literature.
Other aims are “la lutte contre le chassidisme, I’exaltation de l’instruction et des travaux manuels.” [the fight against Hasidism, the exaltation of education and
manual labor.]
Badchan, the sad folk and wedding minstrel (Eliakum Zunser), talmudic trend of thought.
Le Roman populaire [The Popular Novel]: Eisik Meir Dick (1808-94) instructive, haskalic. Schomer, still worse, title, for example, Der podriatechik (l’entrepreneur),
ein höchst interessanter Roman [The Podriatist (the entrepreneur), an extremely interesting novel]. Ein richtiger fach fun leben, or Die eiserne Frau oder
das verkaufte Kind. Ein wunder-schöner Roman. [The Iron Lady or the Sold Child, a very beautiful novel]. Further, in America serial novels, Zwischen
Menschenfressern [Among Maneaters] , twenty-six volumes.
S. J. Abramowitsch (Mendele Mocher Sforim), lyric, subdued gaiety, confused arrangement. Fishke der Krummer, Jewish habit of biting the lips.
End of Haskalah 1881. New nationalism and democracy. Flourishing of Yiddish literature.
S. Frug, lyric writer, life in the country by all means. Délicieux est le sommeil du seigneur dans sa chambre. Sur des oreillers doux, blancs comme la neige.
Mais plus délicieux encore est le repos dans le champ sur du foin frais à l’heure du soir, après le travail. [Delicious is the lord’s sleep in his room. On soft
pillows, white like the snow. But yet more delicious is the repose in the field on fresh hay at sunset, after work.]
Talmud: He who interrupts his study to say, “How beautiful is this tree,” deserves death.
Lamentations at the west wall of the Temple Poem: “La Fille du Shammes.” The beloved rabbi is on his deathbed. The burial of a shroud the size of the rabbi and other
mystical measures are of no avail. Therefore at night the elders of the congregation go from house to house with a list and collect from the members of the
congregation renunciations of days or weeks of their lives in favor of the rabbi. Deborah, la Fille du Shammes, gives “the rest of her life.” She dies, the rabbi recovers.
At night, when he is studying alone in the synagogue, he hears the voice of Deborah’s whole aborted life. The singing at her wedding, her screams in childbed, her
lullabies, the voice of her son studying the Torah, the music at her daughter’s wedding. While the songs of lamentation sound over her corpse the rabbi, too, dies.
Peretz: bad Heine lyrics and social poems. Né 1851. Rosenfeld: The poor Yiddish public took up a collection to assure him of a livelihood.
S. Rabinowitz (Sholom Aleichem), né 1859. Custom of great jubilee celebrations in Yiddish literature. Kasrilevke, Menachem Mendel, who emigrated and took his
entire fortune with him; although previously he had only studied Talmud, he begins to speculate in the stock market in the big city, comes to a new decision every day
and always reports it to his wife with great self-satisfaction; until finally he must beg for traveling expenses.
Peretz: The figure of the batlan frequent in the ghettos, lazy and grown clever through idling, lives in the circle of the pious and learned. Many marks of misfortune on
them, as they are young people who, although they enjoy idleness, also waste away in it, live in dreams, under the domination of the unrestrained force of unappeased
desires.
Mitat neshika, death by a kiss: reserved only for the most pious.
Baal Shem: Before he became a rabbi in Miedzyboz he lived in the Carpathians as a vegetable gardener, later he was his brother-in-law’s coachman. His visions came
to him on lonely walks. Zohar, “Bible of the Kabbalists.”
Jewish theater. Frankfurt Purim play, 1708. Ein schön neu Achashverosh-spiel, Abraham and Goldfaden, 1876-7 Russo-Turkish War, Russian and Galician army
contractors had gathered in Bucharest, Goldfaden had also come there in search of a living, heard the crowds in the stores singing Yiddish songs and was encouraged to
found a theater. He was not yet able to put women on the stage. Yiddish performances were forbidden in Russia 1883. They began in London and New York 1884.
J. Gordin 1897 in a jubilee publication of the Jewish theater in New York: “The Yiddish theater has an audience of hundreds of thousands, but it cannot expect to see a
writer of great talent emerge as long as the majority of its authors are people like me who have become dramatic authors only by chance, who write plays only by force