Obligatory First Post: What am I doing here?

Hello, everyone!

Chances are if you have reached this blog, it is because I sent you here or you stumbled upon the link in my Facebook profile. Although I am documenting this for my own reasons, I look forward to sharing my experiences with everyone. Feel free to leave comments!

For those of you who do not know, I am one of 18 students from across the country, ranging from 2nd-year undergraduates to masters students completing a summer internship in Yiddish Language and Culture at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. It is a 7-week program that includes Yiddish language instruction, a class in Yiddish culture led by various scholars in Yiddish literature and culture, and, of course, some obligatory grunt work at the Book Center when necessary. Interns also have the opportunity to work closely with the faculty on an independent project that involves translation of Yiddish text and/or research on a particular topic in Yiddish culture. At the end of the summer, we will all present our work and, perhaps, contribute to some kind of future exhibition here at the Book Center. We will also get docent training if we want it, the opportunity for further involvement with the Book Center's upcoming projects, 6 credits of coursework through the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a small stipend for our work. All of the credits, the books, our housing, and various other goodies (which includes a familiar childhood toy renamed Yiddish-style as an "Oy-Oy") are fully paid for by the center. Yes, they actually PAY us to do something so cool.

Some of you may be baffled by this. Why learn Yiddish? What kind of 22 year old wants to speak like an old bube? Jewish assimilation in America came at the expense of an amazingly rich culture that I managed to stumble upon only recently. The Holocaust killed off about half of the world's Yiddish speakers. The post-World War II generation of Ashkenazi Jews that followed learned almost nothing of their parents' or grandparents' native tongue, typically abandoning it for English or Hebrew. What Yiddish my mother heard growing up only shows up in select words she has always used to describe certain things--shabbes, shmate, goyim, etc. Occasionally she will use a Yiddish word I never heard her say before. Ever since I can remember, I have always been fascinated at the power in those Yiddish words. There is something in the word shpilkes--used colloquially to mean a feeling of restlessness, but literally translated as "pins" or "needles"--that captures something that English cannot, at least to me.

Of course, it is only in retrospect that I see how Yiddish has always played a subtle role in my life. My trajectory into this program really began last summer when I was an honors summer research assistant with a professor of mine at the University of Miami. Much of what I was reading was about nationalism and the movements that have arisen as an answer to it. One day, as I was milling about the internet, I discovered Emma Goldman, the notorious anarchist of the early 20th century. When I read more about her, I also learned about her affiliation with the major Yiddish anarchist movements, both here and internationally.

Wait, what? Yiddish... Jewish... anarchists? I had certainly never heard about political radicals in Hebrew school. My Hebrew school--mostly attended by the irritating offspring of the reformed, observant-two-times-a-year type of Jews--was more of a bar mitzvah mill that taught us to read Hebrew and not much else. On top of it, we learned Sephardic (Middle Eastern) pronunciation of Hebrew when the vast majority of us were of Eastern European descent. We probably did talk about some Jewish traditions and certainly learned about the Holocaust. Yet somehow this entire Jewish secular cultural life that flourished before the Holocaust failed to make it into the curriculum. Since my Jewish grandparents passed away long before I was born, there was very little of that world left in my family. I had to discover this world on my own.

I first became interested in radical political thought and leftist literature at some point after my experience living in New Orleans from 2004 to 2006, both before and after Hurricane Katrina. In a former life, before I came to the University of Miami, I was a student at Tulane University. It was the beginning of my sophomore year when Katrina devastated New Orleans. Being even a small part of one of America's worst human rights crises provided me a deep perspective into the way poverty, race, and government neglect function in this country. Maybe it is another case of liberal white guilt, I am not sure. I certainly did not suffer financially or physically from my experience. But to this day, I empathize deeply with those whose entire lives were wrecked and who still are suffering in the aftermath of Katrina.

When I started reading about the Jews coming to America at the turn of the century, something clicked for me. Of course I knew a great deal about the Holocaust. For the first time, though, I read extensively about the pogroms in Russia and about the struggle Jews faced upon arrival in the United States. Along with the Italians, the Poles, the Irish, and many other immigrant groups, most Jews were poor and, accordingly, were treated like the absolute scum of the universe. My parents are both highly educated, but I wanted to know what it was like for my great-grandparents who came to this country from Eastern Europe, who learned a new language, and who had to make their way from scratch in a very antagonistic environment. My teeny, miniature diaspora during Hurricane Katrina made me empathize with how immigrants were feeling when they had to pick up and leave everything they had known for centuries.

That, in a nutshell, is how I ended up here. My senior thesis (to graduate with Latin honors) is exploring the writings of radical Jewish women in America at the turn of the century. I am interested in examining how these young women adjusted to America--to a new language, a new culture, oppressive working conditions, to Christian moralizing--and figuring out why it is that Jews ultimately abandoned Yiddish culture and many of the ethical values and political ideals that came along with it. With some encouragement from my thesis adviser to look into Yiddish immersion programs, I found this place, applied at the absolute last possible minute, prostrated myself at the feet of my letter of recommendation writers and, well, here I am. At the Yiddish Book Center, I will be continuing my research and I hope to learn through their writing (fiction and memoirs) about the way Ashkenazi Jewish women were acclimating to the New World. Learning Yiddish will help me to eventually use primary sources rather than relying on translations or on the select few females publishing in English at that time.

The other students here are incredibly smart and interesting people who have extremely varied interests and perspectives. It has been only 3 days here in Amherst and I know that I am going to learn so much just from the other interns in this program. Their topics range far and wide in Yiddish culture: comparative studies of Yiddish foods, Jacob Adler's Yiddish portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Yiddish Linguistics, Klezmer and folk music, Czechoslovakian Jewish History, the perception of Jews in contemporary Poland, Indian-Jewish intermarriage, and so many more interesting and novel ideas. It is actually pretty intimidating. I am sure that I will have to pay tribute to the people I meet through this program in numerous individual blog entries at a later point.

This week was short, but hectic. It felt like freshman year of college all over again, in a way: I probably had to introduce myself about 30 times, at least. Now that we are all moved in and settled, the real work will begin. Next week we start our 2-week course in Yiddish cultural history with Professor David Shneer, who teaches History at the University of Denver. If you are interested in some of what we will be reading in this course, check out http://portfolio.du.edu/dshneer. Needless to say, I am very excited about this portion of the curriculum.

Now, though, it is the weekend. My suite mates and I are going to take some time out of this hectic week to explore "downtown" Amherst. Keep checking back for updates!

Leah

P.S. In case you are wondering, the word in the address of this blog, "zitsfleish" is a Yiddish word I learned somewhat recently. It means "perseverance," which is what I believe learning this language is going to take.