 17. ‘‘Ober du bist dokh, zarkhi, dakht zikh, a khokhem,— / dakht zikh a khokhem, / dakht zikh a khokhem’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 216). 18. That is an average of roughly three times per poem. 19. Julian Levinson, ‘‘Modernism from Below: Moyshe-Leyb Halpern and the Situation of Yiddish Poetry,’’ Jewish Social Studies 10 (2004): 148. For the poem see Halpern, In nyu york, 20. 20. J. Levinson, ‘‘Modernism,’’ 148. 21. The fact that the Hebrew root z-r-h. refers to the East—making Zarkhi ‘‘the Eastern One’’—may not be by chance. 22. Roskies, ‘‘Coney Island,’’ 83. For a fuller treatment of this notion of parody, see David G. Roskies, ‘‘Major Trends in Yiddish Parody,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 94 (2004): 109–22. 23. Halpern, Goldene pave, 179. 24. Ibid., 213. 25. An allusion to the burning bush, Exodus 3:2. 26. An allusion to Moses’s death, as decreed by God, before the entrance to the land, in Deuteronomy 34:5. 27. An allusion to the story of Samson in Judges 16. 28. ‘‘Gumilastiks dray af a fendl fun blekh / un mit di briln tsum yam aroys. / zarkhi veynt efsher zayn benkshaft oys—/ vos veysn mir libe brider. // un s’iz efsher gornisht zarkhi vos veynt / nor a boym vos brent un vert nit farbrent / un vos veynt mit di tsvaygn azoy vi mit hent—/ vos veysn mir libe brider. // un s’iz efsher oykh nisht keyn boym vos veynt / nor a shtume klog fun an oyg mit a hant / fun eynem vos shtarbt bay der shvel fun zayn land—/ vos veysn mir libe brider. // un efsher iz es nisht eyner vos shtarbt / nor a blinder riz fun fartoyznt yor / baveynt zayne opgeshoyrene hor—/ vos veysn mir libe brider. // un s’iz efsher oykh nisht keyn riz vos veynt / nor dos poshete narishe instrument / vos veynt unter zarkhis alte hent—/ vos veysn mir libe brider’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 223). Harshav also situates this poem as a central text in Yiddish literature’s use of Jewish discourse. Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 95. 29. ‘‘At times Zarkhi appears to be the final manifestation of the diaspora musician, epigone of a tradition that reaches back to the shores of Babylon but is now unceremoniously dying. He is the descendant of those who crossed the Red Sea with Moses into the desert, but Halpern identifies him more with those who danced around the golden calf than with those who stood awestruck before the granting of the Law. T. S. Eliot’s diminished hero, J. Alfred Prufrock, retains a whiff of former glory because his creator admires the Christian civilization of which his protag-

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onist is the pallid, late specimen. But Zarkhi lacks even that much fallen grace. Halpern regards Zarkhi’s inherited culture of Torah wisdom and martyrology with less than perfect respect’’ (Wisse, Little Love, 137–38). (Perhaps more Verog than Prufrock; that is, if Prufrock, in ‘‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’’ is T. S. Eliot’s image of the sensitive individual navigating life in the modern world [‘‘Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table’’], it is a slightly sunnier picture than Monsieur Verog, whom Ezra Pound depicts in ‘‘ ‘Siena Mi Fe’; Disfecemi Maremma’ ’’ as the image of decadent decay as seen through modern eyes: ‘‘Among the pickled foetuses and bottled bones, / Engaged in perfecting the catalogue, / I found the last scion of the / Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.’’) I would maintain, as the reading continues, that there is more sensitive engagement than imperfect respect going on at all events. Chana Kronfeld also suggests a more complicated relationship between Halpern’s image of the poet as jester and his view of the world (Kronfeld, On the Margins, 165–84, esp. 172). 30. After all, in poem 15 (242) we read of another situation: ‘‘but perhaps [efsher] it is completely something different’’ (‘‘nor efsher iz es gor-gor epes andersh’’). 31. In this way there is a shared intuition about the relationship between the modern individual and art found in both Zarkhi’s improvised instrument together with this poor vision and Wallace Stevens’s poem ‘‘The Man with the Blue Guitar,’’ where the guitar becomes a kind of organ of perception for the modern poet: ‘‘They said, ‘You have a blue guitar, / You do not play things as they are.’ // The man replied, ‘Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.’ ’’ Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 165. 32. There are innumerable examples, but one will suffice: ‘‘A Jew once entered a telephone booth. He needed to speak with someone. But he didn’t know how to use the telephone. So he asked the girl sitting there if she could let him know what he needed to do. So the girl said to him, ‘With one hand you take and turn the crank here, and with the other hand you hold the tube [earpiece].’ The Jew looks at her and says, ‘What do you mean? Then what will I talk with?’ ’’ Immanuel Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, or How to Laugh in Yiddish, 1947 (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 71. 33. There is the following story of the Jewish woman with the basket: ‘‘A Jewish woman was standing in the market, holding in her hand a small basket of eggs. Another Jewish woman approached her and said: ‘Do you know, Chaye? Sore died!’ The first Jewish woman said: ‘What are you saying? Sore died? Hold my basket a moment.’ And when the other one took her basket, she wrung her hands [brecht zi di hent] and said: ‘Woe, woe is me!’ ’’ Ibid., 44; see also James A. Matisoff, Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expressions in Yiddish (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 18–19. The additional paronomasia at work in this story is that she ‘‘breaks’’ (brekht) her hands instead of breaking the eggs (brekhn di eyer). 34. Halpern, Goldene pave, 213. 35. My thanks to Professor Chana Kronfeld for suggesting this reading to me. 36. That is the traditional abbreviation for bikehile kedoyshe (in the holy community of). 37. ‘‘Un du lozt dayne oves in keyver nisht lign / un rufst zey, bam breg fun yam zikh tsu vign, / tsu farzingen dayn tsar mit dem altn nign / omer abaye———/ omer abaye———/ omer abaye———’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 245). 38. ‘‘Omer rov zarkhi—zogt rov zarkhi’’ (ibid., 250). 39. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 425. This is also one of the more common ways Abramovitsh begins stories and novels told by his famous narrator Mendele Moykher Sforim: ‘‘Omer mendele moykher sforim—zogt mendele moykher sforim.’’ See, for example, the novels Di takse (The Tax), Di klyatshe (The Nag), Masoes binyomin hashlishi (The Travels of Benjamin the Third), as well as the stories ‘‘Tsurik aheym’’ (Back Home) and ‘‘Di alte mayse’’ (The Old Story). 40. ‘‘Omer rov zarkhi—zogt rov zarkhi: / in seyfer barkhandi / tsunoyfgeshtelt fun di greste khakhomim / in kapitl zibn / dertseylt zikh a mayse fun’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 250, 251). 41. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 425. There may be an echo of the city of

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Samarkand, an ancient city on the Silk Road once famed not only for its wealth but for its learning and scientific achievements. 42. See chapter 3. 43. ‘‘Biz di flekn funem blut afn hemdl / hobn oysgezen vi blumen in morgnlikht / baym shayn fun dem fakl / vos hot im geloykhtn tsu koylen’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 250). 44. The word is kloyster, which can also indicate a Catholic church. 45. For the translational difficulty of this line I have used Harshav and Harshav’s rendering (American Yiddish Poetry, 427). 46. ‘‘Dersteylt zikh a mayse fun a tsadik. / gegangen farbay a kloyster bay nakht / hot men gliendik zhar fun di fentster gevorfn, / hot zikh ongetsundn di bord mitn beged / azoy vi a fakl (af im). / hot der tsadik oyfgehoybn di oygn tsu himl / un shtarbndik hot er azoy gezogt: /—far blinde naronim zaynen di shtern mazoles, / far reshoim zaynen zey gornisht; / in der emesn ober zaynen zey / gots likhtikayt efsher, / vos vayzt zikh undz bloyz durkh zayn himl—/ dem altn tselekhertn shirem fun iber der velt, / un s’iz mer nisht—a khesed a groyser / af vemen zayn likhtikayt lozt zikh arop, vi a fayer, / un nemt im tsu zikh’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 251). 47. These signs, mazoles, are also traditionally associated with angels in the divine retinue. 48. The phonetic rendering of the consonantal text is taken from Harshav and Harshav (American Yiddish Poetry, 427). 49. This is from the first story; the corresponding line from the second story is ‘‘The last prayer of a tsadik’’ (‘‘di letste tfile fun tsadik’’). 50. ‘‘Shavrulim ledarrkhi perumo—bahaltene likhtikayt in der finster, / di klog fun roytseyakh. / un efsher—ver veyst? / efsher meynt dos gor-gor epes andersh kholile, / un di tsung vet zikh brotn in gehenem, / vayl zi hot nisht oysgetaytsht punkt vi men darf?’’ (Halpern, Goldene pave, 250, 251). 51. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 425. 52. Matisoff, Blessings, 88. 53. ‘‘Ir hot gehe´rt fun ‘tizal katal imrosi?’ Vel ikh aykh zogn: tizal—zol geshvoln vern; katal—vi a barg; imrosi—mayn shviger. Vet ir dokh fregn, far vos iz tizal ‘zol geshvoln vern?’ Vos den zol mayn shviger, az nit geshvoln vern? Vet ir dokh vayter fregn, far vos epes katal ‘vi a barg?’ Oyb shoyn ye geshvoln vern, zol zi geshvoln vern vi vos? Vi a barne? Avade vi a barg! Ay vos? Ir vet fregn, far vos iz imrosi ‘mayn shviger?’ Zogt zhe ale´yn—ver den zol geshvoln vern, az nit mayn shviger?’’ Ibid., 87–88; see Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, 18. 54. ‘‘The syntax reads: ‘The shavruls are prumed for Zarkhi’ (the words in boldface have no meaning). With a slight change, it would mean: Zarkhi’s sleeves are slit. Also Proma’a in Aramaic is burglar’’ (Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 425). 55. Thus, for instance, Hebrew zahav (gold) is cognate with Aramaic dehav (gold). This is because original Proto-Semitic /dh/ became /z/ in Hebrew and /d/ in Aramaic. The root d-r-h, however, does not seem to be widely attested in Aramaic, which makes Aramaicizing of the Hebrew doubly artificial. 56. Alexander Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1928; repr., New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research/Schocken Books, 1988), 285. 57. Yitskhok Niborski and Bernard Vaisbrot, Dictionnaire Yiddish-Franc¸ais (Paris: Bibliothe`que Medem, 2002), 349; Yitskhok Niborski, Verterbukh fun loshn-koydesh-shtamike verter in yidish (Paris: Bibliothe`que Medem, 1999), 146. So, for example, Abramovitsh uses the phrase ‘‘may ko mashme lon’’ in his Hebrew story ‘‘Ha-nisrafim’’ (The Burned-Out) and the stand-in gloss ‘‘to vos-zhe lozt mikh do yener hern?’’ (So what does that make me understand?) in his Yiddish version ‘‘Di nisrofim.’’ 58. Charles A. Madison, Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 204. 59. ‘‘Mit may-ko mashme loniker idishkayt.’’ Yankev Glatshteyn, In tokh genumen: Eseyen 1948–1956 (New York: Farlag fun idish natsyonaln arbiter farband, 1956), 62, 49. 60. This idiom refers to the practice of a poor student’s taking charitable meals at certain homes on designated days.

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61. Avraham Reyzen, Lider, vol. 11 of Ale verk fun Avraham Reyzen (New York: Farlag ‘‘Idish,’’ 1917), 16–17. 62. ‘‘ ‘Narish kind, vos yogstu zikh aheym?’ ‘esn! ikh bin hungerik!’ ‘pshite! avade bistu hungerik . . . shoyte eyner! may ko mashme lon? Vos dertseylstu mir, az du bist hungerik . . . anit, vos volt ikh gemeynt, az du fast op a yonkiper un du bist nit hungerik?’ ’’ (Perets, Khsidish, pt. 1, 24). 63. Ibid., pt. 2, 10; see also Niborkski, Verterbukh, 146. 64. To use Professor James A. Matisoff’s pithy formulation (Matisoff, ‘‘Historical Semantics’’). 65. The fact that the semantic range of meyle and her sisters is so wide is reflected in the ink spilled on their nuances. See, just for example, the exchanges in Yekusil Berger, ‘‘Meyle, bemeyle, mimeyle, bekhen, lokhen,’’ Yidishe shprakh 26 (1966): 56–57; Mendl Mark, ‘‘Meyle, bemeyle, mimeyle, bekhen, lokhen,’’ Yidishe shprakh 27 (1967): 22–23. 66. Even though the word is of Semitic origin, it nowhere occurs in Perets’s Hebrew version of the story. 67. Matisoff, Blessings. 68. Even ‘‘nevermind’’ would work. 69. Used as a prooftext in Niborski, Verterbukh, 175. 70. Janet Hadda, ‘‘Twenty Years with Yankev Glatshteyn,’’ Prooftexts 21 (2001): 94. See also Janet Hadda, Yankev Glatshteyn (Boston: Twayne, 1980), 140–41. 71. That is, without a struggle, unmediated. 72. Yankev Glatshteyn, Di freyd fun yidishn vort (New York: Der Kval, 1961), 105. 73. It is possible that a common Yiddish idiom supports this figurative usage. To refer to the paragon, the premier example of something (call it ‘‘X’’), one says, X fun X-land (X from Xland). When someone speaks a beautiful, refined Yiddish, for example, it is yidish fun yidishland (Yiddish from Yiddishland). For confirmation of this resonance, see Jeffrey Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 33. This book provides an interesting analysis of the concept of Yiddishland, particularly in the context of what Shandler describes as ‘‘postvernacular culture.’’ 74. That is, modern-Hebrew-speaking children. 75. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 267. I will be using the Harshav translation here with my own interpolations to point out specific details. See Yankev Glatshteyn, Yidishtaytshn (Warsaw: Farlag Kh. Bzhaza, 1937), 99–102. 76. Cited in Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 267. 77. Glatshteyn, Yidishtaytshn, 99. The translation is Harshav and Harshav’s (American Yiddish Poetry, 267–69). 78. Kristoffer Nyrop, Das Leben der Wo¨rter, trans. Robert Vogt (Leipzig: Eduard Avenarius, 1903), 151 (emphasis added). 79. See lines 26, 51, 71, and 102, the last line of the poem. 80. From ‘‘paraphrase’’ to ‘‘periphrase.’’ 81. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 269; these are lines 34–35 of the poem (Glatshteyn, Yidishtaytshn, 100). 82. I say ‘‘pseudo-dialectal’’ because not only is there the phonic conflation (portmanteau) of monument  hant  monumant (very ably rendered by Harshav as ‘‘monumand’’), but there is probably also an echoing play of a Yiddish vocalic shift in certain words (for example, German Schmerz and Yiddish shmarts, German Herz and Yiddish harts), which serves in a way to ‘‘nativize’’ the neologism, to make it sound like a kind of Yiddish. 83. ‘‘And I will give them in my house and within my walls a hand and a name better than sons and daughters; an eternal name will I give them, which will not be cut off.’’ This is not the only use of yad in the Bible for ‘‘monument’’; see also 1 Samuel 15:12, 2 Samuel 18:18. The resonance is not only biblical. In Modern Hebrew, yad can also mean ‘‘monument.’’ 84. ‘‘Zarkhi zogt toyre.’’

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85. In a famous Yiddish folksong, two of the things that will happen when the Messiah comes are ‘‘moyshe rabeynu vet undz toyre zogn, shloyme hemeylekh vet undz khokhme zogn’’ (‘‘Moses our teacher will expound on the Torah for us, Solomon the King will interpret his wisdom for us’’). 86. Farkert is the Yiddish version of such rabbinic locutions as ipkhe mistabre and aderabe, which also occur in Yiddish. In the words of the Groyser verterbukh, the Talmudic expression ipkhe mistabre is used ‘‘when the words of a Tanna or Amora are in contradiction to a Mishnah, an earlier opinion, or do not make sense’’ (Groyser verterbukh, 3:1329), which is to say that it is used to clarify wording that can’t make sense except in the opposite. The word aderabe has a roughly equivalent meaning. 87. William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New York: New Directions Press, 1963), 6ff. 88. Cf. pshite or apshite, meaning ‘‘it is simple; it is clear that; it is understood on its own; certainly, undoubtedly’’ (Groyser verterbukh, 4:1944). 89. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 269; these are lines 34–39 of the poem (Glatshteyn, Yidishtaytshn, 100). 90. Niborski and Vaisbrot, Dictionnaire, 206; Niborski, Verterbukh, 60; Harkavy, YiddishEnglish-Hebrew Dictionary, 165; Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, 1990), 660; Yehoash and Khayim Spivak, Idishe Verterbukh (New York: Farlag ‘‘Vekher,’’ 1926), 57.

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chapter 4 1. Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 74–76. 2. We often do not have, in Clifford Geertz’s admirable phrase, ‘‘the consultable record of what man has said’’; all we have is the consultable record of what man has written. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 30. 3. Itamar Even-Zohar, ‘‘Polysystem Studies.’’ Special issue, Poetics Today 11, no. 1 (1990): 11. 4. The Basel edition itself alludes to three precedent Polish editions that have not survived. 5. The pithiest analysis to date is Naomi Seidman’s A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). 6. The biblical injunction is formally a feminine plural imperative. The grammatical rule in both Hebrew and Yiddish is that for a group that has even a single man, the default pronoun to refer to that group must be masculine. The title Tsenerene is therefore the only case I know of in Yiddish where even in the presence of men the default gender is feminine. 7. Seidman, Marriage, 16. 8. Dovid Katz, Words on Fire (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 96. 9. Yankev Shatski, ‘‘Di ershte 300 yor ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ in Tsenerene: Mustern, Ivre-taytsh: Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur (Buenos Aires: Y. lifshits-fond fun der literatur-gezelshaft baym Yivo, 1973), 326; D. Katz, Words on Fire, 96; Yankev Glatshteyn, ‘‘Historishe fartaytshung fun taytsh khumesh,’’ in Tsenerene, 357. 10. Shatski, ‘‘Di ershte 300 yor ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ 326. 11. Shmuel Rozhanski, ‘‘ ‘Tsenerene’, der kval fun ivri-taytsh un yidisher dialektik,’’ in Tsenerene, 10. That is, these features had entered the publication style of Yiddish, which was meant to be legible in all parts of the Yiddish-speaking world. 12. Shatski, ‘‘Di ershte 300 yor ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ 326. 13. Ibid., 329. 14. Cited in Rozhanski, ‘‘Tsenerene,’’ 9. 15. Cited in ibid., 14. 16. Glatshteyn, ‘‘Historishe fartaytshung,’’ 357. 17. Cited in Rozhanski, ‘‘Tsenerene,’’15. 18. Ibid., 12, 14.

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19. D. Katz, Words on Fire, 97. This ‘‘Lutheran’’ echo is of Max Erik’s statement that Ashkenazi was ‘‘the Luther of the middle period of Yiddish literature’’ (cited in source; Shatski, ‘‘Di ershte 300 yor ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ 329). The parallel is instructive. Although the important Blitz and Witzenhausen translations of the Bible into Yiddish were more ‘‘literal’’ in the tradition of biblical translations, Blitz at least was influenced by the Lutheran translation. Erika Timm, ‘‘Blitz and Witzenhausen,’’ in Studies in Jewish Culture in Honor of Chone Shmeruk, ed. Israel Bartal, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Chava Turniansky (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1993), 61–64; see also Marion Aptroot, ‘‘1678–1679: Two Yiddish Bibles Printed in Amsterdam,’’ July ¨ bersetzungs2005, http://cf.uba.uva.nl/nl/publicaties/treasures/text/t20.html; N. Leibowitz, ‘‘Die U technik der ju¨disch-deutschen Bibelu¨bersetzungen des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen,’’ Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 55 (1931): 377–463. And according to Shatski, both were even influenced by the Tsenerene (‘‘Di ershte 300 yor ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ 328). The notion of what one might call ‘‘native cadences’’ as an important component of the task of the translator (as opposed to the bare letter of the text alone) was surely incorporated into such works. For a fuller treatment see the chapter ‘‘Yiddish Bibles’’ in Jean Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, ed. and trans. Jerold C. Frakes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 82–127. 20. This Yiddish word (literally, ‘‘to make a separation’’) traditionally indicates two things that should not be mentioned in the same breath, usually the sacred and the profane or the Jewish and the non-Jewish. 21. Though it should be noted that this hybrid was based on ‘‘the language of the Saxon chancery’’ as a ‘‘compromise language’’ and that, as a kind of official vernacular, it was a different kind of literary language. John L. Flood, ‘‘Martin Luther’s Bible Translation in its German and European Context,’’ in The Bible in the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Richard Griffiths (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 65. 22. D. Katz, Words on Fire, 97. 23. This is the view put forth most famously by Roman Jakobson with his idea of the ‘‘poetic function.’’ 24. ‘‘ ‘Kol yomay, azoy zogt binyomin der driter aleyn, kol yomay nisgadalti betuneyadevke, mayn gants lebn, dos heyst biz mayn groyser nesie, bin ikh nisgadl gevorn in tuneyadevke, dort bin ikh geboyrn gevorn, dort bin ikh dertsoygn gevorn, un dort hob ikh lemazl khasene gehat im ishti, mit mayn ployniste hatsnue maras zelde tikhye.’ ‘‘Tuneyadevke, dos kleyne shtetl in a farvorfn vinkl, in der zayt funem trakt, kimet opgerisn fun der velt azoy, az ven a mol makht zikh, eyner kumt ahin tsu forn, efnt men di fentster, di tirn un men kukt farvundert on dem frishn parshoyn. shkeynim fregn eyner baym andern, aroyskukndik fun di ofene fentster, kashes: ha, ver zol es azoyns zayn? fun vanen hot er plutsim fun der heler hoyt aher zikh genumen? vos ken azelkher badarfn? hot er epes nisht a meyn? epes azoy glat ken es nit zayn, glat azoy den nemt men un men kumt! mistome ligt dokh do epes, vos men muz es dergeyn . . . derbay vil itlekher aroysvayzn zayn khokhme, zayn genitshaft, boykh-svores faln vi mist.’’ Mendele Moykher Sforim, Masoes binyomin hashlishi: Mendele un zayn epokhe, fragmentn fun forsharbetn tsu der kharakteristik un zikhroynes, ed. Shmuel Rozhanski (Buenos Aires: Yoysef Lifshits fond baym Kultur-kongres in Argentine, 1958), 31. 25. One could also add another smaller sequence in which the Hebrew text ‘‘with my wife’’ (‘‘im ishti’’) is glossed in Yiddish as ‘‘to my pious missus’’ (‘‘mit mayn ployniste hatsnue’’) and commented on as ‘‘Mrs. Zelde, long may she live’’ (‘‘maras zelde tikhye’’). 26. Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, 118. 27. This situation is beginning to change. The fullest contemporary treatment is the excellent study by Simon Neuberg, Pragmatische Aspekte der jiddischen Sprachgeschichte am Beispiel der ‘‘Zenerene’’ (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1999). 28. Khone Shmeruk, ‘‘Di mizrekh-eyropeyishe nuskhoes fun der tsenerene (1850–1786),’’ in Tsenerene, 330–50; also found in For Max Weinreich on His Seventieth Birthday: Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), 320–36.

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29. Chava Turniansky, ‘‘Ze’enah u-Re’enah,’’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 16 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 967. 30. Shmeruk, ‘‘Di mizrekh-eyropeyishe nuskhoes,’’ 330–31. 31. For a first-rate analysis of khumesh-taytsh, particularly in light of the pre-Lutheran Bible translations, see Shloyme Nobl, Khumesh-taytsh: An oysforshung vegn der traditsye fun taytshkhumesh in di khadorim (New York: Yivo, 1943). 32. Shmeruk, ‘‘Di mizrekh-eyropeyishe nuskhoes,’’ 334–36. See also Max Weinreich, ‘‘History of the Yiddish Language: The Problems and their Implications’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959): 567. 33. My thanks to Andrew Simpson for this catalogue. 34. Shmeruk, too, observes how the linguistic shift in the Eastern European versions of the Tsenerene are likely in line with spoken-language developments. Some of the prominent changes in the Tsenerene’s language that mark this shift are as follows. (1) The loss of the simple preterit in favor, first, of the historical present, and ultimately of the composite past tense. This is ‘‘one of the most important signs of the Eastern European redactions,’’ and Eastern Yiddish to this day still has only the composite past tense. (2) ‘‘The removal of linking words, which had already dropped out of the spoken language, and bringing the sentence construction closer to spoken language,’’ as with inverted word order. (3) Replacement of older, ‘‘archaic-sounding’’ words with more common synonyms; or other lexical shifts, such as the adverbial-complement ‘‘mutation’’ (for example, aroys instead of heroys, and arayn instead of hinayn, both of which are still part of modern Eastern Yiddish). (4) The change of word choice based on a change in that word’s meaning in the spoken language. For example, the word tseylem lost its meaning ‘‘idol’’ since in the spoken language it had come to mean ‘‘Christian cross’’ or ‘‘crucifix’’ (Shmeruk, ‘‘Di mizrekh-eyropeyishe nuskhoes,’’ 338–42). Shmeruk’s article was the pioneering work on this subject. A much larger and thorough study of the ‘‘Easternization’’ (and in many ways vernacularization) of literary Yiddish in the early modern period is Dov-Ber Kerler, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). 35. The italicized phrase is in Hebrew in the text. 36. μ[d ˜a rfçnyp ònwa dr[ ayd r[l ònwa fçyww ˜z[wwyg fzya ad dr[ ònwa lmyh çnp[çyb zfçr[ ˜a ayd fah μwraww ònwa ryçww yd rbya ˜fpwl ˜ya ˜dnfçyg zya rd hbqh ˜wp (dwbkh ask) r[d ònwa fnwrg pa . . . çnwa fnr[l r[ (tyb) r[d fym ˜bwhyg ˜a hrwt 37. Nobl, Khumesh-taytsh, 37. 38. See, for example, an introductory list in Louis Jacobs, The Talmudic Argument: A Study in Talmudic Reasoning and Methodology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1–17. 39. Interestingly, the seeming non sequitur itself is another Yiddish stylistic development. 40. wza ˜ypwa zya fnaww ydryp yd ònwa ˜yyz wx ayd ˜fyyz ayyrd fwh tyb ˜yya fçya ayww çnwa fnr[l r[ . . . fkmyg wx hbqh fah ˜fyyz ayyrd fl[ww yd ˚ywa zya 41. Alexander Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1928; repr., New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research/Schocken Books, 1988), 523. 42. fr[ww hnykç ayd ˜[d fçywwr[p ˜yyz fr[ww dr[ ayd (whwbw whwt htyh ≈rahw) r[ fgaz μwrad ˜fzw znwa fçyyww çd (μymh ynp l[ tpjrm μyhla jwrw) μyhla r[ fgz μwrad ònwa ˜brwj ˜ya ˜wfba ˚yz ˜wfygba ˜r[ww fyn hrwt yd çnwa fr[ww ˚an twlg μya ˜yyz ˜dr[ww ˚yylg rym 43. See Midrash Genesis Rabbah 12:10. 44. Note once again that no direct translation is given; rather, Rashi’s interpretation, as is so often the case, is immediately presented almost as the translation. 45. See Midrash Genesis Rabbah 4:3. 46. See Midrash Psalms 19:4. 47. See Midrash Genesis Rabbah 4:6. 48. See Numbers 16. 49. That is, Tractate Bava Batra, chap. 5 (74a). 50. Interestingly, the word ‘‘apple’’ used here can also mean simply an unspecified fruit and is in some later editions rendered generically ‘‘fruit’’ but with the Hebrew peirot. See, for example, Tse’enah u-re’enah (New York: Hebrew, 1913), (2).

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51. ‘‘He [i.e., Ashkenazi] reassembles the fragments taken from diverse sources, reuses or transforms motifs time-honored within the tradition, and transposes into the vernacular the essence of the biblical material. To begin with, the text gives the impression of a grand coherence, as much because of the choice of the sources as for the unity of the composition. We have before us a work whose rigorous structure is complex and itself reveals to us an author in the modern sense’’ (Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, 115). 52. Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 68–94. 53. See also John Hinds, ‘‘Organizational Patterns in Discourse,’’ in Discourse and Syntax, ed. Talmy Givo´n, vol. 12 of Syntax and Semantics (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 135–57; Wallace C. Chafe, ‘‘The Flow of Thought and the Flow of Language,’’ in Givo´n, Discourse and Syntax, 159–81. 54. Think, for instance, of Michael Wex’s hypothetical exchange of curses:

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Berl: A beyzer gzar zol af dir kumen—May an evil decree come upon you. Shmerl: Kumen zolstu tsu dayn eybiker ru—May you come to your eternal rest. Berl: Ruen zolstu nisht afile in keyver—May you find no rest even in the grave. Shmerl: Zol dir lign in keyver der eyver, in di kishkes a loch mit a sheyver—May your penis lie in a grave, [may] a hole and a hernia [lie] in your guts. Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 120. In this Gru¨belichkeitstrieb-riddled competition, the sole motivation for each subsequent curse is a linguistic ligature, a single word is the seed of the next utterance. 55. This is also Rashi’s own analysis of the topical progression. 56. A kasha, that is, a question over a perceived difficulty in the text. 57. Additionally, there is here a secondary linguistic ligature, namely ‘‘quarreling.’’ This requires an explanation. The Yiddish verb used in the text for the protestation of the waters at the beginning and the quarreling here is krign [zikh], which covers the semantic range of quarreling, protesting, strife, and even war. The author links these acts together with the ultimate biblical example of such discontent, namely Korah, in whose case ‘‘rebellion’’ would be an accurate description. This is, then, an intentional thematic and linguistic thread running through this narrative. 58. Namely, raqi‘a (expanse). This also requires an explanation. The narrative excerpted from the Talmud is itself part of a larger string of narratives. The cited chapter opens with a legal discussion of what appurtenances are included in the sale of a ship but quickly turns into a series of outlandish seafaring and traveling tales. The most fanciful of these is a string of stories told by Rabbah bar Bar Hana, some of which involve a certain merchant whom he met on his travels. The story he tells immediately following the Korah story opens with the merchant telling Rabbah bar Bar Hana, ‘‘Come, I will show you how the earth and the heaven kiss one another’’ (Tractate Bava Batra 74a), where the Aramaic word for ‘‘heaven,’’ reqi‘a’, is the cognate of the Hebrew word in the lemma for the entire pericope. The similarity and contiguity are certainly more than fortuitous. At the very least it underscores the author’s sensitivity to linguistic and structural detail. 59. Julia A. Goldberg, ‘‘A Move Toward Describing Conversational Coherence,’’ in Conversational Coherence: Form, Structure, and Strategy, edited by Robert T. Craig and Karen Tracy (Beverly Hills: SAGE, 1983), 34. To paraphrase in a simplified way, the four moves are (1) ‘‘introducing’’: the introduction of new material, unrelated to the preceding material; (2) ‘‘reintroducing’’: the reintroduction of previous material that was, however, not in the immediately preceding material; (3) ‘‘progressive-holding’’: maintaining some of the material as what preceded it, but expanding on it or adding material to it; and (4) ‘‘holding’’: maintaining material only from the preceding material. 60. Ibid., 36.

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61. Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 99–100. The linguistic-philosophical vocabulary of the latter point is associated with one of Harshav’s larger theoretical projects in literary theory and criticism, outlined in a number of articles but most thoroughly and programmatically in Benjamin Hrushovski, ‘‘Integrational Semantics: An Understander’s Theory of Meaning in Context,’’ in Contemporary Perceptions of Language: Interdisciplinary Dimensions, ed. Heidi Byrnes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1982), 156–90. 62. The similarity of certain aspects of Jewish discourse to the stream-of-consciousness style that developed in modernist literature has been remarked upon before. The crucial difference is that whereas stream-of-consciousness is an internal, monologic, and psychological product, Jewish discursive patterns developed according to external, oral, dialogic, and conversational patterns. 63. Immanuel Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, or How to Laugh in Yiddish, 1947 (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 180n6. 64. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 100. 65. I am consciously using Harshav’s designation ‘‘expression’’ in that I am taking him to mean that it has become more or less a set collocation in Yiddish. 66. Mary Louise Pratt, ‘‘Ideology and Speech-Act Theory,’’ in The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present, ed. Jean Jacques Weber (London: Arnold, 1996), 182. Pratt’s article is an important study in the relevance of linguistics and linguistic theory to careful analyses of literature. 67. And it is important that her essay is anthologized in a collection dedicated to stylistics. 68. Pratt, ‘‘Ideology and Speech-Act Theory,’’ 191. 69. Menakhem Perry, ‘‘Thematic and Structural Shifts in Autotranslations by Bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish Writers: The Case of Mendele Mokher Sforim,’’ Poetics Today 2 (1981): 185. 70. Victor Erlich, ‘‘A Note on the Monologue as a Literary Form: Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Monologn’—A Test Case,’’ in For Max Weinreich on His Seventieth Birthday, 44–50. 71. Ibid., 45. 72. Erlich maintains his distinction between monologue and first-person narration by underscoring its ‘‘discursive, non-dramatic quality’’ (45), a quality that is another important point of contact between his discussion and the Tsenerene. 73. Cited in source; Erlich, ‘‘Note on the Monologue,’’ 45. For its application to Sholem Aleykhem see also Ken Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 183–89. 74. Although with the Sholem Aleykhem examples, Erlich is in an easier position vis-a`-vis the skaz ‘‘mold’’ since from the outset he maintains that the monologn are not skaz but closely related phenomena. 75. See Chava Weissler, ‘‘The Religion of Traditional Ashkenazic Women: Some Methodological Issues’’ AJS Review 12 (1987): 79. 76. Sheila E. Jelen, ‘‘She Sermonizes in Wool and Flax: Dvora Baron’s Literary Vernacular,’’ Prooftexts 23 (2003): 204. See also Jelen, Intimations of Difference: Dvora Baron in the Modern Hebrew Renaissance (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 102–4. 77. Erlich, ‘‘Note on the Monologue,’’ 45. 78. Ibid. 79. However, the term ‘‘vernacular’’ itself is somewhat fuzzy. Its semantic range covers, for example, notions of both ‘‘standard’’ language and ‘‘quotidian’’ language. Sheila Jelen situates Baron at the leading edge of innovating a new vernacular-sounding literary Hebrew: ‘‘Baron’s career as a Hebrew writer reflects a process of textual acquisition based not exclusively on a scholarly engagement with traditional texts but, in part, on a gleaning of literary texts from oral encounters. Learning traditional Jewish texts orally and aurally, Baron was better equipped than her literary peers to recognize the importance of representing the juncture of voice and text in modern Hebrew literature’’ (Jelen, Intimations of Difference, 83). The orality that Jelen fore-

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grounds here springs from the woman’s traditional contact with the Jewish texts through the Tsenerene. 80. Kerler, Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish, 100–115; see also Chava Turniansky, ‘‘Nusach maskili shel ‘tsenerene’, ktav-yad bilti-yadua shel herts homberg’’ Ha-sifrut 2 (1971): 835–41; Turniansky, ‘‘Iberzetsungen un baarbetungen fun der ‘tsenerene,’ ’’ in Sefer dov sadan: Kovets mechkarim mugashim bimlot lo shivim ve-chamesh shanah, ed. S. Verses, N. Rotenstraikh, and K. Shmeruk (Jerusalem: Ha-kibuts he-meuchad, 1977), 165–90. 81. Kerler, Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish, 26. 82. Erlich, ‘‘Note on the Monologue,’’ 46. 83. Ibid., 47. 84. Jelen, ‘‘She Sermonizes,’’ 204. 85. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 18. It is a development of ‘‘there is neither earlier nor later in the Torah’’ into ‘‘there is neither earlier nor later in the Jewish library.’’ 86. Michael Stern, ‘‘Tevye’s Art of Quotation,’’ Prooftexts 6 (1986): 79–96. 87. Cited in source; ibid., 79. Stern’s contention, however, hinges on what this notion of ‘‘suits’’ means. 88. Ibid. 89. See, for example, the two cited examples above, Stern himself (ibid.), and Herbert H. Paper, ‘‘A Note on Two Kinemes in Sholem Aleichem,’’ in Bartal, Mendelsohn, and Turniansky, Studies in Jewish Culture, 68. 90. Erlich, ‘‘Note on the Monologue,’’ 48. 91. Dan Miron, Ha-tsad ha-afel bi-tsechoko shel shalom alekhem: Masot al hashivutah shel haretsinut be-yachas le-yidish ule-sifrutah (Tel Aviv: Am oved, 2004), 27; see also 26–33 for his reading in full. See also Miron, A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 179, for the original context of this perception in the stylistic contrast between the literary personae Mendele Moykher-Sforim and Sholem Aleykhem. 92. It is tempting to make an analogy of this to the Talmudic sugye, the smallest topical unit of discussion in a Talmudic debate. 93. The specific version of the text referenced is Sholem Aleykhem, Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem, vol. 3, sec. 4 (New York: Forverts oysgabe, 1942), 9–25. 94. And it bears stressing again that this is a monologue, that is, an illusion of conversation, not a conversation as such. It is what makes that illusion so convincing, so natural—a way of organizing thought and language mediated by literary cultural models diffused particularly influentially through the Tsenerene—that is at the heart of this chapter. 95. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 107–11. 96. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 188. 97. ‘‘Rebe! ikh vil aykh fregn a shayle vil ikh aykh. ikh veys nisht, tsi kent ir mikh, tsi kent ir mikh nisht. ikh bin yente bin ikh, yente di kurelapnitshke. ikh handl mit eyer handl ikh, mit oyfes, mit gendz un mit katshkes. ikh hob mir mayne shtendike koynetes hob ikh mir, a tsveydray hayzer, haltn zey mikh unter, zol zey got gebn gezunt un aldos guts; vorum ikh zol nokh darfn tsoln pritsent, volt nisht geklekt di khale af der ‘hamoytsi.’ khap ikh a drayerl khap ikh, a mol do, a mol dortn, do genumen, dort gegebn, dort gegebn, do genumen—me dreyt zikh, meshteyns gezogt! avade, vos zolt ir klern, ven mayn man olevasholem zol mir atsind lebn—tete-te! . . . khotsh az me vil shmuesn dos eygene tsurik, hob ikh keyn honik far im nisht gelekt, vorum keyn fardiner, zol er mir moykhl zayn, iz er dokh nisht geven, nor gezesn un gelernt, gezesn un gelernt, un gehorevet hob ikh, un horeven bin ikh geveynt nokh fun kindvayz af, nokh bay mayn mame olehasholem, batye hot zi geheysn, batye di lekhttsierin, zi iz geven a lekhttsierin, flegt ufkoyfn kheylev bay di katsovim un tsien lekht, kheylevene tseplekh, me hot nokh nisht gevust demolt fun keyn gaz un fun keyn lemplekh mit glezlekh, vos trishtshen ale mol, ersht yene vokh geplatst bay mir a glezl, un far tsvey vokhn a glezl . . . Yo, akegn vos iz dos gekumen tsu reyd? akegn dem, vos ir zogt: yung geshtorbn . . . az mayn moyshe-bentsien olevasholem iz

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geshtorbn, iz er alt geven sakhakl zeks un tsvantsik yor’’ (Sholem Aleykhem, Ale verk, vol. 3, sec. 4, 9–10). 98. As Miron says directly, ‘‘her patterns of thought are . . . associative’’ (Ha-tsad ha-afel, 27). Ken Frieden, too, confirms this characterization of much of Sholem Aleykhem’s style in works such as this as being ‘‘digressive [and] free associative.’’ He argues that among the monologues there are important structural and stylistic differences between those that deal with ‘‘folk’’ characters and those that involve ‘‘bourgeois’’ characters. Ken Frieden, ‘‘Sholem Aleichem: Monologues of Mastery,’’ Modern Language Studies 19 (1989): 25. 99. The phrasal ligatures in the story are as follows: (1) yung geshtorbn (died young); (2) an almone (a widow); (3) an eygene dire (one’s own dwelling); (4) shkheynim (lodgers); (5) shlekhte shkheynim (bad lodgers); (6) ikh hob lib reyn (I like cleanliness); (7) a ben-yokhid (an only son); (8) gezunt (healthy); (9) yaykhlekh (soups); (10) men iz keseyder fartararamt (one is deafened in good order); (11) shlim-mazl (bad luck); (12) fun milkhiks mit fleyshiks in eyn oyvn kon keyn guts nit aroys (nothing good can come of milk and meat in the same oven); (13) teplekh in balabatishkayt iz keynmol nisht tsu fil (in the household there are never too many pots). 100. Erlich, ‘‘Note on the Monologue,’’ 49. 101. After all, ‘‘the preposterousness of an interminable monologue in what was purported to be a dialogue situation is at the core of some of Sholem Aleichem’s telling comic effects’’ (ibid., 48). 102. Hana Wirth-Nesher, ‘‘Voices of Ambivalence in Sholem Aleichem’s Monologues,’’ Prooftexts 1 (1981): 158–71. 103. Ibid., 163. The passage in question reads: ‘‘ ‘Reb Yosi,’ I says to him, ‘May God be with you! Anyway, when a wife dies what should you do? It’s God’s affair! . . . The Lord hath taken away and the Lord gave, isn’t that how it’s written in our holy books? One doesn’t have to explain it to you; you probably know it better. . . .’ Yes, how did that come up? About what you said: ‘an only son.’. . . He’s my one and only, as you say: the apple of my eye; Dovidl that is’’ (‘‘Reb yosi, zog ikh tsu im, got iz mit aykh! meyle, az se shtarbt a vayb, vos zol men tun? s’iz a gots zakh!’’ . . . hashem lokakh hashem nosan, vi azoy shteyt dortn geshribn bay undz in di heylike sforim? aykh badarf men nisht dertseyln, mistome veyst ir beser . . . Yo, akegn vos zhe iz dos gekumen tsu reyd? akegn dem, vos ir zogt: a ben-yokhid . . . er iz bay mir eyn-un-eyntsiker, vi zogt ir: eyn oyg in kop, dovidl heyst es’’) (Sholem Aleykhem, Ale verk, vol. 3, sec. 4, 15–16). 104. Of course, Sholem Aleykhem couldn’t help adding the Tevye-esque turn of reversing the order of the canonical phrase (Job 1:21, ‘‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away’’). 105. Wirth-Nesher, ‘‘Voices of Ambivalence,’’ 165. 106. Ibid., 166, 167, respectively. 107. Wirth-Nesher does explicitly acknowledge the comic element of these works; see ibid., 166–67. 108. Miron, Ha-tsad ha-afel, 26–33. 109. My thanks to Naomi Brenner for this astute insight. See also Miron, ibid., 26. 110. See the anecdote ‘‘Puter’’ in Olsvanger, Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, 170. The cultural referencing of humor in this way is another important literary concomitant. These jokes or joke-type references are the lighter end of Harshav’s ‘‘principle of universal analogy,’’ in which ‘‘every chain developed in a text may link it with the whole universe of discourse’’ (Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish, 102). So, for example, later in the story, when Yente laments having lent a brand-new pot to her neighbor Gnesi, we find the following exchange described: ‘‘And she gives me back a banged-up pot. So I say to her, ‘What kinda pot is this?’ So she says, ‘It’s your pot.’ So I say, ‘So how come I get a banged-up pot when you took from me a perfectly good pot?’ So she says, ‘Quiet, don’t carry on so, it’s no use! First, I gave you back a perfectly good pot. Second, when I took the pot from you it was a banged-up pot. And third, I never took a pot from you; I have my own pot, so leave me alone!’ . . . The things a libertine will say!’’ (‘‘un git mir op a shtsherbate tepl. zog ikh tsu ir: ‘vos iz dos far a tepl?’ . . . zogt zi: ‘s’iz ayer tepl’ . . . zog ikh: ‘vi kumt tsu mir a shtsherbate tepl, az ir hot bay mir genumen a gants tepl?’ . . . zogt zi: ‘shat, shrayt nit azoy, me

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vet fun aykh nit gliklekh! ershtns, hob ikh aykh opgegebn a gants tepl; tsveytns, az ikh hob bay aykh genumen dos tepl, iz dos geven an ongeshtsherbet tepl; un dritns, hob ikh bay aykh keynmol nit genumen keyn tepl, ikh hob mir mayn tepl, un tshepet zikh op fun mayn lebn!’ . . . a hultayke kon!’’) (Sholem Aleykhem, Ale verk, vol. 3, sec. 4, 24). This kind of explanation from mutually exclusive alternative possibilities is a familiar joke form (as well as, incidentally, an acceptable legal argument in some trial procedures) that is being alluded to as a recognizable and understandable cultural form. See Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 8–9. Yente is not saying, ‘‘What ridiculous, nonsensical things she will say!’’ but rather ‘‘She’s using that one on me?!’’

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chapter 5 1. Shmuel Niger, Y. L. Perets: Zayn lebn, zayn firndike perzenlekhkayt, zayne hebreishe un yidishe shriftn, zayn virkung (Buenos Aires: Argentiner opteyl fun alveltlekhn yidishn kulturkongres, 1952), 275. 2. See, for example, Buber’s Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (1906) and Die Legende des Baalschem (1908), Berdyczewski’s Nishmat Chasidim (1899), and Dubnow’s essays (1888–93). David G. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 115. 3. Niger, Y. L. Perets, 274ff. 4. See, for example, Robert Alter, The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language of Realism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 24–41. 5. Menakhem Perry, ‘‘Thematic and Structural Shifts in Autotranslations by Bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish Writers: The Case of Mendele Mokher Sforim,’’ Poetics Today 2 (1981): 181. 6. For example, Ruth R. Wisse, I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 55; Ken Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 282; David C. Jacobson, Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 19. 7. Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, ‘‘Hasidism: Interpretations of Hasidism,’’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), 1420. 8. David C. Jacobson, Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 19. 9. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 282. 10. Ibid. 11. Niger, Y. L. Perets, 274–75. 12. Ibid., 279. 13. Dovid Bergelson, ‘‘J. L. Perez und die chassidische Ideologie: Anla¨ßlich des zehntes Wiederkehr von Perez’ Todestag,’’ Juedische Rundschau (Berlin), April 8, 1925, 267. (This article also appeared in Yiddish as ‘‘Y. L. Perets un di khsidishe ideologye,’’ Literarishe bleter, April 10, 1925, 3.) 14. Niger, Y. L. Perets, 290. 15. See ibid., 274. 16. To my knowledge there is only one English translation: ‘‘A Conversation,’’ in The I. L. Peretz Reader, ed. Ruth R. Wisse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 181. Translation as ‘‘A Chat’’ might also be appropriate; see Y. L. Perets, Stories and Pictures, trans. Helena Frank (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1906; repr., Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 313. 17. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 282. 18. Gershon Shaked, Modern Hebrew Fiction, ed. Emily Miller Budick, trans. Yael Lotan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 26.

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19. Ruth R. Wisse, ‘‘Two Jews Talking: A View of Modern Yiddish Literature,’’ in What Is Jewish Literature? ed. Hana Wirth-Nesser (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 131–32. 20. ‘‘Es iz a varemer, emes-yontefdiker tog.’’ 21. ‘‘Lozn zikh hinter der shtot aroys shpatsirn.’’ The version of the story used here is from the 1930 edition of Perets’s collected works, Ale verk fun Y. L. Perets, vol. 5, Khsidish (New York: Morgn-frayhayt, 1930), 150–54. The story was originally published in the special Passover issue of Der Yid (1900), 7–9. I will refer to that version only when the differences are particularly salient. 22. ‘‘A sorid upolit fun di alte kotsker.’’ Incidentally, this is a good example of a regularized postvocalic despirantization in Hebrew phrases adopted into Yiddish. So we find regularly sorid upolit instead of the expected *sorid ufolit. 23. Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1928; repr., New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research/Schocken Books, 1988), 518. 24. See Joshua 8:22 and Jeremiah 42:17; for the reversed order see Jeremiah 44:14 and Lamentations 3:22. 25. Niger, Y. L. Perets, 276. 26. ‘‘A nisher fun di alte belzer.’’ 27. See, for example, Ezekiel 17:21 (‘‘And all his fugitives in all his armies will fall by the sword, and the remnants [or ‘those who are remaining’; vehannisˇ’arıˆm] will be scattered to every wind’’). Additionally, take Jeremiah 42; though not an exact parallel, this martial pericope uses both items in some form: the verb, of which nisher is the participle, in verse 2 (‘‘And they said to Jeremiah the prophet, ‘Let our supplication fall before you; pray on our behalf to the Lord your God, on behalf of all this remnant [hasˇe’erıˆt]; for we remain [ni’arnuˆ] a few from many, as your eyes do see us’ ’’), and sorid ufolit in verse 17 (‘‘All the men who turn their faces to come to Egypt and to sojourn there will die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; and there will be neither remnant nor fugitive [sarıˆd uˆfalıˆt] from the misery I am bringing upon them’’). 28. ‘‘Yungerheyt, zenen zey zikh sonim gevezn, sonim af toyt un lebn.’’ Note the Hebrew word for ‘‘enemies,’’ which is not in and of itself a particularly marked word, but which, when taken in the story’s lexical context up to that point, strengthens the ‘‘biblical’’ proportions of their erstwhile struggle. 29. ‘‘In beys-hamedresh, vinter baym oyvn, hobn zey sholem gemakht; un tsind, kholhamoyed peysekh, baym ershtn sheynem tog, geyen zey beyde shpatsirn.’’ 30. This shift back to the present is heightened in this version of the text by adding the word ‘‘now’’ (tsind), which is absent in the original version; the choice of this specific word instead of the more common itst heightens the contrastive character of the statement. 31. ‘‘Di zun shaynt af a vayt bloyen himl. fun der erd raysn zikh aroys di grezlekh; men zet mamesh bekhush, vi a malekh shteyt bay yedn grezl un shlogt: vaks! vaks! makhnes feygelekh tseflien zikh, zukhndig farayorige nestn.’’ See Genesis Rabbah 10:6 (‘‘There is not one [blade of] grass which does not have a constellation in heaven [i.e., here, a guardian angel] which strikes it and says, ‘Grow!’ ’’). It is noteworthy that Mendele Moykher-Sforim’s introduction in S. Y. Abramovitsh’s novel Masoes binyomin hashlishi (The Travels of Benjamin the Third) opens with exactly this image, though Perets stages a reversal of Abramovitsh’s Quixote-like adventure story by immediately launching into the dialogue. 32. ‘‘Kotsker, farshteyst,—emese kotsker, meyn ikh, fun di hayntige iz nisht keday tsu redn,—nor emese, alte kotsker haltn gornisht azoy shtark fun der hagode.’’ 33. The term ‘‘colloquy’’ is being used advisedly. Plainly speaking, it is a conversation or dialogue. But taking a cue from Erasmus, the form is quite expandable both for didactic or rhetorical purposes (as in his ‘‘The Religious Feast’’) as well as for the purpose of language instruction. Erasmus, after all, began writing his colloquies ‘‘as a series of model conversations . . . illustrating the various Latin phrases appropriate to a particular social situation. . . . They were written down, not for publication, but as part of Erasmus’s work as a private tutor in Paris.’’ Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams

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(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 174. Of course, pedagogy was not the foremost part of Perets’s project; but the concern for a particular and ‘‘accurate’’ representation of language certainly was. 34. ‘‘Nor fun di kneydlekh?—shmeykhlt r’ zerakh.’’ 35. ‘‘Oys kneydlekh,—entfert r’ shakhne ernst,—lakh nit! Du veyst dem sod fun ‘loy tasgir eved el adoynov’?’’ The biblical verse cited is Deuteronomy 23:16. 36. An equally plausible rendering would be ‘‘relevance,’’ as in the Wisse translation (Wisse, I. L. Peretz Reader, 181). 37. Ignaz Bernstein, Ju¨dische Sprichwo¨rter und Redensarten (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 74. 38. My gratitude to Professor Eli Katz, z’’l, for this and other fine details of Yiddish language and idiomatics. 39. See, for example, Perry (185–96), and in the context of the visual arts and Marc Chagall, see Benjamin Harshav, ‘‘The Role of Language in Modern Art: On Texts and Subtexts in Chagall’s Paintings,’’ Modernism/Modernity 1 (1994): 56–63. 40. ‘‘Far mir,—zogt der belzer mit a shtoltser anives,—iz genug tsu visn di kavones fun davenen.’’ 41. ‘‘Meyle der pshat iz dokh poshet.’’ 42. What is so pleasant (and so cleverly, if gently, satirical of Shakhne’s way of thinking) about this opening is the pun between pshat and poshet—technical and literal versions of ‘‘simplicity.’’ 43. See chapter 2. 44. ‘‘Az es antloyft a knekht a meshores, a poyer—tor men im al-pi din toyre nisht khapn, nisht bindn un nisht ibergebn tsurik tsum porits, tsum balebos; minastam, az a mentsh antloyft, kon er shoyn nisht oyshaltn . . . iz shoyn sakones nefoshes!’’ Note that the verb ‘‘to give over’’ here—ibergebn—is a running calque of the Hebrew (tasgir) throughout this text. 45. The word he uses here again is sod. I have rendered it here ‘‘esoteric meaning’’ instead of the earlier ‘‘significance’’ because in light of his having just spoken of the pshat, it seems clear that this is the sense Perets is driving at. 46. ‘‘Nor der sod is oykh gor poshet: der guf iz bibkhines eved,——er iz a knekht tsu der neshome! der guf iz a bal-tayve, er zet a shtik khazer, an eshes-ish, an avoyde-zore, veys ikh vos—shpringt er fun der hoyt aroys; zogt ober di neshome: loy sayse! muz er shvaygn. un farkert—di neshome vil a mitsve ton—muz der guf ton, meg er zayn mid, geharget . . . muzn di hent arbetn , di fis loyfn, dos moyl redn . . . farvos? der porits, di neshome heyst!’’ 47. It is true that this phrase can be found once in the Bible, Exodus 20:10, but as a category it took off under rabbinic auspices, as we can see from the more than ninety attestations in the Talmud. 48. Or equally well: ‘‘Do not turn [him] in!’’ 49. ‘‘Un fundestvegn: loy tasgir! di fayerdige neshome volt im farbrent, ash fun im gemakht. un, ven der riboyne-shel-oylem zol veln neshomes on gufim, volt er keyn velt nisht bashafn!’’ 50. One might be tempted to add pilpul to this conceptual space; however, this word, a technical term for a particular kind of legalistic argumentation, has also come to represent a hairsplitting casuistry whose Jesuitical connotation is not appropriate to the context. 51. The form of this word, ‘‘privileges’’ (skhiyesn), is unusual. Setting aside for the moment the real possibility that it is simply a dialectal plural, it looks as if this might be a conflation of two plural forms: (1) skhus (pl. skhusn), meaning ‘‘merit, right,’’ a Hebrew word with a Germanic plural ending; and (2) skhiye (pl. skhiyes), meaning ‘‘privilege, honor,’’ another Hebrew word but this one with its original Hebrew plural ending. In the event, the form in our text (skhiyesn) has a doubly marked plural form. 52. This indicates something to the effect that the person fasting does so to excess or in a self-consciously demonstrative, performative way. 53. Tractate Taanit 11a; in that context it is part of a larger debate on the acceptability of uncommanded fasting.

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54. The material in parentheses is the Yiddish gloss of the quote. 55. ‘‘Un deriber hot der guf oykh zayne skhiyesn . . . ‘kol hayoyshev betaynis nikro khoyte’ (der vos fast a sakh heyst a zindiger)—der guf darf esn! ver es vil forn, muz shpayzn dos ferd!’’ 56. See, for example, the story ‘‘Mekubolim’’ (Kabbalists). 57. Wisse, I. L. Perets and the Making, 16. 58. Cf., for example, Yudel Mark, ‘‘The Language of Y. L. Peretz,’’ YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 4 (1949): 69. 59. The terms of this discussion come from H. Paul Grice’s ‘‘Logic and Conversation,’’ which was discussed earlier in chapter 2. To recap, according to Grice, during the normal exchange of information in a conversation, the conversants operate according to a set of general tacit rules, called maxims. These maxims function to maximize efficiency, semantic weight, and comprehensibility. When a maxim is flouted (consciously contravened), that itself is designed to convey a certain meaning in a certain way. The above-mentioned maxim of relevance is simply put by Grice: ‘‘Be relevant.’’ H. P. Grice, ‘‘Logic and Conversation,’’ in Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, vol. 3 of Syntax and Semantics (New York: Academic Press, 1975), 46. Should one flout this maxim in conversation by responding to someone in a seemingly irrelevant way, we are meant to understand that that irrelevance actually does get some meaning across. 60. The humorous adaptation of the commentary element, namely glossing the gloss with an ad hoc aphorism (‘‘whoever wishes to travel must feed his horse’’), is also a gesture of homage to Abramovitsh’s apothegmatic stylistics, where yoking a quotation from the holy sources to a pithy bit of folk wisdom was his own take on the European epigrammatic tradition. 61. This phrase (yoyme depagre) is an Aramaic near synonym for ‘‘holiday’’ (though less religiously connoted, along the lines of a ‘‘day off’’), and is significant here for being somewhat more ‘‘technical,’’ not a standard idiom. 62. ‘‘Kumt vayter a yontef, a yoyme depagre—frey dikh oykh! nem a kap bronfn, frey dikh, guf, oykh! un di neshome hot hanoe, un der guf hot hanoe: di neshome—fun der brokhe, der guf—fun kap! peysakh, zman kheyruseynu—kum aher, guf, khap a kneydl! un er vert dodurkh gehoybn, nisale! er kumt tsu simkhes mitsve!—oys kneydlekh, bruder, lakh nisht!’’ 63. Or also: ‘‘lets himself be persuaded.’’ 64. The word for something soaked, shruye, is from the Hebrew-Aramaic component of the language. In the original version of the story it is followed immediately by the Yiddish geveyktes (something soaked), which is a gloss that functions to rabbinicize the word shruye as a technical category deserving of taking part in the study-house auto-gloss tradition. 65. Notice once again Zerakh’s smiling speech. 66. Deuteronomy 16:14. 67. ‘‘R’ zerakh iz moyde, az der inyen iz tif un lozt zikh hern; er ober est nisht keyn shruye! ‘hostu hanoe fun matses . . .’ ‘ver hot matses tsu der zet?’—shmeykhlt r’ zerakh—‘un glat—vu nemt men tseyn tsu di matses?’ ‘vi azoy den bistu mekayem ‘‘vesimakhto bekhagekho’’ benegeye tsum guf?’ ‘ikh veys? oyb rozinke-vayn shmekt im—meyle! ikh aleyn hob vild hanoe fun der hagode. ikh zits un zog un tseyl di makes, un tseyl, un topl zey, un makh nokhamol a keyfl.’ ’’ 68. This is a double echo, in that the ‘‘miseries and harsh afflictions’’ speaks in biblical language and the ‘‘exile of the shekhinah’’ refers to the kabbalistic legend of the shekhinah accompanying the Jews in their exile. 69. This refers to two parts of the Haggadah, one in which the ten plagues of Egypt are listed, and another in which Jeremiah 10:25 is read out: ‘‘Pour out Your wrath upon the nations which do not know You, and upon the tribes which have not called upon Your name.’’ 70. This is to say, of the two passages to be repeated, according to this new custom he would like to institute, the recitation of the plagues is the most important. There is a darkly parodic humor in taking delight (zikh mekhaye, from the Hebrew meaning literally ‘‘to enliven’’ or ‘‘to revive, bring to life’’) in the plagues, especially considering the destruction they wrought culminating in the death of the first-born. 71. ‘‘ ‘Megusham!’ ‘megusham? far azoy fil tsores un inuyim koshim . . . far azoy lang golus

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hashkhine?—ikh meyn, men darf makhn a mineg, men zol zogn zibn mol di makes, zibn mol shfoykh khamoskho! der iker—di makes; mekhaye bin ikh mikh mit zey! ikh volt nokh gevolt efenen di tir bay di makes . . . zoln zey hern! vos hob ikh moyre?—zey farshteyn den loshnhakoydesh?’ ’’ 72. The phrase ‘‘in the following words’’ (kehay lishno) is a technical Aramaic phrase usually used to introduce a specific wording of special note. The curious use of this locution, where, as Yehoash and Spivak note, the ‘‘native’’ synonyms mit azoy shprakh, azoy, and nemlekh (all meaning something like ‘‘i.e.,’’ ‘‘to wit,’’ or ‘‘thus’’) would work perfectly well, is another one of Perets’s high–low register conflations. Yehoash and Khayim Spivak, Idishe Verterbukh (New York: Farlag ‘‘Vekher,’’ 1926), 110. Not only does it bring kehay lishono into an active, working, everyday idiom, but it elevates what follows it into a status of some gravity; but as we know now to expect, it will be a kneydl gravity. 73. Literally, ‘‘you will remember.’’ See Numbers 15:40; this passage forms part of the shema prayer. Traditionally, this word, tizkeru, is to be intoned with particular emphasis on a clear enunciation of the sibilant /-z-/ in order to avoid any confusion with tiskeru. My thanks to Professor Daniel Boyarin for pointing this out. 74. This sarcastic phrase, khosn dnon (literally ‘‘the aforementioned bridegroom’’), is taken from the language of the marriage contract. Using French to translate it is meant to get across a sense of the humorous high–low conflation involved. 75. ‘‘ ‘Herst, bay undz hot zikh getrofn aza mayse! ikh zol nisht zogn keyn guzme, efsher in tsentn hoyz fun rebn, zikhroyne-livrokhe, hot gevoynt a katsev. ikh zol nisht zindign mit di reyd,—er iz shoyn afn oylem hoemes,—a megushemer katsev, a katsev shebekatsovim! a kark vi a shtir-oks, bremen vi barshtn un hent vi di kletser! haynt—a kol! az er redt, dakht zikh, es dunert fun vaytn, khayil shist! er iz, dakht zikh, a belzer khosid gevezn.’ ‘nu, nu,’ brumt r’ zerakh. ‘khlebn!—entfert r’ shakhne kaltblutig,—er flegt davnen mit meshune-vilde havayes, mit alerley iber-koyles un unter-koyles. bay zayn ‘‘tizkeru,’’ hot zikh gedakht, az men shpritst mit vaser af fayer!’ ‘moykhl, moykhl!’ ‘haynt, zay dikh meshayer! vos far a mehume es vert, az aza bokher zitst zikh tsu der hagode! . . . men hert yedes vort baym rebn in shtub! meyle—a katsev zetst er vi a katsev; lakht men arum tish. der rebe, zikhroyne-livrokhe,—koym, koym, vos er rirt mit di lipn; men zet dokh bekhush, az er shmeykhlt . . . shpeter ober, az der ‘‘khosn dnon’’ hot ongehoybn tseyln d makes, az zey hobn im ongehoybn aroysflien fun moyl vi di koyln, un er zetst nokh derbay in tish arayn vi mit a hamer, az men hert, vi di koyses klingen,—iz der rebe, zikhroynelivrokhe, arayngefaln in an umet, in atsves . . .’ ‘in atsves—yontef—peysekh? vos redstu?’ ‘men hot take gefregt!’ ‘un vos hot er geentfert?’ ‘der riboyne-shel-oylem aleyn,—hot er gezogt,—iz bay yetsies mitsraym arayngefaln in atsves!’ ’’ 76. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 282. 77. Ibid., 292. 78. Not only that, but quite a` la Hasidim the rebbe is made in a way God’s analogue. 79. The phrase ‘‘Pharaoh and all his army’’ uses the Biblical locution paroy vekhol kheyloy (see, for example, Exodus 14:4, etc.). 80. Tractate Megillah 10b. 81. Notice, once again, the gloss of the Hebrew into Yiddish. 82. Psalms 145:9. 83. Possibly also ‘‘So be it.’’ 84. That is to say, what did he add to the matter; what was his innovation? The Yiddish is as follows: ‘‘ ‘vu hot er es genumen?’ ‘a medresh! az di bney yisroel zenen ariber ibern yam, un dos vaser hot fardekt un fartrunken paroy vekhol kheyloy, hobn di malokhim ongehoybn zogn shire, srofim veoyfanim zenen zikh tsefloygn in ale zibn himl mit a zemer, mit a bsure toyve! ale koykhovim umazoles hobn ongehoybn zingen un tantsen! un di galgalim,—konst dir forshteln, vos far a simkhe es iz gevezn, di tume iz ayngezunkn gevorn! nor der riboyne shel oylem hot ale opgeshtelt, fun kisey hakoved hot zikh gehert a kol: ‘‘maase yaday toyvim bayam veatem oymrim shiro?’’—mayne kinder trinken zikh in yam, un ir freyt aykh un zingt! vorem paroy vekhol

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kheyloy—dem koyekh hatume aleyn, hot oykh got bashafn . . . ‘‘verakhmov al kol maasov,’’ ksiv!’ ‘meyle!’—ziftst r’ zerakh. er shvaygt a vayle un dernokh fregt er: ‘oyb es iz vayter a midresh, vos hot er oyfgeton?’ ’’ 85. Wisse, I. L. Peretz Reader, 184. 86. This ‘‘innovation’’ (mekhadesh zayn) is here the technical Talmudic equivalent of Zerakh’s ‘‘achievement’’ (oyfton). 87. Pesakhim 6b; this is a general principle of traditional Biblical exegesis, namely that all parts of the Bible are informative for all others; anachronism is not considered an interpretative fault. 88. Hosea 9:1. 89. ‘‘R’ shakhne shtelt zikh op un zogt ernst: ‘ershtns, belzer nar, iz keyner nisht mekhuyev mekhadesh tsu zayn: ‘‘eyn mukdom umeukhor batoyre’’ . . . dos alte iz nay, dos naye iz alt . . . tsveytns, hot er undz megale gevezn dem sod, farvos men leyent di hagode, vos iz take durkhgenetst mit atsves. un—dritns, hot er dermit fartaytsht a posuk. ‘‘al tismakh yisroel el gil koamim.’’ megushem, grob frey zikh nisht: du bizt nisht keyn poyer! . . . nekome iz nisht keyn yidishe zakh!’ ’’ 90. Professor Daniel Boyarin, Talmud seminar, University of California, Berkeley, Spring 2000. 91. Mention should be made of the centrality of the nigen (melody) to Hasidic life, and to Perets’s oeuvre, as a crucial feature of cultural and religious expression. Each Hasidic ‘‘court’’ had its own particular set of melodies used for all kinds of events and occasions. The Kotsker’s justification of a particular melody is, then, an issue of some importance. No doubt it was one further ‘‘distinction’’ between the Kotsker and the Belzer. For Perets, the idea of the nigen, which he develops in many of his Hasidic stories, becomes a stand-in for the artistic elements of the Jewish folk spirit. Perets was himself a great lover of Jewish folk music, and music occupies a central role in many of his stories. His early Hebrew poem ‘‘Nagniel’’ (1876) gives particular prominence to the image of Nagniel, the angel of poetry and song, who helps a despairing poet recover his muse. A. R. Malochi, ‘‘Y. L. Perets, der hebreisher shrayber,’’ in Y. L. Perets in 19tn yorhundert: Lider, dertseylungen, eseyen, ed. Shmuel Rozhanski (Buenos Aires: Yoysef lifshits-fond fun der literature-gezelshaft baym yivo, 1973), 265. See also Hirsh Dovid Nomberg, Y. L. Perets (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn in argentine, 1946), 13–19. 92. Perets, quoted in Wisse, I. L. Peretz and the Making, 11. 93. That there was no speech community does not mean that there was no active readership, clearly, nor does it mean that there were not spoken, oral, and auditory resonances for Hebrew literature in the period; the profusion of intricately constructed poetry, for instance, vis-a`-vis rhyme, meter, and rhythm, attests to that fact. 94. Roskies, Bridge of Longing, 103. 95. Niger, Y. L. Perets, 274; ‘‘hot perets nit gehat bedeye tsi idealizirn oder gor tsu ‘rehabilitirn’.’’ 96. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 309. 97. D. Jacobson, Modern Midrash, 20. 98. Perry, ‘‘Thematic and Structural Shifts,’’ 182–83. 99. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 307. Again, see also Niger, Y. L. Perets, 275. Yankev Glatshteyn, too, warns against a nostalgification of Perets. Glatshteyn, In tokh genumen: Eseyen 1948– 1956 (New York: Farlag fun idish natsyonaln arbiter farband, 1956), 31. 100. Robert Alter, Hebrew and Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 60. 101. Roskies, Bridge of Longing, 115. It should be mentioned in this context that Roskies is addressing the neo-Hasidic strain, in the history of which Dubnow and Berdyczewski figure prominently. 102. Ibid., 121. 103. Ken Frieden, ‘‘Joseph Perl’s Escape from Biblical Epigonism Through Parody of Hasidic Writing,’’ AJS Review 29 (2005): 267. Further, for a particularly thoughtful and detailed analysis

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of Perl’s work and importance, see Jeremy Dauber, Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004) 104. From Perets’s 1901 Hebrew collection (Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, 283n). The version used here is taken from the Hebrew version of his collected works, Kol kitvey Y. L. Perets, vol. 2, 46–50. 105. Note the past tense, which will eventually turn into a present. Unlike the Yiddish, which is in the present throughout, the Hebrew brings us toward the characters through an initial narrative distance. In the Yiddish our intimacy is immediate. 106. The collocation yats’u lasuach is an exact parallel to the Yiddish shpatsirn geyn, i.e., in Chana Kronfeld’s pithy phrase, ‘‘to go for a Socratic walk,’’ to walk and talk. There may even be a slight resonance with Genesis 3:8, in which ‘‘they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden in the day’s breeze’’ (‘‘vayysˇime‘uˆ et-qoˆl yhwh ’elohıˆm mithallek baggan leruˆah. hayyoˆm’’), or with Genesis 24:63, ‘‘And Isaac went out to stroll in the field toward evening’’ (‘‘vayyes.e’ yis.h.aq lasuˆah. bassadeh lipnoˆt ‘areb’’). Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 125. By way of comparison, the Hebrew poet Shaul Tshernikhovski (1875–1943) makes interesting use of a closely related verb. In his long poem ‘‘Brit milah’’ (Circumcision) he describes a festive gathering of the small community of Bilivirka (purportedly in southern Ukraine) in honor of a circumcision: ‘‘The community was very joyful, all of them arguing and conversing’’ (‘‘kahal alez me’od, mitvakchim u-mesochechim kulam’’). Shaul Tshernikhovski, Shirim (Jerusalem: Schocken Books, 1946), 155. Not only are arguing or debating and conversing synonymous activities, but they are joyful ones as well. The is a key point: the cultural embeddedness of ‘‘argumentation’’ within the scope of conversation is quite clear. 107. Literally ‘‘Kotsets,’’ the significance of which will be described presently. 108. Mark, ‘‘Language of Y. L. Peretz,’’ 65. 109. ‘‘Akh rosho kafuf, le-val yidchak, chas ve-shalom, et ragley ha-shkhina.’’ 110. At least for this particular feature, Perets was in the van as a protomodernist. 111. Compare this to the opposite impression created by the Hebrew poet Yehudah Leib Gordon’s use of the same idiom in his poem ‘‘Kotso shel yud’’ (The Tip of the Yud). There he describes the incomparable grace, beauty, and poise of the heroine Bat-Shua: ‘‘u-shchinat ha-el mit’aneget aleha / et komatah ha-zkufah docheket ragleha’’ (And the Shechinah of God delights in her / When her upright stature encroaches on its feet). Yehudah Leib Gordon, Kol shirei yehudah leib gordon, vol 4 (Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1930), 11. 112. A giant on the shoulders of a dwarf, so to speak. 113. Reuben Alcalay, The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary, 2 vols. (New York: Chemed Books; Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth, 1996), 1:145. 114. These puns are also a stock technique in the ‘‘classical’’ Yiddish works of Abramovitsh and Sholem Aleykhem. 115. ‘‘Ha-shemesh mechamemet et shikhmam shel ha-zkeynim be-vikurey karneyha.’’ 116. This notion of ‘‘metaphorical entailment,’’ as amply discussed by George Lakoff, refers to ‘‘carry[ing] over that knowledge [i.e., our normally ‘extensive knowledge about source domains’] from the source domain to the target domain.’’ George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 384. The knowledge here being ‘‘carried over’’ is the biblical image of first fruits being borne to the Temple on strong, healthy shoulders. The inversion centers on the old scholars, arthritic of shoulder, bearing the weight of the first fruits, which in the story are the weightless sunbeams. 117. ‘‘Ve-ha-zkeynim holkhim le’at-le’at, akev be-tsad agudal, u-mesochachim.’’ 118. Alcalay, Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary, 1:1948. 119. One’s attention is immediately captured by the uncontracted preposition and definite article. We find be-ha-tse’irim for the expected ba-tse’irim. Of course, application of this ‘‘rule’’ is much less fluid and more rigidly adhered to in contemporary Hebrew than in earlier periods. It is a frequent feature of rabbinic Hebrew, a taste of which Perets may be trying to serve here.

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120. The Yiddish expression is idiomatic. Shakhne’s ‘‘oys kneydlekh . . . lakh nit!’’ (of matzah balls . . . don’t make fun!’’) is not a transparent construction. The word oys can be a preposition (e.g., ‘‘out of’’) or an idiomatic adverbial particle (e.g., ‘‘enough with’’). Here, though, it seems to be related to the separable verbal prefix for oyslakhn (meaning ‘‘to ridicule, laugh at, deride’’). Usually for this verb the object of derision is indicated by the preposition fun. According to the Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, the preposition oys can ‘‘for a number of verbs and expressions’’ indicate an object. Yudl Mark and Juda A. Yofa, eds., Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh, 4 vols. (New York: Komitet farn groysn verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh, 1961–80), 1:143. That dictionary cites the sentence ‘‘hot der khokhem oys im zeyer gelakht’’ (the wise man laughed a lot at him). 121. Rashi, Tractate Ketubbot, 111a. 122. ‘‘Ha-pshat hu pashut. im boreach eyze eved, mesharet o po‘el, asur, al pi din tora, letofso, le-osro be-khavalim ule-hashivo lirshut adonav, le-mosro le-yad be‘alav.’’ 123. And Rashi probably would not have given him the sod as Shakhne conceived of it anyway. 124. Literally, ‘‘a commandment [of the form] ‘Thou shalt.’ ’’ 125. This last is an idiomatic expression indicating that the situation can no longer be borne or endured. Cf. Psalms 69:2 and Jonah 2:6. 126. Alter, Hebrew and Modernity, 59.

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coda 1. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 73. 2. James A. Matisoff, Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expressions in Yiddish (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), xxvi–xxvii. 3. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 570. 4. Though somewhat clunky in English, this title is a technical term indicating a cultural institution whereby alms are collected in order to pay for the wedding of a bride whose family is too poor to provide for those costs. The title of this story has also been translated as ‘‘A Contribution for a Wedding.’’ Ruth R. Wisse, ed., The I. L. Peretz Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 156. 5. Perets, Khsidish, pt. 1, 8; see also Yitskhok Niborski, Verterbukh fun loshn-koydesh-shtamike verter in yidish (Paris: Bibliothe`que Medem, 1999), 122. 6. Reuben Alcalay, The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary, 2 vols. (New York: Chemed Books; Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth, 1996), 1:992. 7. Shulamit Hareven, Bedidut: Sipurim (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980), 97 (emphasis added). My thanks to Rutie Adler for bringing this quote to my attention. 8. See Rachel Feldhay Brenner, ‘‘Discourses of Mourning and Rebirth in Post-Holocaust Israeli Literature: Leah Goldberg’s Lady of the Castle and Shulamith Hareven’s ‘The Witness,’ ’’ Women in Judaism 3 (2002): 7–9, http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/journal/journal_index2 .html.

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index

Abelard, 129 Abraham, 73, 74 Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev as classic author, 109, 111 Masoes binyomin hashlishi, 86–88, 135–36, 175 n. 31 may ko mashme lon used by, 165 n. 57 narrator of works of, 164 n. 39 stylistics of generally, 14–15, 111–12, 132, 146 syntactic structure by, 99–100 tautological infinitives and, 11 tonurabonenen coined by, 91 translation by, 130 Adventures in Yiddishland (Shandler), 147–48 afterlife, 147–53 aggada, 124, 125–26 Alcalay, 138, 152 aletho-Hasidism, 131 Alter, Robert, 19, 145–46 Aramaic education and, 8 as holy tongue, 4 lexicon and, 11–12, 33 literature and, 5 meyle and, 71 notational figures in, 90–91 poetry and, 54, 64–65 in ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 144 of Talmud generally, 2–5 tautological infinitives and, 18, 19, 23–24, 28–29 argumentation, 15, 37–38, 44, 78, 114–28, 137–46. See also questions Ashkenazi, 3–4, 34–36, 73 Ashkenazi, Yankev ben Yitskhok, 12–13, 82, 84, 85, 88, 97 ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets). See also ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets)

Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev, and, 110, 111 aggada in, 124, 125–26 argumentation in, 114–28, 137–46 conversation in, 14–15, 114–15, 116–28, 121–22, 134, 137–46 feet in, 134–36 Gru¨belichkeitstrieb in, 117, 120 Hasidism in, 115–28 irony in, 124–25 length of prose in, 133–34, 141–43 lexicon of, 71–73, 115–23, 126, 127–28, 133–46 mise-en-sce`ne of, 114–16, 133–37 notational figures in, 122 parody in, 115–16, 117–18 pastoralism in, 116, 137 pogromology of, 115 repetition in, 122 selection of, 110, 114–15 ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets) contrasted, 14–15, 133–46 Talmud and, 115, 117, 118, 119, 126–27, 128, 146 translation of, 110, 129 associative digression, 82, 98–108 authority, 126, 144–45 avade, 107, 160 n. 39 Ave´-Lallemant, Friedrich Christian Benedict, 33 Avineri, Yitzhak, 19 ‘‘Azoy iz undz bashert’’ (Halpern), 54 Baal Shem Tov, Yissoel, 124 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 45, 46 Baron, Dvora, 101, 171 n. 79 Baumgarten, Jean, 88 Benjamin, Walter, 147 Bequemlichkeitstrieb, 36–37 Berdyczewski, 132

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Bergelson, Dovid, 113–14 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 14, 69, 111 Bible. See also Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) Deuteronomy, 59, 64, 176 n. 35 Exodus, 176 n. 47 Ezekiel, 135, 175 n. 27 Genesis, 19, 90–97, 136–37, 180 n. 106 Hosea, 179 n. 88 Isaiah, 77, 135 Jeremiah, 175 n. 27, 177 n. 69 Judges, 59–60 lexicon and, 33, 34–36 Numbers, 19, 178 n. 73 poetry and, 54, 77–78 Psalms, 57, 72, 178 n. 82 Samuel, 166 n. 83 scholars and, 34–36 in ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 141 Song of Songs, 83, 135 tautological infinitives and, 18–19 versions of, 85 Yiddish and generally, 18–19, 29, 33 bilingualism, 3–5, 6–8, 13–15 The Bilingualism of Our Literature (Niger), 6, 7–8 Birnbaum, Solomon, 156 n. 5 Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears (Matisoff), 149 blood, 62, 63 bobe, 148 body, 119–22, 142–43 Bokher, Elye, 83 Boyarin, Daniel, 128, 161 n. 54 Brenner, Yosef Hayim, 146 bridges, 52–53 ‘‘Brit milah’’ (Tshernikhovski), 180 n. 106 burning bush, 58–59 Cambridge Manuscript, 83 candles, 66–69 catachresis, 76 ‘‘Cellars and Attics’’ (Heifetz-Tussman), 161 n. 53 Chafe, Wallace, 46–47 chakham, 151 chapter overview, 9–15 ‘‘Charity for Poor Brides’’ (Perets), 151–52 Chasidut (Perets), 110–14 ‘‘Circumcision’’ (Tshernikhovski), 180 n. 106 class, 139–41 clocks, 66–69 Cohen, Ted, 15

commentary stylistics, 86–88, 122 component consciousness, 7, 32 comprehensibility, 75–80, 83, 85 conversation in ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 14–15, 114–15, 116–28, 134, 137–46 cooperative principle of, 41–43 discourse vocabulary and, 36–47 ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (Rabinovitsh) and, 82 focal consciousness in, 46–47 interdisciplinary approach to, 9–10 language contact and generally, 2–5, 8–9, 82 lexicon and, 11–12, 31, 35–36 literature and generally, 8–9, 10–15, 129 logic and, 43, 116–23 maxims of, 43, 177 n. 59 monologues and, 100–108 move system for studying, 97, 104 nativization and, 12 nusach in, 14–15 questions in, 15, 43–45, 123–28 rabbinic texts and, 13 rhetorical, 1–2 scholars and, 35–36 semantics in, 10–12 in ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 137–46 speech acts in, 41–43 tautological infinitives and, 11, 17–18, 20, 25–26 topics in, 46–47, 95 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) and, 12–13, 81–82, 84–85, 88, 89–90, 97, 99–100, 100–103, 108 word order in, 46 Yiddish and generally, 1–5, 8–9, 15, 35–36 ‘‘A Conversation’’ (Perets). See ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets) conversational analysis, 45–47 conversational coherence, 46 conversational implicatures, 43–45, 121–22 ‘‘A Conversation of Hasidim’’ (Perets). See ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets) cooperative principle, 41–43 culture, 43–47, 50–51, 54–65 dafke, 79–80 David, King, 57 death, 53, 59–60, 64, 68–69 derekh hashas, 1–2, 5, 36 ‘‘Der nayer nign’’ (Perets), 69–70 Deuteronomy, 59, 64, 176 n. 35 Deutlichkeitstrieb, 36–37

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Di goldene pave (Halpern), 12, 51–65 ‘‘The Diligent Student’’ (Bialik), 69 discourse vocabulary. See also lexicon in ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 71–73 on comprehensibility, 75–80 conversational implicatures in, 43–45 culture and, 43–47 drives of communication and, generally, 36–38, 44 education and, 40–41 logic and, 37, 38, 39–41, 42, 81 may ko mashme lon, 66–70 meyle, 70–73 mimeyle, 73–75 nativization and, 39–47 poetry and, 49–80 of possibility, 51–65 pragmatic context of, 38–39, 41–43 questions in, 15, 43–45 speech acts in, 41–43, 47 Talmud and, 37–38, 42–43, 47, 51 utterances in, 45 word order in, 46 of Yiddish, 39–47 ‘‘Dos groyse gevins’’ (Rabinovitsh), 24, 26–28 ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (Rabinovitsh), 13, 82, 103–8 drash, 117 drives of communication in ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 117, 120 commentary stylistics and, 87–88 discourse vocabulary and generally, 36–38, 44 in poetry, 60–61, 78, 79–80 possibility and, 51 tautological infinitives and, 107 Dubnov, Shimen, 84, 132 Dubnow. See Dubnov dvarim, 140 dyuke, 128

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farkert, 78, 120, 143 feet, 134–36 focal consciousness, 46–47 folk songs, 53, 69 folk speech, 84, 107, 132 Frieden, Ken on Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 113, 125, 130, 131 on Perl, Joseph, 132 on Rabinovitsh, Sholem, 104, 173 n. 98 Gay, Peter, 37 gender, 3, 4, 8, 83, 84, 107–8 Genesis, 19, 90–97, 136–37, 180 n. 106 German Bible, 85 poetry and, 77–78 tautological infinitives and, 11, 19–20, 21, 25, 26 gestures, 58 Glatshteyn, Yankev, 12, 66, 73–80, 84, 85 Gnessin, Uri Nisan, 146 God in ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 133, 134–35, 136 in ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (Rabinovitsh), 106 in poetry, 59, 63–64, 77 in Tsenerene (Ashkenazi), 91–92 Goldberg, Julia A., 97, 104 Goldenberg, Gideon, 19, 20, 23 golden peacock, 52 The Golden Peacock (Halpern), 12, 51–65 Gordon, Yehudah Leib, 180 n. 111 ‘‘The Great Winnings’’ (Rabinovitsh), 24, 26–28 griblen zikh, 120 Grice, H. Paul, 41, 43, 177 n. 59 Groyser verterbukh, 51 Gru¨belichkeitstrieb in ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 117, 120 commentary stylistics and, 87–88 concept of, 37–38 poetry and, 51, 60–61, 78, 79–80 questions and, 44 tautological infinitives and, 107

education, 4, 7, 8, 40–41, 91 efshar, 162 n. 3 efsher, 51, 54, 56–58, 60, 63–66 Eliot, T. S., 163 n. 29 Elyashev, Izidor. See Makhshoves, Bal English, 148–50 Erasmus, Desiderius, 175 n. 33 Erik, Max, 84, 85, 168 n. 19 Erlich, Victor, 100–101, 102, 103, 106 ethnography, 113 Exodus, 176 n. 47 Ezekiel, 135, 175 n. 27

Hadda, Janet, 73 ‘‘Ha’ed’’ (Hareven), 152–53 Haggadah, 116–18, 122, 123, 125–26, 128, 137 Hakalir, Eliezer, 136 ‘‘Hakhnoses kale’’ (Perets), 151–52 Halpern, Moyshe-Leyb ‘‘Azoy iz undz bashert,’’ 54 Di goldene pave, 12, 51–65

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Halpern, Moyshe-Leyb (continued ) Harshav, Benjamin, analyzes, 104 ‘‘Memento Mori,’’ 163 n. 14 In nyu york, 163 n. 14 ‘‘Zarkhi tsu zikh aleyn,’’ 56–60 ‘‘Zarkhi vegn di zibn royte berd,’’ 60–61 ‘‘Zarkhi zogt toyre,’’ 60–65 ‘‘Ha-matmid’’ (Bialik), 69 ha mina ley, 145 Hareven, Shulamit, 152–53 Harshav, Benjamin on argumentation, 35, 37 on conversation, 2, 5 on Glatshteyn, Yankev, 75 on Halpern, Moyshe-Leyb, 61, 62, 65, 104 on translogical language, 98 on the Tsenerene (Ashkenazi), 103 on universal analogy, 173 n. 110 Hasidism, 13–15, 109–14, 115–28, 129–33 Haskalah, 10, 112 Hebrew Ashkenazi and, 73 attitude toward, 4 in commentary stylistics, 87 gender and, 83 as holy tongue, 4, 107 lexicon and, 11–12, 32–34 literature and generally, 5, 6–8, 129 mimeyle in, 73–75 nusach in, 14–15 of Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 13–15, 110, 111–12, 129–33, 153 poetry and, 54, 69, 73–75, 77–78, 80 spirit of, 7 of Talmud, 2–5 tautological infinitives and, 18–19, 26, 28–29 in Tsenerene (Ashkenazi), 90, 91–92, 99–100 Yiddish and generally, 2–5, 18–19, 26, 28–29, 32–34, 129–46, 150–53 Heifetz-Tussman, Malka, 161 n. 53 He´loı¨se, 129 Herzog, Elizabeth, 34 Hock, Hans Henrich, 28 Hofmann, Erich, 20, 22 Hosea, 179 n. 88 humor, 148–49, 173 n. 110. See also parody

‘‘In Not Higher’’ (Perets), 161 n. 53 In nyu york (Halpern), 163 n. 14 instruments, 57, 60 Introspectivism, 75 Inzikh, 75 irony, 124–25, 131 Isaiah, 77, 135 Israel, 73–74 ivri-taytsh, 8 Jacobson, David, 112, 130 Jacobson, Steven, 33 Jakobson, Roman, 168 n. 23 Jelen, Sheila, 101, 103, 171 n. 79 Jeremiah, 175 n. 27, 177 n. 69 Jewish Enlightenment, 10, 112 Jokes (Cohen), 15 Judges, 59–60 Ju¨dischdeutsches Wo¨rterbuch (Ave´-Lallemant), 33 Kabbalah, 117, 118, 121 Kagarov, Jevgenij, 19, 20 kal-vekhoymer, 160 n. 40 Katz, Dovid, 85 Kaufman, Terrence, 24, 29 kedeboe, 151–52 kehay lishno, 178 n. 72 ‘‘Kelers un beydemer’’ (Heifetz-Tussman), 161 n. 53 Kerler, Dov-Ber, 102 kheyder. See education khokhem, 151 khosn dnon, 178 n. 74 Khsidish (Perets), 110–14 kideva’ei, 152–53 King James Bible, 85 kneydlekh, 122 komponentn-visikayt, 7, 32 ‘‘Kores’’ (Perets), 156 n. 1 Kotler, Yosl, 54–56, 58 ‘‘Kotso shel yud’’ (Gordon), 180 n. 111 Kredos (Glatshteyn), 75 krign, 170 n. 57 Kronfeld, Chana, 161 n. 55, 164 n. 29 labor, 140–41 Lakoff, George, 180 n. 116 land, 73–74 language contact concept of, 2–3 conversation and generally, 2–5, 8–9, 82

ibergebn, 176 n. 44 idiom, 134–35, 136, 138, 140 individualism, 50–51 inference theory, 47 infinitive absolutes, 18–19

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interdisciplinary approach to, 9–10 lexicon and, 11–12, 81 lines of descent and, 9 literature and generally, 3, 4–5, 5–9, 28–29, 82 scholars and, 3–4, 5 tautological infinitives and, 11, 18, 28–29 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) and, 82, 84–88 lemay, 107 Levinson, Julian, 54 Levinson, Stephen, 39, 47 lexicon. See also discourse vocabulary Aramaic and, 11–12, 33 of ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 71–73, 115–23, 126, 127–28, 133–46 Bible and, 33, 34–36 conversation and, generally, 11–12, 31, 35–36 discourse vocabulary and, 36–47 in English, 148–50 Hebrew and, 11–12, 32–34 language contact and, 11–12, 81 lexical borrowing, 11–12 literature and, 11–12, 31 midrash and, 33, 34–36 rabbinic texts and, 33 scholars and, 34–36 semantics, 11–12 of ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 133–46 Talmud and, 12, 33, 34–36 of Yiddish generally, 11–12, 31–47 life, 66–69 lines of descent, 9 literature. See also poetry Aramaic and, 5 bilingualism and, 6–8 conversation and generally, 8–9, 10–15, 129 Hebrew and, 5, 6–8, 129 interdisciplinary approach to, 9–10 language contact and, 3, 4–5, 5–9, 28–29, 82 lexicon and, 11–12, 31 may ko mashme lon in, 66–70 meyle in, 70–73 nativization and, 12 nusach in, 14–15 selections from, 10, 49–51, 83–84, 110, 114–15 semantics in, 10–12 stylistics of, generally, 85–88 symbiotic perspective on, 6–7 synthetic perspective on, 7–8 tautological infinitives and, 11, 17–29 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) and, 85 Yiddish and generally, 3, 4–5, 5–9, 129

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logic associative digression and, 105–6 conversation and, 43, 116–23 discourse vocabulary and, 37, 38, 39–41, 42, 81 poetry and, 78 scholars and, 38 of Talmud, 128 topic shifts and, 105–7 translogical language, 98–99 loshn-koydesh, 4 loy tasgir, 120–21 Luther, Martin, 85 madekh, 160 n. 38 makhn, 161 n. 54 Makhshoves, Bal, 6–7 mame-loshn, 4 Manger, Itsik, 52, 85 ‘‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’’ (Stevens), 164 n. 31 Margolin, Anna, 52 Mark, Yudl, 20, 22–23, 24, 27, 134 Masoes binyomin hashlishi (Abramovitsh), 86–88, 135–36, 175 n. 31 Matisoff, James, 10, 149 matzah, 71–72, 117–18, 122–23, 139–40 matzah balls. See kneydlekh maxims of conversation, 43, 177 n. 59 may ko mashme lon, 66–70 ‘‘May ko mashme lon’’ (Reyzen), 66–69 McLean, Hugh, 101 meaning, 117, 118–23, 129. See also Gru¨belichkeitstrieb Megale tmirin (Perl), 132 Melokhim-Bukh, 83 ‘‘Memento Mori’’ (Halpern), 163 n. 14 Mendele Moykher Sforim. See Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev meyle, 70–73, 107, 118 midrash, 33, 34–36, 126, 127, 145 mimeyle, 73–75, 119 minastam, 119, 144 Miron, Dan, 103–4, 107, 173 n. 98 Mishnah, 2, 128 mistama, 144 mistome, 107, 119, 144 mitnase, 137 mitsve, 120 modernity, 51–52, 57, 60 monologues, 100–108 Moses, 59

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move system, 97, 104 Moykher, Mendele, 164 n. 39 Moyshe-Leyb at the Seashore (Kotler), 54–56 ‘‘Moyshe-leyb baym breg yam’’ (Halpern), 53 multilingualism. See bilingualism ‘‘Nagniel’’ (Perets), 179 n. 91 nationalism, 6, 113 nativization, 5, 12, 39–47, 132, 148–49, 150 nemen, 126–27 neo-Hasidism, 112–14, 129–33 ‘‘The New Tune’’ (Perets), 69–70 nigen, 179 n. 91 Niger, Shmuel The Bilingualism of Our Literature, 6, 7–8 on Hasidism, 111 on Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 110, 113–14, 129 on zogerke, 83 nostalgia, 109–10, 130, 131 notational figures, 90–91, 122 Numbers, 19, 178 n. 73 nusach, 14–15, 111–12, 132, 134, 146. See also stylistics Nyrop, Kristoffer, 76

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Olsvanger, Immanuel, 64, 148–49, 164 nn. 32–33 ‘‘Oyb nisht nokh hekher’’ (Perets), 161 n. 53 oys, 181 n. 120 pardes, 117 parody, 54, 115–16, 117–18, 136, 160 n. 29. See also humor pastoralism, 116, 137 perception, 57 Perets, Yitskhok Leybush ‘‘A shmues,’’ 14–15, 71–73, 110, 111, 114–46 bilingualism of, 13–15 Chasidut, 110–14 as classic author, 109 criticism and, 130, 131 ‘‘Der nayer nign,’’ 69–70 folk speech and, 132 ‘‘Hakhnoses kale,’’ 151–52 Hasidism and, 13–15, 109–14, 129–33 Hebrew of, 13–15, 110, 111–12, 129–33, 153 idiom and, 134–35, 136, 138, 140 irony and, 124–25, 131 Khsidish, 110–14 ‘‘Kores,’’ 156 n. 1 ‘‘Nagniel,’’ 179 n. 91 nostalgia and, 109–10, 130, 131

nusach and, 134 oeuvre of, 109–14 ‘‘Oyb nisht nokh hekher,’’ 161 n. 53 ‘‘Premature Death,’’ 156 n. 1 repetition by, 134 ‘‘Sichat chasidim,’’ 14–15, 133–46 stylistics of, 111–12, 121–22, 124–26, 128, 132–33, 134, 146 tautological infinitives and, 11, 21 ‘‘ ‘Toyre’ (a khsidisher monolog),’’ 70 translation by, 111–12, 112–13, 131 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) and, 85 Yiddish of, 13–15, 110, 111–12, 129–33 ‘‘Yoykhenen melameds mayselekh,’’ 21 Peretz. See Perets, Yitskhok Leybush Perl, Joseph, 132–33 Perry, Menakhem, 99–100, 111–12, 130 Pesakhim, 179 n. 87 Pharaoh, 136–37 Philologos, 156 n. 5 phono-semantic matching, 26 Pinski, 85 place, 7 poetry Aramaic and, 54, 64–65 argumentation and, 78 Bible and, 54, 77–78 blood in, 62, 63 bridges in, 52–53 burning bush in, 58–59 candles in, 66–69 catachresis in, 76 clocks in, 66–69 on comprehensibility, 75–80 culture and, 50–51, 54–65 dafke in, 79–80 death in, 53, 59–60, 64, 68–69 discourse vocabulary and, 49–80 efsher in, 51, 54, 56–58, 60, 63–66 folk songs and, 53, 69 German and, 77–78 gestures in, 58 of Glatshteyn, Yankev, 73–80 God in, 59, 63–64, 77 Gru¨belichkeitstrieb and, 51, 60–61, 78, 79–80 of Halpern, Moyshe-Leyb, 12, 51–65 Hebrew and, 54, 69, 73–75, 77–78, 80 individualism and, 50–51 instruments in, 57, 60 Inzikh, 75 land in, 73–74 life in, 66–69

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logic and, 78 may ko mashme lon in, 66–70 mimeyle in, 73–75 modernity and, 51–52, 57, 60 Moses in, 59 parody in, 54 perception in, 57 of possibility, 51–65 questions in, 57–58 rain in, 66–69 repetition in, 53, 66 of Reyzen, Avraham, 66–69 Samson in, 59–60 selections of, 49–51 similative buttressing and, 54 Talmud and, 64–65, 66–70, 78–80 Torah and, 54 torches in, 62–63 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) contrasted with, 83 universalism and, 50–51 in Yiddish generally, 4, 49–51 pogromology, 115 possibility, 51–65 Pound, Ezra, 164 n. 29 poverty, 151–52 pragmatic contexts, 38–39, 41–43 Pratt, Mary Louise, 99 ‘‘Premature Death’’ (Perets), 156 n. 1 pride, 118, 137, 141 Prilutski, Noyekh, 22 The Producers, 1 Psalms, 57, 72, 178 n. 82 pshat, 117, 118–20 Pushkin, 136

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Rashi, 139, 141 ‘‘Red tsu mir yidish’’ (Glatshteyn), 73–75 remez, 117 repetition, 53, 66, 122, 134 Reyzen, Avraham, 66–69 Rosegger, Peter, 20 Roskies, David, 54, 129, 132, 162 n. 10, 163 n. 14 Ro¨yte Pomerantsen, 148–49 ruf mikh knaknisl, 98 Sadan, Dov, 103 Sadger, Isidor, 37 Samson, 59–60 Samuel, 166 n. 83 Sarah, 73, 74 scholars. See also rabbinic texts Ashkenazi, 34–36 Bible and, 34–36 bilingualism of, 3–4 conversation and, 35–36 education of, 4, 7 gender and, 3 language contact and, 3–4, 5 lexicon and, 34–36 logic and, 38 midrash and, 34–36 on Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 112–14 social status of, 34–36 Talmud and, 34–36 Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) and, 88–89 Searle, John, 41–42, 47 secret, 117, 141 semantics, 10–12, 17–29, 148–49 Shaked, Gershon, 115 Shandler, Jeffrey, 147–48 Shapiro, Lamed, 75 Shatski, Yankev, 84 Shekhinah, 133, 134–35, 136 Shivchey ha-besht, 124 Shmeruk, Khone, 88–89 Shmuel-Bukh, 83 shmuesn, 148 Sholem Aleichem. See Rabinovitsh, Sholem Sholem Aleykhem. See Rabinovitsh, Sholem shpatsirn geyn, 180 n. 106 shruye, 177 n. 64 Shtarkman, Moshe, 35–36 ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 14–15, 133–46. See also ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets) similative buttressing, 11, 18, 24–29, 54, 98 skaz, 100–102 skhiyesn, 121

quarreling, 170 n. 57 questions, 15, 43–45, 57–58, 123–28. See also argumentation rabbinic texts, 1–5, 10–11, 13, 33. See also scholars Rabinovitsh, Sholem associative digression and, 82, 100–108 as classic author, 109 conversation and, 82 ‘‘Dos groyse gevins,’’ 24, 26–28 ‘‘Dos tepl,’’ 13, 82, 103–8 folk speech and, 107 monologues and, 100–108 tautological infinitives and, 11, 21–22, 24, 26–28 rain, 66–69

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slaves, 119, 120–21, 140–41, 144 Slavic languages, 20, 25 socialism, 113, 140–41 sod, 117, 141 ‘‘So It Is Our Fate’’ (Halpern), 54 Song of Songs, 83, 135 soul, 119–22, 140–41, 142–43 ‘‘Speak Yiddish to Me’’ (Glatshteyn), 73–75 speech acts, 41–43, 47 speech genres, 45 Spielberg, Steven, 52 spirit, 7 Stern, Gustav, 36–37 Stern, Michael, 103 Stevens, Wallace, 164 n. 31 stylistics of Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev, 111–12 nusach, 14–15, 111–12, 132, 134, 146 of Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 111–12, 121–22, 124–26, 128, 132–33, 134, 146 of Tsenerene (Ashkenazi), 85–88, 90, 98–103 synonyms, 160 n. 33 ‘‘Tales of Yoykhenen the Teacher’’ (Perets), 21 Talmud Aramaic of, 2–5 ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets) and, 115, 117, 118, 119, 126–27, 128, 146 discourse vocabulary and, 37–38, 42–43, 47, 51 education and, 4, 8 Hebrew of, 2–5 lexicon of, 12, 33, 34–36 logic of, 37, 128 may ko mashme lon in, 66–70 meyle and, 71 notational figures in, 90–91 poetry and, 64–65, 66–70, 78–80 scholars and, 34–36 in ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 145 tautological infinitives and, 19, 23–24, 25 Yiddish and generally, 1–5, 10–11, 12, 19, 23–24, 25, 33, 151 ‘‘The Task of the Translator’’ (Benjamin), 147 ‘‘Tautological Infinitive’’ (Goldenberg), 19 tautological infinitives Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev, and, 11 Aramaic and, 18, 19, 23–24, 28–29 associative digression and, 107 Bible and, 18–19 concept of, 11, 18 conversation and, 11, 17–18, 20, 25–26

in ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (Rabinovitsh), 107 functions of, 21–24 in German, 11, 19–20, 21, 25, 26 Gru¨belichkeitstrieb and, 107 Hebrew and, 18–19, 26, 28–29 importance of, 17–18 infinitive absolutes and, 18–19 language contact and, 11, 18, 28–29 literature and, 11, 17–29 Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, and, 11, 21 phono-semantic matching and, 26 Rabinovitsh, Sholem, and, 11, 21–22, 24, 26–28 similative buttressing and, 11, 18, 24–29 Slavic languages and, 20, 25 Talmud and, 19, 23–24, 25 topicalization and, 20, 21–22, 23–24, 26–27 in Yiddish generally, 11, 17–29 in ‘‘Yoykhenen melameds mayselekh’’ (Perets), 21 teyrets, 107 Thomason, Sarah Grey, 24, 29 time, 7 ‘‘The Tip of the Yud’’ (Gordon), 180 n. 111 ‘‘To a Friend . . .’’ (Glatshteyn), 75–80 tomer, 107 topicalization associative digression and, 104 concept of, 18 in ‘‘Sichat chasidim’’ (Perets), 139 tautological infinitives and, 20, 21–22, 23–24, 26–27 topics, 46–47 topic shifts, 92–97, 105–7 Torah. See Bible ‘‘ ‘Torah’ (A Hasidic Monologue)’’ (Perets), 70 torches, 62–63 ‘‘ ‘Toyre’ (a khsidisher monolog)’’ (Perets), 70 Tractate Ketubbot, 181 n. 121 Tractate Megillah, 178 n. 80 Tractate Menachot, 151 Tractate Taanit, 176 n. 53 translation by Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev, 130 of ‘‘A shmues’’ (Perets), 110, 129 Benjamin, Walter, on, 147 by Perets generally, 111–12, 112–13, 131 for Tsenerene (Ashkenazi), 82–83, 84, 85–86, 91–92 translogical language, 98–99 The Travels of Benjamin the Third (Abramovitsh), 86–88, 135–36, 175 n. 31

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yats’u lasuach, 180 n. 106 yeshivah. See education Yiddish afterlife of, 147–53 Aramaic and generally, 2–5, 19, 23–24, 28–29, 33 Bible and, 18–19, 29, 33 categories of, 32–34 in commentary stylistics, 87 component consciousness in, 7, 32 conversation and generally, 1–5, 8–9, 15, 35–36 data concerning, 3 discourse vocabulary of, 39–47 East Yiddish, 33, 34 in English, 148–50 gender and, 83 German and, 19–20, 21, 25, 26 Hebrew and generally, 2–5, 18–19, 26, 28–29, 32–34, 129–46, 150–53 interdisciplinary approach to, 9–10 language contact and generally, 2–5 lexicon of generally, 11–12, 31–47 lines of descent and, 9 literature and generally, 3, 4–5, 5–9, 129 midrash and, 33 as mother tongue, 4 nationhood and, 6 nativization into, 5, 12, 39–47, 150 nusach in, 14–15 of Perets, Yitskhok Leybush, 13–15, 110, 111–12, 129–33 poetry generally, 4, 49–51 rabbinic texts and, 1–5, 10–11, 33 scholars and, 3–4, 5, 34–36 semantics in, 10–12 Semitic, 32, 33 social status of, 3, 4, 6, 35 spirit of, 7 symbiotic perspective on, 6–7 synthetic perspective on, 7–8 Talmud and generally, 1–5, 10–11, 12, 19, 23–24, 25, 33, 151 tautological infinitives in, 11, 17–29 West Yiddish, 25, 32, 33–34 Yidish-taytshn (Glatshteyn), 75 ‘‘Yoykhenen melameds mayselekh’’ (Perets), 21 yoyme depagre, 177 n. 61

Tsenerene (Ashkenazi) associative digression and, 82, 98–103 comprehensibility of, 83, 85 conversation and, 12–13, 81–82, 84–85, 88, 89–90, 97, 99–100, 100–103, 108 in ‘‘Dos tepl’’ (Rabinovitsh), 13 editions of, 89 folk speech and, 84 gender and, 83, 84 Genesis in, 90–97 God in, 91–92 Hebrew in, 90, 91–92, 99–100 language contact and, 82, 84–88 literature and, 85 monologue in, 100–103 notational figures in, 90–91 popularity of, 83–85 as prose work, 83 scholars and, 88–89 skaz and, 100–102 stylistics of, 85–88, 90, 98–103 syntactic structure of, 99–100 systems of, 82–90 topic shifts in, 92–97 as tuitional, 91 Tsharni, Daniel. See Niger, Shmuel Tshernikhovski, Shaul, 180 n. 106 Tsinberg, Yisroel, 85 ‘‘Tsu a fraynt . . .’’ (Glatshteyn), 75–80 ‘‘Two Languages—One Literature’’ (Makhshoves), 6–7 un fundestvegn, 120 universalism, 50–51 utterances, 45 vernacular, 171 n. 79 vocabulary. See discourse vocabulary; lexicon the Way of SHaS, 1–2, 5, 36 Weinreich, Max on Ashkenazi, 159 n. 20 on discourse vocabulary, 39, 51 on logic, 38 technical vocabulary of, 158 n. 1 on the Way of SHaS, 1–2, 5, 36 Weinreich, Uriel, 9, 35 Wex, Michael, 170 n. 54 Williams, William Carlos, 78 Wirth-Nesher, Hana, 106–7 Wisse, Ruth, 52, 103, 115, 121, 127, 163 n. 29 ‘‘The Witness’’ (Hareven), 152–53 word order, 46

Zarkhi, 162 n. 10 Zarkhi baym breg yam (Halpern), 12, 51–65

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index ‘‘Zarkhi zogt toyre’’ (Halpern), 60–65 Zborowski, Mark, 34 zogerke, 8 Zuckerman, Ghil’ad, 26

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Zarkhi by the Seashore (Kotler), 55–56, 58 ‘‘Zarkhi tsu zikh aleyn’’ (Halpern), 56–60 ‘‘Zarkhi vegn di zibn royte berd’’ (Halpern), 60–61

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