The Glatstein Chronicles

by Jacob Glatstein

  p. 90 Here Lawson appears to have erred in his judgment, since Schiff had contributed generously to Jewish causes.

  p. 92 Shikse, the Yiddish term for a Gentile woman, may be neutral or derogatory, depending on the context.

  p. 93 The International Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in 1905 on the premise that all workers should be united as a class within a single union. Members were called Wobblies.

  p. 95 Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia, by Sir Arthur Newsholme and John Adams Kingsbury (New York, 1934), presented a glowing account of medical organization and administration in Soviet Russia.

  p. 96 Jacob Gordin (1853–1909), pioneering dramatist of the American Yiddish theater, best known for his introduction of social realism in plays like God, Man, and Devil, Mirele Efros, and The Jewish King Lear.

  p. 96 The dentist recalls prominent figures on the Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century. Morris Rosenfeld (1862–1923) was known as a “sweatshop poet” after the theme of some of his best known verses. Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908) staged the first known Yiddish public entertainment in Galicia in 1876 and was touted as “father of the Yiddish stage.” “In the Plow Lies the Blessing,” by the popular folk poet and wedding bard Eliakum Zunser (1836–1913), extolled the pioneers who went to till the land of Israel. Goldfaden and Zunser did not fare as well in New York as they had in Europe.

  p. 96 Naftali Herz Imber (1856–1909) composed the song Hatikvah (The hope), which later became the national anthem of Israel. He, too, died poor and obscure in New York. Louis Miller (1866–1927), American socialist leader and editor of the Yiddish daily Warheit, 1905–1916.

  p. 96 Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), founder and longtime editor of the Yiddish daily Forverts (Forward). The Russian term molodyets, “fine fellow,” is sometimes used ironically.

  p. 96 Dr. Hillel Solotaroff (1865–1921), anarchist theoretician and lecturer.

  p. 99 August Ferdinand Bebel (1840–1913), one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

  p. 100 Journey’s End, by R. C. Sheriff, first performed in 1928 and frequently revived, dramatizes the experience of a British Army infantry company in the trenches of France during World War I.

  p. 102 Józef Kazimierz Hofmann (1876–1957) was considered one of the finest virtuoso pianists in the world.

  p. 110 Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev (d. 1810), was one of the most beloved rabbis of the Hasidic movement. In Hasidic folklore, he is said to have interceded directly with God on behalf of the Jews.

  p. 110 Eugeniusz Jagiello, Polish Socialist, was elected to the fourth Rus sian state parliament in 1912 largely thanks to the Jewish vote.

  p. 111 Growth of the Soil, by the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, was published in 1917. Glatstein left Poland in 1914, so this image must have been imposed retroactively.

  p. 111 Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869), Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848), and Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (1842–1927) were prominent literary critics. “Our” Brandes because he was the Jew among them.

  p. 112 Bazarov, hero of Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons; Nekhlyudov, of Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection; Karamozov of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; Oblomov and Sanin, eponymous heroes of Ivan Goncharov and Mikhail Artsybashev, respectively.

  p. 113 Poem by the Yiddish poet David Einhorn, “Geshtorbn der letster bal-tfile” (The last prayer leader is dead). Glatstein gets the title slightly wrong.

  p. 116 The ancient custom of ritual flagellation for one’s sins has been observed by some into modern times.

  p. 116 Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1838–1933) was known as the Chofetz Chaim (Desirer of life), after the title of his best-known work, which instructs in the morality of permissible and impermissible speech. He was a much-beloved rabbi and teacher and ethicist.

  p. 124 The man cannot speak because he is still in the midst of his prayers, having not yet removed the phylacteries in which he davens, or prays. From what follows, it seems his piety has its limits.

  p. 137 Created by Catherine the Great in 1791, the Pale of Settlement was the Western region of imperial Russia to which Jews were confined. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Pale had a Jewish population of about five million. It was formally abolished by the Russian Revolution in 1917.

  p. 138 In 1934 Abraham Faber, a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of three men accused of shooting two men to death as part of a Boston bank robbery. All three were found guilty and executed by the state of Massachusetts on June 7, 1935.

  p. 139 The novels of French writer Joseph Marie Eugène Sue (1804–1857), particularly Mystères de Paris (Mysteries of Paris), were hugely popular, including among Jewish readers.

  p. 140 Both Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) and Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) used Paris as the location for much of their fiction.

  p. 140 The Café Dome in Montparnasse was a favored meeting place of American expatriate writers, artists, and intellectuals.

  p. 140 The poet Haim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934) was one of the leading figures of the modern Hebrew renaissance. He died on July 4, 1934.

  p. 141 Yehuda (Judah) Halevi (c. 1075–c. 1141) was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and poet. He is best known as a poet for his “Songs of Zion,” about which one of his translators, T. Carmi, wrote, “No Hebrew poet since the Psalmists had sung the praises of the Holy Land with such passion.”

  p. 143 There were several conflicts about language in Palestine of the 1920s and 1930s, including over the role of Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish homeland, and the adoption of the Sephardic, or “eastern” pronunciation as opposed to the Ashkenazic or European.

  p. 167 This image of emptying the pockets evokes the New Year ritual of tashlikh, in which Jews empty their pockets into a naturally flowing body of water, symbolically casting their sins into the sea.

  p. 167 Echoes Psalm 137, in which the poet vows never to forget Jerusalem.

  p. 167 A makeshift dwelling that Jews build for the harvest festival of Sukkoth, the sukkah is often used as metaphor for material insubstantiality.

  BOOK TWO. HOMECOMING AT TWILIGHT

  p. 185 Buchlerner in Yiddish means something like “he who studies books.”

  p. 186 The Biblical Esau, twin brother of Jacob, here represents a generic Gentile alternative to Judaism. The “man in the skullcap” insists that drinking must be sanctified, serve a higher purpose.

  p. 187 Havdalah, the ceremony at the end of the Sabbath that marks its separation from the rest of the week, includes a blessing over wine.

  p. 192 L’Arlésienne is a suite by Georges Bizet to accompany a play of the same name by Alphonse Daudet.

  p. 193 Fountain of Love: the Yiddish uses the Polish phrase źródło miłości.

  p. 194 Israel Ben Eliezer (1698–1760), known as the Ba’al Shem Tov or Master of the Good Name, is the founder of Hasidic Judaism, a movement that changed the primary emphasis from study to direct apprehension of God and joyful celebration of His universe.

  p. 196 Observant Jewish women did not show their own hair after marriage.

  p. 197 The Cossack tribes of what are now Ukraine and Belarus were famous for their skills as horsemen and soldiers.

  p. 197 The Torah is said to contain 613 mitzvot, or commandments, which consist of prescriptions and interdictions.

  p. 200 The wife of Lot in Genesis 19 is turned to salt when she looks back at the City of Sodom that they are leaving.

  p. 200 Prince Jósef Poniatowski (1763–1813), brother of the last king of Poland, Stanisław. August Poniatowski distinguished himself in one of the battles of the Polish-Russian war of 1792.

  p. 202 The patriarch Abraham negotiates with the sons of Heth, or Hittites, to secure a burial place for his wife Sarah in Genesis 23. Ephron is their chief negotiator.

  p. 203 After the passage in Genesis 23:1, “These were the years of the life of Sarah.”

  p.
204 Colloquial for the Russians. Glatstein’s father had been called up for temporary service in the tsar’s army at a time when Lublin was under Russian rule.

  p. 206 Meyer London (1871–1926), Socialist Party representative elected to the United States House of Representatives from his Lower East Side district in 1914.

  p. 208 Opening line of famous Yiddish lullaby written by Abraham Goldfaden for his play Shulamis.

  p. 209 Passover is spring festival, Sukkot, or Tabernacles, is autumn harvest festival.

  p. 210 Apparent reference to ladder of Genesis 28:12, where Jacob sees angels ascending and descending.

  p. 214 The war between Russia and Japan from February 1904 to September 1905 was fought mostly in Manchuria, and was sometimes called the Manchurian War.

  p. 215 Richard Corey, eponymous hero of poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), is thought to be a successful young man until his suicide forces a reappraisal.

  p. 217 Balaam, Numbers 22–24, is sent to curse Israel but after God’s repeated intervention ends by pronouncing this blessing, which is traditionally recited by Jews upon entering the synagogue.

  p. 218 Menahem David ben Isaac, who bore the honorific title “Maharam” Tiktin, was a Polish rabbi of the sixteenth century. Abraham Abele Gombiner (c. 1633–c. 1683), known by the title of his commentary, Magen Abraham, was a Polish rabbi and Talmudic scholar.

  p. 219 Lulav is the palm branch used ceremoniously on Sukkot.

  p. 222 The Saxon Garden was a public park founded in Lublin in 1837.

  p. 223 Cholent is a stew baked overnight in a slow oven, usually served on the Sabbath when fire cannot be turned either on or off.

  p. 224 The feldsher, or barber-surgeon, usually had basic medical knowledge but no formal training.

  p. 226 From treyf, which means not kosher, comes trefniak, one who doesn’t keep kosher.

  p. 226 A pogrom was perpetrated against the Jews of Kalisz by local residents in 1919.

  p. 227 A symbolic representation of a fence to mark out the area within which objects may be carried on a Sabbath without a breach of Jewish law.

  p. 227 Baba Bathra is the third tractate of the Talmud, which deals with the laws of damages.

  p. 227 The gomel blessing, “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who bestows good things on the unworthy, and has bestowed on me every goodness,” is recited in recognition of salvation from illness or danger.

  p. 227 Bzhezin and łódź are cities in central Poland.

  p. 227 Rabbi Israel Hildesheimer (1820–1899), university-trained scholar and rabbi who became the leader of Orthodox Jewry in Germany.

  p. 228 Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev (see Book One, note for page 110) addressed God in the familiar second person singular, as du.

  p. 229 All the cited books are modern historical renditions of ancient biblical and rabbinic texts and legends, some in scholarly and others in fictional form. The Sages of Israel (Toldot gedoley yisroel), by Solomon Judah Leib Rapoport, applied New Critical methods to the representation of rabbinic figures. Sins of the Samaritans (Ashmot shomron), The Hypocrite (Ayit tsavua), and The Love of Zion (Ahavat tsion) are novels by the Hebrew writer Abraham Mapu (1808–1867) that were very popular in their time.

  p. 230 Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) wrote a comprehensive history of the Jews and taught history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau.

  p. 230 Lump and Schacherjude, German derogatory terms for a boor, a person of low status, and a Jewish haggler.

  p. 230 Kiddush is the blessing recited over wine at the start of the Sabbath meal.

  p. 230 Sir Moses Haim Montefiore (1784–1885), renowned Jewish financier and philanthropist.

  p. 231 Nathan the Wise, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), is a drama about an enlightened Jew, apparently based on the figure of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, calling for religious tolerance and mutual respect.

  p. 231 Steinman is describing the ritual of kapparot, in which the sins of a person are symbolically transferred to a fowl that is swung around the head three times and designated the atonement sacrifice—which is then given to the poor for food.

  p. 232 Dating from biblical times, the firstborn son is redeemed from a member of the priesthood. This is now done by symbolic payment. That Steinman performed this ceremony would mean that he was a Kohen or descendant of the priesthood. Hoshana Raba is the seventh day of Sukkot, marked by a special synagogue service.

  p. 232 The ram’s horn, or shofar, is blown on the Days of Awe, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Steinman is describing a community that has lost the meaning of the ceremonies that it observes.

  p. 235 Xanthippe, wife of Socrates, was reputed to be argumentative. Her name is used as a synonym for shrewishness.

  p. 236 Sabbatai Zvi (1626–1676), Jewish mystic and rabbi, who proclaimed himself the Messiah and attracted many followers in his native Turkey and across Europe. The movement collapsed after his conversion to Islam in 1666.

  p. 236 See Book One, note for page 96. Before immigrating to America where he became a playwright, Gordin founded the Biblical Brotherhood, as described here.

  p. 237 Jacob Priluki, Yelisov, Portugalev, and Rabinovich were leaders of several branches of the Brotherhood.

  p. 238 The Khazars were a Turkic seminomadic people living in central Asia. In the seventh century they founded a polity on the Caspian Sea which later adopted Judaism as its religion.

  p. 238 Eldad Hadani was a Jewish traveler of the ninth century who professed to have lived among the Lost Tribes of Israel. Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (c. 915–c. 990?), physician and minister at the Spanish Muslim court, exchanged letters with the head of the Khazar kingdom.

  p. 239 Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was the Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and political leader who founded the modern Zionist movement in 1897.

  p. 239 Leon Pinsker (1821–1891) made out the case for Jewish “autoemancipation” in an 1882 pamphlet by that name. He founded the Hovevey Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement, which encouraged the building of settlements in the Land of Israel.

  p. 241 Swiss city that served as site of the first Zionist Congress, 1897.

  p. 250 In Genesis 39 Joseph is rescued from his Ishmaelite captors by Potiphar, who sets him in charge of his household. Joseph resists the advances of Potiphar’s wife.

  p. 256 Di Shvue (The vow, 1900) is a play by Jacob Gordin. Esther Rachel Kaminska (1870–1925) was one of the leading actresses and directors of the Yiddish stage.

  p. 257 Di kishefmakherin (The witch) is a much-performed operetta by Abraham Goldfaden. Shulamith, a play about star-crossed lovers, Shulamith and Absalom, contains what became the best known Yiddish lullaby, “Raisins and Almonds,” with the opening line “In a corner room of the Holy Temple … ”

  p. 259 Jews referred to Jesus by other names, Yoshke Pandre or Yosl Panderik, for example.

  p. 260 “Woman of Valor,” concluding section of Book of Proverbs, traditionally recited on Sabbath eve.

  p. 263 Alexander Moissi (1879–1935), famous European actor who championed modern dramas of Strindberg, Chekhov, and others.

  p. 263 Babbes—old women, or midwives.

  p. 264 The familiar hymn “Ya ribon olam v’olmaya, Ant hu malke melech malchaya … ” (O God, who created all things, King of Kings, Thy praises shall I recount morning and night).

  p. 266 The midnight service, Tikkun chatzot, a Jewish recital of lamentation commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

  p. 271 The etrog, a kind of citrus fruit, was one of the four species that represent the Temple offerings on the holiday of Sukkot, or Tabernacles. It was preserved in a special box to keep it from being damaged.

  p. 283 The Polish Socialist Party was a major left-wing party created in 1892 that drew Jews into its platform of workers’ rights. The General Jewish Labor Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia—known as the Jewish Labor Bund, founded in 1897—maintained that the Jewish working class had to begin by organizing its
own ranks.

  p. 290 See note for page 236.

  p. 290 Jacob Frank (1726–1791), a Polish Jewish merchant who claimed to be the messiah. He preached a form of religion that resembled Christianity and finally urged his followers to convert to Catholicism.

  p. 291 See Book One, note for page 9.

  p. 292 The mezuzah is a parchment with quotations from the Bible. Enclosed in a box, it is placed on the right doorpost of Jewish homes.

  p. 297 Count Leopardi (1798–1837), Italian poet and thinker.

  p. 297 Henri Bergson (1859–1941), French philosopher. Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), French symbolist poet. Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), Polish romantic poet.

  p. 298 A Jewish male would have been expected to keep his head covered at all times. As a courtesy, nontraditional Jews often cover their heads when they are in an observant home.

  p. 298 At the Passover seder, the festive meal commemorating the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, a cup of wine and sometimes a ceremonial chair are set aside for the Prophet Elijah, whom folk belief expects to visit all Jewish homes that night.

  p. 302 Nahum Sokolow (1859–1936), Zionist leader and prolific Hebrew writer, editor, journalist, translator.

  p. 303 Cheder was the Jewish elementary school, which usually met in the teacher’s home.

  p. 303 The Blunderer on the Road of Life (1868–1870) traces the emergence of a young boy from the traditional Jewish world into enlightenment.

  p. 306 The Marranos were Jews of the Iberian Peninsula who converted to Catholicism under duress during the Inquisition but remained secret or crypto-Jews. The term is sometimes used for Jews who conceal their identity.

  p. 307 A Russian greeting.

  p. 310 Abraham Ibn Ezra (1093–1167) major Spanish-Jewish exegete, philosopher, scientist, and writer.