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ABSTRACT
The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not just an opportunity to discover understudied aspects of the Jewish urban experience and modern Yiddish culture, but also allows us to tap into a less refined level of beliefs, behavior, judgments and attitudes of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America. Tashrak wittily conveyed to his readers a comforting image of the New World: New York City was just an enlarged shtetl, whose Jewish residents clashed over a host of issues, while encountering a number of stereotypical non-Jews. In his representation of internal Jewish divisions and disputes, relations with non-Jews, and the trials of modernity and assimilation, Tashrak followed, to some extent, the literary paths of earlier Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Yet critics often frowned upon his politics as either conservative or apolitical, and considered his literary style as lowbrow, thus they disregarded his work altogether, or referred to it as worthless.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Gil Ribak is an Associate Professor at the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, University of Arizona.
Notes
1 The column appeared in Yidishe gazeten, March 30, 1917: 11. A recent study has asserted that the Germanization of Yiddish endured later than previously assumed: see Krogh, “Dos iz eyne vahre geshikhte,” 88–92. See also, Weinreich, “Daytshmerish toyg nit,” 97–106. The first quote is עס איזט מיינע פפליכט די אויסערע טהיר פערשלאסען צו האלטן, אונד קיינעם איינלאס צו געבען, דער ניכט דאצו בערעכטיגט איזט, אונד דאפיר זארגע צו טראגען, דאסס דאס אייגענטום דער לאדזשע אימער אן זיינען בעשטימטען פלעצע זיכער אונטערגעבראכט ווירד .” The second is “עס איז מיין דזשאב צו האלטען די טהיר פארמאכט און די אויגען אפען אז עס זאלען זיך ניט אריינכאפען קיביצער און זיך ניט ארויסכאפען ווער מיט פרעמדע קאלאשען, אדער אמברעלעס ”. Unless otherwise mentioned, all the translation from the Yiddish are mine. As Tashrak’s playful language was a hallmark of his writing, I kept the original transliteration rather than use the YIVO standard.
2 Communal activist Bernard G. Richards termed Tashrak “A Jewish Mark Twain,” Boston Evening Transcript, September 21, 1910 (copy does not show page numbers). “Ghetto Mark Twain” appears in Baltimore News, January 9, 1911, 2, newspaper clipping in Papers of Tashrak, folder 27, RG 1502, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York (henceforth YIVO).
3 The quote is by Krutikov, “Cityscapes of Yidishkayt,” 160.
4 Roskies, “Sholem Aleichem and Others,” 53–77. Shpigelblat, “Sholem Aleichem: der dikhter fun yidishn humor,” 190–202. Cf. Miron, “The Dark Side of Sholem Aleichem’s Laughter,” 16–55.
5 Moses Rischin has mentioned “Megashtetl” in “The Megashtetl/Cosmopolis,” 171.
6 Examples of that critique are quoted below.
7 On Tashrak’s career, see Reyzin, Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye, 4: 902–12; and Charney, ed., et al., Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 8: 807–8. Miriam Shomer Tsunzer described Tashrak’s entertaining personality as well as his unreciprocated love for Rose Pastor in “Fun yidishn literarishn nu-york baym onheyv yorhundert,” 179–81. See also, Tashrak, “Rose Harriet Pastor,” 32–4.
8 On the symbolism of shtetls names in Yiddish literature, see Miron, The Image of the Shtetl, 14–15, 106–7; and Shandler, Shtetl, 28.
9 Zevin, “Iber gvald bistu a yid,” 1: 53–6. My translation of that feuilleton into the English appears in this issue. Glupsk appears in “Dem noged’s mazl,” ibid., 2: 131–8. On the problem of utilizing maskilic concepts in American Yiddish literature, see Berkowitz, “This Is Not Europe, You Know,” 135–65. On declining religious observance, see the scathing critique (1887) by an Orthodox Rabbi, Moses Weinberger, in Sarna, ed. and trans., People Walk on their Heads.
10 Tashrak, Etikete, 87, 131–2. On maskilic critique of Jewish society, see Fuenn, “The Need for Enlightenment” (1840), and Maskilim to the Governors of the Pale, “A Jewish Program for Russification” (1841), in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World, 357–60; Etkes, “Teudah be-yisrael – beyn tmurah le-masoret,” 3–19; Orbach, New Voices of Russian Jewry, 54–71, 108–23; Salo W. Baron commented on the suspicion of most Jews in Russia toward maskilim, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets, 112–13.
11 The feuilleton appears in Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 2: 59–66. Even though the first group of Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, organizers chose 1655 as the anniversary year, since in that year the Dutch West India Company granted Jews the right to settle (and overruled the objection of Governor Peter Stuyvesant). On the 250th anniversary celebration, see Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 36–42; and Friedman Rosen, “Earlier American Jewish Anniversary Celebrations,” 481–97.
12 The comic references are to Israel Joseph Benjamin, a Romanian-born Jew, who set out to emulate the twelve-century traveler Benjamin of Tudela in a search for the remnants of the tribes of Israel. Between 1859 and 1862 Benjamin II (as he called himself) made a journey across the United States, whose impressions he published in a German-language book, Three Years in America (1862, translated from the German by Charles Reznikoff and reprinted Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1956). On the dissemination of his writings in maskilic circles one could learn from Mendele Moykher Sforim’s (S. Y. Abramovitsh) book Masoes benyomen ha-shlishi (1878), 2: 161–2. Fishke the Lame is another book by Abramovitsh.
13 Zevin, “Iber gvald bistu a yid,” 59–60. On the image of the Italian fruit peddlers, see the writings of the Yiddish sweatshop poet, Rosenfeld, “A royter feliton,” 3: 75; and “Nesies in yidishen kvartal,” ibid., 3: 172. On the imagery of Italian immigrants in American Yiddish sources, see Ribak, Gentile New York, 83–6, 119–22.
14 Zevin, “Iber gvald bistu a yid,” 61–3. On the term “Damn Columbus!” by embittered immigrants (especially traditionalists), who were outraged by any of their new country’s transgressions, see the report from Philadelphia by Greenstone, “Religious Activity,” 160; Golden, The Best of Harry Golden, 10; and in Forverts, July 27, 1912, 4.
15 On Abramovitsh’s portrayal of the synagogue backbenchers, paupers and idlers, see Miron, A Traveler Disguised, 99–100, 131–5.
16 The piece about the North Pole is in Yidishes tageblat (hereafter YT), September 10, 1909, 4. On the race to the North Pole, see Henderson, True North. Tashrak’s own critique of Orthodox synagogues with their filth and untidiness is in his, Etikete, 114–18.
17 On the Tageblat, and the quote by Sarasohn, see Shtarkman, “Vikhstike momenten in der geshikhte fun der yidisher prese in amerike,” 17–18; and Shtarkman, “Di Sarasohn zikhroynes vegn der yidisher prese in amerike,” 273–4. On Paley’s style and the Tageblat’s final stage, when it took a more Orthodox line and was later swallowed by the Morgen zhurnal (1928), see Khaykin, Yidishe bleter in amerike, 89, 101, 114–20, 297–303. Arthur A. Goren wrote an essay about Morgen zhurnal, “The Conservative Politics of the Orthodox Press” that appeared in his book, Politics and Public Culture, 100–09.
18 Mendele Moykher sforim, “Fishke der krumer,” 3: 135. See also, Aberbach, Realism, Caricature, and Bias, 48–64. On Jewish self-image among Eastern European Jewish immigrants, see Ribak, “‘The Jew Usually Left Those Crimes to Esau’,” 1–28. See also, Gold, Jews without Money, 37; and Communal worker Boris Bogen, who wrote about the degenerating influence of the environment on Jews in America in “Jews of Many Lands,” 3–4.
19 Tashrak, Etikete, 131–2. On the Yiddish intelligentsia’s self-image as guides of the masses, see Irving Howe, with the assistance of Kenneth Libo, World of Our Fathers, 169–70, 533–7. On notions of civility and manners in the Yiddish press, see Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows, 196–9. See also, Metzker, ed., A Bintel Brief.
20 Tashrak, Etikete, 136–9. On Jewish thinkers who criticized the purported Jewish alienation from nature, see Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siecle.
21 Tashrak, Etikete, 87–8. On audience behavior at the Yiddish theater, and the critics of such behavior, see Warnke, “Patriotn and Their Stars,” 161–83. Sandrow, Vagabond Stars.
22 YT, February 13, 1910: 4. On residential changes and the ensuing interethnic tensions that affected Jewish immigrants and Irish-Americans in New York, see a report (1900) on a crowd of mostly Irish Americans on a Madison Street block, who tried to drive out violently the newly-settled Jewish tenants – YT, August 28, 1900: 4. See also,Barrett and Roediger, “The Irish and the ‘Americanization’,” 7–11. On the representation of the Irish in Yiddish sources, and their relations with Jewish immigrants, see Ribak, “‘Beaten to Death by Irish Murderers’,” 41–74.
23 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 9–13. Most of the stories in that collection were published in the first decade of the twentieth century. On the symbolic and historical significance of Jacob and Esau’s story in Jewish-Christian relations for centuries to come, see Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 1–30. On the midrashic maxim “Esau Hates Jacob,” see Haim Hacohen, Jacob & Esau, 73–5.
24 See, for example, the distinction between the Polish lord, Ukrainian peasantry, and a Russian colonel in Spektor, Mayn lebn, 1: 50–1, 67; 2: 51–63; a similar distinction between the Polish lord and the Russian official is in Aksenfeld, Dos shterntikhl un der ershter yidisher rekrut, 68–9. On the characterization of those archetypes, see Shmeruk, “Mayufes: A Window on Polish-Jewish Relations,” 273–86; Bartal, “The Porets and the Arendar,” 357–69. Ribak, “Between Germany and Russia,” 225–48. Miron, Image of the Shtetl, 3–4.
25 On images of the peasantry in Yiddish folklore, see Abramovitsh, “Onvayzungen un bamerkungen,” 122–3. Cahan, Der yid, 25–32; Stutchkov, Der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh, 167–8. See also, Funkenstein, “The Dialectics of Assimilation,” 1–13; and Ribak, Gentile New York, 10–18.
26 Moss, American Metropolis, 3: 240–1; Jesse Jones, The Sociology of a New York City Block, 12, 15, 64; A. Berlow (A. Vorleb), American Jewish Autobiographies Collection (YIVO), #70: 43. One can mention here only a handful of examples: Max Feigan, ibid., ibid., #4: 23. Yechezkel Gittelson, Amerikaner yidishe geshikhte be’al-pey (YIVO), box 2: 3; Levi Glas, ibid., 20; Adolph Held, ibid., 5; Hyman Plumka, American Jewish Autobiographies Collection (YIVO), #19: 24; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 84; Rolnik, Zikhroynes, 169–70; Danzis, Eygen likht, 26–7; and Kopelov, Amol in amerike, 157–64.
27 James F. Richardson mentioned the Irish “sport” in The New York Police, 166–8. For the image of Irish in New York’s popular entertainment, see Snyder, The Voice of the City, 110–14. See also, Mooney, Irish Stereotypes in Vaudeville, 1865–1905. John and Appel, Pat-riots to Patriots.
28 See the description of the Irish in Abraham Cahan’s article, “Unzer inteligents,” Tsukunft (February 1910): 109. Leon Kobrin’s story, “Klayninke neshome’lekh” appeared ibid (January 1909): 40–4. Kornblit’s story, “Oysgenikhtert” (Sobered Up), was published in Maccabaean (October 1901): 41–4. Masliansky, Masliansky’s droshes fir shabosim un yon-toyvim, 1: 187; See the portrayal of Irish policemen as antisemitic and corrupt in John (Yoyne) Paley’s novel, Di shvartze khevre oder nu york bay tog un bay nakht, 38–46. Tsiyony wrote in YT, October 19, 1899, 4: 7. Zelikovitsh, Geklibene shriftn, 42. See Tashrak’s reference to Irish as “Beytsimer,” YT, January 28, 1910: 4. See also, Appel, “Betzemer” ; ibid., 236–7; and Glanz, Jew and Irish, 97–8.
29 The sketch appeared in Minikes’ peysakh-blat (1917), 10.
30 YT, July 21, 1909: 4. As Hasia R. Diner has noted, the Lower East Side was far from being a singularly Jewish urban space – Lower East Side Memories, 42–4.
31 The first feuilleton is in YT, October 12, 1917, 6. The second is ibid., September 10, 1909, 4. Ribak, “Beaten to Death,” 53–4. See Tashrak’s praise of the Irish in English in “Ghetto Mark Twain,” Baltimore News, January 9, 1911, 2, newspaper clipping in Papers of Tashrak, folder 27, YIVO. Other praise for the Irish by other Yiddish writers is in Yidishe gazetn, August 9, 1895, 1; May 16, 1902, 4. Varhayt, March 22, 1911, 4. On Zangwill and the Melting Pot concept, see Nahshon, “From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot,” 53–60; and Vital, “Zangwill and Modern Jewish Nationalism,” 243–53.
32 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 4: 107–11. On Jews and arson for insurance purpose, see Weissman Joselit, Our Gang, 33–40. There is a large volume of scholarship about the relations between established, Uptown “Yahudim” and Downtown, Eastern European Jews, see Rischin, The Promised City, 95–8, 110–11; Cohen, Encounter With Emancipation, 301–44; Berrol, “Germans versus Russians: An Update,” 142–56; and Szajkowski, “The Yahudi and the Immigrant: A Reappraisal,” 13–44.
33 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 158–9. The Israeli Folktale Archive (IFA) has many examples of Jews outwitting peasants. See Fishl Sidr, Sipurey-‘am me-borislav. Shmuel Zanvel Pipe, Sipurey-‘am me-sanuk. See also, Ezra Glinter, “The Life and Death and Life of Coney Island,” accessed June 28, 2019, https://forward.com/culture/art/325835/the-life-and-death-and-life-of-coney-island/.
34 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 2: 38–43. On Americanized Yiddish, see Bashevis Singer, “Problems of Yiddish Prose in America,” 5–12.
35 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 14–18. On Jewish lack of observance, see another short piece by Tashrak, “He Knows Something about Jews,” ibid., 2: 113–14. On mixed marriages at that period, see Drachsler, Democracy and Assimilation, 124–8. On Jewish-Irish mixed marriages, see Philip Krantz’s essay in Fraynd, November 1917, 11–13; Varhayt, July 1, 1909, 1; July 6, 1909: 1; and the report by Celia Silbert in American Jewish Chronicle, August 18, 1916, 456–7.
36 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 33–5. See also “John McCarthy’s Suke,” ibid., 4: 75–80, which attacks Jewish atheists.
37 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 57–61. Tashrak referred to Germans as more civilized than the Irish, but even more antisemitic – see his stories, “In Crotona Park,” ibid., 1: 19–21; and “Yoshke the Dog,” ibid, 1: 39–43. See also Ribak, Gentile New York, 70–3.
38 YT, December 13, 1909: 4. See a succinct history of Temple Emanu-El in Stephen Birmingham, “The Temple that Our Crowd Built,” New York Magazine, April 21, 1980: 45–8. The second story is in Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 4: 75–8. At the rabbi’s advice, the janitor increases the cost, and that pulls in the radicals, as now it is a class struggle, and that is what makes them come to the suke (even if it is to celebrate their victory).
39 Zevin, Tashrak’s beste ertselungen, 1: 61, 160–1. On ethnic succession in New York City, see 61st Congress, 3rd Session, Reports of the Immigration Commission (1911, reprinted New York: Arno, 1970), 26: 164–165. Nadel, Little Germany, 161–2.
40 Circulation estimates appear in Goldberg, “Di yidishe prese in di fareynikte Shtatn 1900–1940,” 130, 133, 137. Khaykin, in Yidishe bleter, 101, 110–11, estimates a circulation of 70,000 in 1898 and 100,000 2 to 3 years later. According to him, the Tageblat was the second richest foreign language in America, surpassed only by the German Staats Zeitung. See also, Howe, World of Our Fathers, 518–22.
41 Reyzin and Voliner are in Reyzin, Leksikon, 4: 905–6, 910. See also what bal-Makhshoves (Isidor-Yisroel Eliashev) wrote about Tashrak in Charney, ed., et al, Leksikon, 8: 808. Cf. the eulogy to Tashrak in Groyser kundes, October 15, 1926, 4. On shund literature, see Cammy, “Judging The Judgment of Shomer,” 85–127.