Second Day of Class

In the Vilnius summer Yiddish program, students are divided into four levels, and each level has language classes with two different teachers, with a generous coffee break (coffee and tea provided) between them. In the afternoon there are study sessions and supplemental cultural educational activities, and every Sunday there is a field trip.

My class, level 4, consists of eleven students, including myself. Four are young female graduate students from the US, Poland, France, and Lithuania, two are middle aged women who work for YIVO, the Jewish scholarship institute, in Buenos Aires, two are middle aged women from Israel with some previous involvement with Beit Sholem Aleichem, a Yiddish organization in Tel Aviv, one is an actress and translator from Vancouver, one is a professor of Dutch language who teaches in Helsinki, Finland, and one is a man born in Czcheckloslovakia, who lives in the Netherlands and is engaged in the process of formal Orthodox conversion to Judaism. We are a geographically and experientially diverse class, but our Yiddish is roughly on the same level, so we are able to have interestig conversations about the poetry and literature that we read together.

Our first class is taught by Abraham Lichtenbaum, who is the executive director of YIVO in Buenos Aires. He is a funny and dynamic teacher, patient, provocative, and insistent on class discussion rather than lecture. In his class we are reading The Dybbuk, perhaps the most famous play ever written in Yiddish. It was written in 1914 by Sh. Ansky, a folklorist who went on expeditions to research the way of life and culture of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. It is a passionate, mystical, spooky piece, and I am really looking forward to exploring it with this class. Yesterday Professor Lichtenbaum lectured us on Jewish folk practices and superstitions to prepare us for the piece, and today we will start talking about the play itself.

Our second class is taught by Dov Ber Kerler, who teaches at Indiana University. He has high expectations for our class, speaking Yiddish very fast and antipating that we will read and write quite a lot over the course of the month. He begins class each day with a poem that we listen to on his computer so that we can hear the poet's actual voice. Then, we go on to read and discuss a work of literature. Right now we are reading Yaknehoz, a comedy about the absurdity and vulgarity of Jews involved in the stock exchange in Odessa. The print is small, and Sholem Aleichem was known for his nuanced representation of the spoken word, so that the text was certainly not constructed for students but for people who could pick up on the slavic expressions and cultural references. Nevertheless, from what I can understand of the play, it is a doozie!

It appears that each week we will write two short essays for Professer Lichtenbaum and two longer essays for Professor Kerler, and we will take turns giving presentations as well. It does seem manageable though, as we have afternoons and evenings to ourselves to prepare the homework.

On the first day of class we read a poem which I really enjoyed and thought was interesting, so I'll share it with you here:

To Be a Jew

To be a Jew means always running after God,
Even if you are turning away;
Sitting and waiting for an unknown day
(Even if you are a non-believer)
When you will hear the sound of the Messiah's shofar

To be a Jew means not being able to get away from God
Even if you want to;
Not being able to stop saying prayers
Even after all the prayers have been said,
Even after all of the excuses have been made.

-Aaron Zeitlin


And one more, for good measure:

The Jewish People

Zionists want all of the Jews,
Communists want all of the Jews,
Socialists want all of the Jews,
Anarchists want all of the Jews.

Everyone - wants all of the Jews.
The people says:
Slow down...

Just as the world is - so am I,
Says the people.
And how is the world? This is how the world is.

A bit of earth, a bit of water,
A bit of wind, a bit of fire,
The rest - sand.

And so am I - says the people
Like the world.

A bit of Zionism,
A touch of Communism
A spray of Socialism
A breath of Anarchism
The rest - sand.

Made up of all these little pieces - says the people
Just like the world - so am I.

What a shame it would be if the world was made
Of only fire, only water,
Only earth, only wind.

A bit of Yiddish, a bit of Hebrew,
A bit of religion, as bit of secularism,
The rest - sand.

The Jewish people is as old as the world,
And as wise as the world.