These days, people (i.e. parents) often ask me about the utility of Judaic Studies, especially when it comes to finding a job in a rocky economy like ours. In response, I go on and on about the ways in which Judaic Studies hones one’s critical skills, facilitates a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving and brings to bear a global perspective on the world – qualities that would certainly stand any job-hunting candidate in good stead.
Flickr / Chajm
If they’re still listening, I also invoke the work of historian Lucy Dawidowicz who, years ago, published a book with the provocative title, What’s the Use of Jewish History? In it, she cited a story by Y.L. Peretz in which two gentlemen, sitting on a park bench in Warsaw, exchange pleasantries about this and that. As their conversation picks up steam, gentleman number one glumly remarks on the recent passing of Heinrich Graetz, the great German historian of the Jews, seeking some measure of shared consolation. But gentleman number two has nothing to say. Having never heard of Graetz, all he can muster is a feeble, “Was he from around here?” ...continue reading "LinkedIn"
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.
Flickr/seanmcgrath
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.
Sholem Aleichem/Wikipedia. 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!
The sight of Jewish men, clad in full ritual garb, davening, or praying, in public is not new to me or, for that matter, to anyone who has flown to Israel via El Al. But in my all years of shuttling back and forth between New York and D.C., I’ve never, ever, seen anyone daven on Amtrak.
Flickr/Juhana Leinonen Until today, that is. I looked up from my laptop and there he was -- on the 8:10 to Washington. His tefillin bag plopped on the seat beside him, a male passenger on the right side of 40 was holding on to his siddur (prayerbook) with one hand and to his ticket with the other, trying all the while to stand upright and still as the train swayed to and fro.
The prayerful passenger also seemed to be coordinating his devotions with those of the conductor, timing the first with the second so that he wouldn’t be interrupted.
As I (surreptitiously) looked on, I couldn’t help wonder what Sholem Aleichem would have made of the scene. The author, among other things, of the droll and amusing Railroad Stories, which situated East European Jewry’s encounters with modernity aboard a series of train trips, he would have relished the seeming incongruity of it all.
Sholom Aleichem is currently the subject of a warmhearted and incisive documentary, Sholom Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness. Be sure to see the film, even if it entails getting on a train.
