Fear by Chana Blankshteyn translated by Anita Norich

 

Yiddish women writers are becoming discovered lately through excellent translations. After the Blume Lempel and Yenta Mash who were relatively known among the Yiddish knowledgeable, the short stories of a well travelled Vilna based author, Chana Blankshteyn seen the light of the English-speaking literary realm, in the translation of Anita Norich. 

For those curious about an Yiddish-English translation of the short stories who gives the name of the volume, Fear, they can practice this exercise offered by In Geveb Yiddish publication. 

Blankshteyn is relatively less known outside her time and Vilna. Contemporary with Isaac Babel, she dies on a natural death in 1943. Her collection of stories was originally published under the title Noveles with a foreword by Max Weinreich and was one of the last Yiddish books to appear in Vilna before WWII. There are only a few copies available right now from this collection, out of which only two in the US. The author who felt at ease with the world and travelled extensively, especially throughout Europe, was eulogized as a writer and a pioneer for women´s rights and the poor. 

The first English volume of Fear recently published includes nine short stories. The story that gives the name to the volume deserves fully to be given the title of the volume because it is an admirable collection of emotions and contrasts, a vibrant episode from the life of a character, full of dramatism and suspense. It is so well written that one may need a break before continuing with the rest of the stories. Almost all the stories though look like sequences from the life of some characters brought together temporarily, as it usually happens in life. After the story ends, we may guess they life continued but it is out of the sight of our literary imagination.

There are mostly women with voices represented in the stories, and they are coming for various layers of Jewish life, especially non-religious ones - although in one of the stories there is a ´comrade rabbi´ requested to officiate a chupa - Jewish wedding - to two secular Jews, one of them the granddaughter of a Hasidic rebbe. There is a world on the move, changing both in social, political and economic ways. Not surprisingly, there is the character of the ´foreigner´, more or less Jewish, who is entangled in relationship with local Jewish girls. The foreigner is the messenger of a globalized world, and so are becoming the relationships too.

The women in the stories are orphans, single mothers by choice and not because widowed, working women, women not interested to have a relationship at all. In most cases, the location of the story is not mentioned - except Paris - and so is their Jewish identity. Although, the references to High holidays in autumn or the month of Tammuz - actually, the only month mentioned; Tammuz usually takes place between the Gregorian June-July and is the month where the 17th of Tammuz fast takes place, which marks the beginning of the three weeks leading to Tisha B´Av; overall, not a happy month in the Jewish calendar - are a reference that we are moving within the Jewish realm. References about anti-Semitism and pogroms do exist too, but one must remember that in this part of the world, such events were rather the rule than the exception therefore they were part of the everyday Jewish reality.

With calm and cold blood, analytically and observing, sometimes from very afar, Chana Blankshteyn is a witness of her times, a literary journalist of a world that soon is about to disappear. We - me including - may be tempted to judge it according to the current literary standards and expectations. But this is a wrong take. Rather, we should open our curiosity towards exploring the Yiddish world of past times. I wish there are more such books brought to the editorial light, they mean more than any historical reference because they are slices of life as it once was.

Rating: 4 stars 

Yiddish is Back!

Now, I have your attention!
In fact, Yiddish was never on a break, only the ways in which the interest towards it propagated was relatively on hold. After all, this language - yes, it´s a language, not a dialect, zhargon, also as per the decision of the 1908 Yiddish Conference in Czernowitz where it was declared as ´national language of the Jewish people´- was always here, always developing and creating valuable works - that brought a Nobel Prize to an autor writing in Yiddish, Isaac Bashevis Singer, in 1978.

In the article How Does it Feel to be an Yiddish Writer in America, published on the 23rd of May edition of the Forverts, he explained the premise of the title: ´like a ghost who can see but it is not seen´. And he explains later: ´Writers have never had any guarantees as to the number of their readers or the future of their languages. Nobody can tell what will happen to the words and phrases in use today or five hundreds years from now. A new way of conveying ideas and images may be found that will make the written word, and perhaps even today´s spoken word, completely superflous. It is not the language that gives immortality to the writer. The very opposite is true: great writers do not let their languages become extincts´. 

The recent literary works brought to the attention of the English speaking publicm like the short stories by Blume Lempel or by Yenta Mash confirm this assumption. The fact that those writers are women might be another topic to discuss, but maybe on another occasion.

The good academic news of the fact that Yiddish is becoming so sought-after is that there are many books and information available in English, outlining the diversity and complexity of the language, especially from an anthropological/social perspective.

I will briefly mention my latest two readings in this respect.

Born to Kvetch by Michael Wex is a very detailed journey into the world beyond the words. Yiddish means a lot of dialects and a world when just speaking the words is not enough to fully manage the language. From the complex characters of the folk tales to the language of the synagogue, or the exchanges on the street, the word and its context can change - for the good and for the bad. Organised in chapters following the main life encounters, it provides a rich depository of vocabulary and their background story. One can learn a lot about it, but still, it is not enough for considering oneself a master of the Yiddish. Unfortunatelly, it does not provide too much specific details of variants of Yiddish spoken in various Central and East European countries, being rather focused on the standard Litvische. There are so many topics - way too many - that needs further discussion and exploring - like the fully packed laboratory of families of demons, but the book is enjoyable not only by academics, but equally by those who want to figure out more than basic information about Yiddish.

My favorite Yiddish-related read of the day is an excellent collection of articles, information and literary fragments inspired by or about Yiddish, edited by Ilan Stavans (who had extraordinary contributions in the field of Yiddish-speaking realm in South America) and Josh Lambert. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish covers almost everything that one needs to acknowledge about the history of Yiddish in America, from the foods to the books and the famous Hollywood personalities. I´ve spent a bit over a day delving into all stories yet being convinced that there are still so many testimonies and memories left behind. Selections are automatically limitative and subjective but in this case the distribution is very diverse, which meant for me that there are more Yiddish-related books added on the TBR and hopefully reviewed on the blog soon too. I wish there will be such a bilingual selection one day, Yiddish-English.