Saturday evening and once more, I was submitted to "culture". The place was the Gesher Theater in Yaffo, and it was called "Hate and Love", based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gesher is a professional theater founded by Russian immigrant actors and writers, in Hebrew, and in a few years it has conquered a very respectable place in the Israeli culture. I think it is much better than HaBima and the Kameri, more professional and they try harder.
The story is about a Poylish schlemazl called Herman whose life saved by the family servant Jadwiga. His wife does not come back after the war so out of gratitude he marries her and they move to America. (Pic.: Jadwiga washes Hermann like a baby, it must be a Polish custom). He ghostwrites speeches and books of ethics and religion for a rabbi, and takes a lover on the side, a survivor, Masha. Masha drives him crazy trying to force him to leave Jadwiga and marry her. Jadwiga is pregnant, Masha fakes pregnancy. Hermann is thorn between them, and if the dilemma were not enough, his wife - believed long dead - appears in America and finds him. Three women fight for the soul of the schlemazl, who in the end runs away with Masha to California.
9 comments:
This (a full length novel, not just a short story) was made into a movie also. The Yiddish title is "Sonim, di Geschichte fun a Liebe" and in English, "Enemies, a Love Story", which was the title of the movie. I thought they did a decent job with the movie - it was a sincere effort at translating the book to the screen and they did not try to "juice up" the story with cheap elements to make it more appealing to a mass audience.
The character of Herman is semi-autobiographical for Singer. Singer left Poland shortly before the war, but his wife and son ended up in Moscow and then Palestine. Singer (without ever divorcing) married another woman in the US in 1940. He was also in his time a notorious womanizer who must have had many more female friends, so his tale of juggling multiple females must have been thru experience. I saw Singer speak (in English) a couple of times in the late 70s's/ early 80's (both the year and his age). He was an entertaining speaker who had a pat speech he would give over and over with the same jokes. For example, when asked if Yiddish literature would ever die, he said "not as long as there are graduate students who need thesis topics." BTW, I just saw a movie called "A Serious Man" and the 1st 15 minutes of the movie (set in a shtetl) are entirely in Yiddish, spoken very nicely by two young actors (and 1 old timer from the Yiddish theater), so Yiddish is not quite dead.
One of my parent's friends was a Jew who in fact married the Polish girl who hid him, so Singer's story was not far from the truth. Their grandson was a young punk who one day came to his saintly grandmother (the Polish girl, now elderly) and demanded money to buy drugs. When she refused, he killed her. Truth is even stranger than fiction and no good deed goes unpunished.
America was the Goldene Medina to the generation that escaped Europe but not some of their children and grandchildren were infected by the ills of American society (and some were and are very successful). My uncle and his son became very successful real estate developers but the son's son has become a Lubavitcher Hasid and a yeshiva student (even though he was raised in a only nominally religious home and Lubavitch is the "wrong" Hasidus for a Galitizianer - my family's ancestors were in the orbit of the Belzer rebbe). I know you would approve of this but it is really not what his parents had in mind for him (although better than becoming a heroin addict or an Hare Krishna).
K
BTW, the Chinese says -
Experience is a good teacher, and it is a pity that high tuition fees....
And then the link takes you to various Chinese websites (the orginal poster gets a few cents when you "click thru" - with scantily clad pictures of young Chinese women with whom you can have a "phone chat" in Chinese.
It is also possible that some of the links are infected with viruses so I would not recommend clicking thru unless you have a browser other than Internet Explorer (the browser most vulnerable) and good virus protection.
BTW, I've noticed an uptick in spam postings to your blog. There must be automated tools that post spam to a list of thousands of blogs and I'm guessing that your blog is now on a list for one of those spam engines, unfortunately. There must be ways to discourage these (perhaps prohibit anonymous comments) but I'm no expert on what they are.
K
I see you are familiar with Singer and the story. Maybe you could confirm if in the end Herman runs off with Masha? In the play, it was not clear.
Singer came several times to Buenos Aires to give lectures in yiddish, and his books were serialized in the local yiddish paper. He was not considered representative of serious Jewish literature but more of a pornographer. That's why I was a bit surprised that he received the Noble Prize. His standard comment on yiddish being a dead language was that it has been dying for generations. You sure know that.
"I know you would approve of this but it is really not what his parents had in mind for him (although better than becoming a heroin addict or an Hare Krishna)."
It's depressing that J would probably approve of a secular American Jew gravitating towards Lubavitch. Never mind the almost complete withdrawal from the secular world and secular education / opportunities. The children of the baal teshuvah will be almost completely denied a secular education and will be trapped in that world, most likely financially poor but responsible for an enormous family. Certainly no Einsteins, Feynmans, Tellers or von Neumanns will emerge from among them.
Singer's joke was that Yiddish was dying but not dead, but there's a big difference between being dying and being DEAD. This would always get a laugh.
In the book and movie, Masha kills herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Yadwiga has a baby (named Masha) and moves in with Tamara. As I type these words, it dawns on me that the book is perhaps a bit of an overheated melodrama in the old fashioned Yiddish theatrical (hysterical) mode.
As for financially poor, in my cousin's case, that is covered at least for a couple of generations more. I'm sure the (not so distant) ancestors of Feynman , Teller, etc. all had big beards and davened all day too (and were probably as good at gemara as their descendants were at physics), so at some point there is the potential to (re)join the secular world but I agree w. you (and not w/ J) that it's a bloody shame, notwithstanding that many yiddishe kinderlach will be added to our race to help replace all of my relatives who were shot in a ditch by the Nazis. Also, keep in mind that being frum is not a vow of poverty - although there are a lot of schnorrers who want to do nothing but sit and learn supported by others, there are also many successful businesses owned by the frum.
K
Thanks for clearing up for me the ending of the story. I would liked a happier end but then it wouldnt be Yiddish theater where extreme sentiments, tears and crying are a must.
Regarding your cousin, you read me right, I do approve his returning to our roots. I always was attracted by the idea of leading a religious life, but at this stage of my life, I am unable to recite a simple prayer without stopping and saying to myself, what a nonsense. I even have difficulty to complete a kaddish with a straight face, with its excessive, repetitive, servile glorification of God.
On the other hand, if you ask me who led "a good life" (in the Roman sense) - Teller Rezso or the Rebbe from Szatmar, who after WWII recreated his movement, I say Teller spent his life purposelessly.
I'm not sure you are drawing the right conclusions - on the one hand you say that prayer is nonsense, but then you wish that you or your descendants could be naive enough to take this nonsense seriously.
The famous nuclear scientist was Teller Ede. Who is Teller Rezso? One could argue that Teller saved the lives of countless millions. By inventing the hydrogen bomb, he helped to make war so potentially terrible that it became unthinkable, even for someone as crazy as Stalin. Stalin did not care about the death of millions (mere "statistics") but there was no bunker in Moscow deep enough to shield him from Teller's "super" (something Assad should keep in mind as well before he rattles his sword in Israel's direction).
K
Teller Ede it is and the fact that I did not remember his name only proves how ephemeral his life and memory was.
Regarding the lack of consistency of my attitude toward religion, I am aware of it. I am still in the learning phase, trying to build a coherent philosophy.
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