by Ezra Glinter
Today few newspapers continue to publish fiction. The same is not true of the Forward, however. Under Boris Sandler, who was editor-in-chief of the Yiddish Forward from 1998 until 2016 and is himself an accomplished writer of fiction, drama, and poetry, the newspaper continued to publish the most talented contemporary writers in the language. And as Yiddish publishing has shrunk, the Forward has become an even more vital outlet than before.
Like everything regarding Yiddish—as well as journalism, literature, and publishing—much has changed in the century since the Forward topped a circulation of some 250,000 daily readers. Today the Forward’s audience is no longer a mass public, but a specialized readership that looks to the newspaper to uphold the best Yiddish literary traditions, in every possible medium. Thus, the Forward not only continues to publish fiction in its biweekly print edition, but has a special section of its website devoted specifically to literary writing, a rarity for any newspaper today.
As much as things have changed, however, certain things have stayed the same. The Yiddish fiction found in the Forward is as much an international endeavor as it ever was, with writers hailing from Israel, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere. And it continues to represent an immense diversity of both style and subject matter. Just as their predecessors did before them, today’s contributors to the Forward are constantly expanding the boundaries of what Yiddish fiction is, and what it might yet be.
Blume Lempel
1907–1999
ONE OF THE most experimental authors of modern Yiddish prose, Blume Lempel often dealt with erotic themes and subject matter, and made use of free-associative and stream of consciousness literary techniques.
Born in Khorostov, in what is now Ukraine, Lempel lost her mother when she was twelve years old, and received little formal education. In 1929 she decided to immigrate to Palestine, but after stopping in Paris to visit an older brother, wound up living there for nine years. In Paris she attended night school and married a furrier, Lemel Lempel, with whom she had two children. In 1939, Lempel moved to the United States with her family. They settled in New York, where Lempel attended classes at the New School for Social Research.
Lempel’s first published writing was in 1943 in the newspaper Der tog (The Day), where she wrote under the pseudonym Rokhl Halperin. In 1947 she serialized a novel titled Tsvishn tsvey veltn (Between Two Worlds) in the Communist newspaper Morgn-frayhayt (Morning-Freedom), while writing other pieces for Yiddish newspapers and literary journals.
Lempel published two collections during her lifetime, although much of her work remained uncollected. In 1950 she moved to Long Beach, Long Island, where she lived until her death in 1999.
“A Journey Back in Time” was included in Lempel’s 1986 collection Balade fun a kholem (Ballad of a Dream) and was published by the Forward on November 5, 1999, to commemorate its author’s death. Its phantasmagorical style and sexual subject matter are typical of Lempel’s experimental and introspective tendencies, making it a fitting tribute to one of the most innovative writers of recent Yiddish fiction.
A Journey Back in Time
(NOVEMBER 5, 1999)
Translated by Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
I DON’T KNOW WHAT draws me to the mountains. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I’m actually more closely related to the sea. The sea is closer geographically too. Nonetheless, whenever I have a day off, I leave the city and make the five-hour bus trip to the mountains—my mountains.
We pass by other mountains on the trip up, some wild and overgrown, some bare and stony, some impassable, like the source of my own beginnings.
Throughout the journey I keep my eyes closed, blindly holding onto the thread leading me to a connection—but with what or with whom I don’t know. I don’t want to know. According to my mysterious nameless guide, it’s best to save my energy: through an unexpected twist of fate, what is now totally unimaginable might well come true.
My longing for the mountains is mysterious even to me. I feel as if I’m obeying an attraction stronger than reason. Visions that first awakened in the cradle come back to life with the full, magical force of childhood imagination. As I sit looking at a cloud-covered peak whose snowy crown ascends into the mists, I too climb into the heavens. I follow footpaths that lead nowhere. I come to the mountains as if to a long-forgotten graveyard, yet I recite no prayers of supplication. I have nothing to ask for. I have a home, a husband, successful children. I do nothing but sit, thinking about everything and nothing, until the birds take me for an inanimate object and alight on my head to peck at the buzzing flies inside.
Suddenly a snake springs out of the tall grass, interrupting my reverie. As soon as it detects my scent, it goes still, gazing at me with its haughty eyes, as if reminded of something. I stare at it and it stares back, its snake eyes full of hatred, mine full of regret. Suddenly it stretches itself out, spits, and slithers away.
The snake’s bitterness lingers on my tongue for a long time. I wonder why the snake itself did not take a bite of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Why did it so generously give away such a fateful secret?
The mountains possess a reality all their own. And so I sit and weave one thought into another, leaving the outside world far behind. Metaphors flow feverishly through my mind. Dream-images glide like underwater ships, with fairy-tale ogres clambering up their masts to wait for the maidens to descend from the world above—maidens who will tame the beasts with their siren songs and instruct them in the ways of earthly passion.
I sit there until just before nightfall. And if the keeper of the forest happens by, I sometimes spend the night with him. We make no appointment beforehand, both of us believing that you never know what mood you’ll be in tomorrow or next week or even an hour from now. This applies especially to those who dwell in the mountains. They can never predict what will arrive from the other side. The sky might be bright blue, the sun shining on the silken lake, when all at once the mountains prick up their ears: A thunderclap erupts. Trees bend to the ground. The river roars with waves chasing waves. A mighty cloud like a rebel god overpowers the sun. Waters pour from the sky, and the waters below rise up to meet them.
Once, as day faded into night, I followed the dirt road into the forest. The storm was still raging. Lightning had set the trees afire, but rain was extinguishing the blaze. In the dark of night I stood in water up to my knees. Leaning against a tree, I lifted my arms and waited for a miracle. I could make out the hoot of an owl, the laughter of a lizard. Unafraid, I raised my voice and cried out. My cry was like a song, the song sung by the biblical shepherd girls at the well when distant footsteps set the mountains to trembling.
Rising above all other voices, my song drew the watchman to me and my tree. I could see the beam of his flashlight from far away as it danced through the trees and scoured the bushes. Finally it stopped at my feet, touched my body and played over my face, blinding me. Asking no questions, the woodsman picked me up and threw me over his shoulder as if I were a wild animal he’d shot and killed.
Inside his cottage it was dark. He dropped me onto a bed covered with furs. I could hear his heavy tread, and by the shine of a lightning flash I saw him bend over the fireplace. As the flame caught, I made out the stuffed head of a deer on the wall. Its broad antlers gave proof of a noble pedigree. Golden eyes looked out at the room as if the deer were wondering what it had done to cause some wrathful god to exile it to this alien place.
My eyes on the shadows leaping on the walls, I didn’t notice the keeper of mountain and forest approaching my bed. His hand on my heart was at once tender and heavy. “Not from around here,” he whispered as if to himself. “Who doesn’t know that trees attract lightning?”
I wanted to say that not only trees attract lightning; people do too.
His shadow on the wall assumed bizarre forms, sometimes a billy goat, sometimes a pagan god with singed wings. I felt his tongue slowly drawing lines on my brow. “Don’t wipe off the si
gn,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
He returned with a cup of black coffee mixed with something spicy. On the old-fashioned gramophone, Barbra Streisand was crooning a torch song. He said little, I even less. Silently he removed my shoes, my wet clothing. Without a word, he covered my body with his own.
Deep in a psychic state, I pursued every possible path, looked for every possible key. I saw the deer on the wall take off for the spring where all manner of living things were drinking clear water. On the bank, a naked man stood on all fours like the other animals to drink his fill from the plenteous source. When the deer caught the scent of a two-footed creature, it pricked up its ears and ran back to its spot on the wall.
The man who watches over mountain and forest presses his ear to my heart. His lips move slowly as if in prayer. I wonder to whom and for what he’s praying, but I dare not ask. As always, I look for the knot in every tangle, paying attention to each thread along the way. Some threads break off to form other tangles. I feel the tension roiling in my blood. To hide the trembling inside me, I begin to stammer, calling him names that have caused mountains to quake, locusts to fall to the ground.
Rain drums with fat fingers, muffling my words. Windowpanes rattle in the whistling wind. In the fireplace, wood yields without resistance to devouring flame.
The hair on his chest is stiff and prickly. A smell of mint rises from his body.
Half-awake, all in a dream, I give myself to him. I’ve been ready since yesterday, since last year, since centuries ago. I recognize him by the Adam’s apple stuck in his throat, destined to be neither spat out nor swallowed. We meet on the virgin prairie, the meadow of times past. I know his ways, his desires. I am the I of today and the she of yesterday. I am the wife of long breasts and ripe hips, low brow and wide mouth. She is naked and knows not to cover her shame. Civilization has not yet touched her wildness. She frolics in his arms. Passion responds to passion, strength flowing from him to her and back again. A shift here, a new rhythm there, all separation put aside. She is both he and she, all sexes together, black as the devil and white as an angel. Not knowing what she is, where she’s going, or what she’ll become, she ties a knot in the umbilical cord stretching from the days of our ancestors over all the hard ground, so that I will remember—or perhaps forget—that what once was will never be again. Listening to the howl of the wolf and the cry of the hyena, she nestles closer to his side. No more prey or predator tonight. The lion and the lioness lie down together in each other’s arms. Time stands still. Not time, but this moment is what counts. This moment is all.
There were other encounters to come, but they were only facsimiles, corruptions. The stuffed deer over the fireplace looked pathetic, more theatrical than suggestive. The fire had gone out. The linden trees no longer gave off their rainy scent. Instead, there was only the metallic smell of central heating. Overnight, he too had changed. No longer one of a kind, he now wore dark glasses, tight pants, and a fashionable haircut, as if posing for a picture. The mystery was over. Armed with a new passport, he had switched his identity. The former woodsman sold his land and went off to the big city. Civilization knocked down the cottage, filled in the lake, blew up the mountain. In their place, the god of surplus value built a twelve-story luxury palace with glass walls, its steel roof topped with a gilded rooster, like the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Yes, I still make excursions, if not always in the same direction. Even when I’m not sure what the question is, I keep trying to find the answer. I search the mountains, looking high and low for question and answer alike. I know the exact time of year when the sun stays its course and exactly when it turns around. I know when the morning star becomes an evening star and when the three sister stars in the Orion constellation suffer their legendary beating. I do not look at the Milky Way.
A lunatic once said to me: Don’t be seduced by a seductive word like “truth.” As we both know, the truth is this: aside from you and me, nothing exists.
Yente Mash
1922–2013
YENTA MASH, ONE of the preeminent Yiddish writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, was born in Zguritse, a small town in what is now Moldova. She received both a Jewish and a secular education and was trained as a teacher.
In 1941, when Mash was nineteen years old, she and her parents were exiled to the Siberian gulag by Soviet forces along with other “bourgeois elements.” There her parents died, and Mash endured seven years of hard labor under extreme conditions of privation and terror.
After the war Mash married and made her way to Kishinev, which was then the capital of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. For years she worked as a bookkeeper while struggling to recover from the physical and psychological scars of her experiences in Siberia.
In 1977, Mash immigrated to Israel and settled in Haifa, where, in her fifties, she began to write and publish. Her first publication appeared in the journal Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain), edited by poet Avrom Sutzkever, and won praise for its startling, vivid depictions of the twentieth century’s cataclysms and upheavals.
As Mash’s career developed, her work plumbed her life experiences across both decades and continents. Her short stories and memoiristic essays were published in Yiddish-language journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Forward. Mash was honored with Israel’s Itsik Manger Prize in 1999 and with the Dovid Hofshteyn literary prize in 2002.
“Mona Bubbe” appeared in Mash’s 1986 collection Meshane mokem (A Change of Place), and was published by the Forward on March 16, 2012, in honor of Mash’s ninetieth birthday. It takes place in the Jewish community of Kishinev, just as its members were leaving for Israel in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mona Bubbe
(MARCH 16, 2012)
Translated by Ellen Cassedy
EVERYONE IN THE city knew her, but none of us knew her real name. No one knew where she came from or who she really was—Jewish? Christian?—but we accepted her anyway, along with her peculiar name. Someone had dubbed her “Mona Bubbe” behind her back, and everyone called her that as if there was nothing strange about it, because . . . well, because in truth she didn’t matter much to any of us.
IN THE FIRST years after the war, Jews began returning from the evacuation. First we wept over the ashes of our ruined towns, and then we moved to the cities and looked around for a place to live—a corner, a room under a leaky roof, anywhere we could settle down and unpack our troubles. New to the big city, we were hungry for something familiar to nourish our souls, something to call our own. We were overjoyed when we ran into Zeke, the gaunt, towering prophet who’d apparently been sent straight from heaven to lift our spirits and relieve our loneliness. Zeke was delighted with us too. So long as we gathered around and kept on listening, he didn’t care who we were. Often enough he forgot we were there and addressed himself directly to the Lord of the Universe. Day and night, he went around in a shapeless overcoat three sizes too big, clasping an open book to his chest like the Ten Commandments. We started thinking of him as a kind of Moses, even though, unlike Moses, he didn’t stutter—in fact, his tongue was as sharp as a knife.
Zeke always orated in Hebrew, and never in a side street but always right in the center of town, or sometimes in the park where we used to stroll in the evenings on the trail of the latest gossip. A crowd would form, some admiring, others shaking their heads over the crazy fool. Some worried that the man’s recklessness was going to get him into big trouble. They begged him to watch his step, stop his flapping and jabbering. But reasoning with him was tough. He believed he was God’s messenger. It was up to him to create peace and unity in the world, to persuade the lost flock to stop following the false messiah—that is, the Soviet regime. Yes, he went that far. Fortunately, even among us Jews, hardly anyone could understand what he was talking about. Most of us considered him a harmless lunatic. But the secret police had people who specialized in such types. They concluded that this Zeke with the baggy coat was only pret
ending to be a madman. He might look like a disturbed person, but that was only a mask. In fact, he was an American agent, an anti-Soviet propagandist. In short order he was whisked away, and no trace remained of the prophet with his giant coat and holy book. Now the streets were deserted, especially in the evenings.
It took a while for Mona Bubbe to show up. Why “Mona Bubbe”? Well, why not? First of all, she was a woman, so she needed a woman’s name. And, whenever she thought someone was making fun of her, she’d flash her eyes and gnash her teeth like a baba, a witch. Your blood would curdle. But at the same time you’d see a curious smile on her lips, just like Mona Lisa’s. So some joker came up with the name Mona Baba, a combination of beauty and hag that was about as bizarre as she was. Since people were pretty sure she was a Jew, it didn’t take long for her to become Mona Bubbe. The Jewish word for “grandma” gave her a kind of protection, as if our community was watching over her. In fact, she was a minor character who would never take the place of Zeke the prophet in our hearts—but still, better than nothing.
AFTER THE COMPLETION of “Komsomol Lake” and the splendid tree-lined path that surrounded it, another site on the south side was designated for an impressive stairway with columns, fountains and a garden. The whole area was called the Summer Park, just like in Leningrad. There were halls where various games were played, a movie theater, and an open-air stage. All in all, it was a magnificent city project, which provided the starving population with cultural activities to consume along with our miserable crusts of postwar bread.