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From My Bookshelf: Biography of the Heroic Herman Stern

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

ShoptaughAs mentioned on my other blog (Practicing Writing), I recently had the opportunity to speak about Quiet Americans with a group of readers at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. Following our meeting, we toured the museum’s new exhibit, “Against the Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941.”

I found the exhibit fascinating and returned another day to explore it more carefully. I also took notes. I was particularly captivated by the exhibit’s introduction to Herman Stern, a German-born Jew who immigrated to the U.S. in 1903. He was 16 at the time. Subsequently, Stern became a successful businessman in North Dakota. And from North Dakota, he managed to help more than 100 Jews escape from Nazi Europe.

I wanted to know more details than the exhibit provided, so I put my research skills to work. Soon enough, I located a biography of Stern in a local college library: Terry Shoptaugh’s “You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me”: Herman Stern and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, published in 2008 by the Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota State University. (more…)

From East Europe to the East Bay: 100 Years After Emigration, a Bar Mitzvah in Berkeley

by Erika Dreifus on
7

I’ve spent so much time writing about my paternal family history–particularly the refugee histories of my dad’s parents–that it sometimes seems as though my mom’s side doesn’t get very much attention. But appearances can be deceiving–just because I haven’t written quite so much about my maternal ancestors doesn’t mean that I don’t think about them. This past week, in fact, I’ve been thinking about them quite a lot. And that’s because I’ve just returned from several days in Berkeley, Calif., a trip occasioned by the Bar Mitzvah of my eldest cousin’s elder child.

My dad is an only child, and my mom is one of two siblings. My sister and I have three first cousins. Gathered together for the Bar Mitzvah, I found myself thinking again about our common past and the significance of our gathering in Berkeley for A’s Bar Mitzvah. I realized (and confirmed via the Ellis Island/Port of New York records) that it was 100 years ago–during the summer of 1913–that our grandmother’s father Jacob had left Eastern Europe to immigrate to the U.S. He left behind his wife (Yettie, after whom I am named), my then-infant grandmother, and two more children (twin daughters, then in utero).

Theirs was not an unusual story. (more…)

Upcoming Seminar on Teaching Holocaust Literature; Applications due October 21

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has issued a call for applications for participation in the 2014 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar, “Holocaust Literature: Teaching Fiction and Poetry,” which will run January 3-8, 2014.

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies announces the 2014 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar. This year’s Hess Seminar is designed for professors who are teaching or preparing to teach English, Jewish studies, modern languages, literature, or other courses that have a Holocaust-related literature component. Sessions will focus on imaginative responses to the Holocaust created by a variety of writers, from those writing during the Holocaust to survivors to second generation authors to those without an explicit family connection to this event.

The seminar will be co-led by Anita Norich, from the Department of English Language and Literature and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at University of Michigan, and Erin McGlothlin, from the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis.

Applications are due on October 21, 2013. For application guidelines, please visit the museum’s website.

From My Bookshelf: To Sing Away the Darkest Days by Norbert Hirschhorn

by Erika Dreifus on
1

HirschhorngifPublished by Holland Park Press, To Sing Away the Darkest Days: Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs “is the culmination of a five-year project which saw Norbert Hirschhorn source more than one thousand Yiddish songs from several archives and from collections on the Internet, as well as from CDs.” I learned about this book through a post that the publisher contributed to the Jewish Book Carnival Goodreads group, and when I received an offer of a review copy, I accepted.

The book’s first half is devoted to Hirschhorn’s “re-imaginings” (his term) of the old Yiddish songs. Some source material is likely to be familiar to many readers: “Mayn Yidishe Mame” and “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen,” for instance. But plenty of Hirschhorn’s inspiration comes from material that I hadn’t encountered before.

Beginning on page 57, the book’s focus turns to “Sources, transliterations, literal translations, [and] links to music.” Starting with the book’s first poem and proceeding anew to the last, the reader finds a transliteration of each song’s original Yiddish text, a literal translation into English, historical background and notes, and, where possible, links to audio or video. I’m still trying to decide if I might have preferred having all of this information directly follow each of the poems instead; the format selected requires a lot of flipping back and forth for the reader who wants edification as she goes along, poem by poem.

In any case, Hirschhorn has done something wonderful here, and I encourage readers interested in Yiddish language and literature (as well as in poetry itself) to investigate. I’ll even recommend a place to start: Hirschhorn’s publisher has created a page with links to some of the songs behind the poems. Go over there, and enjoy.

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
2

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • “I am reading the streets of Tel Aviv for their genre affiliations,” writes Kevin Haworth for the Bending Genre website.
  • A terrific review of one of my own recent reads, Merrill Joan Gerber’s The Hysterectomy Waltz.
  • More about Alice Walker’s odious words.
  • The Jewish Week presents its summer reading section.
  • Jewish Review of Books has redesigned its website in time for its new summer issue.

    • Shabbat shalom.