The Nation State and the Promised Land: An American Yiddish Writer in Israel, 1949, by Solomon Simon. English translation, 2024, by David R. Forman. All rights reserved.
Page numbers from Medines Yisroel un Erets Yisroel, 1950, Farlag Matones (NY), are included for those who wish to follow along with the original Yiddish, below.
To begin with the Introduction, click here.
p. 16
There’s a Jewish saying: “To the drunk, God sends schnapps, and to the spinner, flax.”
On the very first morning, I met with four hundred children.
The town of Ra’anana’s public school is right next to my brother’s house. Only the chicken coops and a row of trees separate my brother’s yard from the schoolyard. In the morning, the calling and shouting of children woke me up. I quickly got dressed and went outside. A row of eucalyptus trees stood at the edge of the schoolyard. I sat down on a mound, hidden by a tree, and looked at the cluster of children.
They were playing some type of football or, rather, a kind of combination of football and basketball. I listened attentively to hear what they were yelling, but I did not understand a word. It distressed me a good deal. Consider this: As far as I can tell, a passage of the Talmud is familiar territory and Maimonides is not too heavy reading for me, but I could not even begin to understand what these pipsqueaks were yelling.
It seems, however, that knowing a language is one thing and understanding it when it is spoken rapidly and with an unfamiliar pronunciation is quite another matter. I sat there and contented myself with their happiness.
p. 17
They did not let me sit there for long. They noticed me and headed right over. Thirty or forty children called out in unison. “America! An American!”
I took the pipe out of my mouth and joked, “Yoroyk!” (a green one).
Apparently they did not understand what I meant. I did not say ‘yarok’, but ‘yoroyk’. And they might not have understood what the expression “a green one” [or, greenhorn] meant. They all called out together, “Ma yesh?”
Now I did not understand their question. According to my understanding of Hebrew, you cannot say, “Ma yesh” without an additional word. So, what do they mean by “Ma yesh?” without an additional word? Later I found out that in Israel this expression is used as often as “alright” is in America. “Ma yesh” means: “What does it mean?” “What do you have there?” “What do you want?” “How are you?” “What happened?” “Why?” “What’s new?” and on and on.
I sat there and did not know what to answer. Meanwhile, more and more children arrived. Some pelted me with questions, while others whooped and yelled. The noise reached up to to the sky.
I closed my eyes, and my heart danced between delight and dismay. Before me stood a couple of hundred children speaking a natural Jewish language, and filled with curiosity about other Jews. But they would have been much closer to me if they spoke my language, the language of my parents and the language that my children understand. And if it was to be Hebrew, why did the Hebrew have to be pronounced so it sounded like Italian or Arabic? Does the heritage of our holy tongue have no value?
A whistle blew, a drum banged, and a voice called out:
“Line up! Exercises!”
The whistle had to blow several more times before the children assembled themselves. They did their exercises without enthusiasm. After the exercises, the children headed…
p.18
back over to me. The whistle blew angrily, and I pleaded with them.
“Go to your classes!”
They obeyed, but as they left they were still clamoring:
“Visit our school! Come to our classrooms! I’m in Room 7! I’m in Room 6! Don’t forget Room 9!”
I ate breakfast and went over to the school. The principal received me with goodhearted gruffness:
“You corrupted the children today. Visitors come here often, but the children pay no attention to them. Why have they latched onto you?”
I answered playfully:
“You see, I am actually a teacher, and children respond very well to teachers who aren’t teaching them.”
“Nu, so be it. Let’s introduce you to the teachers.”
He led me into the teacher’s lounge. None too big a room but, on the other hand, well supplied with maps and other resources, and with an outstanding collection of textbooks. I even caught sight of Mandlkern’s concordance and a single-volume Talmud.
It was break time, and the teachers were siting around a table drinking tea. The tea drinking seemed odd to me, but later I learned that it is an established custom in Israel. Every institution serves tea several times a day to its employees.
I met the teachers and spoke to them in Yiddish. Each of them spoke a fine and luscious Yiddish. Only one teacher, the English teacher, insisted on speaking to me in Hebrew. I learned later that he spent several years in North America and was a sworn anti-Yiddishist.
The teachers conferred. All the children wanted to see me. I would go into the last classroom, and two more classes would be brought in, so I could talk with three groups of children.
I went into the class. All the children stood up. It is customary that whenever a teacher or some other honored guest enters…
p. 19
a classroom, all the children stand up. This, I liked.
I surveyed the room. A big blackboard, maps, a wall-newspaper, and pictures of Bialik, S. Ben-Tsion, Herzl, and Sholem Aleichem on the wall. It seemed to me as though Sholem Aleichem was looking at me and saying:
“Look at them — Jewish children! Mir zol zayn far zeyere beyndelakh![1] Sure, they speak an odd language, with some altered vowels, but no matter, no matter. Here are dear Moyshes and Shloymes, little Rivkes and Sarahs.”
The teacher introduced me.
“This is a Yiddish writer from America. He will speak to you in Ivrit, Hebrew, but with the exiles’ pronunciation.”
I began to talk, imitating the Sephardic pronunciation, but they did not let me speak. They corrected every other word, and they corrected me out loud to the point where it was impossible to speak.
The head teacher chided them goodheartedly:
“Sabras, have a little respect! He knows Hebrew better than you do. Oh, his pronunciation? So, he hasn’t been in Israel one whole day yet. He just arrived yesterday at five in the evening. Be tolerant! He will learn to talk with our dialect.”
I began again. It was quiet. They began to be interested in what I had to say. As I warmed to the subject, I left off imitating the vowel-shifted Hebrew and spoke with the Ashkenazic pronunciation entirely. Apparently, the group understood my “language of exile.”
I told them about the public schools that Jewish children attend, about the afternoon schools, the Talmud Torahs, Jewish day schools, Yeshivas and Sunday schools. I told them about the Boy Scouts, Habonim [labor Zionist youth group], youth clubs, Young Israel, and children’s clubs associated with the [Yiddish] schools. Then I told them about the Yiddish newspapers, the Hebrew Hadoar, and about the three children’s magazines we have.
When I finished, they peppered me with questions. I asked them to talk slowly. The teacher appealed to them not to…
p. 20
…talk beshutef v’bshetef — a word play, meaning quickly and all at once. Some of the questions were quite pointed and interesting.
“Why don’t the American Jews move to Israel?”
“Do American Jewish children know that we fought against seven nations?”
“Why is a special children’s magazine needed for those children who know Hebrew, when there is a good children’s magazine like Devar L’Yeladim already available?”
I started to answer their questions, but then came questions about the answers. For example: I told them that there are five million Jews in America. The children were astounded:
“What? So many Jews in America?”
I continued. “Yes, there are five million Jews in America. Imagine if all the Jews in America came to Israel. Where would they fit? There would not only be no room in Israel to build houses, plant gardens and sow fields. There would be nowhere for anyone to stand comfortably.
A boy jumped up and called out: “And in the Negev?!”
“Even the Negev is not big enough to take in all the Jews in America.”
A twelve-year-old girl called out: “And Trans-Jordan?”
Yet another boy spoke: “It doesn’t matter, we will figure something out. We beat seven nations, we drove England out, and you don’t think we’ll figure out what to do with five million American Jews? You don’t know us!”
“Ok, I’ll tell them,” I promised. “But do you think they’ll listen to me?”
“First, you stay here,” called out a boy with a face full of freckles. “Why travel back to America? A Hitler will come there too, and you will end up like the German Jews.”
This was the first time I heard that refrain, but not the last.
Next there was the matter of the children’s magazine. I told them that a children’s magazine in America is completely different…
p. 21
than a children’s magazine in Israel. In America, Jewish children also read English magazines. There they read about nature, mechanics, and other similar things. The Jewish magazines write exclusively about Jewish subjects.
A boy who stood near the door (because so many children had come in from other classes) called out:
“Please write the contents of the latest Kinder-Zhurnal on the blackboard.”
I wrote the contents from the May issue of Kinder Zhurnal on the blackboard. I gave a summary of each story. A boy in the back row asked, “How can it be that a Jewish writer is writing from left to right?”
“What?” I called out. “I wrote the Yiddish letters from left to right?”
“Not the letters,” answered the boy, “but you made the columns from left to right.”
I answered, “I’m standing on the left side of the blackboard. At first I thought that the contents would only take up one column. But I was wrong, so I added another column.”
The boy did not accept my answer. “Maybe you did it because you read English all day?”
I did not want to contradict him.
Yet another boy raised his hand:
“You have a story there called Hershele is Not Allowed In, by P. Bizberg. The writer tells about a boy who travels to Argentina with his father, and they were not allowed in. Why print a foolish story about a boy who wants to swap one exile for another? Israel is open to all Jews, why didn’t he travel to Israel?”
Another boy commented, “You wrote ‘Argetina’ instead of ‘Argentina’”
I started to reply, but the bell had rung for the third time. The teacher raised his hand and said, “Enough for today. We will invite Doctor Simon back a second and third time.”
p. 22
The whole class stood up and called out in unison, “Yofi, yofi!”
Another new word for me. I found out later that Israeli’s say, “Yofi, yofi” (‘beauty’) and not “Yafeh” (beautiful) for a lot of things they like.
This was my first, but not my last, meeting with the children of Israel.
Here is the Yiddish text to Chapter 2:
[1] Roughly, “May harm come to me rather than to their precious little bones.”
The Nation State and the Promised Land 