Oytsres gor a sakh

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The day came. A hundred friends and relatives assembled at my husband’s family’s temple in Baltimore. In memory of my mother and Jeff’s father, Meg lit candles and recited a lovely secular blessing, in Yiddish, composed by Judith Seid. "Zol di sheynkayt fun zeyr lebn balaykhtn di doyres," she chanted. ("May the beauty of their lives shine from generation to generation.")

The Torah service followed. Meg recited in Hebrew, then began her remarks in English interspersed with Yiddish poems and songs. She started with a poem by early-20th-century Russian immigrant Eliezer Shindler:

Undzer yidish
Undzer sphrakh
Farmogt dokh
Oytsres gor a sakh. . .

Our Yiddish
Our language
Does indeed possess
A wealth of treasures . . .

The treasures Meg chose to share ranged from the happy song about the joys of poverty to Polish writer I.L. Peretz’s "Bontshe shvayg" ("Bontshe the Silent"), a scathing tale that, in Meg’s words, "tells Jews to wish for more than a good breakfast—to stand up for themselves instead of meekly bowing down." She read from a worker’s 1908 letter to the Forward, New York’s Yiddish-language daily, about his struggle to fight back against a tyrannical boss. She read from Avrom Reisen’s tale of the battle between the sexes, concluding that "we must continue to fight for equality."

One man came up at the end of the service wiping his eyes. "I’m going to have to send you the dry cleaning bill for my handkerchief," he told Meg. "You said that blessing just the way my mother used to." Great-great-uncle Will whispered the highest praise: "She doesn’t even have an accent!"

For me, Yiddish—the embodiment of the everyday, the profane—is sacred. In part this is because for my generation—and for Meg’s
—Yiddish is exotic, endangered. No longer taken for granted, it has become a precious thing, a treasure we must honor and protect.

Meg deserves the last word:

"I’m glad I connected myself with both the religious Jewish language and the more everyday one. These languages came alive to me. I plan to pass on the knowledge of Yiddish to my children, who, I hope, in turn will pass it on to their children. Sholem aleykhem and shalom!"

From the Jewish feminist magazine Bridges (Spring 2000). Subscriptions: $15/yr. (2 issues) from Box 24839, Eugene, OR 97402.

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