Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. POWER OF TYPOGRAPHY It is against my principles to participate in any...
...Some six decades ago Professor L. Wiener, in his History of Yiddish Literature in the 19th Century, said that Yiddish would be dead in about 15 years...
...I believe in freedom of expression but chutzpah should be curbed...
...But though your reviewer praises Singer, I wonder whether Singer feels comfortable being called the "Last of the Yiddish Mohicans...
...It was stated that the shelter program is a cover-up for defenselessness and perpetrates the illusion of coping with the threat of war when there can be no realistic program other than one which abolishes war and the H-bomb...
...In 1948 Stalin decided to liquidate Yiddish, but it has outlived him...
...I wonder where Sundel gets the chutzpah (nerve) to write such tripe, and I wonder why The New Leader chose to print it...
...I do grant that my usage was loose...
...But Yiddish is alive today—as for the future, we don't know...
...I hope I am proven wrong, but facts must be faced...
...According to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary "patois" means "a dialect...
...The end of any literature, of course, is not a happy event to report...
...Sundel writes that Yiddish is "a patois language...
...My New Century Dictionary, one of the best in the United States, does not carry Webster's "contemptuously" or "illiterate...
...This was supposed to happen around 1913, more than a decade before Isaac Bashevis Singer appeared as a writer...
...Instead of being a protest against nuclear warfare, it could be construed as a protest against the private shelter...
...This is due to the Nazi murder of the Jews and to Stalin's policy of forced Russification of the Soviet Jews...
...The typographic format of your magazine attracts me more than any other news and opinion magazine, liberal or conservative, that I have come across...
...If there was any ambiguity in my referring to Yiddish as a "patois language" today, I certainly did not intend it...
...It has been said thousands of times in the last two hundred years that Yiddish is dying—but it has outlived all the prophets of doom...
...It is true that the present position of Yiddish is weaker than it was a century or even 25 years ago...
...Eugene S. Schwartz...
...The review of I. B. Singer was a rare one of praise...
...hence, contemptuously illiterate or provincial speech...
...I am not going to discuss philology with Sundel, or the nature of the Yiddish language...
...The essence of the discussion pointed out the immorality of the shelter program by selecting survivors on the basis of geography and means and at the same time preparing the public to accept and acquiesce to nuclear warfare...
...What he said is either a display of ignorance, or an expression of anti-Semitism or self-hatred...
...It is true that Singer is a master of Yiddish literature, but we have a number of fine Yiddish writers in the United States, South America, Canada, Western Europe, Israel and even in Russia...
...Park Forest, Ill...
...and because of world opinion and protests, Khrushchev has allowed the resumption of publications in Yiddish...
...Now I am a great admirer of I. B. Singer and I have written a number of articles about him...
...The subsequent shooting served to remind us that we are being transformed into barbarians even before we are destroyed...
...For the rest of Elias Schulman's letter, I don't wish to add confusion upon confusion with parables about the accuser being the accused and the seven watchmen in one's own heart...
...The decision to build a shelter was made as insurance while recognizing that war today is an act of insanity and a disease...
...I feel that the news and literary review magazine field needs much visual improvement, and The New Leader has taken the initial step...
...After doing away with the language itself, Sundel repeats four times that Yiddish is "doomed to extinction," that it is a "dying restricted language," that it is "a near dead language" and that it is a "dwindling medium...
...All are doing important work...
...I can only say that Sundel is not original...
...Certainly, it is in bad taste to keep on repeating that it is dying...
...New York City Elias Schulman Executive Secretary, Yiddish P. E. N. Club Alfred Sundel Replies: I do not believe that my use of "patois" (intended to mean a provincial dialect), in reference to the development of Yiddish since the 15th century, is 100 per cent incorrect...
...I think it speaks for itself...
...AUTHOR'S NOTE In editing my story, "Shelter in the Jungle" (NL, October 30), the discussion between Malcolm White and his wife that preceded their decision to build a shelter was deleted...
...Though I may not agree with the editorial content politically, I congratulate you for the graphic presentation of the magazine and for the use of fine quality illustrations...
...POWER OF TYPOGRAPHY It is against my principles to participate in any endeavor forwarding the "liberal cause," but, because I would like to encourage the advancement of good magazine design, I am taking a one-year subscription...
...I hope that you will run some articles with the conservative touch in the coming year so my conservative conscience will not make me feel guilty for taking this subscription...
...Queens, ?. Y. Tony Di Nuca YIDDISH TODAY I was simply astonished by Alfred Sundel's review "The Last of the Yiddish Mohicans" (NL, December 11...
...This substantial deletion changed the story's effect...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 1
