Throughout the book[1], Solomon Simon uses Hebrew in two different ways. The first is when he quotes the Jewish source texts: Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, Talmud or the Medieval commentaries. Sometimes he quotes these sources in his own Yiddish translation. But in many cases, he cites the original Hebrew followed by the Yiddish.
The second way he uses Hebrew is to transmit his fascination with Israeli Hebrew. Elsewhere, he argued for retention of Yiddish in daily life. He also suggested that, in American Jewish education, children should be taught not Modern Hebrew, but Loshn-Koydesh (the Holy Tongue) in it’s traditional form – that is, Biblical Hebrew with the Ashknazi pronunciation. Ivrit (Modern Hebrew) as a living language was destined to evolve over time with daily use. This, he argued, would cause a gulf between Israelis and traditional Jews in the diaspora, as well as a gulf between the present and the past. Instead of being a unifier, Hebrew would divide Jews from Jews.
Be that as it may, he spent a fair bit of ink educating his American Yiddish readership about all the new words that he was encountering: “ma yesh”, “yofi”, “beshutef v’bshetef”, “tserif”, “shuk”, “pkidim”, “nehag”, and on and on. For all his complaints, it was clear he was enjoying learning and sharing the new words and that they added to the excitement of the new, rapidly-developing culture, an excitement he could not help but be caught up in at least to some extent.
There is a third kind of Hebrew that appears in the book. By this I refer neither to scripture nor to modern coinages, but to the Hebrew words that organically made their way into the Yiddish language over the centuries in which European Jews had learned both languages. The words sometimes retain their source meanings, but also sometimes evolve in their use over time. A familiar example is the Yiddish word for holiday, ‘yontef’ (spelled yom-tov, יום־טוב), which originates from the Hebrew words yom (day) and tov (good), even though the Hebrew word for holiday is ‘khag’.
In Chapter 7, in Simon’s heated conversation with the bus driver, two such Hebrew-origin Yiddish words struck me as worth pointing out. One is Yoven (plural, Yevonim). “A Yoven,” says Simon, “is a uniformed murderer.” The word Yoven, in Hebrew, literally means, ‘Greek’. It can still mean that in Yiddish but, according to my dictionary, it is more often used to mean a Ukranian or Russian policeman or soldier, and, by extension, ‘a brute.’
Why would the word for Greek evolve, in Eastern Europe, to mean a brute, and particularly a uniformed one? After all, since the fall of Alexander’s empire we had also been bullied by the Romans, the Germans, the Spanish, the English, and on and on. The Greeks hadn’t particularly bothered us since Judah Maccabee hit them back. The reason, simply enough, is that the word ‘Yoven’ sounds like ‘Ivan’. So, Simon, who grew up in Imperial Russia, was being particularly blunt in tagging Israel’s military heroes with that word. When you glorify those who put on a uniform, he implied, you become “them”.
I have already included an explanatory footnote to that same conversation about another Hebraism that has morphed in its meaning over time. The driver says, “For me, it’s no privilege to be an ato bekhartonunik, chosen by God to be slaughtered.” The dictionary gives the definitions, “A Jewish chauvanist” or an “aristocrat” (used ironically). Imported into Yiddish from the Hebrew, “You have chosen us”. The driver’s pointed choice of words accomplishes at least two things. First, he points to the indisputable historical fact that God did not and will not watch over us and keep us safe from physical harm.
Second, by calling Simon a “Thou-hast-chosen-us guy”, he was charging him with elitism, a charge that must have hit home. In fact, Simon did think the Jews were better than other people. Not inherently better, but in the combination of not having state power and instead having the rule system of the Talmud (and the faith to center it in their day-to-day lives), the Jews had worked out a way to live that was at a higher ethical and spiritual level than the surrounding people. Never mind that Simon himself did not follow the prescriptions of Halachah in his own day-to-day activity. He had been formed by that way of life, and was trying to work out a way of continuing it in some form or else creating an analog. That was what was at stake for him in the Zionist claim that only by being like everyone else could the Jews be secure in their lives.
Though we are less than half way through, Chapter 7 is one of the pivot points of the book. It gives a distilled version of one tension inherent in Israel-diaspora relations. Are we, in America, able to afford being holier-than-thou only because, for the moment, being slaughtered is not on the agenda? Or are the Jews in Israel trading our distinctive spiritual and moral strength for physical security or, even worse, for an illusion of physical security? For me, one benefit of learning Yiddish is that – in the overlay of past persecutions with recent ones, and in the ironic juxtaposition of holiness with a hollow elitism – it feels to me as though the words themselves are calling our accumulated experiences in history as witnesses in their argument.
[1] Note: I originally intended this comment to come out shortly after Chapter 7 dropped. With the start of classes, it turns out I have a little less writing time than I thought I would, and I’ve fallen behind the schedule I set myself. Under the circumstances, continuing to post the translation itself takes priority and my ongoing commentary less so. However, if you, the reader, find that anything is confusing or comment-worthy, there is a contact form, here. Similarly, if those of you who are following the Yiddish find mistakes in the translation, please let me know.
The Nation State and the Promised Land 