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funberggeytashturem-blog · 5 years

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gorelik

In the Birthing Center

She convulses on the bed. She raises her head it falls right back to the pillows- after a minute it left her alone. Soon the pain begins again, grabs her mercilessly; as if with fiery tongs, it cuts, it burns, it rips pieces, from her straining body. She squeezes the bed posts with her white knuckled grip. With a grimacing, contorted face, she breathlessly moans: oh mama, ma--- I hear it in her moan: eternal, universal labor-pains. I am ashamed, and guiltily I sit by her bed, late at night, and lower my gaze to the ground. My lips quietly pronounce: "you are stronger" With your blood and your pain you conquer death. From somewhere in the hospital, a wounded, despondent, determined scream, echos like the roar of a sick lioness deep in the woods at night. My heart trembles then quiets. On the white walls, it was like a perfect hand wrote a message announcing the newcomer. My gaze wanders across the white walls and asks: "how many before?"

Your Grandma Said

Your grandma taught you

how to stand and walk

she said:

just so -

stand on up and go,

take a step

and then one more

come, come, come,

don’t be scared

move your feet;

on your own;

I’ll be proud -

ha, ha, ha,

fell already huh?

What’s mine will soon be yours!

You’ll stand up.

You’ll learn how,

just like me.

I’m old, but

see how I stand?

see how I walk?

Seems like yesterday,

my own grandma taught me

how to walk;

I feel I’ve only just

taken my first step

but as you see,

now I’m a,

little old grandma!

ha, ha, ha,

now I’m a,

little old grandma!

Soon, my little child,

I’ll be like you are now.

Will you guide me

with your little hand

like I’ve guided you?

I’ll stand up

take a step -

and then one more -

a stagger and a fall.

Ha, ha, ha.

You won’t be ashamed

of your grandma, right?

Of the grown woman

just learning how to walk?

Move your little feet

take a step -

and then one more -

doing it on your own,

on your own, on your own,

makes me proud.

1. Chicago

Your sky is grey and smoky

the streets: dirty and broad;

children dance around a circle

a dead cat rots nearby.

In your noisey skies, it seems,

witches fly around and shriek;

stench spreads from the slaughterhouses

Curses, smokes and spits.

2. Madison Street

I think:

once upon a time a shade

somewhere in a dirty alley

sowed a great sin.

And it bloomed

in the street’s length and breadth.

On every corner

drunks wallow

and painted girls

wink at passersby.

An old and hobbled woman

whose browned face bears

shining, cutting eyes,

wears a pretty green hat

and trudges down the sidewalk.

The drunk old man who walks beside her

curses, chews, and spits.

From a beer garden

floats a drinking song

mixed with the clashing of glasses

and hoarse women’s laughter.

On a corner:

pious, God-fearing sisters stand

with drums in their hands

singing and dancing,

they set themselves to saving souls.

Not far from them

a girl with cynical laughter

winks at a man passing by.

And the God-fearing sisters

beat the drums and sing:

Hallelujah!

glory, glory

Hallelujah!

Celestia

On a stoop, there she sits.

her big black eyes

look yearningly,

far, far away.

Surely to Italy’s

fields and meadows.

In the windows

of tumbledown houses

men sit,

with mustachioed lips

and fiery eyes,

absorbed in their card game.

On the steps

wives with tousled hair

and opened busoms

throw their hands and shout.

On the sidewalk

kids with bloated bellies

and twisted feet

pick through the bits

of thrown out spoiled fruit

and shreds of rotten greens.

From a window floats a song,

from a cheap record player

that mingles

with the notes

of a balalaika.

And the dreaming

black eyed girl

sits.

A song pours from her throat,

quiet and sad:

o Mary, o Mary.

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funberggeytashturem-blog · 6 years

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Every Jewish Street in Warsaw was a City unto Itself

by Yitzchak Varshavski (Isaac Bashevis Singer)

published in der Forverts, 7/2/44

When someone is dealt a great misfortune, a truly terrible blow, they are not immediately able to understand what has happened to them. It often takes weeks, months, or even longer until the time comes when they are ready to understand the full magnitude of the tragedy.

All around the world, Jews are now experiencing something similar. We have received such a terrible blow that we have become partially numb. The horrifying dispatches have come one after the other with such a speed that we have lost any sense of the reality of the situation. A human mind can perhaps understand the cruelty of a single murder. But when it comes to mass murder; when one hears of the thousands of children that were buried alive; when one hears of the places where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were slaughtered, poisoned, and burned — our imagination halts. The nervous system can only register such facts, it cannot respond to them. It's like saying this or that star is a billion light years away from us, that is: it would take a billion years for light rays to arrive here on earth. Light travels at a speed of 300 thousand miles a second. We know that this is far, enormously far, but our understanding is too weak to comprehend such a distance.

We are now experiencing something similar when we read the sums of our victims. We halt before the abyss.

The author himself is from Warsaw. He knows that Warsaw has been left without Jews, but he cannot imagine it. When he speaks the word Warsaw, he sees the Jewish Warsaw of the past. He cannot really imagine Warsaw "Jew free," or the Jewish streets of warsaw as hovels. Most likely, there are many other similar realities. He also cannot imagine the Polish provincial cities without Jews. What? How can there possibly be a Polish-Jewish shtetl without a shul and a study house. How can there be a Friday without men heating the floor and without Jewish wives baking challas and setting out cholent? The imagination does not want to go hand in hand with the logic. And the author cannot imagine that all his victims, all the friends, all heymish and near, whom he left behind, lie slaughtered, burnt. In his imagination, he speaks to all of them, discusses matters, debates with them and and evaluates them according to the virtues and faults that they possessed. It is hard for him to imagine that everything has literally turned to ash.

Here the powerlessness of our imagination is in a certain sense a justification. Future Jews will perhaps wonder how in these days and months we were able to eat, drink, do business, go the the theatre and live as we always have. The answer is: the tragedy is too great for our tiny little heads.

Our eyes cannot see extremely short ultra-violet waves; our ears cannot hear very high pitched noises. We are not sensitive enough to feel the highest human sorrow multiplied by hundreds, thousands, and millions. It will take years until the Jewish people is able to deliver a reckoning of the blow that they have received from the great evil the German people have committed.

Streets and types of Warsaw

It was characteristic of the streets of Warsaw, that every street had a character, its own unique face. To some extent, this is true in New York as well. Fifth avenue has a different character than a street in the Bronx; East Broadway is different from 14th Street. But in New York the character of the streets changes so quickly that before you can identify what sort of face this or that area has, a change has already taken place. Here, you are always in the middle of a move. Houses are torn down. The means of communication are changed. New York is a city in which everything is kept inside buildings. The situation in Warsaw was completely different, especially in the part of the city where most of the Jews lived. Everything there was old, local. If a street had a face, it kept that face

The Jews of Warsaw partitioned Warsaw into these streets and those streets. Naturally, wherever a person lived was these streets. In general, the partition was between south-Warsaw and north-Warsaw, although if Warsaw had a subway it would have only taken a few minutes to travel between these streets and those streets. Nevertheless, there were Jews who spent many years in these streets and never once entered those streets. It was a sort of local patriotism for the inhabitants of the two parts of Warsaw.

These streets — the southernmost part of the Jewish quarter — were Shliske, Panske, Gzhibovske, Tvarde, the Gzhibov, Gnoyne, Krokhmalne, Marianske, and some others. It is hard to convey, but the inhabitants of these streets held themselves to be the true Jews of Warsaw. Rarely did a Litvak wander here. Here Chasidim would stroll the streets with shtraimlekh. Here were concentrated the most pious and most conservative part of the Jews of Warsaw. There were no large shops. Mostly, there were small shops for food, spices, milk, or coals. Most of the Jews here were poor. However, if a man were to become rich, he was always trustworthy, without loans, without mortgages, without bankruptcies. Here, in these streets, in literally every courtyard there was a Hasidic prayer house and in every few courtyards — a mikvah. The schoolboys and young men who learned Torah rarely tucked their payos behind their ears there. It was unnecessary. Often, old wives would meet there, bent and stooped, wearing high hats with long satin streamers of every color. Madmen roamed the streets freely and children ran after them. The beggars who would go from house to house each had their own area, their own turf. The largest donation was a groszen, the smallest, a little piece of sugar. It may be surprising, but the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment, penetrated the area very slowly and very late. While those streets were completely soaked in Zionism, Bundism, Populism, and other heresies, still in these streets a heresy was a rare discovery. If a young man were to become a heretic, he would become one hundred percent a heretic, and sooner or later leave these streets.

For the most part, Rabbis loved these streets. When a Lithuanian Rabbi would come to Warsaw, he would usually stay in these streets. For them, they held every comfort. The tramway did not go through most of them. Hasidim filled the street peacefully. Admittedly, if the Rabbi needed money he would have to go to those streets. But for the sake of the world to come, it was better for them to stay here.

At one time the famous Rabbis Reb Zeynvele Klepfish and Reb Itsike (whose surname I have forgotten) lived on these streets. On number five Krokhmalne street there was a Hasidic prayer house, where at one point studied none other than the “Hidushei HaRim”, Reb Itshe Mayer Alter, the grandfather of the current Gurer Rabbi. Here in these streets were conducted the battles between the Gurer Hasidim and the Aleksandrover. There, the Hasidim also had their minor Rabbis: the Amshinov, the Sokachev, the Radzimin, the Minsk, the Nayshtet. Friday in the evening, the Jews observing Shabbos would go around and see to it that the stores would be closed early. Nobody there had ever heard of an open store on Shabbos. Shabbos morning, the stores would smell of cholent and kugel. From every window sabbath hymns would sing out. Here, in these streets, was Eretz Yisrael.

It is noteworthy that the underworld also preferred these streets to those streets. In those streets, of course, you could hit a fat lick, but it was better to relax in these streets. Here the thieves had their “pubs,” their little restaurants and “kennels,” where they would stay. Their lovers stayed with them there. Just like how in the Hasidic houses people were very hasidic, in these coarse houses they were very coarse. The women who tended the stalls would call their merchants with sing song voices. In the innumerable bazaars — in the halls, in the “gashtshinni dvur,” in Janusz’s yard, in Ulrich’s yard, and in other various places, your ears rang with voices and oaths. Day in and day out, swindlers would come to the yards and eat early, lay down with naked shoulders on a board, lit with a burning lamp. They would stay up late reading Shamer’s novels and other books, and although at this point there were already movies in Warsaw, boys and girls would pay a groszen to look into a peep show, a little box in which you could see all sorts of pictures. The Yiddish theater here had its devotees and they were not satisfied with any old play. Here people loved melodrama: it needed a little orphan, a schemer, a clown, an emperor, and much “dancing, marching, and singing.”

To those streets belonged Dzshelne, Pave, Gensha, Mile, Niske, Stavke, the Muranov, and above all others — the Nalevkis and the Frantsishkaner. There lived there an eternal commotion. Before the war, Jews there traded with Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk, and Brno. By this point there were large shops, filled to the brim with merchandise. There the rent was high because every apartment was a shop. There you could find innumerable little factories. There was always the bustle of an area totally dedicated to trade. There were also small synagogues and Hasidic study houses, but you could not see them between the shops, factories, and workshops that encircled them. On those streets you did not walk, you strode. There, if you wanted to go from one street to the next you would “catch a tramway.” From there, salesmen would travel far and wide selling wares. There, in restaurants and heymish hotels (they were all called “hotel devants”) they told their jokes and the pranks that they had pulled. There, when an interesting story was told, a “sharp shtick,” no one questioned whether or not it was true. What’s the difference? It’s good regardless. If a merchant there said that he just returned from Siberia, no one would be surprised. It was characteristic of those streets, that almost every house was simultaneously a small business or inn. Business there was conducted constantly. On Genshe, there were massive shops from which wares were bought for all of Poland. There one discussed whether stocks would rise or fall. There was an interest in foreign currency, whether the English pound sterling was more or less expensive. There Hasidic Jews outfitted themselves with stiff collars and shots of schnapps because they were “good for business.” There men dreamt of building Eretz Yisrael and of social revolutions. There, early in the morning, you purchased Yiddish newspapers, and there mobs of Lithvaks streamed in.

When a Warsaw Jew said the word “Litvak,” he did not simply mean Jews from Lithuania. A Litvak was anyone who said “ikh” instead of “yakh.” Ukrainians, Volhynian, Podolians, Russian Jews — all were considered “Litvaks.” An exception was made for those Jews who said “yekh” instead of “ikh.” These were “provintser,” i.e. from the polish provinces.

Jews from these streets could understand the Litvaks in no way shape or form. They were stingy and thirsty for money; they did not travel to rabbis and they turned every Yiddish word on its head; they wore short clothing, like Germans, but at the same time they learned at Khevre Shin Samekh and in various Litvish shuls. The true Litvaks recited mincha early. In those streets there were shuls where by 1pm mincha had already been recited. Moreover, the Litvaks were shrewd businessmen. The Jews from these streets could comprehend none of this. They viewed the Litvaks with the same astonishment, and with a similar revulsion, as gentiles view Jewish immigrants. Something there was bizarre, strange, and dangerous.

Beginning in the later years, when the youth of these streets began to “spoil,” the gap between these streets and those streets began to shrink. There were times when a match between a Polish Jew and a Litvak was considered an unnatural and bizarre occurrence.

Jewish life all in all distinguished itself by its great temperament. At weddings you celebrated and at funerals you wept; when something happened on the street it immediately filled with people. The wives of Warsaw loved to eat well and to snack. When a Warsaw girl conducted a love affair she burned like a fire. When two Jews had a dispute they would immediately go to the Jewish court. The pious truly destroyed themselves for God. The heretics became “scoundrels.” When a Warsaw woman sang a “shloger” (a popular song, a “hit”) she put her heart into it. When a Warsaw fishwife or goose merchant praised her stock, she claimed that there had never once been such a fish or such a goose, and anyone who would give it a sniff would receive a bit of health. There was one thing that was foreign to the Jews of Warsaw, and that was nonchalance.

It is inconceivable that this entire pulsating and squirming life has been extinguished. One cannot imagine that this colossal assemblage of of human uniqueness has been wiped out.

#yiddish #translation #isaac bashevis singer

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