Day: October 25, 2023

The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts recently got a total makeover.

The Center, one of the preeminent Yiddish institutions in the world, offers a wide variety of indispensable resources on its website for researchers and Yiddish enthusiasts alike. But since its founding in 1980, the Center’s vast collection of books and other materials has mainly lived in underground vaults and off-site storage facilities — largely inaccessible except to researchers visiting by appointment.

All of that has now changed. The Center’s new permanent, public exhibition, “Yiddish: A Global Culture,” features hundreds of books, photographs, works of art, memorabilia and other objects displayed in a large and beautifully organized exhibit space. The Yiddish Book Center has transformed itself into a unique museum and showcase of Yiddish material culture.

Banners reproducing Yiddish books and magazine covers greet visitors in the exhibition area Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center

“We wanted to make Yiddish culture cool. Seriously cool,” said David Mazower, the chief curator and writer for the exhibition. Stereotypes about Yiddish as dead or dying or irrelevant needed to be swept away. The vitality and daring of Yiddish literature, art, music, journalism and theater — which burst onto the international scene in the late 19th century, and never paused to breathe until the catastrophe of the Holocaust — needed to be shown to Jews themselves and to the world in its true and brilliant colors.

Shakespeare’s sonnets in Yiddish

The exhibit is housed in the main building at the heart of the complex. (The Yiddish Book Center itself consists of several low wooden structures with steep shingled roofs, evocative of an Eastern European shtetl). Visitors initially look over a balustrade, down onto an area that was once packed with tall metal bookshelves. 30,000 of those books have been boxed up and relocated. A long ramp is enlivened by a colorful 60-foot mural depicting the history of Yiddish culture, commissioned for the exhibit from German illustrator Martin Haake.

The ramp is lined with books from the Center’s collection that give a sense of the huge range of topics that appealed to Yiddish writers and readers: Shakespeare’s sonnets translated into Yiddish (1944); Avrom Sutzkever’s chronicle of the Vilna Ghetto (1946); a Yiddish introduction to Islam (1907); the children’s fantasy-adventure novel, Yingele Ringele (1929); Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in Yiddish (1921); Japanese folktales retold in Yiddish (1921); a history of the Republic of China (1940, among the last Yiddish books published in Vilna before the Holocaust). There’s also a much more recent endeavor: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, translated into Yiddish in 2021.

The exhibition area is festooned with two rows of colorful double-sided banners —  each reproducing a Yiddish book or magazine cover — under the central skylight. A space this size could easily become overwhelming but Mazower subdivided it into 16 thematic sections including bestsellers, Soviet Yiddish, women’s voices, press & politics and theater. Each section is unique in its shape and layout, and in the way it combines text and objects. There are no barriers between the sections: Each feeds naturally and fluidly into others, suggesting the interconnectedness of all aspects of the Yiddish story — and of the Yiddish diaspora itself in time and space.

Replica of I. L. Peretz’s “salon” in Warsaw

The desk that I. L. Peretz used to write his stories Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center

Across from the bottom of the entry ramp — self-contained but inviting and accessible — is a section called “Peretz’s Salon.” It recreates the study in the Warsaw apartment of  Y.L. Peretz, one of the founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th century. This study was where Peretz gave advice to eager young Yiddish writers, several of whom later became famous in their own right. A large photograph of Peretz at his desk hangs on the back wall, with a reproduction of the desk standing in front of it. Books by writers in Peretz’s literary circle line the walls, and sound recordings of readings from those books float in the air.

A detail of the micrograph portrait of the writer and thinker Chaim Zhitlovsky Photo by the Yiddish Book Center

Among the many impressive pieces in the exhibit is an extraordinary over-life-size  “micrograph” portrait of the Yiddish writer and thinker, Chaim Zhitlowsky — consisting of thousands of hand-inked Yiddish words from Zhitlowsky’s texts. It was created in Buenos Aires in the 1940s by Guedale Tenenbaum, a Jewish textile worker from Poland, as a tribute to a man he deeply admired. Tenenbaum also made micrograph portraits of other Jewish literary figures, like Y. L. Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and H. Leivick. When the Center acquired the Zhitlowsky micrograph in 2018, it was covered in mold and water stains, and torn in two. (It had once been thrown in the trash when the school that owned it closed). After expert conservation, it’s a marvel.

A page of the book “Himlen in Opgrunt” by Esther Carp Photo by the Yiddish Book Center

I was also struck by a beautiful 1921 book, Himlen in Opgrunt (“Heavens in the Abyss,” a poem by Chaim Krol). The illustrations and text were created by Esther Carp, the remarkable Polish-Jewish female modernist painter and printmaker, whose work is finally starting to be appreciated. The book — one of a handful of surviving copies — was open to an illustration whose vivid, saturated colors and bold composition absolutely leapt off the page. Amazingly, this magnificent volume was hiding in the Center’s own vaults, among a group of unprocessed donations.

Yiddish translations of Black American literature

One section of the exhibit featured books and photographs that showed how Yiddish writers and readers grappled with race and racism in the United States, including Yiddish translations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Langston Hughes’ The Song of Black Folk. Most remarkable was a Yiddish ballad by poet Dora Teitelboim about the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, with illustrations by Black activist and artist Ollie Harrington.

A display of vintage Yiddish typewriters, including those that were used by renowned Yiddish writers Photo by the Yiddish Book Center

A large case of original Yiddish typewriters was very evocative. Some belonged to famous women writers like Blume Lempel and Chava Rosenfarb. It was easy to imagine the busy clacking of their fingers writing all kinds of Yiddish texts on the keys.

The glamorous world of the Yiddish theaters that once flourished in New York and other major American cities came to life through displays of original posters, letters and photographs. An oil portrait of Second Avenue Yiddish theater legend Celia Adler, painted by fellow Yiddish theater and screen star Ludwig Satz, was a standout.

A 1920s steamer trunk belonging to the famous Yiddish literary couple, Peretz Hirschbein and Esther Shumiatcher, gave a sense of the global interconnectedness of Yiddish culture. The couple carried this trunk with them all over the world, visiting other Yiddish cultural figures and seeing the sights.

A copy of Hersh Fenster’s Undzere Farpaynikte Kinstler (Our Martyred Artists), written in 1951 to commemorate Jewish artists in Paris murdered by the Nazis, gave a stark sense of what Yiddish-speaking artists achieved in the first part of the 20th century — and of the creative talents decimated by the Holocaust.

A Forverts linotype press from 1918

A Forverts linotype from 1918 Photo by the Yiddish Book Center

I was amazed by an enormous, black, intricate 1918 linotype press that once belonged to none other than the Forverts (Forward) newspaper. It stands 7 feet tall and weighs 4,500 pounds. I spent a long time studying its many gears, levers and springs, as well as the worn and dirty Yiddish keys, used to type the text that the machine would print. It was strange and moving to think that I now write articles for the same publication, but using such unrecognizably different technology.

I was also fascinated by displays on children’s books, as well as women’s bibles in Yiddish (since religious women in Europe were usually not taught to read Hebrew); 500 years of Yiddish poetry written by women the Kultur-Lige — a socialist Jewish organization established in Kiev in 1918, that promoted Yiddish language, literature and theater; the Yiddish radio research done by Henry Sapoznik; popular “shund” (trash) literature, including stories about detective Jewish Max Shpitskopf, the “Viennese Sherlock Holmes.” (Isaac Bashevis Singer devoured Shpitskopf stories as a boy.) Also notable was a wooden box holding a card index of Yiddish books in the personal library of New York garment worker, Samuel Judin. You’ll also find the original puppets used in Yiddish puppet theater by Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler.

All the explanatory texts at “Yiddish: A Global Culture” are in English, so no knowledge of Yiddish is required to visit. For me, wandering through the exhibits was an act of homage: Here in front of me, accessible yet fragile, were treasures of the Yiddish culture I’ve come to care about so deeply. I’ve rarely felt more intimately connected to Yiddishkeit in all its wonder and variety.

 

The post Magnificent permanent exhibit opens at Amherst’s Yiddish Book Center appeared first on The Forward.

Mike Johnson, the little-known and far-right selection for speaker, has a “Very Poor” rating from the group Republicans for Ukraine

The Taliban are pushing back against persistent global criticism of their Islamic governance in Afghanistan, claiming their supreme leader’s decrees, including a general amnesty, have promoted national reconciliation and put the war-torn country on the path to stability.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban spokesman, Wednesday posted a 40-minute promotional video documentary on social media, showcasing some of the decrees and touting their “good” outcomes more than two years into their male-only government, known as the Islamic Emirate. 

However, the video did not discuss several other decrees issued by reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, that placed an indefinite ban on Afghan girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barred most women from workplaces, including the United Nations and other aid groups.

“The general amnesty has reunited Afghans,” Mujahid wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, with the video. He referred to the decree that reclusive Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada first issued after the then-insurgent group reclaimed power from a U.S.-backed government in August 2021. 

The amnesty covered all members and politicians associated with the ousted Afghan government and individuals who worked for the U.S.-led Western troops during their presence in Afghanistan for almost two decades. 

While appearing in the documentary, Mujahid said that the amnesty decree was being enforced “effectively and seriously” nationwide by Taliban authorities, saying those found guilty of breaching it in “a few instances” were brought to justice and jailed. 

Mujahid’s social media post came a day after a senior U.N. diplomat renewed allegations the Taliban’s “repressive policies and practices” were responsible for a deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan.

“There is a culture of impunity for torture and inhumane treatment in detention centers, as well as for human rights violations against former government officials and military personnel, despite promises made to the contrary,” Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on the situation of Afghan human rights, told a U.N. meeting in New York on Tuesday. 

Last August, a U.N. report accused Taliban fighters of committing more than 200 extrajudicial killings since taking power despite the general amnesty. It documented at least 800 alleged offenses, including arbitrary arrests and detention, ill-treatment, torture, and enforced disappearances of former Afghan officials and security personnel.

The Taliban at the time rejected the U.N. findings, declaring them unfounded and propaganda to malign their administration. 

While speaking Tuesday, the U.S. representative told the U.N. meeting that the Taliban continue to issue edicts targeting women and girls, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, journalists, former government officials, and other vulnerable Afghan groups, including religious minorities. 

“Until the Taliban honors their word to respect the human rights of all Afghans, the international community must monitor the situation in Afghanistan with vigilance and hold the Taliban accountable,” said David Johnson, U.S. senior advisor for South and Central Asia.

Taliban officials have repeatedly rejected criticism of their policies, saying they are aligned with Afghan culture and Islamic law. 

The Taliban documentary hailed Akhundzada’s decree on women’s rights, saying it prohibited forced marriages of women and ensured their right to inheritance, dowry, and fair treatment, among other rights, within Islamic law, or Sharia. 

The video also highlighted “among others, the decree outlawing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which is known as the world’s largest producer of narcotics.

“Now we believe that we do not have even one percent of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. God willing, in the coming days, we will have an Afghanistan free of drug cultivation and smuggling,” Mujahid said. 

Recent media reports and satellite images backed by the U.N. and the U.S. have concluded that annual poppy cultivation “significantly” decreased in the country. However, critics remain skeptical about whether the gains are sustainable, noting that de facto Afghan authorities have not yet provided an alternative livelihood program for farmers affected by the ban in the impoverished nation.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes, in its report last month, revealed that Afghanistan had become the world’s fastest-growing producer of methamphetamine. It noted that the highly addictive stimulant is mainly made from legally available substances or extracted from the ephedra plant, which grows in the wild.  

 

The Taliban documentary commentator echoed its government’s assertions that Akhundzada’s decrees “are based on the demands of a healthy and Islamic society and raised the hopes of Afghans for a better future.”

 

No foreign government has recognized the Taliban government over human rights concerns and their treatment of Afghan women.

 

Ukraine soldier says Americans don’t realize a lot of aid money stays in US  Business Insider

As Breast Cancer Awareness month drew to a close, One Brooklyn Health brought together 60 breast cancer patients and survivors for an afternoon of pampering and celebrations at Brookdale Hospital.

While the hospital worked to bring more awareness to breast cancer, it also wanted to show people fighting the disease that they are not alone — and to bring a little positivity to their days. The Oct. 23 event was inspired in part by Brookdale’s Dr. Sandra Scott and her mother, who is a breast cancer survivor. 

Just a year ago, Thelma Oliver was diagnosed with breast cancer at Brookdale after she found a lump in her right breast. Brookdale’s Breast Surgical Oncologist, Dr. Simone Mays, was on vacation when Oliver first came in, she said — but the staff called to explain her situation, and Mays saw Oliver right away.

Thelma Oliver was diagnosed and treated at Brookdale, and said she is grateful for her doctor. Photo by Corazon Aguirre

Oliver got a mastectomy after the lump in her breast burst — and later on, a lumpectomy after she found a smaller lump in her left breast. 

“I got that early, thank god,” she said. “Thank god for Dr. Mays.”

After her surgeries, Oliver received radiation therapy and reconstructive surgery. 

“Somebody said to me, ‘You are here, you’re still here,’ and I keep those words with me every day,” Oliver said. “As I go about, my day, I say, ‘Yes, I’m still here.’ God’s not finished with me yet, and I give thanks.”

Attendees were pampered with spa treatments with products from Anoz Spa and The Green Spa and Wellness Center — the latter of which was co-founded by a breast cancer survivor, Maureen Brody.

Brody created her own body moisturizer while she was receiving radiation treatments, she explained. While it was killing the cancer cells in her body, the radiation was also causing radiation dermatitis — a common side effect that turns the skin dry, sore, and itchy.

Maureen Brody showed off her specially-formulated products at the event. Photo by Corazon Aguirre

Her doctors recommended typical drugstore moisturizers, but Brody wanted to use something all-natural — she didn’t know what had caused her cancer, and didn’t want to use any more chemicals than were necessary on her body.

“You want to detox, you don’t want to put chemicals, you don’t know what caused [the cancer,] she said. “There’s a lot of fear involved in all of that, you want to just get rid of all the toxins in your body and go back to nature.”

 She spoke with some of the estheticians and dermatologists she knew from the spa and used raw ingredients to whip up her own cream.

“It became like the most luxurious cream that I’ve ever tried,” Brody said.

Sixty women attended the event. Photo by Corazon Aguirre

Her doctors at Sloane Kettering were impressed too, and even started carrying the products in their office. Since then, she has developed a whole line of oncology-friendly face and body products, and said she was “honored” to be able to pamper the women at Brookdale with them. 

Among those celebrating was Diane Isaac, a 17-year breast cancer survivor. She discovered a lump in her breast during a monthly self-exam just five days after her annual mammogram, which had come back clean, she explained. The skin over the lump was itchy, and the lump itself was small — it felt like an uncooked grain of rice, she explained.

But she went back to the doctor and was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer, which required a double mastectomy and the removal of “many” lymph nodes. 

Diane Isaac enjoyed the celebration with her great-grandson. Photo by Corazon Aguirre

“Now, I’m here today!” Issac said. “All I say is, don’t depend on the doctor, don’t depend on your boyfriend, or your man, or your woman, or whoever it is — to find things! Know your body. I am proud to be a survivor, and I am proud to spread the word to other women.”

Getting a cancer diagnosis is a frightening situation, she said, but one patients have to meet head-on. It took her a year after diagnosis to get back to her old self, but now, 17 years later, Isaac described herself as “thriving.”

“I’ve got this [good] right man next to me, and all my grandkids, and my daughter, and now I have a great-grandson I have to look forward to,” Isaac said. “I’m blessed, I’m happy.” 

The Telegraph published this video item, …

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Last night House Republicans nominated far right extremist backbencher Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House. It was unanimous, but there were 22 House Republicans curiously missing from the meeting. But they came around today, and Johnson has been elected Speaker.

This is already setting off widespread doomsday hysteria on social media about how “Speaker Johnson” means we’re all doomed. But this is coming from the same people who three weeks ago tried to tell us that Donald Trump would be the Speaker of the House and we were all doomed. And as recently as yesterday, these types were insisting that Republicans’ plan was to leave the speakership vacant through November so the government would shut down. But it’s now obvious this was not their plan, given that they just filled the speakership.

So let’s discount every bit of hyperbolic doomsday hysteria coming from these types today. They can’t just go from “We’re doomed because there isn’t going to be a Speaker” to “We’re doomed because there’s going to be a Speaker” and expect anyone to take them seriously. These types on our side just want to feel panicked fear at all times, and the stuff they’re saying has no connection to reality.

Back in the real world, Mike Johnson’s arrival a Speaker is not a good thing. It’s just not a bad thing either. As I’ve said all along, House Republicans were likely to fall in line behind someone once they realized that the House Republicans in toss-up districts were prepared to hand the speakership to the Democrats just to preserve their own personal reelection prospects in their own moderate districts. We were coming up against that scenario, and everyone knew it, so Republicans went with the last candidate standing on their side.

What’s interesting is that the House Republicans in those toss-up districts ultimately decided to vote for a far right extremist like Mike Johnson. This means it’s nearly a given that they managed to get a binding agreement from him as far as what he won’t do. He probably agreed not to do a shutdown and other things. But we’re not going to find out what those concessions are until later, when we see the House end up not doing those things.

In the meantime, House Republicans have chosen someone for Speaker who is both an extremist and inexperienced. The extremism will work against him right out of the gate. He’s on record as opposing women’s rights, gay rights, you name it. He’s a huge election denier. And while he’s too low profile to have any current scandals, just give it a minute. Far right extremist clowns like Johnson always have a bunch of corruption scandals and/or personal scandals in their closet. Always. Johnson’s scandals will now be dug up. And we’ll use his scandals to distract and derail his planned agenda.

It’s also important to remember that this guy was chosen as a compromise candidate precisely because he’s a nobody with no power or influence. If people with years of House leadership experience like Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan couldn’t corral this House Republican caucus of idiots, then someone as powerless as Mike Johnson isn’t going to be able to do it either. Republicans will be united behind him for five minutes and then they’ll go right back into their bickering fiefdoms and personal agendas.

Remember, we do not defeat someone like Mike Johnson by assigning him magical powers. All that kind of talk does is hand him leverage, which gives him power that he wouldn’t otherwise have. In reality Johnson is a weakling who now has a very tentative grasp over a very unmanageable caucus. He’s not going to magically pull off a government shutdown, with so many of his members clearly not wanting one. And he’s not going to be able to magically overturn the 2024 election, no matter how loudly and hyperbolically the doomsday hysteria addicts on our side keep yelling that he can somehow magically do this.

One of the biggest dangers at a time like this is the sheer number of people on our side who are so clinically addicted to feeling panicked fear, they’re now going to shout doomsday hysteria about Johnson at the top of their lungs, even as the rest of us try to use effective messaging to derail Johnson. We have to think of these doomsday hysteria types on our side as our enemies, because they are. They’re perfectly willing to declare defeat, and eager to convince the rest of us to give up, just so they can feel the negative things that their broken brains want them to feel.

But as for those of us who are involved in politics because we want to fight and win, “Speaker Mike Johnson” is both a challenge and an opportunity for us. This is a guy who will spew a lot of bluster but can’t really do much of anything about it. And his track record of extremism will hand us a gift in terms of winning those toss-up House races in 2024. The countdown to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries starts today. Now let’s go win the House majority.

The post House Republicans just elected extremist weakling Mike Johnson as Speaker – and they just handed the 2024 House to the Democrats appeared first on Palmer Report.