Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Yiddish
Most recents (17)
Il avait un talent fou, un charisme exceptionnel, il utilisait sa trompette comme une voix, et sa voix, comme une trompette. Mais savez-vous pourquoi, pendant toute sa vie, Louis #Armstrong a porté une étoile de David autour du cou ?
Je vous l'explique ci-dessous ⬇️ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Je vous l'explique ci-dessous ⬇️ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Le moins qu'on puisse dire sur l'enfance de Louis Armstrong, c'est que ce n'était pas "La vie en rose". Né le 4 août 1901 d'une mère âgée de 16 ans, abandonné par son père dès sa naissance, il a grandit dans une extrême pauvreté, sa mère en arrivant même à se prostituer...⬇️
Élevé par sa grand-mère jusqu'à ses 6 ans, dans un quartier connu sous le nom de "Battlefield" (champ de bataille..) de la Nouvelle Orléans ségrégationniste de l'époque, il va y rencontrer une famille juive qui va tout changer : les #Karnoffskys❤️✡️
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@amanpour @kajakallas #Ukrainian fascists hold a party at #Kyiv's "BarHot" organized by cartoonist Anton #Chadsky, eat a cake depicting a #Russian #baby
@amanpour @kajakallas Canned meat distributed by the #Ukrainian #Nazi A. #Gramanchuk with fascist symbols such as the shield of the Ucronazi collabrs and the colors of the OUN-UPA, on the label it says: "#meat of Russian-speaking #babies"
Alluding to dead children in #Donbas
Alluding to dead children in #Donbas
@amanpour @kajakallas Thread 19
FROM: #Marin in #Nazi -funeral #Ukraine | Mar 7, 2023
TO: #Kotsyubaylo eliminated | Mar 7, 2023
- when the #Americans visited the positions in #Avdiivka, he said that he was feeding the tamed #wolf "the #bones of #Russian-speaking #children.
FROM: #Marin in #Nazi -funeral #Ukraine | Mar 7, 2023
TO: #Kotsyubaylo eliminated | Mar 7, 2023
- when the #Americans visited the positions in #Avdiivka, he said that he was feeding the tamed #wolf "the #bones of #Russian-speaking #children.
Interested in bold new approaches to #modernism? Want to write a review of my book on #Jewish #avantgarde #design and #performance in #EasternEurope for an academic journal? Let me know in comments or DM and I can arrange a review copy. Keep reading for some juicy titbits! (1/9)
The Introduction asks what we can do with ‘peripheral’ modernisms and how Jewish culture and international networks shaped the avant-garde in Romania and further afield (2/9)
Ch 1 introduces an artistic rivalry that unfolds from Berlin to Riga via Bucharest, pitting the #Bauhaus against the Schule Reimann in the race to create Bucharest’s first school of modern design (3/9)
Gilman reads ‘See How Little’ as tinged with homoeroticism, and says that the Yiddish speaking reader would have instantly thought of ‘male limb’ with the ‘אבר’ used for limb here. And while yes, it can be a euphemism, I think there is something working on a few levels. #Yiddish
There is likely a bit of a physical union, shades of the existence of the shechinah, or dwelling of God between a man and wife — but also perhaps a fraternal spiritual/intellectual union of minds.
Gilman seems to reach a little, though, when he suggests there is a kind of ‘impregnation’ going on on that front.
On the other hand, we’ve got ploughed fields for planting, birth images...
On the other hand, we’ve got ploughed fields for planting, birth images...
I’ve previously touched upon Leivick as ‘prophet.’
He doesn’t seem to outright reject this identification and it’s treated very seriously by Malka Lee — and derisively by Zishe Landau. Yankev Pat sees him as a ‘Cohen Gadol’ in 1954. #Yiddish
He doesn’t seem to outright reject this identification and it’s treated very seriously by Malka Lee — and derisively by Zishe Landau. Yankev Pat sees him as a ‘Cohen Gadol’ in 1954. #Yiddish
Emma Schaver (here in excerpt) views Leivick and Levi Shalit as Rabbi and Hasid:
Glatstein, too, treats him as a sort of secular Rov: turning up at his house to read him his own poems and receive, as he says, his ‘semicha.’
More ‘Nature’ — as I said, it’s one I’ve worked on a bit more and here’s the first stanza, pushed into slightly better English shape #Yiddish
And here I move laterally to the poem ‘Tired’ by a contemporary of Leivick’s, Langston Hughes.
Hughes, too, wants to cut nature, in two. Not how it works, not its design, not if there’s some pre-determined order — but why it is rotting from the inside. It’s infected, not divine
Hughes, too, wants to cut nature, in two. Not how it works, not its design, not if there’s some pre-determined order — but why it is rotting from the inside. It’s infected, not divine
@aglaser‘s excellent book, Songs in Dark Times, shows how Leivick teeters on the edge of recognising where he stands as visually, if conditionally, white in America. And he does teeter, even talking in interview about the danger of the whipped becomes the ones who wield the whip.
‘Nature’ is one of the poems I asked for permission to try publishing a translation of formally. With no response, I prefer not to post too much of a ‘final’ version, with rhyme restored, rather than a partial literal working one for analysis. #Yiddish
Another wrestling with the natural and the divine, where do we come from, where do we go, why and how. Can we only be what we are destined to be? If God is in everything, then where is God in the sanatorium, in death? We foreshadow the pantheism of ‘Spinoza’
A tie here to ‘Darwin’ and ‘Again a Neighbour Died’ where we think about origins and what the purpose of life is. And the terrifying prospect of someone else’s end —
If we look ahead to ‘A Leaf on an Apple Tree’ again — almost twenty years later — we find Leivick compelled to join in singing about a different kind of belief, with different prisoners — Ani Ma’amin, with the survivors of the Shoah in DP camps. #Yiddish (Con’t)
In fact, the three members of the delegation to the DP camps in 1946 each come away with their own version of ‘Ani Ma’amin.’
Efros, firmly in the Zionist camp, casts Israel as the redemption of the Jewish people.
We’re setting up for a couple May Day poems.
Leivick doesn’t break fully with the Soviets— and was quite popular in Russia, visiting in 1925— until 1939 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the initial break was in 1929, and the Freyheyt walkout over Hebron) #Yiddish
Leivick doesn’t break fully with the Soviets— and was quite popular in Russia, visiting in 1925— until 1939 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the initial break was in 1929, and the Freyheyt walkout over Hebron) #Yiddish
The May Day poems also continue beyond that point, through ‘In Treblinka bin ikh nit geven’ and there is even in that volume a temporary mending of fences, it seems, with the Soviets when they are anti-Nazi.
For even more in that vein, one can look at Ruth Wisse’s article and the following exchange of letters with Samuel Leivick in the pages of the Jewish Review of Books: jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/98/dr… and jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/154/l…
It’s true Leivick wasn’t particularly humble about his writing and seemed to believe he was always destined for something special — though I am getting the impression he was introverted by nature and didn’t necessarily enjoy public speaking. #Yiddish
He seemed to like to take the opportunity to leave — in his prose pieces, he’s quite often slipping out the door and going for a wander. Perhaps it’s more about the fact that he *can* leave and exercises the option in order not to lose it.
He’s also fairly self-effacing about what he considers a ‘bad’ poem in Tsarisher Katorge, where his cellmate asks Leivick if he can translate it for him and he perseverates, saying it’s pretty bad in Yiddish and could only be worse in Russian.
Charney connects this poem to his earlier ‘Redemption Comedy’, saying it could be a coda. And it could (2nd excerpt.) Here is the real redeemer in contrast to the false redeemer of the previous poem — roughly the plot of Leivick’s Golem plays, reduced to two poems. #yiddish
I would argue, in light of Horn, that if you work with the idea that in the two Golem plays Leivick acknowledges a belief in the concept of two Moshiachs, Ben Yosef and Ben David — then as a revolutionary…
He might have initially counted himself as part of an artificial, ultimately unsuccessful ‘Ben Yosef’ — like, say, the golem is created to be in the first play and who ultimately replaces both Moshiachs in the second play…
Eventually, Leivick is forced to deliver Daniel to be sent to war, recounted in a later poem appearing in ‘In Treblinka bin ikh nit geven’ (1945) which I have shared pieces of previously… #Yiddish
In his post-Khurbn writing he often portrays himself (and also American Jewry) as the father and the son, the knife and the throat — the (potential) victim and the culpable-through-insufficient action.
This leads to an interesting passage in ‘With the Surviving Remnant’ which seems generic without any biographical information. Much less so knowing about his own son.
We have a false redeemer, too, touching on Leivick’s preoccupation with the Moshiach.
We have a false redeemer, too, touching on Leivick’s preoccupation with the Moshiach.
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).
Inside: The sex industry isn't technophilic; Schroedinger's streaming service just died; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/ear…
#Pluralistic 1/
Inside: The sex industry isn't technophilic; Schroedinger's streaming service just died; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/ear…
#Pluralistic 1/
Sponsor me for the @ClarionUCSD Write-A-Thon! I'm writing 10,000 words on my prison-tech thriller "Some Men Rob You With a Fountain Pen" and raising scholarship money for the Clarion SF/F workshop, which I graduated from in 1992.
clarionwriteathon.com/members/profil… 2/
clarionwriteathon.com/members/profil… 2/
The sex industry isn't technophilic: Why sex workers are the first in - and first out - of new technologies.
3/
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In 1959, Eugene Ionesco wrote the absurdist play Rhinoceros in which one by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos. At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine. 1/
Rhinoceros is a play about conformity and mob mentality and mass delusion, about how easy it is for people to accept outrageous/unacceptable things simply because everyone else is doing it.
In the end, the protagonist Berenger is the only human left. 2/
In the end, the protagonist Berenger is the only human left. 2/
I've been thinking about Rhinoceros a lot this week, as we enter this new season of "return to pre-Covid normalcy" on hyperdrive.
There are many good reasons to try to avoid getting infected with Covid. It's not innocuous and it's dangerous to pretend otherwise. 3/
There are many good reasons to try to avoid getting infected with Covid. It's not innocuous and it's dangerous to pretend otherwise. 3/
Finally, after 2 years, we were able to spend some time with my Zeide, Chief Moshe Lieberman of Antwerp... Ill share here some insights here in the coming days...
Zeide is a great scholar, just look at these much used books at his home office...
There books all over the house "my best feiends" he calls them...
....and.....the lying begins. #TrumpLied200KDied #DebateTonight
....and the blaming on the Gold Star families has begun...
...and the jab at Gov Gretchen Whitmer. She has a name & her family has been THREATENED.
This is a thread about Jewish eateries on the #LowerEastSide of Manhattan: #KatzsDelicatessen, #YonahSchimmelKnishery, and #RussandDaughtersAppetizers.
So, of course, it is also a thread about #immigration.
So, of course, it is also a thread about #immigration.
@KatzsDeli, 205 E. Houston St. Already famed for pastrami, Katz's was immortalized in #WhenHarryMetSally, and yesterday held a fake orgasm contest. Opened by others in 1888; Willy Katz became part owner in 1903, cousin Benny Katz joined 1910, and it's been Katz's ever since. #LES
@YonahSchimmelNY, 137 E. Houston St. Yonah Schimmel, a Romanian rabbi, operated a pushcart at Coney Island starting in 1895, and opened his shop in its present location in 1910. The best potato knish anywhere. Don't @ me. #LES
