Yiddish Wikipedia (or Vikipedia)

Here's a plug for a worthwhile project: an uncensored forum for information exchange, by and for native Yiddish speakers (i.e. Chasidim). Beside the inevitable trolls and flaming wars, there have been some amazingly dedicated participants. And the results are admirable, including a dynamic main page and fairly well formulated policies.

Vikipedia fans have long complained about lack of support from established Yiddish/Chasidish bloggers and websites who should've been its most natural allies. For what it's worth, this is my vote of support. I've even contributed occasionally, although not as much as I should have.

So, if you can write in Yiddish, why not take five minutes to add an article. Choose any topic that strikes your fancy. And do your part to help promote the free exchange of ideas for those most in need of it (at least in this country).

And if for nothing else, bookmark it just for the news on the front page--the only collection of its kind--where you'll find items such as a new Chasidish community in Western New York State (that must be somewhere near the Pacific, right?), and new bans on Nosson Slifkin by a Kolel in Toronto (What now?).

And for those who can't read Yiddish, don't let this important part of our culture die. Sign up for Yiddish classes.

Anti-Semitism on Craig's List

I had an email exchange yesterday with a friend who reads my blog. He took exception to a comment I posted on the previous post.

Here's what I said:

"Yossele, sorry to shatter your comforting sense of victimhood, but Yidden are not hated by goyim in America, at least not by most."

...to which my friend wrote:

"And how do you explain those rants on craigslist? And that's from a hipster-artist type site, and they're supposed to be the most liberal people..."

For those living in a hole, Craig's List has a section called Rants and Raves where idiot loners roam thinking of new and creative ways to post racist and anti-semitic remarks, and where Jewish loners roam searching out those posts for sadomasochistic pleasure. (Hint: type 'Jewish' in the search box.)

...to which I responded:

"Oh, come on. You can't be serious. As unpleasant as it is, that's not serious anti-semitism. Not by a long stretch.

Let's face it: all human beings will not love all other human beings at all times, no matter how tolerant and liberal they are. Some people think Jews are pushy and loud and money-minded and a whole bunch of other things. And some people think French are weasely smelly guttural-nasal assholes. And some people think all Russians are either mafiosos or communists. And some think all Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. And some think all Europeans are anti-semitic Arab-lovers. And some think all Americans are ignorant imperialist bastards. And some think all Skverers are narrow-minded frimaks and all Gerers are arrogant chenyuks and all Breslovers are bipolar BTs and all Lubavitchers are lunatic meshichisten and all Pupaners are Satmarer wannabes and that all Satmarers think they own the world because their Rebbe had some stupid reactionary shitte and insulted anyone who disagreed with him. And (big secret) I count myself among a number of the above.

Does all this mean there's a lot of hatred in the world? Perhaps. But are any of these groups in danger of being persecuted because someone somewhere doesn't like them? That's ridiculous. Is there real and dangerous anti-semitism in the world. No doubt. But it's not in America today. Will it be here tomorrow? Who knows? Let's make sure we get our act together so that at least if someone does have an argument it should be baseless. At this point, with our racism and disregard for anyone or anything other than ourselves, the anti-semites might very well have a point.

Jews would do well to grow up and stop perpetuating an uber-victim mentality. Anti-semitism isn't some mysterious phenomenon, as Jews like to think. It has clear psychological explanations. And if we Jews paid attention we might actually figure it out. Question is if we're willing to do anything about it. But a nice first step would be to show some respect to the people we live amongst and have to deal with day-to-day.

Whew... Got that rant out of my system and I'm feeling better now. You shouldn't do this to me... :)"

To which he wrote: "This is good. You should post this..." And despite the rather embarassingly knee-jerk sentiments expressed, I liked the idea...

Racism at Der Blik

“Since when do you read Der Blik?” my wife asked, as she noticed it in the pile of publications I brought home Friday afternoon after work—the family’s Shabbos reading material, only it’s usually just a Mishpacha for her and the kids, and Ha’aretz and the Forward for myself.

“Since they’ve been using headlines such as these,” I responded, holding up the cover.

My wife glanced over at it, and I pointed to the headline I disliked.

(Click for full image)

Translation: “Crown Heights: Where it’s ‘black again’ from the blacks.”

“Okay, it's not very nice,” she said. But she didn't think they should be pilloried for it. “They don’t really mean anything by it, I don’t think. It’s just their kind of language.”

And their kind of language is, in my opinion, precisely the problem.

The article inside goes on to report on surging crime rates in Crown Heights, most of which, they claim, is committed by blacks against Chasidim. The incidents are indeed shocking: muggings, armed robberies, theft, and random assaults on innocent Chasidim on the streets, often accompanied by anti-semitic slurs.

But even if the above facts are true (setting aside that the journalistic standards of Satmar publications have never proven very high), the piece uses subtle language that paints not just individual criminals but the entire black community in Crown Heights as being responsible for the violent crime in the neighborhood. Throughout the article, blacks are referred to as shchoirim and tinkel-hautige, literally blacks and dark-skinned, in Hebrew and Yiddish, respectively. While the terms are technically accurate, their usage and connotation is unequivocally negative.

Is such language benign, a bad case of an overtired headline writer, an inexperienced editor? Perhaps Chasidim are the last holdouts of a world gone mad with political correctness? I don’t think so. As racial stereotyping goes, this headline may not take home the prize (then again, it might). But the tone is ugly, and shows the mentality of those who, while living in America, have yet to learn the value of respect and dignity for all mankind.

Just imagine the response to a similar remark about the Jews. “Neighborhood Housing Prices Soar, Thanks to the Jews”, “Country Dragged into Iraq Quagmire by The Jews”, “Williamsburg Homeowner ‘Jewed’ by the Hasidim”, you get the idea. Any of those will get you fired from your job, and fast.

Even with the 1991 riots and the overall bad blood between blacks and Chasidim in Crown Heights (or, as one might argue, precisely because of it), generalizing against all blacks because of such incidents is not only morally wrong, it also perpetuates a culture of hostility and distrust. And if the masses might be excused for harboring racism under the surface—we all have our prejudices at some level, after all—it doesn’t excuse a major publication for such irresponsible writing.

Too often Chasidim I speak to just don’t get it. So what? they ask. Why must we be so overly sensitive? The blacks commit horrible crimes against us. Some, even at the highest level, display shocking anti-semitism, and we should be all sensitive about the particular language in which we say ‘blacks’?

What they don’t get is that it’s not about political correctness, or being overly sensitive. It's not about potentially insulting anyone either. It's not about them, it's about us. Black leaders might be shirking their responsibilities by failing to promote education and civic responsibility. And that should rightly be criticized. But that doesn’t excuse us from our responsibility to promote a culture of respect. And that's putting aside the very significant fact that millions of blacks, most likely the vast majority, are as far removed as possible from the implied generalizations.

Der Blik, which is published by the “Zaloinim”, the faction of Satmar headed by Zalmen Leib Teitelbaum, must think that anything they write is merely for internal consumption, and therefore free from critical oversight. Hiding behind their Yiddish and their general insularity, they live with the smug belief—correctly, perhaps—that whatever moral or ethical failings might slip through their writings, the vast majority of their readers will not object. And I find that sad, because if anyone can do something about ingrained prejudice among Chasidim it's the Chasidic media, and sadly, they have yet to live up to the task.

My Mother on Me

My mother has taken it upon herself to single-handedly strengthen my Yiddishkeit. I wish her luck, truly—although, if she'd ask me I'd tell her it's really unnecessary; but alas, she didn't ask. So she's now in the habit of reminding me every now and then to say a few kapitlech tehillim, to learn a little, to daven a little ehrlicher—the old one-on-one mashgiach talk we remember so fondly from Yeshiva. The frummish rhetoric, if you will, has increased now tenfold. "Men darf mispalel zein...", "men darf hubben bituchen...", "der bashefer vet helfen, in s'vet zein git..." *, that’s all I hear from her these days, or so it seems.

But this was never really supposed to happen. It only started after one of the few close friends who know about this blog ran into my mother under circumstances that are still unclear, and mentioned how much he enjoys my writings. “Which writings?” my mother asked. My friend realized the blunder. “Umm… uh… just, you know, in general. Gotta run.” And he made a quick getaway.

“I heard you’ve been writing,” my mother said to me the next time we spoke. “And I’d love to read some of it.”

"Umm, sure..." I said. But I kept on forgetting to bring her some printouts. And then my printer was broken for a while, see. And then it was fixed but I was out of paper.

But the excuses only go so far with a persistent Yiddishe mameh, and at some point I had to do some explaining and I decided to come clean. We’d always been close, despite some occasional philosophical differences—mostly on how much junk food she’s allowed to give my kids under the Grandmother’s Prerogative. But exactly how much can I tell her, I wondered to myself.

"My writings aren't really conventional,” I said to her the as she rocked on the recliner in her living room reading a Mishpacha Junior—she likes the Shikufitzky cartoons—while I sat on the old, plastic slip-covered couch. “They’re not the regular, story-with-a-musar-haskel sort, or the essay-on-why-the-whole-world-is-against-us-but-we’re-still-better sort.”

"It's okay," she said, looking at me curiously. "Do I expect you to be a big-time writer? Your father, he has the writing gene. Shoin, so not everyone can be so talented. What, do I expect you to write like the professionals in, say, Mishpacha, or something?"

"Right. No, I'm sure you don't."

"So, nu?" she said as she turned the page, looking remarkably like the grandmother right there on the Savta’s Stories page, with her tichel and reading glasses.

"My writings are just... I sort of… disagree sometimes with… some of the standard positions held by most Chasidim."

Her head still bent she looked up at me over her reading glasses, but only ever so briefly, and then looked back at what she was reading. “We’re open-minded people, you know. I don’t agree with everything either. That’s nothing new.”

But she’s not too obtuse, my mother, and finally, after considerable verbal dancing on my part, she realized that what I suffered from was shaky faith. Not a big problem, she said. And although, yes, she’s sad about it, she doesn’t think it’s something a little extra tehillim and maybe a visit to the Rebbe and another ehrlicher yid or two can’t help. And she could help out too with some extra inspirational tidbits.

So I started hearing about the peace of mind that comes from trusting in God. The serenity. The sheer joy to be had from waking in the morning and proclaiming moideh ani lefunechu**. “I mean, do you really think one can be happy without believing that God watches over us at every moment? Imagine, if it wasn’t God running every little detail in our lives, we’d go crazy from all the stress and misery. But once you believe,” —her eyes would light up and her hands would be in the air, palms upward as in supplication—“then you have no worries! Life becomes sweet, you’re careless as a child, knowing that God has only the best in store.”

She’d feel I’m not sufficiently convinced and go on earnestly. “It’s all in the Toireh. This isn’t stuff I’m making up.” And she’d shake her head, as if to convince me of that fact. No, she really didn’t make it up, unless she was the ghost writer for Twerski on Prayer and Pliskin’s My Father, My King, both of which are lying on the end table beside her.

I don’t know about most mothers—perhaps there are some out there with whom one might find it pleasing to discuss theology. But mine is certainly not one of those. So I usually just listen and nod, and wait for her to move on to inquire about my kids, and ask if my wife might want an extra apple strudel she just made. To her credit, after all the discussions, she still wants to read some of my writings. She’s convinced she’ll love them, despite everything I tell her.

“So, did you bring me anything you wrote?” she asked the other day as she stood in the kitchen stirring something in a pot on the stove. She tasted some broth from the pot with that big cooking spoon of hers, and then added some spices and stirred some more. She looked up at me. “You didn’t? Awww… I want to shep nachas… It can’t be that bad.” She paused for a moment, and then looked at me. “You don’t write anything about me, do you?”

“Oh, no. What could I possibly write about you?”

“Hmm,” she said, more to herself than to me, and shook her head thoughtfully, as if to say, “Well… I can think of some things, but okay…”


------------------------------------------------
*We must pray… We must trust in the Almighty… The Creator will help us, and all will be well…
**I give my thanks to you. (Part of a short prayer to be said immediately upon awakening.)

Chasidic Country Clubs

“I don’t know,” my wife said when I broached the subject of my ten-year-old daughter going to summer camp. “Do you think she’s old enough?”

I thought to remind her that I went to summer camp as a seven-year-old, but then, that might just confirm some old point of hers relating to my own parents’ child-rearing skills. She, having grown up in a cooler, suburban area, never knew the thrill of schlepping a trunk a hundred miles or so north for a rendezvous with moldy, mosquito infested bunks and malfunctioning sewage systems and the like. But somehow or another, and aided by my daughter, who’d actually become excited about the notion, my wife was eventually convinced of the idea.

We duly mailed the application forms to the camp we’d chosen, a popular location affiliated with a particular Chasidic group—one different from our own, a detail I later realized was of greater importance than I’d imagined. We eagerly awaited the response, sure to come along with lists of items to pack and immunization forms and the like.

“You know what my sister Chavi told me this morning?” my wife said a few days later as I was looking through the day’s mail, checking carefully for an envelope from the camp. “Bais Chana Rochel wouldn’t accept her Faigy for preschool next year.”

“What’s that?” I asked absent-mindedly, distracted by a credit card offer, anticipating the added camp expenses. Only six months zero percent on balance transfers; I’ll wait for something better. “Oh, they wouldn’t? Why not?” I looked at her as she flipped over a salmon croquette in the frying pan.

“They wouldn’t say,” my wife said. “We can’t tell you de reason,” my wife mimicked the response—as if she’d heard it herself. “Chavi’s going out of her mind. She went there when she was a kid, and she was completely expecting Faigy to be going there. Go start looking for a school now. In June, nuch dertzi! They could at least have told her a few months ago. She applied already who knows how long.”

“What is this? Some uppity white country club?” my brother-in-law asked when my wife and I stopped by later that week. At first they’d been stunned. Then they were angry, first with the school, then with themselves for being naïve and not preparing for it.

“I tried calling them a few times,” said Chavi, “and they wouldn’t give me the time of day. Dere are many factors dat go into dese decisions, and we don’t give out dat information. Leave your number, she said to me. And maybe someone will get back to you. Did anyone call? A loch in kup.”

My sister-in-law and her husband had failed to allow for our exclusivist tendencies. I heard afterwards from scores of others who’d gone through similar ordeals. “They look at everything,” another sister-in-law declared, claiming to have first-hand information from a friend of a friend. “Who your parents are, how much money you have, how you dress, what your neighbors think of you.”

“And of course,” my wife added wisely, “all this becomes more important when you’re from a different chasidus.”

It is nothing new of course that applying for admittance into a self-respecting institution of any Chasidic stripe nowadays switches on a social calculator—actually, a spreadsheet is more like it—in some administrator’s office in which complex formulas are used in order to determine an applicant’s desirability. Pedigree, financial status, marriage arrangements, country of great-grandparents’ origin, even general likability; everything is a factor.

A recent brochure for the new institutions of one of the Satmar factions included a Q&A section dealing with the makeup of the student body. Readers were assured that only students from “reineh in upgehiteneh mishpuches,” reputable families of pure and untainted standing, will be accepted. Just the thought of human beings making such judgments about their fellow humans causes one to shiver.

As humans we hold ourselves in a certain regard—as well as everyone around us. We don’t want to mix with those we don’t consider “our kind.” And even Chasidim, for all their talk of acceptance and inclusion and refraining from judgments, have their limits. Here, sit at my Shabbos table, a Chasid will tell you; have a piece of kugel, or even two. Yes, do feel welcome in my home any time. Oh, don’t mention it. Yes, everyone in the community is very hospitable and generous. It is awe inspiring, isn’t it? Such a beautiful lifestyle, such warmth. Indeed, if there’s any way we might possibly be of assistance please don’t hesitate. Sure, I can speak to my brother’s mechutan, who has a business partner, who used to have a neighbor, who might know someone who can give you some advice. Oh, it’s about getting your child into our school? Ah, yes, it’s a good school. But there has been a problem of overcrowding lately, and also—it’s hard to say this, because people take it the wrong way sometimes—but there have also been some problems with some students who didn’t quite belong. You know, it’s not that we don’t want certain people. It’s just that perhaps you might be more comfortable someplace else. You know, one that is more like your kind.

We wished the in-laws well, and my wife even made a few phone calls to people she thought might have connections. But nothing worked, and last I’ve heard, they were still looking for a suitable school for Faigy.

“That’s just how it is,” I said to my wife resignedly the other evening.

“You know,” she said to me after a few moments of quiet, “nuch a mazel we didn’t go through this with our kids. Burich Hashem we didn’t have such problems.”

“Absolutely right.”

We went on preparing our daughter for camp and thinking about local day camps for the younger kids. More than two months after we’d sent the application an envelope finally arrived from Machne Bnos so-and-so, and my wife called me eagerly at work.

“We can start packing,” she said. “We just got the envelope from the camp.”

As she opened the envelope our original deposit check fell out onto the table. And on the enclosed plain white form letter we were notified, with curt apologies, and no reason given, that our application was rejected.

Yeshiva Boys from St. Louis, and Non-Baseball Baseball

A few months ago, as the thought of summer loomed, it occurred to me that my ten-year-old daughter might finally be ready for summer camp.

“What’s so great about camp?” my daughter wanted to know. Bad question, she soon realized, after I began to wax nostalgic about my own summer camp days—and she’s apparently at that age (so suddenly, it seems) where her father’s childhood memories are more annoyance than entertainment.

I'd gone to summer camp in the Catskills every year from age seven until a few years past my Bar Mitzva, while my parents whiled away the summers in the Brooklyn heat. It was a Chasidic camp, the language was Yiddish, of course, and all the boys had curly payess of varying lengths. But we had "modern" counselors, yeshiva boys from St. Louis, who were probably—by today's labeling system—slightly left of Yeshivish.

The St. Louis boys taught us Chasidic kids from Brooklyn to play “punch ball,” “kick ball,” and some other variations of the same ballgame involving three bases and three strikes and three outs—except there was never a bat; that was off limits.

They taught us how to cheer during color war, usually coming up with cheers in English which we then translated to Yiddish (which was often just mispronounced English), sing Miami Boys Choir songs with an authentic Miami Boys Choir accent (against which the Rav of the camp would endlessly rail—it seemed to offend him, singing the songs in the manner of Jews who wear small yarmulkes, have no payess—at least none visible—and speak English at home), and they helped us—not because we wanted the help, but because their own Yiddish was somewhat lacking—to brush up on our English.

Of course we had a full day of studies—basically the same nine-to-four routine as the rest of the year, laboring over Gemoroh and a little bit of Chumash, with the same Rebbes. But when the learning was over we did pretty much what campers all over did: we went swimming, hiking, we played games, we had great activities, color war, field days, campfires, major trips, the occasional visit to the nurse or camp mother, and the more than occasional late night bunk raid with toothpaste and shoe polish—as victims the first few years, and as perpetrators later on.

In truth, not all my camp experiences were that great. The camp had a faction in the community with which it was affiliated that hated the "modern" atmosphere and was always arguing for restrictions. One year, new rules were announced. Swim periods would be shortened. No ball playing allowed whatsoever. (“Any child caught with a ball would be sent home!”) The head counselor was a severe looking, middle-aged Chasid, with dark plastic eyeglasses, and a dirty yellow talis katan, with his Shomrim/Hotzoloh radio weighing down his pants at all times. Out went the fun-loving counselors from St. Louis, and in came Yiddish speaking counselors from Williamsburg, serious men with wives and bungalows full of kids, who preferred to sit and gossip outside the bunks about Chasidic politics than to ever think of organizing activities. (Then again, perhaps they would if only someone put it in their job description.)

I hated that summer, of course, and didn’t go back there the next. But due to that psychological quirk that humans have for blocking out unpleasant memories, I tend to—now, when recounting those times—only focus on the earlier summers. And those were the ones I told my daughter about when trying to impress upon her why she might enjoy being away from parents and siblings for a full four weeks, getting to live and play (and engage, I assume, in various forms of official and unofficial rivalry) with other girls her age.

Did she go in the end? Well, that’s a whole story in itself. Look out for it in a future post.