I PURELY COMMENTARY
Multiple Tevyes
Continued from Page 2
pointlessness of comparing two
such different treatments simply
because one derives from the
other, similar departures from
the text of Thvye (except for its
being set to music) were made in
1914 by Sholem Aleichem
himself for a dramatized version
of the book that had a long stage
life of its own. In fact, his
cannibalization of the novel was
even more extreme than the
musical's.
Halkin's extensive studies indicate
that while in Fiddler there are three
Tevye daughters, Tsaytl, Hodl and
Chava, they vary in the numerous other
Tevyes. The "cannibalization" in the
process similarly has notable
explanations.
Sholem Aleichem emerges in the
Halkin account as a personality who,
after being a Czarist Russian
government rabbi — Kazonye Rabbin —
became the master of every conceivable
test confronting Jewry. He dealt with
the sociological aspects. He faced up to
issues arising from anti-Semitism and
related threats to Jewry, he fearlessly
tackeled internal Jewish issues even
when the image of the Jew was not the
brightest.
The study of the evolvement of
Tevye by Halkin is a most impressive
literary commentary. The manner in
which Tevye tranforms, the changes,
Tevye's- family, the total dramatic
changes in the novel in Sholem
Aleichem's episodes written from 1894
to 1914, draw this comment from
Halkin:
Sholem Aleichem and Tevye
age together: a year in the life of
one is a year in the life of the
other, and twenty years in the
life of one is twenty years in the
life of the other. Even as Sholem
Aleichem sits at his desk writing
down Tevye's stories, Tevye
continues to grow older by the
amount of time that writing
takes.
It is in part this aspect of
Tevye that makes him so real a
character, for despite the great
misfortunes that befall him and
his extraordinary resilience in
confronting them, the years
affect him much as they do most
men: slowly, subtly, almost
imperceptibly in the course of
any one of the book's episodes
— in which, as in the short story
generally, time is not a
significant factor — but
enormously when regarded
over the whole span of them.
Even the question of intermarriage
assumes a basic discussion in Sholem
Aleichem under the critical scrutiny of
Halkin.
Then there are the effects of the
revolutionary tactics in the political
Russian sphere that receive attention
in the analyzed works.
There is always the element of
humor, yet there is always much more
than that in Sholem Aleichem.
'Ievye is the reflector of Jewish
traditional observances, always quoting
the prayers and Scriptures. Halkin
analyzes these characteristics and his
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FRIDAY, OCT. 16, 1987
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comments are scholarly interpretations
of prayers and folklore alike.
There is a Halkin confessional that
has much merit in evalulating
translations. Some of the comments
refer to what could be interpreted as
superstitious, yet it is part of a cultural
symptom. As Halkin defines it:
Human speech, of which
nearly all the fiction in this
volume is composed, is both the
easiest and the hardest
language to translate: the
easiest because it is usually
syntactically so simple, the
hardest because it carries the
greatest freight of those
localisms and culture-bound
words of a community that can
never have a true equivalent in
other languages. And this is
especially so of Yiddish, that
Jewish tongue woven on a base
of middle high German and
richly embroidered with
Hebrew and Slavic, whose
syntax is far simpler than
German's but which is
culturally more remote from the
languages of Christian Europe
than any of them are from each
other.
True, one needn't exaggerate
the difficulties: professional
translators are used to insoluble
problems, and they generally
manage to solve them. There
are, however, two aspects of
Yiddish speech that, because
they have no real parallel in
English and cannot be
satisfactorily approximated in
it, deserve to be mentioned.
The first has to do with
formulas for avoiding the evil
eye. Superstition and the fear of
provoking or attracting the
attention of hostile forces, or
simply of causing offense, are of
course universal; but in Yiddish
(perhaps because it was the
language of a culture in which
aggression, given little external
outlet, was always felt to be
threateningly close to the
surface) this anxiety is so
extreme that it dictates the use
of a wide variety of appeasing
expressions in daily speech.
Thus, one should not mention a
dead person one has known
without adding olov hasholom,
"may he rest in peace;" one does
not boast of or express
satisfaction with anything
unless one says kinnehoro, "no
evil eye" (i.e., touch or knock
wood); if one mentions a
misfortune to someone, one tells
him nisht do gedakht or nisht
far aykh gedakht, "it shouldn't
happen here" or "it shouldn't
happen to you;" if one makes a
remark critical of somebody,
one prefaces it with zol er mir
moykhl zayn, "may he forgive
me;" if the criticism is aimed at
Providence, one says zol mir got
nisht shtrofn far di reyd, "may
God not punish me for my
words." Moreover, such
expressions cover only the
7 specific case; if a person is
talking about a deceased
relative, for example, and
mentions him ten times, it is
good form to say olov hasholom
after each.
The result is that one or
several sentences of spoken
Yiddish can contain a whole
series of such phrases that
break the speech up into a
sequence of fragments
punctuated by anxious
qualifications. The translator
can and should retain some of
these, but being overly faithful
to them makes the English
tiresome, and I have left quite a
few out. Wherever the reader
sees one such expression in the
English, he can assume there
may be more in the Yiddish.
Secondly, there is the
widespread use in Yiddish of
Hebrew, not in the form of
quotations, as with Tevye, but of
idioms that have become rooted
in popular speech, commonly
transplanted there from
religious texts and prayers.
These occupy an ambivalent
position: on the one hand, they
are understood and used even
by uneducated speakers, yet on
the other, their Hebrew
etymology continues to be
recognized and their sacred
origins are not obscured, so that
they often produce ironic or
comic effects.
The new Halkin-edited volume
contains valuable additions to the study
of Tevye. One of the Tevye items in the
Halkin studies reintroduces two other
Sholem Aleichem daughters, Shprintze
and Beilah, who are not included in the
Fiddler cast.
Always under the emphasis of
humor, Sholem Aleichem earns and
receives recognition in this newly-
translated series not only as humorist
but also as historian, psychologist,
humanist, sociologist.
The Halkin-edited
Sholem
Aleichem has another very unusual
credibility. The book includes a glossary
that is combined with notes referring to
the text. The 23-page "Glossary and
Notes" is in itself a voluminously
enriching, informative collection of
Jewish excerpts from Bible, Talmud and
Jewish literature. It is also a miniature
Hebrew lexicon. It earns serious
commendation.
One important aspect of this book
must be taken into consideration.
Schocken listed this volume as the
first in the Library of Yiddish Classics.
This new publishing venture is
sponsored by the Fund for the
Translation of Jewish Literature. The
editor of the series is one of the leading
scholars who devote themselves to the
popularizing and teaching Yiddish,
Prof. Ruth R. Wisse of McGill
University, Montreal. Noted Jewish
writers will be included in the planned
list for translation and commentaries.
Therefore, the new Sholem
Aleichem represents a movement of
great significance. It may well be
defined as a new Jewish cultural
academia.
'Holocaust' Roots
Continued from Page 2
"catastrophe," also described in
some Hebrew-English diction-
aries as "destruction, ruin." It
was used soon after World War
II to describe the attempted ex-
termination of Europe's Jews. In
Hebrew and Yiddish, churban,
"destruction" — specifically, the
destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem — was often used to
describe the death of six million.
In English, the word holocaust
(from the Greek holokaustos,
"burnt whole") first appeared in
the language around 1250, in a
biblical song telling the story of
Abraham's willingness to sacri-
fice his son, Isaac, as a burnt of-
fering to God. In its application
to the Nazi era, the capitalized
word was used first in this
specific sense in the title of a
1965 book of memoirs about the
Warsaw Ghetto by Alexander
Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom.
However, the word holo-
caust, even when capitalized to
refer to the specific Nazi era, has
been used to encompass more
than the murder of Jews. From
the casualties in our Civil War
(then described as "a holocaust
of lives') to the wholesale
murder of gypsies in World War
II to later genocide in Cam-
bodia, the coverage of the term
has not been limited to any
William Safire
single group; hence, Jews
sought a term for their par-
ticular tragedy. Shoah, a
Hebrew word, has filled that
need; Claude Lanzmann used
the word to title his powerful
1985 documentary, a nine-hour
oral and visual history of the
killing. The Catholic Church's
use of Shoah in this context in
recent years shows its will-
ingness to acknowledge the uni-
queness of Jewish suffering.
There is great scholarship and value
in the Safire definitions and root sear-
ching. The current tendency to apply
the word "holocaust" has disturbed
many people. The Safire explanations
should serve to clarify arid correct when
such guidance is needed. Meanwhile, he
has provided us with gems that will
always be cherished.