“It  has  become  evident  that  no  external  factor  can  induce  anti‐Semitism in  the  anti‐Semite. Anti-Semitism  is  a  free  and  total  choice  of  oneself,  a  comprehensive attitude  that  one  adopts  not  only  toward  Jews,  but  toward  men  in  general,  toward  history  and  society;  it  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  a  passion  and  a  conception  of  the  world.” 
(Sartre, Jean-Paul (1949), Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, p11)

One can view the Territorialists as crackpots and dreamers. Indeed, some of them were. However, many of them were practical and highly respected Jewish leaders. Some of their failures were the result of unreliable partners. Others failed because they came too late to be the places of rescue that they were hoped to be.

LA Yiddish Day, by most accounts, was a success. But to me and Aaron Castillo-White, as co-organizers, it was a bit of a shock. We weren’t certain that anyone would come at all, and furthermore, it was difficult at times to lock in all the details we needed.

Esther Shumiatcher (1899-1985) was born in Gomel, Belarus at the turn of the century. Although she immigrated to Canada with her family at the age of 12, she continued to write poetry in Yiddish, and in her marriage with the Yiddish playwright Peretz Hirschbein, she became part of a leading couple in the Yiddish literary scene. Her poem “Albatros” became the namesake of a prominent Yiddish literary journal in Berlin. One of her most noted poetic works is “9 months,” a poetic saga about pregnancy.

Perennial Philosophy begins with the idea that all religions, however different, share a mutual and identical core. That core is the unified divinity which is in the base of all things and is both immanent and transcendent, meaning, it manifests in the observable world and at the same time is external to it. While all religions developed fundamentally different doctrines, practices and theologies, it is the esoteric part of each religion which appears to be similar, the part in which one can tap into divinity itself, communicate and participate within it.

We have the potential and power to oppress the weak or console and raise up the weak. And when we are the weak we can allow ourselves to be raised up. When we forget to see the wonder in creation we forget God. While we wait for absolute clarity, we can let the opportunity to make some meaning in the world through our actions pass us by. 

When I see a new generation of Yiddish-speaking Hasidim on Joe Rogan style podcasts, watching Tucker Carlson, engaging in heavy consumer culture and swearing profusely, I don’t think to blame them for the rabbit holes they’ve gone down or why they’ve gone down them. I think everyone is going down the same rabbit holes. I bring this example only to demonstrate that not even a community that kept Yiddish, ultra-orthodoxy, and strict rules about media consumption can withstand the vortex.

According to Maimonides’s “Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith,” one central principle of Judaism is the belief in the arrival of Messiah and the messianic era. We orient ourselves to the messiah as we orient to the future; the messiah is the one who has not yet arrived. But in Elijah’s prophecy to Gavriel in Gates of the Forest, Elijah claims that “The Messiah is not coming. He’s not coming because he has already come.”

The lack of awareness is the lack of ego, and the lack of ego allows us to do the impossible without hesitation, like little kids believe that everything is possible.

As a bookseller in San Francisco, I looked up to the great booksellers of the city from times gone by. There was a time when downtown San Francisco was dotted with a fine variety of booksellers, new, used and antiquarian. Even in my time we had dealers like Jeremy Norman who specialized in rare medical books and handled the Albert Einstein letters, along with McDonalds Book Shop in the Tenderloin, whose dilapidated collection was known as “a dirty ill-lit place for books.”

Most names for God in Yiddish come directly from Hebrew, but in the process of their translation, they take on connotations that are unique to the Yiddishe Neshomeh, the Jewish Soul. These Hebrew names, when translated to English, retain a sense of loftiness and power. In Yiddish, they mostly become more approachable.

Ziame Telesin (1909-1996) was born in Kalinkovitsh, Polesia, Belarus. He and his wife, the poet Rokhl Boymvol, lived in Minsk and wrote in Yiddish, translated Russian literature into Yiddish, and also wrote Soviet patriotic poetry. He volunteered on the Russian front in WWII and suffered severe shell-shock. He wrote for several Yiddish journals including Eynikeyt and Folks-shtime. He and Boymvol immigrated to Israel with their son in 1971.

“Every (spiritual) light which doesn't take away a darkness can't be relied upon.”

We are told that in order to really make a difference, we need to convince our friends and family of our rightness. This is true, but at what cost? Given that our directive was ordered from afar, is there going to be any sensitivity instructed for these conversations?

Fear of the other is a significant part of Jewish experience and thinking, and not without reason. We have lived as a minority people wherever we were, at the whims of kings and princes.

…”purification is an inner process which is never ended but in which we continually become ourselves.”

In lieu of my Makhshoves this week, I decided to translate a Yiddish poem by the author Avrom Zak (1891-1980). Zak was born in Amdur, in Russian Poland, and wrote and lived with the Yiddish literary community in Warsaw before escaping to the Soviet Union in 1940. He returned to Warsaw in 1946 and settled in Buenos Aires in 1952, where he wrote his volume Fun heysn ash, which includes this poem. In “My Years,” the poet reflects on living life as a poet.

When God confused the languages of the builders of the tower, he perhaps did so to prevent the "Tyranny of the majority” as Mill puts it. Cooperation and understanding could appear positive, but a healthy development of societies comes from disagreements. The entire Jewish tradition and thought is constructed upon accounts of disputes.

דער מלמד פֿון אַ מאָל באַקומט נישט קײן בכּובֿדיקן אָרט אין דער אַלטער הײם, סײַ צװישן די קינדער, סײַ פֿון די װאָס האָבן זיך דערמאָנענן אין זײערע קינדעריאָרן װעגן זײערע דערפֿאַרונגען אין חדר. ער האָט צװײ שיטות פֿון לערנען: דאָס זיסװאַרג און די שטראָפֿן (ד.ה., שמײַסן). ער איז אויפֿן נידעריקסטן שטאָפּל פֿון לעבן, דאָס איז זיכער.

R’ Gamaliel writes that tohu and bohu, formlessness and emptiness, were some of the eternal materials that God used to create the world. This transformation entails a logical contradiction. How can formlessness be a material? The very lack of form becomes form.