•

Yiddish Poetry in Latin Characters:
Marie Jaffe's 'Gut Yuntif, Gut Yohr'

Marie B. Jaffe, a Hunter gradu-
ate, is a New York public school
teacher. She is associated with the
Poetry Society of America and is
active in the YM-YWHA. Her
translations of the poems of noted
Yiddish writers have appeared in
numerous magazines. She is a poet
in her own right and she has
produced a unique work: Yiddish
poems in Latin characters.
Her "Gut Yuntif, Gut Yohr,"
published by William-Frederick
Press (55 E. 86th, NY 28), is "a
collection in Yiddish of original
holiday verses and popular Eng-
lish classics in translation."
The entire book has 47 pages.
The translations consume 15 pages.
The selections are interesting. Ap-
pearing in Miss Joffe's Yiddish,
but in Latin characters, are the
following:
"Erev Krismes," the translation
of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by
Clement Moore; "Boimer," Joyce
Kilmer's "Trees"; "Die Klndheit
Fun Hiawatha," Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow's "Hiawatha's Child-
hood"; "Lincoln's Gettysburg Red-
eh," the famous Lincoln address
of Nov. 19, 1865; "Ah Meisseleh,"
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fable";
"Alter Smoky," the folk tune "Old
Smoky"; "Der Rubaiyat," Omar
Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat"; "Zeks
Haiku" from the 17th Century Jap-
anese poet Matsuo Botsho, and
"Ver Is Sheyndeleh?", William
Shakespeares "Who Is Sylvia?"
From "Erev Krismes" we cull
a single stanza to illustrate Miss
Joffe's interesting approach to her
form of Yiddish:

Nor ah halbeh minutkeh, in
gantzen ferchoppert,
Und men hert affen dach vie
die fisseloch kloppen;
Ich dreh zich arum, and kom
mach ich a shtell,
Ut shteht der Reb Nikky
bei mir affen shvell,

The selection of a "Reb Nikky"
may not lend dignity to this effort.
One doesn't pun with a religious
symbol. But this one example of
a possible lack of good judgment
doesn't detract from the fun in
the rest of the book.

RABBI
LEO GOLDMAN

Serving

Expert Mohel

Hospitals and Homes

"LI 1 9769

-

-

CERTIFIELD EXPERT MOHEL

RABBI

Israel Goodman

FE 4-4149

FE 4-8266

Serving In Hospitals and Homes

REV. GOLDMAN L.

MARSHALL

MOHEL

Serving at Homes and Hospitals

DI 1-9909

Rabbi
Shaiall Zachariash
Mohel

Phone: 863-0256
Detroit

Let Robert Lowell,
Stanley Kunitz,
' Compose in English for a queen;
But me, I'll write in
mameh-loshen,
Where competition's not so keen.
Let others think deep thoughts,
and somber,
And write them down in
lofty styles;
My humble mission —
to bring laughter;
Men zol zich keiklen in
die aisles.

To cause her readers to "Keik-
el"—roll—in the aisles, her holi-
day poems include "Velvel der
Tzadik,"—a Valentine poem; "Ger-
shon Vashington," "inchh der
Tzadik," Friling," "Velveleh
Shakespeare," "Mamenu," "Hoich-
eh Horizanten," "Chatzkeleh Kol-
umbus," "Halloween," "Thanks-
giving," "Gut Yuntif."
As some of the titles indicate,
they are parodies on famous char-
acters in American life.
In each of the poems there is
an element of the entertaining,
the humorous, giving special status
to the Yiddish-in-Latin by a poet
with a sense of the jovial.

nnouncem,ents

Last Week's Winner of the

"RASKIN
BIG BABY BONUS"

MRS. ROBERT PRICE

(8 lbs., 2 oz.)
Congratulations on the birth of your
son and we hope the RASKIN
PRODUCTS you received helped
make your first week at home
easier.

RASKIN FOOD CO.

Recommended by Physicians

LI 2 4444

Her efforts show that she knows
Yiddish and that her aim is to
entertain—to introduce the lighter
vein, with a sense of humor that
distinguishes her own poems and
the translations.
Thus, to give tone to her work,
she introduces the book with this
prefatory poem:

Aug. 2—To Mr. and Mrs. Sidney
Feldman (Maggie Zeiger), 26100
Marlow, Oak Park, a daughter,
Mindy Sue.
* * *
July 28—To Mr. and Mrs. Jerome
Rochlin (Helena Bichman), former
Detroiters of Des Moines, Ia., a
daughter, Semone Barri.
* * *
July 27—To Mr. and Mrs. Shel-
don H. Beck (Shelly Ruth Stern),
18707 Coyle, a son, William Jami-
son.
* * *
July 26—To Mr. and Mrs. San-
ford &likes (Anne Lydia Simon),
15363 Northgate, Oak Park, a
daughter, Gail Faye.
* * *
July 24—To Dr. and Mrs. Joel
M. Cohen (Betsy Sue Kanter), 6914
Pine Eagle, Birmingham, a daugh-
ter, Leslie Beth.
* * *
July 22—To Mr. and Mrs. Al
Kaplan (Fran Green), 10420 Troy,
Oak Park, a daughter, Sandra
Paige.

Special Fund in Pittsburgh

RABBI CHASKEL
GRUBNER

SPECIALIZED MOHEL

Recommended by Physicians
Serving in Hospitals and Homes

3298 Sturtevant

TU 3-1441

PITTSBURGH (JTA) — A grant
of approximately $50,000 to initi-
ate an endowment fund, which is to
provide funds for additions to lo-
cal agency facilities that cannot be
met by annual campaign sources,
was given to the United Jewish
Federation here.

1,700 Sign at Technion; Exchange Program On

Jewish Sleuth
Hero in First
Baharav Novel

HAIFA—Over 1,700 men and
women have registered for enroll-
ment at the Technion, Israel Insti-
tute of Technology, for the school
year beginning in October.
As last year, electrical engin-
eering is the most popular sub-
ject.
In accordance with a resolution
adopted by the Te chnion's board
of governors last June, the num-
ber of freshmen will be increas-
ed by only 100 over the previous
year because of limited funds at
the disposal of the Technion.
Entrance examinations were
held this week in eight different
languages, among them English,
French, Romanian, Arabic, Persian
and Spanish, for the benefit of new
immigrants.

A native of Montreal, raised on
New York's Lower East Side, having
been- a sailor, longshoreman, sol-
dier and an editor, I. D. Baharav
ferried with the "Phantom Fleet"
that smuggled refugees into Pales-
tine in 1947, before Israel's state-
hood.
In 1951 he won the Cornell Uni-
versity Playwriting Award for a
verse drama. In 1952 he was
graduated from Champion College,
Plattsburgh, N. Y. Several of his
plays had off-Broadway staging.
Now he has to his credit a first
novel, "The Winds of April," pub-
lished by Primary Sources (11
Bleecker, NY 12). Because it re-
sorts to many Yiddish phrases, re-
fers to Jewish themes, situations
and places and has as one of its
major heroes a Jewish detective,
this novel has special appeal for
Jewish readers.
Detective Len Lander, a mem-
ber of the New York police force,
is the Jewish sleuth in this story
in which Nell Newton Abarbanell
plays the major role.
Nell Newton is her stage name,
and Abarbanell is the Jewish name
of a courageous girl whose main
task is translation from the Rus-
sian. It is in the course of her
association with a Russian writer,
who vanishes—eventually she her-
self is in danger—that the entire
plot develops.

the most popular country, with 37
Israeli students going there. This
country is also sending the larg-
eSt number of its students to Is-
rael, 36.
While in Israel two months the
foreign students will work in in-
dustry as well as in institutions of
higher learning.

.

William Solomon Plants
500 Trees in Israel

William Solomon, a member of
the Rovn•r Lachowitcher Aid So-
ciety, has perpetuated the mem-
ory of his wife, Bella, who passed
away in November 1962, by plant-
ing a garden of 500 trees in the
John F. Kennedy Peace Forest in
the Judean Hills near Jerusalem.

The Technion announced that
close to 300 students from Is-
rael and abroad are this year
taking part in the exchange pro-
gram organized by the Interna-
tional Association for the Ex-
change of Students for Techni-
cal Experience (IAESTE). The
activities of IAESTE in Israel
are organized and directed by
the Technion.

MUSIC! ENTERTAINMENT!

SAMMY
WOOLF

AND HIS ORCHESTRA

UN 3-6501

If No Answer Call DI 1-6847

••••••••••••••••••••••••
•
•
•
•
•

Some 145 Israeli students have
gone to 21 different countries
abroad, while 138 students are
coming to Israel from the same
number of countries. Holland is

•

MORREY
WATNICK

PHOTOGRAPHY by

BERNARD H.

WINER

Detective Lander is with her
as she goes through various haz-
ards. They attend a Jewish wed-
ding, they meet the Russian in-
volvees, they are with beatniks
in a coffeehouse. It revolves
around stolen documents, an un-
natural death and arson.

•

• Fine Jewelry & Gifts
Birmingham, Mich. :

KE 1-8196

Bar Mitzvahs — Weddings

WATCH FOR S
THE OPENING

•••••••••••••••••4••••••

We Make Our Own Glasses

HEADQUARTERS FOR

• LATEST DOMESTIC AND
Baharav himself offers this ex-
IMPORTED FRAME FASHIONS
planation of his literary effort in
his Jewish sleuth novel:
• PRESCRIPTIONS FOR GLASSES
"The Winds of April was begun
ACCURATELY FILLED
in 1959, under a mandate from my
agent to write a conventional novel
• Immediate Repair
• Reasonably Priced
of suspense which would sell. (I
had been writing verse I couldn't
give away, and my plays were con-
sidered too weighty, postage both
13720 -W. 9 MILE nr. COOLIDGE
ways). By 1960 we had a few
OAK
PARK,
MICH.
LI 7 - 5068
corpses, a mystery of sorts, a stal-
wart detective and an appealing
Hours: Daily and Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
heroine (for some arcane perversity
Thursdays to 9 p.m.
both insisted on being Jewish, right
through the final draft; the girl
proved especially troublesome by
maintaining an immaterial life of
her own which impeded the who-
dunit thrust). By 1964, when publi-
cation unexpectedly came my way,
I had reverted to playwriting; had
exposed two full-length works in
the off-Broadway haze, with the
BE SURE!
SHOP HERE!
inevitable searing hindsight prior
to rehearsal: '0 Lord, the script
p ekigio.
is lopsided, incomplete, overdo•e.'
So I reshaped, tempered Winds
down the length of '64. Manhattan
is the setting, though all the major
characters have their origins else-
where. There are elements of • New Crop California
despair, and humor, and romance
— sorry, no sex — in the story
which, taken at another. level,
might have dimmed lackluster in
the telling. Writing a novel is a
lbs.
long, long process; to persist in,
and ultimately to foist upon inno-
2 p
cent strangers, a . work of utter
superfluity, demands a certain ex-
hilaration as reward. Crime and
bun. 1 9C
punishment offers that extra lift
4) .
without distorting the fabric of
Only •All lb.
daily life overmuch, and I am
beholden to E. A. Poe,, inventor." •
GIFT BASKETS EXPERTLY PREPARED

ROSEN OPTICAL SERVICE

• • ii,•• •• ••• ••• ••• •• ••• ••• ••• •• ••• ••• ••• •• ••• ••• ••• ••4 •
•

• •
•
• •
•

:

THE DISCOUNT • • • •
FRUIT STORE •

•

! Thin Crisp Sugar Carrots
12C C
Sweet As Sugar California Cantaloupes 4 f or 98c
Home Grown Solid Ripe Tomatoes
24c, b .
• •
Juicy Seedless Grapefruifs
6 for 48c
Sweet Juicy California Oranges . . . 3 doz. 98` 's

U.S. No. 1 Dry Onions
• Crisp Red Radishes
: Fresh Tender Green 'Onions

3

2

Fancy Chiquifa Bananas
• •
• I

•
•

Veterans will be admitted free
to the Michigan State Fair until 3 •
p.m. on Veterans' Day, Aug. 28. •
The fair runs from Aug. 27 through
• •
Sept. 6.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
28—Friday, August 6, 1965

SS REALTY CO.

• •

286 •
ckegilso. spc

TO YOUR MOST DISCRIMINATING TASTE

•

•

•
•
•

•
•
541-9138 :

The SMALLER Store With The SMALLER Prices

22175 COOLIDGE (Just S. of 9 Mile Rd.)
Oak Park

• •
•

Open Mon., Tues., Wed., Thurs and Sat., 8-9 p.m.
•
•
•
Fri. 8-7 p.m.
Sun. 8-5 p.m.
V
•
■ •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••h

"

Smartest Move

You'll

Ever Make"

17350 LIVERNOIS

DI 2 1300

-