FAITHHACKER
| Limmud UK Aftershock | |
 by Matthue Roth, December 31, 2007
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I've been asked to suffix all of my comments that address Limmud as "Limmud UK," which is a giddy curse-turned-blessing-in-disguise -- Limmud NY starts in just about two weeks, and Limmud LA comes right after that. I'm going to be otherwise occupied with being on the verge of giving birth, G*d willing, but oceans cannot contain the amount of jealousy I have for everyone who gets to carry on in the grand tradition of Limmud.
Before I went, I asked what Limmud is, exactly, and this is what I've discovered: it's the Hebrew word learning. There's a whole universe of stuff that falls under the arbitrary umbrella we've decided to call the Jewish nation, and
I wish I could be more specific. I wish I could nail down everything that I've learned. I wish I could even give you the highlights. Man -- maybe next year, Jewcy'll sponsor me and buy me a PDA to do instant updates from each session. I started to make a list, and here's what I got:
- Former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Berg's assertion, while reading I.B. Singer's Nobel address, that Yiddish is a language without words for violence. That, he says, should be our model for building a Jewish state and a model for its future -- with all the corollaries that come with that. (After our session, I pointed out to him that one of the first Yiddish phrases I learned was potch in the tuchus. He said it didn't count.)
- Raz Hartman teaching a room full of young/old/middle-aged hippies/punks/investment-banker-lookin' people how to sing wordless Chasidic dirges. (We came late, and met someone leaving the room, jaw dropped open, who told us, "I just sang for ten minutes straight. And I didn't even know the words.") In between, he taught slices of Rebbe Nachman, who said that the prophets weren't able to give over their prophecy unless there was music playing.
- Shalva Weil's intense sessions on Ethiopian Jewish refugees, and the halachic battle that determined where, ultimately, they landed in Israel's diaspora. The final word came, in the early 1970s, from a young Sephardic rabbi named Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that, based on a 14th-century precedent, they were not Jews -- because Jew implies from the tribe of Judah -- but Israelites; they were the lost children of Dan. (This probably could and will get its own article, if not its own book; but here is a very brief answer.)
- Daniel Boyarin. The most controversial straight queer commentator on the Talmud today. I think I can say that unabashedly: he gave over a three-part lecture charting the course of Chapter 7 of Baba Metzia that started
with the laws of hiring bricklayers and then proceeded into a discussion of how the size of a man's member corresponds to the size of his desire, and how all the rabbis with the biggest stomachs managed to impregnate their wives (Rav Papa, according to the Gemara, was the size of - if anyone has this in front of them, please correct me - five half-barrels of wine, and some say it was seven.)
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Matthue Roth is the author of Never Mind the Goldbergs and Yom Kippur a Go-Go, as well as the epic supermodel kung-fu novel Candy in Action. He and his wife, the experimental sound artist Itta More... |
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portnoy
nonsense
Former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Berg's assertion, while reading I.B. Singer's Nobel address, that Yiddish is a language without words for violence. That, he says, should be our model for building a Jewish state and a model for its future -- with all the corollaries that come with that. (After our session, I pointed out to him that one of the first Yiddish phrases I learned was potch in the tuchus. He said it didn't count.)
This is a load of crap. Yiddish has numerous words and expressions for violence which range from the ever-mild barnes (noogies) to aroysnemen a mashkante af emetsn (to hold someone down and beat the shit out of them, - literally, to take out a mortgage on someone), not to mention all the variants that deal with nase arbet (murder, or, literally, wet-work). The notion that Yiddish doesn't have words for violence is also illogical, since as the victims of violence Yiddish speakers would, at least, have words for what was done to them. But Yiddish speakers also did unto others as was done unto them and a significant lexicon exists for it. Just because milquetoasty Avrum Burg is a frayer for buying into the fantasy that Yiddish speakers are passive, doesn't mean you have to be. His comment may be a nice platitude, but it's not based in reality. It's Yiddish disinformation.
Matthue Roth
score!
I knew it!!!!
But I think "potch in the tuchus" is still the best argument to the contrary.....
--
.:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:.
Candy in Action
a novel by Matthue Roth
supermodels. kung fu. and a free mp3 soundtrack....
zbird
"His comment may be a nice platitude...."
Actually I don't think it's very nice at all. Everyone believes that non-violence is at least usually a good idea. The difference between doves and civilized hawks is between rarely and never.
But whatever one thinks of nonviolence, the notion that Yiddish speakers are incapable of it, or incapable or even conceiving a word for it, is insulting. It implies that they are less than human, as the urge to and the idea of violence is a standard part of the human condition, regardless of whether that urge/idea is actually consummated. Just add the idea that Yiddish has no word for lust (equally absurd), and you would complete the demasculization (and hence, dehumanization) of the entire people.
--Z
invisible_hand
yiddish and violence
but his point stands in a more subtle way; if you look carefully at what portnoy wrote above, all of his expressions of violence are euphemistic. in other words, in yiddish, there are no violent expressions (at least that have been mentioned so far), in a literal sense.
Ora W.H.
Avraham Burg
This is the same Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and former head of the Jewish Agency, who says "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite." In an interview in Haaretz Weekend Magazine, he said that he is in favor of abrogating the Law of Return and calls on everyone who can to obtain a foreign passport.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868215.html
He, himself, is now a French citizen and businessman. His father, of blessed memory, is probably turning over in his grave.
portnoy
eh
zbird:
By "nice platitude" I meant just that: a trite comment with good intentions. I don't agree with him, but don't think he meant ill. Also, I don't think he intended on dehumanizing Yiddish speakers, but just the opposite - to deify them. By claiming they are inherently nonviolent, he's making a parallel, conscious or not, with Christ.
invisible_hand:
His point doesn't stand. Don't rely only on the two examples I gave. There are hundreds of Yiddish words for violent acts: Matthue's "potsh" can be first among them. There's also frask, trask, and zbeng, among may other terms for a direct hit.
More important here is the fact that Burg was paraphrasing Bashevis-Singer. The original quote is:
The high honor bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language - a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics; a language that was despised by both gentiles and emancipated Jews.
And can be found here: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1978/singer-lecture.html
What Bashevis-Singer says here about "no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics" is also not true. The late Yiddish linguist, Mordkhe Schaechter published an article on Yiddish military terminology.
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