4/24/08
Cheshbon, please!
I'm sorry we had to read another Forward article with the headline "Venerable Journal In Language We Don't Read Closes Its Gaping Mouth" - and I do agree with some of the basic facts: less readers of Yiddish, less writers of Yiddish, blah blah blah zzzzz. (Fewer Yiddish letters, even. Now there are only 16: we had to lay off everything after samech. Sad.) But pleeze, if you do have a Yiddish journal, or care about Yiddish writing (yours or anyone else's), don't expect my pity until you do your utmost to share the wealth of the words you care for. Make sure your journal gets to those who want to read it (I didn't even know the journal still existed - too late now, I guess)! Make sure, for goodness' sake, that your journal has a Web page! As Miriam Koral points out: make sure that you are training your successors! Don't blame the younger generation (thanks for the sneering assessment of your juniors in the last sentence of the article, Mr. Departing Redaktor!) until you get to know them.
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ive met mr. shklar and am one of the "...handful of young Yiddish lovers who attend the club’s meetings..." and i am quite offended by shklar's illiteracy comment. when the club had a yiddish lecture on dovid hofshteyn, i was the youngest one there by 30 years. i see a yiddish tutor every week and although i am not reading at the level of חשבון yet, i surely am well beyond the level of "a few sentences". to her credit, club president Lilke Majzner did have me stand in recognition of my youth following the lecture (which i understood a good amount of).
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