Debbie Nathan

Carrie Bradshaw and her girlfriends on SATC were big followers of the wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times. Who can forget the episode devoted to Carrie’s sturm & drang when news of Mr. Big’s nuptials with someone else appeared in the paper of record?

I dip into Weddings occasionally, but it’s hard to stay with them each week because when you’ve seen one same-sex engagement picture, you’ve seen them all. Still, you never know if you’re missing something important. This is where Yiddishists like Miriam Leberstein come in. I met her years ago in a class at the Workmen’s Circle where we were reading the original of a novel by the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch. Miriam comes from a staunch Bundist family. Her dad ate pork sausage on Yom Kippur, and Miriam was an early and ardent member of SDS back in her own treyf-meaty days. I hadn’t seen her for a while, but we crossed paths at a Yiddish poetry reading last night and had a chance to shmooze about the world. Good thing! People like her know what’s really important in the Style Section.

Like the item above.

“Did you see it? Did you? Go home and look!” she sputtered. “It’s starts out totally normal and boring, with the Chinese-looking bride graduating from some American university with a technology degree, and the wedding to the American at some trendy resort with a Baptist minister. But look further and it turns out the bride’s father was a head of the People’s Liberation Army of China. Mao must be turning in his grave!”

“I looked at the announcement,” Miriam continued, “and said, ‘This is it. The child of a commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army makes it into Weddings in the New York Times. What else is there to say about The New World Order?’”

Miriam and I had just sat through a reading performed by New Yorkers who write poetry in Yiddish. Some have been around quite awhile, like Beyle Shaechter Gottesman. She’s a poetesa, as they say in mame-loshn, from generations back, and hails from Chernowitz, in the Bukhovina in Eastern Europe. Her brother was the emeritus Yiddish instructor from

The Yiddish poet Beyle Schaechter Gottesman

Columbia University, Mordkhe Schaechter. I used to keep the books for a tiny Yiddishist organization on the Upper West Side, just so I could hang out with Mordkhe and his secretary and listen to their beautiful speech patterns.

Mordkhe spent many years in the 1940s and 1950s as a “Territorialist.” He and his group did not think it ethically correct or politically wise to create a Jewish state in Palestine. They explored other places, including Australia, Liberia, New Jersey, and the Norwood section of the Bronx. Nothing quite worked out, but the Territorialists’ were somewhat admired by Edward Said.

Miriam Leberstein and poet Myra Mniewski

The latter told me, not long before he died, that he once had a droll phone conversation with Mordkhe about common Semitic roots. It all had to do with the last name. “Schaechter told me the phrase S’a'id! is Yiddish for “He’s a Jew!” Said recalled with a big grin.

I remembered that anecdote when one performer at the reading, Albert Rosenblatt, did two poems by the recently deceased Grace Paley — but not in English. Rosenblatt and a colleague, Mindl Rinkevitsh, have been translating Paley’s work into Yiddish, which makes sense, since everyone comments about how Yiddish-inflected her English is. So I print two of their translations below, after the original poems.

You’ll read it, you’ll like it. And if you’re the daughter of an ex-head of the People’s Liberation Army now back in Manhattan from your honeymoon — Mazel tov!

REVENGE,
by Grace Paley

I cannot keep my mind on Jerusalem
It wanders off like an idiot with no attention span
To whatever city lies outside my window that day
Damascus
The libraries of Babylonia
Oh! The five exogamous boroughs of
Our beloved home New York

What will happen
When the Lord
Remembers vengeance
(which is his) and finds me

A WARNING

One day I forgot Jerusalem and my right arm is withered
My right arm, my moving arm, my rising and falling arm,
my loving arm
Is withered

And my left eye, the blinker and winker is plucked out
It hangs by six threads of endless remembering
Because I forgot Jerusalem
And wherever I go, I am known, I am recognized at once. I am
perceived by strangers.
Because on one day, only one day I forgot Jersusalem.

Jews everywhere, Jews, old deaths of the north and south
Kingdoms
Poor Jews in the ghetto walls built by the noble Slav,
Jew princes
In Amsterdam who live in diamond houses that shine like
Window panes

Listen to me. Wherever you go, keep the nation of that city
in mind
For I forgot her and now I am blind and crippled.

Even my lover a Christian with pale eyes and the barbarian’s
foreskin
has left me.

(from “Begin Again: Collected Poems, 1985)

(Translation of Revenge below)

NEKOME

Ikh kon nit haltn in eyn trakhtn fun Yerushalayim.
Mayn gedank lozt zikh in veg un blondzhet vi a nar, vos iz nisht
bkoyekh zikh tsu kontsentrirn,
–Tsu voser a shot es ligt, n yenem tog, in droysn fun mayn fenster:
Damesek
Di bibiliotekn fun Bovl
O! Di finf eksogamishe shtotgegentn fun
Undzer balibter heym Nyu York

Vos vet zayn
Ven der Eybershter
Vet zikh dermonen in nekome
(Vos kumt im)
Un mikh gefinin

Translation of A Warning, below:

A VORENUNG

by Grace Paley, trans. by Mindl Rinkevitsch and Albert Rosenblatt

In eynem a tog hob ikh fargesn in Yerusholayim
Un mayn rekhter orem iz mir fardart gevorn
Mayn rekhter orem, mayn baveglekhler orem,
Mayn orem vos heybt zih uf un lozt zikh arop,
Mayn balibter orem
Iz mi fardart govern.

Un mayn rekht oyg, der pintler un der vinker
Iz by mir oysgerisn
Es hengt af zeks fedemer fun eybiken gedenken
Vayl in eynem a tog hob ikh fargesn in Yerusholayim.

Vuhin ikh gey nor, derkent men mikh,
Dershpirn mikh glaykh fremde,
Vayl in eynem a tog, af eyn tog bloyz,
Hob ikh fargesn in Yerusholayim.

Yidn umetum, yidn, lang toyte fun di ale tsofendike un doremdike
kenigraykhn,
Oreme yidn hinter di geto-vetn goboyt funem adorldikn slav
Yidn-printsn in Amsterdam vos voynen in dimentine hayzer blishtshendike
Vi fentser-shoybn
Hert zikh tsu mir tsu.
Vuhin ir geyt nor hot dos folk fun yener shtot in zinen
Vayl kih hob in ir fargesn un itst bin ikh a blinde, a kalike.

Afile mayne gelibter, a krist, mit blase oygn un dem barbars forhoyt
Hot mikh farlozt.

(Thanks again to Albert Rosenblatt)