PURELY COMMENTARY
Translations And Translators
Continued from Page 2
Jewish community. It has been
suggested that if the initiative
proceeded from the Alexandrian
Jews themselves, royal sanction
was obtained for the translation
and a copy presented to the li-
brary. Gradually, the other bibli-
cal books were translated; by the
end of the second century before
the common era, all the books of
the Hebrew Bible existed in
Greek. The various books are
generally judged separately as to
their individual worth in terms of
authentic renderings. Some of
them, like the Five Books of
Moses, are faithful to the Hebrew
text; others, like Jeremiah, vary
constantly from the original He-
brew and are paraphrastic. All of
them were composed in a popu-
lar Hellenistic Greek, much un-
like the classical Greek.
A series of new Greek ver-
sions of the Bible (Aquila, Sym-
machus, Theodotion) resulted
during the second century from
accusations hurled against new
religious sects and their .interpo-
lations and falsifications of the
sacred text. The Septuagint
abounds in misreadings, mis-
translations, and internal corrup-
tions; hence, there is no single
Septuagint version, but every an-
cient manuscript presents a
different text, departing in its
own way from the masoretic He-
brew original. Nevertheless, the
transliteration of Hebrew names
and words in the Septuagint
helps us reconstruct the ancient
pronunciation of Hebrew.
While the Septuagint was
originally intended for the use of
the Hellenized Jews, it at the
same time transmitted the Jewish
teachings to the non-Jewish
world and attracted many prose-
lytes to Judaism. The name Sep-
tuagint, meaning seventy in
Greek, is used as a round
number for seventy-two.
Accustomed to the Greek
translation of the Bible, Jews of
the Roman empire had to be pro-
vided with a substitute Greek
version to take the place of the
Septuagint which was marred by
blunders and interpolations; for
example, in Psalm 96:10 the
phrase "from the cross" was
added to the sentence "the Lord
reigns," and the word almah
(young woman) in Isaiah 7:14 was
retranslated "virgin" for secta-
rian reasons. The first substitute
for the Septuagint was produced
by Aquila, who is identified by
some with the Onkelos of the
Aramaic version (Targum) of the
Five Books of Moses.
Dr. Birnbaum already indicated the
criticism leveled at the translation of the
72. More devastating is the reference to
it in Talmud: Sever Torah 1.6, which de-
clared:
"Seventy elders wrote the whole
Torah in Greek for King Ptolemy, and
that day was as ominous for Israel as the
day on which Israel made the Golden
Calf, for the Torah cannot be translated
adequately."
One must take into consideration
this reference to adequateness, and when
there are too many translations they
need to be treated adequately.
Milhiger — Tevye the Dairyman —
Menahem Mendel and the scores of other
characters, so that they emerge in the
Sholem Aleichem fashion and spirit.
This is applicable to Kasrilevke,
Yehupetz, the communities that have
become legends. Out of it all emerge the
struggling masses and the devout, the
youth who often mirror those of the pre-
sent — when the love affairs lead them
astray.
Indeed, there is genius in what
Maurice Samuel has re-created.
Prof. Ruth R. Wisse
Maurice Samuel
preface to his translation of Maimonides
(Commentary to Zerain) wrote:
"A translator must know three
things: The genius of the language from
which he translates, the genius of the
language into which he translates, and
the subject matter."
Interest in translations gained
momentum with the publication of sev-
eral important works made available in
English from the Yiddish.
Publication by Knopf of My Mother's
Sabbath Days by Chaim Grade — review
of which will receive special attention —
acquires admiration because its co-
translators are Inna Hecker Grade and
Channa Kleinerman Goldstein. Inna
Hecker Grade is the widow of the emi-
nent Jewish author. Grades' is a work of
great distinction.
Then there is the republication of
The World of Sholom Aleichem in the
translation by Maurice Samuel
(Atheneum). It re-emerges as a product
about one of the founders of modern •
Yiddish literature — Sholom Aleichem
— By a translator whose genius made
translations, whether from the Hebrew
or the Yiddish, masterpieces of incom-
parable power. There is never enough
acclaim for Maurice Samuel.
To Wayne State University Press
goes current acclaim for publishing A
Shtetel and Other Yiddish Novellas, with
commentaries and translations by Prof.
Ruth R. Wisse of McGill University. Dr.
Wisse, more than any other living
scholar, earns the distinction of match-
ing the Maurice Samuel skills as a
translator from the Yiddish. Her current
work merits equal commendation with
Samuel's.
A boastful note from Novosti, the
Soviet news agency, about the 25th an-
niversary of the Moscow Yiddish maga-
zine Sovietich Heimland adds to the
aroused interest. Novosti enters into a
claim that Yiddish survives only in Rus-
sia.
In The World of Sholom. Aleichem,
Maurice Samuel interprets and com-
ments, relates and narrates into the lan-
guage of the great writer who was as
much historian' as he was humorist and
evaluates the era under consideration.
In this noteworthy work, first pub-
lished in 1943, with a second edition in
1970 and now with the current immense
paperback, he has incorporated all the
love he possessed for Sholom Aleichem
and the Yiddish language in which the
classics were written.
Indeed, the experiences of the People
There was an admonition on that
Israel, as recorded by the historian-
score by the Hebrew poet, Judah Al-
humorist, receive the appreciation only a
Harizi of the 13th Century who, in his
Sholom Aleichem
master of the language could share with
the author under review.
Indeed, there is the combined genius
of a man possessing both the mastery of
the knowledge and fullest domination of
the language into which the Sholom
Aleichem themes are incorporated.
Sholem Aleichem, with a genius of
knowing and understanding his genera-
tion, portrayed the youth as well as the
elders with great skill. Maurice Samuel
revived that spirit as interpreter, as
translator, as re-introducer of the
Sholem Aleichem cast of characters. As
he states in his introductory chapter to
The World of Sholem Aleichem:
Sholom Aleichem is almost
unknown to millions of Ameri-
cans whose grandfathers made
up his world. This is not simply a
literary loss; it is a break — a
very recent and disastrous one —
in the continuity of a group his-
tory. Jews who get a certain
spiritual tonic from the reflection
that they are somehow related to
the creators of the Bible and of
its ethical values forget that the
relationship was passed on to
them by the men who begot their
fathers. Who were these men?
Under what circumstances did
they nurture the relationship for
transmission? What tone and col-
our had their lives? What pur-
pose did they conceive them-
selves to be serving in their obs-
tinate fidelity to the relationship?
What hopes had they for them-
selves — and for their
grandchildren?
Are these questions irrele-
vant, or perhaps even improper,
in a world which is in the throes
of a tremendous transformation
and must keep its eyes on the fu-
ture? Not if they are put in the
right spirit — one of human
curiosity, of affection, and, if you
like, of decency. We might even
add, of modesty.
It is not a wholesome thing to
believe that we and our posterity
will find all the answers; for
some of them were discovered in
the very imperfect past. The
study of history will never be-
come obsolete, and a knowledge
of one's grandfathers is an excel-
lent introduction to history.
Especially these grandfathers;
they were a remarkable lot.
,
Maurice Samuel earned deep
gratitude for portraying Tevye der
Prof. Ruth R. Wisse matches
Maurice Samuel in the spirit of his ap-
proach to Yiddish. She is the current
master of her subject. In A Shtetel and
Other Yiddish Novellas she has accumu-
lated the works of several notables in
the Yiddish literary ranks. The novellas
included in the WSU Press volume are:
"A Shtetel" by I. M. Weissenberg, "At
the Depot" by David Bergelson, "Ro-
mance of a Horse Thief" by Joseph
Opateshu, "Behind a Mask" by S. Anske,
"Of Bygone Days" by Mendele Moher
Seforim.
Let it be noted that the Mendele
Novella is an enrichment of the labors of
the elders, together with the current,
and most recent, creative writers.
Prof. Wisse's contribution to enrich-
ing acknowledgement of the genius
inherent in the new interest aroused in
the Yiddish language is contained in her
introductory essay in which she traces
history, touches on the vernacular, in a
sense demolishes the charge that Yid-
dish is a jargon. She draws attention to
the basic facts in these informative ob-
servations:
On October 11, 1862, Alexan-
der Zederboym, editor of the He-
brew newspaper, Hamelits, in-
itiated a weekly supplement in
Yiddish called Kol mevasser
(Voice of the Herald) which be-
came the first durable Yiddish
publication in Eastern Europe.
The potential of Yiddish as a lan-
guage of serious communication
was as yet barely realized. There
were published collections of
homiletic stories and compila-
tions of ethical instruction, in-
tended mostly for women; tkhines,
or personalized Yiddish prayers;
tales of Hasidic rabbis, often in
satirical form; and some popular
novels. There was also a stirring
of modern literary talent.
Shloyme Etinger (1799-1855), for
example, was a gifted fabulist
and comic dramatist who gained
a reputation in his immediate vic-
inity of Poland that was based
entirely on circulated manu-
scripts and oral transmission of
his work; by the time of his death
not a word had found its way
into print. With the inauguration
of Zederboym's weekly supple-
ment and the subsequent ap-
pearance of other, similar publi-
cations, the groundwork was laid
for a Yiddish literary renais-
sance.
In its time, every vernacular
has had to prove its worth
against the linguistic superiority
of its aristocratic rival, and Yid-
dish is no exception. An early
issue of Kol mevasser contained a
comic dialogue between Yidl, the
Jew, and his wife Yehudis, Yid-
dish, in which the poor homely
woman defends herself against
her better-looking older sister. As
(