BEGINNINGS
X We barely exist, but our office is already inundated with mail. Some, happily, is material we have been eagerly awaiting, and, now and again, there is the very special delight of opening...
...We have an article on Iran and Israel which deserves some kind of prize, perhaps, for the best non-used title...
...Tempting though it is, we will not call it " S h a h , S t i l l . " And another article, which will appear in our next issue, on the Lubavitch Mitzvah Mobile (where passers-by are encouraged to put on t'fillin), gets the prize for quantity of proposed titles...
...Or, more pertinently, can Jewish culture live when cut off from its own idiomatic base...
...So I listened to its rendition with somewhat mixed feelings—pleased, on the one hand, that the song had been made accessible, knowing intellectually that it makes more sense to sing mediocre lyrics that can be understood than to sing powerful lyrics that are not understood, but saddened, all the same, at the necessity for showering with our socks on...
...letters urging our conversion...
...If launching a new magazine is a way of opening a window to the world, there must be some way of installing screens as well...
...Powerful though the English be, it loses the nuance, hence also the connection to Jewish life...
...The original Yiddish reads "Cherem, velt, oif deineh treifeneh kulturen...
...To be able to engage in such conversations...
...We print the original Yiddish of one, and we do so not only because a Jewish magazine has, we believe, an obligation to do such things, but also because the original offers an interesting illustration of the problem of translation, ultimately of the problem of culture...
...Some, happily, is material we have been eagerly awaiting, and, now and again, there is the very special delight of opening an unsolicited manuscript that turns out to be a gem...
...Some weeks back, I participated in a weekend retreat of a federation executive committee in another city...
...X We barely exist, but our office is already inundated with mail...
...When that happens, the manuscript—poetry, more often than not—is quickly passed from office to office, and the glow lasts most of the day, more than compensating for the vast quantities of egregiously bad poetry which finds its way here with depressing regularity...
...Thus: In the first verse of "Good Night, World," we encounter the line "Damn your dirty culture, world...
...Their language, rich though it may be, does not evoke for them anything beyond its own immediate intentions...
...For the problem is not merely one of translation...
...F...
...One of the joys of the weekend was the singing which followed Shabbat dinner...
...A young man of my acquaintance was recently in Haifa...
...This month's Reaccess presents two particularly powerful poems by the late Jacob Glatstein, as translated by Ruth Whitman...
...An accurate, but (poetically) unacceptable rendition of the line in English would be, " A n excommunication, world, upon your non-kosher cult u r e s . " The word " c h e r e m " conjures up visions of terrible judgments that " d a m n " just doesn't manage, and " t r e i f e n e h " — from the word " t r e i f " — is more than simply " d i r t y . " " T r e i f is foul, it is ritually unacceptable, it conjurs up images of martyrdom and law and history, therefore...
...To which my friend answered, "Yes,—we met at S i n a i ." The older man slapped his head, and said " O f course, of course, I simply forgot...
...My experience suggests that relatively few federation executive committees listen to Jewish music, and still fewer make it themselves...
...Who would have imagined the difficulty in creating titles for our articles...
...assorted anti-Semitic communications...
...Among the songs that were sung that evening was " Y e r u s h a l a y im Shel Zahav"—in an English translation...
...Among the rejects are "Right Between Thine E y e s , " "One Six Hundred and Thirteenth of the Way Home," and "What Has Four Wheels and Phylacteries...
...How have you been...
...We don't know quite what to make of it all...
...It is also a problem of living expression...
...And it is possible, after all, to do more than make do in English, if the knowledge is there—as the following story I stumbled upon recently illustrates: (But, in order to understand the story, one must know of the tradition which holds that all Jews—the dead, the living, and the as yet unborn— were present at Sinai...
...Can there be a thriving culture without its own language...
...As with the Glatstein poems, the translation was very good...
...You'll have to forgive me—it was so crowded and noisy...
...When they drew near, my friend said "Shalom aleichem," and, evidently, said it with a tone that is reserved for friends...
...The older man, returning the greeting, looked a bit puzzled, and asked " D o I know you...
...And here, I should imagine, the answer depends, as so often it does, on knowledge...
...He saw an elderly and obviously Orthodox Jew coming towards him, and something in the man's face caught his fancy...
...It is quite likely the case that many Israelis, whose language may even be studded with idomatic expressions that derive from important experiences of our past, are totally unaware of the connections...
...Or the fun...
...Then there's the rest: a letter asking for a staff position as a specialist on the Communist penetration of the Jewish press...
...Why learn...
...But, again, it necessarily obscured the idiomatic connection to Jewish sources which makes the original so rich...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
