Joseph Dorman – From Under the Fig Tree

As the fall semester winds down, I’m sorry to see it go. So many wonderful events took place over the past couple of months – illuminating faculty presentations, lively student get-togethers, spirited literary readings, stimulating star turns by visiting artists and curators from Israel and Poland – that extended the Program’s reach and enriched the GW community.

The spring semester promises to be equally full. Heading the list is our annual Fleischman Lecture, which this year will be held on March 19th at the DC-JCC, with whom we just launched a most promising and vital partnership. The lecture will be delivered by the estimable Alisa Solomon of Columbia University who will be speaking about the making of Fiddler on the Roof.

Fascinating on its own terms, this landmark cultural production also has special meaning for those of us who call DC home: It debuted at the National Theater before making its way to Broadway. (See Frank Rich’s evocative memoir, Ghost Light, for the surprising details.)

Keeping things in the family, so to speak, the Program will also host a two-day Sholem Aleichem fest on April 24th and 25th. The first part of the festival will feature, among other things, a staged reading in both Yiddish and English translation of several of Sholem Aleichem’s short stories. Professor Max Ticktin, as well as several students from GW’s Department of Theatre and Dance, will be doing the honors.

The second part of the festival will feature a screening of Joseph Dorman’s recently released and widely acclaimed documentary on Sholem Aleichem, Laughing in the Darkness. To gild the lily, the filmmaker himself will be on hand to share with us some of the behind-the-scenes tales of how he came to make the film.

With such wonderful events on the horizon, 2012 promises to stimulate our intellects, tickle our funny bones and engage our imaginations. Who can ask for anything more?

I’ve been called many things in my day: Jocelyn, Jennifer, Jen, Joselit Weissman and on occasion (and hopefully in jest) even Gender Weissman Joselit, a name designed to highlight my stalwart embrace of feminism in matters large and small. Little wonder, then, that I sympathize with the fate that has recently befallen the celebrated man of Yiddish letters, Sholem Aleichem.

Thanks to Joseph Dorman’s affecting and insightful new film, Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, its eponymous subject is experiencing something of a new lease on life. At the very least, his name has probably appeared in print more times in the past month than in the previous 90-odd years since his demise in 1916.

It’s a reflection of our unfamiliarity with the literary protocols and linguistic conventions of an earlier era that we stumble when it comes to the man’s name.

The first time the creator of such enduring characters as Menachem Mendel and Tevye the Dairyman is referred to in an article, he is properly identified as Sholem Aleichem. So far, so good.

It’s the second reference that wreaks havoc. Nine times out of 10, he appears as “Aleichem,” as if Sholem were his first name and Aleichem his surname when, in fact, Sholem Aleichem is not, and has never been, the actual name of a person but rather a familiar Jewish greeting, the equivalent of “hello.” Sholem Aleichem was a pen name – and a rather warm and witty one, at that: an in-joke of the highest, and most intimate, order.

Those in the know do not take kindly to fiddling with his literary signature. As Sophie Stein, the granddaughter of Joseph Stein, the playwright of Fiddler on the Roof, learned the hard way, one messes with Sholem Aleichem’s name at one’s peril.

In a recent article in The Paris Review, which was prompted by Dorman’s film, Stein wrote about what Sholem Aleichem meant to her and her family. Whatever keen insights she may (or may not) have brought to bear mattered not a whit compared to the hue and cry that accompanied her repeated use of “Aleichem,” when referring to what she thought was the writer’s last name. Stein committed the ultimate onomastic faux pas.

The barrage of criticism prompted Ms. Stein to change her tune – and her references – and in later online versions of her text she called the writer by his full and rightful pen name.

That was the proper, and respectful, thing to do. Now, if only the New York Times would follow suit.

Update: Mea culpa

Much to my chagrin, I’ve just learned that I, too, committed an onomastic faux pas when writing last week about Ms. Stein’s piece in The Paris Review.

Instead of calling the author by her proper name, which is Sadie, I called her Sophie. Oh, the irony!

My deepest apologies.

Tag: Joseph Dorman

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