Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish

446 Pages·2004·22.768 MB·English

by  Dovid Katz

Words on Fire

Words on Fire
T he U n f in is h e d
S tory of Y iddish
Dovid Katz
BASIC
B
BOOKS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
Maps and Graphics by
Giedre Beconyte
Center for Cartography at
Vilnius University, Lithuania
(www.kc.gf.vu.lt)
Copyright © 2004 by Dovid Katz
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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Design by Jeff Williams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Katz, Dovid.
Words on fire : the unfinished story of Yiddish / Dovid Katz,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-465-03728-3 (alk. paper)
1. Yiddish language—History. I. Title.
PJ5113.K38 2004
439'.1'09—dc22
2004010296
04 05 06 07 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Chic Wolk, Richard Maullin, Mtndy Cahan
Visionary builders of a new Yiddish island in Vilnius

A Yiddish Poet
by Menke Katz
I am a Yiddish poet—a doomed troubadour,
a dreamsmith jeered by the soft-voiced yokel,
the smooth snob with the swinging lash shrieking: jargon!
O are the mocked tears of my people a jargon?
Yiddish,
formed as Adam of the dust of the four corners of the earth;
the quenchless blaze of the wandering Jew,
the thirst of the deserts.
My mother tongue is unpolished as a wound, a laughter, a love-starved kiss,
yearnful as a martyr's last glance at a passing bird.
Taste a word, cursed and merciless as an earthquake.
Hear a word, terse and bruised as a tear.
See a word, light and lucent, joy rapt as a ray.
Climb a word—rough and powerful as a crag.
Ride a word—free and rhymeless as a tempest.
Yiddish,
The bare curse thrown against the might of pitiless foes.
A "black year” shrouding dawn after a massacre.
The mute call of each speechless mouth of Treblinka.
The prayer of stone to turn into gale.
from Land of Manna (Chicago 1965)

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Notes to the Reader xv
Introduction 1
1 Genesis 11
2 The Three Languages of Ashkenaz 45
3 Old Yiddish Literature 79
4 What Should a Lady Read? 89
5 Yiddish and Kabbalah 113
6 In the East 131
7 Westernization and Language 173
8 New Visions of Judaism 225
9 The Twentieth Century 257
10 In the Twenty-First Century 349
11 The Future of Yiddish 367
Index 399
ix