"Laughing in the Darkness"

Tonight we saw the film "Laughing in the Darkness," a documentary about the life and work of Sholem Aleichem (IMDB entry here). The Michigan Theater showing was advertised among the beer taps on the bar at Red Hawk where we had dinner first -- I thought the juxtaposition was amusing so I took the photo above.

The film was very intense: it included interviews with a number of heavy hitters of Yiddish literary scholarship as well as with Bel Kaufman, Sholem Aleichem's granddaughter, now 100 years old. The development of Yiddish literature within the constantly changing environment of Jewish life in Eastern Europe was a predominant topic. A large collection of photos and a few moving pictures from shtetls and Russian cities provided very interesting visuals -- though sometimes the Ken Burns effect was exploded into a dizzying zoom around the street scenes and vivid faces of the subjects.

The end of the film summarized the continuing reaction to Sholem Aleichem's work in Soviet Russia, Israel, and the US. Interestingly, our friend Baruch, who was with us at the film, said that as a young man in the Soviet Union he read Sholem Aleichem in Russian translation, which was his only window on Jewish culture. This corresponded to the information in the film.

Of course the musical and movie of "Fiddler on the Roof" was noted as major evidence of recent American love of Sholem Aleichem. The scholars summarized how American Jews first turned their backs on Yiddish culture and the works of Sholem Aleichem and then revived their interest in a search for Jewish identity.

Happy Purim!

Purim was a secular as well as a religious holiday in the Shtetls of Eastern Europe. Men got drunk, and women competed to send the best food platters and baskets to their friends and relatives. Yes, these customs have a religious origin: but I say they became secular – and fun.

Sholom Aleichem wrote a story that illustrates this point. “Two Shalachmones or A Purim Scandal” tells of two ill-treated maids in his imaginary town, Kasrilevka. On Purim, the two of them meet, each carrying a basket of sweets to the other’s employers.

The smaller of their platters contained a hamantash and other pastries. The second platter contained: “a fine slice of strudel, two big sugar cookies, a large honey teigl, two cushion cakes stamped with a fish on both sides and filled with tiny sweet farfel, and two large slabs of a poppy seed confection, black and glistening, mixed with ground nuts and glazed with honey. Besides all this, there lay on the plate, smiling up at them, a round, golden sweet-smelling orange that wafted its delicious odor right into their nostrils.”

Tempted by the foods on their platters, and resentful of their employers, the two messengers stopped to chat while they ate up most of the items that they were supposed to deliver: beginning with the hamantash. The two families took offense at the disgraceful state of the platters that they therefore received. Their former friendship dissolved in quarrels and resentment until they realized what had occurred.

Bringing gifts of food to friends is a custom still observed among religious Jews. I don't do much for Purim myself, but I think people still manage to have fun. I'm fascinated by another way that Jewish Purim customs were secularized: some of the pre-Lent revelry in Renaissance Venice was influenced by the costumed and masked Purim celebrations in the Ghetto.

Sholem Aleichem (February 18, 1859)

Sholem Aleichem may be one of the best-known Yiddish writers from Eastern Europe. His character Tevye the milkman became the hero of the American musical "Fiddler on the Roof," which among other things periodically gives high school drama students in Middle America an opportunity to imitate a Yiddish accent in their Senior Class Performance. (Please spare me.)

For many readers, Sholem Aleichem's stories define life in the Russian or Polish Shtetls where their ancestors came from; since his perspective is secular even though his characters are nearly always religious in some way, he's an important source of identity information to both secular and religious Jews.

Sholem Aleichem was born before the Russians adopted the current calendar, so his birthdate is also given as March 2. Of course his name actually means "Hello" or "Peace" -- his real name was Sholem Rabinowitz.

Another List

Jewcy.com just published "The 50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years" by Jason Diamond. The list begins with The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and continues pretty predictably with books by Proust, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, J.D.Salinger, Bellow, Ozick, Chabon... . Of course the first test when you read such a list: how many have you even heard of? And more important: how many have you read. I have read around half of the 50 books on the list, and heard of most of them, and I think it's pretty good, even the inclusion of Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. And Updike's Bech.

Is it really more than 100 years since Sholem Aleichem and I.L.Peretz published anything good? Maybe so. Am I the only person who doesn't find Henry Roth's Call it Sleep very readable? Maybe so.

Marc Tracy writing at Tablet magazine comments: "What is most interesting to me about [this list], ... Jason places a premium on how essential a work was to literature and culture at large rather than specifically to Jewish culture."