Applied Nostalgia

My daughter and I had a fight last night (she's four; it happens) and we made up with me singing songs to her. The songs were in Yiddish, the language we speak at home. I was randomly singing whichever Yiddish songs happened to come into my head, and in the middle I thought: Isn't this ridiculous? The last three songs were a Bund ballad about blowing up a German ammunition convoy; a paean to Vilna; and the Partisans' Song. (I'm not usually so historical, but there you are.) It struck me, not for the first time, how unrooted my Yiddish language and culture is in my individual, quite ordinary-American-Jewish experience, and how an outside, Eastern-European-born observer might think that my use of these historically freighted songs is disrespectful, jokey, or obscene. (Some do.) What do I know of guerilla warfare, Jewish Vilna (I mean its physical bricks-and-mortar), or the routes of the Baal Shem Tov (the subject of another song)?

I used to answer "No" (a little hurt) when asked if my attachment to things Yiddish was due to nostalgia. How can I be nostalgic for something I wasn't born into? But that's precisely the point. We yearn for what we are not conditioned against. The tension of my ideological attachment to Yiddish is to be aware of the sunken past while not drifting away from the present in which Yiddish, very much extant, is quite un-Eastern European.

As for nostalgia, Jews couldn't get along without it. One of my daughter's favorite songs is Yah Ribon, whose last verse recollects the Temple. I never saw that either.

Adventures in Toddler Bilingualism
Superfluous plurals.

My Yiddish- and English-speaking* 3-year-old, while playing blocks with me:

Du bist a boyer! ("You're a builder!")
Ikh bin a boyer! ("I'm a builder!")
Mir zaynen beyde boyersn! ("We're both builders'n!", i.e. with the plural form boyers and an added plural suffix-n)

*She also sings a lot of songs in Mandarin, but I don't think she can generate a sentence.

Snows of yesteryear
Gone, daddy, gone.

Says my daughter, looking at a picture of a snowy landscape: "S'iz gegangen a shney!" ("It snowed!"). Then she paused, and said in English, "The snow's gone!" I didn't have the heart to correct such a cute calque.

If I forget thee, Fuzhou
Things I want to remember about this trip to China. A to-be-modified list.

Standing with a section of dissected stomach in the pathology laboratories of the Fujian Tumour Hospital, while smiling for the Fuzhou television news cameras. Later in that same photo op, looking wise and pathologist-y while looking through a microscope at what was, to be completely factual, slides of perfectly normal thyroid. Being asked six times what my opinion of Fujian is. (Uninformed? Naive? "Please get some traffic laws enforced, and quickly too"?)

Strolling round the eerily empty grounds of one of Fuzhou's several gated communities, to which we were invited by a gastroenterologist at the Fujian Provincial Hospital. His house was huge by Chinese standards, and beautiful. A park in the center of the compound is surrounded by statues of Mozart, Schubert, et al. "What do the farmers do whose farms used to be here?" "They work in the development."

Industry Enterprise of Nanputuo Temple Xiamen, Vegetarian Dept. A/k/a the best vegetarian restaurant I have ever eaten at.

The abovementioned Nanputuo Temple, the first Buddhist temple I have ever set foot in. "Zey davenen! [They're davening!]" said Blanca as she watched worshipers with their candles. "Nisht genoy davenen, zey tuen tefile. [Not exactly davening, they're praying.]", I managed to come up with.

Blanca's kindergarten class at four forty-five, pickup time: thirty sets of hands grabbing at the wooden barrier separating them from their parents, while my daughter sits cool as a cucumber in the middle of the room, in her chair. "Oh, hi, Dad," she might as well be saying. "Here you are, then."

Oy, baby.
Two sweet.

This post will be of interest to people who have a DVD player and use it to brainwash their child with multicolored Jewish images.

OyBaby was a fun, fluffy, undemanding DVD. It was catchy from start to finish. OyBaby 2 manages to be both frumer (more gratuitous/unconvincing/sentimental references to the tradition) and more goyish (less Hebrew, more bad English translations).

This does not mean, of course, that my daughter is not fixed to the spot whenever I put the disc in the player. I enable her addiction. And anything that pleases my daughter short of firecrackers, a chainsaw, or a pork chop is still a wonderful gift. Thanks to the aunt who gave it.

Why I Can Daven At All Those Cool Ortho Shuls on East Broadway
. . . only until my daughter is old enough to daven

Naomi Chana explains it all.

Thanksgiving leftovers
and Denver relations.

There were traditional family greetings: the opening gambit of my lawyer-philosopher uncle that he had (yet again) found a great proof for the non-existence of God (nice try!); discussions of poetry with the other uncle who was there (who also, in jovial greeting, pumped my baby's hand many times, pump-handle style, to her great amusement); my daughter's discovery of the fun that can be had with a pair of grandparents.

There were traditional activities done in non-traditional ways: a Shabbos spent at two shuls (Friday night at this shul, at whose previous incarnation my Mom and Dad were married -- it labels itself as traditional but seems to be moving ever-rightward, or, with the mechitzah height, upward; Shabbos morning with the Reconstructionists, the shul my grandmother attends).

There were activities afforded by opportunity: two Scotch-on-the-rocks at my aunt and uncle's place, part of my graduate-student mental-health regimen. (I suppose the only true guarantor of graduate-student mental health would be a fifth of Scotch, neat. But I digress.)

There was the brined turkey. I had read about brined turkeys but never yet consumed one, which I did in Denver with gusto, brio, and relish. (Not to mention panache and afan. And ganas.)

On the airplane from snowy Denver to chilly New York City, I gnawed at the turkey leftovers in satisfied fashion while our daughter slept. The woman on my left murmured, "Your baby's so good!" That was before Blanca woke up and fussed for the last forty-five minutes of the flight. Repeat after me, ma'am: Keyn eynore. Keyn eynore.

In which I am both a negligent father and a happy reader of blogs

The first, because I gave my daughter both Ebola and the common cold.

The second, because Alina Adams, friend of ours, ice-skating expert, and writer of both romances and mysteries, turns out -- not surprisingly -- to be an entertaining guest blogger as well. Welcome to the dark side, Alina.

In the temple of dairy eats, II

The Mother-Wife, the Daughter, the Father-Husband, and the Aunt were eating today at B&H. The sandaled, hair-netted, and ungloved soup-maker, the sturdy older woman I wrote about earlier, sat on a stool at the counter and watched us, in a not unfriendly way, as we ate happily at our table. As we were about to leave, the woman came up to us and started talking to Celeste. (Oops. Sorry for the style shift. I mean, Mother-Wife.)

She was talking to us, I figured out, in Polish. From my knowledge of Russian and a liberal dollop of context, I caught the words for "nose," "breathing," and "chin." What she meant, therefore, was any one of the following:

A. The baby's nose is pressed against the mother's chest, so that she (Blanca) will suffocate.

B. The baby's nose is pressed against the mother's chest, and her (Blanca's) nose will get squashed, flaring out unattractively and ruining any future friendships or romances.

C. The baby can only breathe through her nose. Since her nose is pressed etc., the air will come up into her sinuses and [something or other which I couldn't figure out].

I managed to remember how to say "thank you" in Polish, and did so. We were grateful for the soup-maker's concern, though I'm still not sure what she meant. Blanca (i.e. Daughter) seems happy.

I went home by myself on the bus, and while I was reading my book, thought I heard the bus driver talking to himself. After a few minutes I figured out that, thank goodness, this was not the case. Rather, he was only cursing at other drivers in a loud voice.

Breast-Milk Addicts for Edwards

I took them, or rather her, along with me to hand out flyers this evening at Grand Central for the sake of the Plucky Underdog. It was my first piece of campaigning ever. Blanca slept comfortably, once I decided to propagandize inside, and didn't seem to pay much attention to the proceedings. (After all, if she did vote, only one issue would matter to her: a constant, ever-flowing supply of milk, interrupted by naps.) However, I found it all really enjoyable -- making up slogans on the spur of the moment, thrusting pieces of paper at unsuspecting passersby, and engaging in debates with the more curious. A sample:

'Me: Vote for the best candidate, John Edwards, on March 2nd!

Passerby (tall, businesslike type, with chiseled jaw and no-nonsense demeanor): Why is he the best candidate?

M: [Discourse on income inequality, Kerry's obfuscation, etc.]

P: What do you mean by income inequality?

M: [Description thereof.]

P: Is he a socialist?

M: [with barely suppressed guffaw] No.

Another possible response was: well, sir, I don't think you have anything to fear about socialist influence in today's Democratic Party . . .

While the Edwardsites were soldiering along at one GCT entrance, Team Kerry staked out the other. Here's what I noticed, based on a lifetime's lack of knowledge of political science and grassroots campaigning:

Posters
Kerry: lots o' brightly colored posters, suitable for wrapping round poles.
Edwards: posters, yes, but no pole-wrappers, and not quite as many.

Brochures
Kerry: again, lots o' colors.
Edwards: Xeroxed handouts.

As I was about to leave, I met a fellow Caltech housemate who's now teaching political science at NYU. We cheerfully agreed that we were both going to vote for Edwards, though he's probably going to get clobbered. I hope, though, that the best candidate has more of a chance than the pundits credit him with. We are not Kerry's sheep.

Want to see what I bought?

It's easier for me to brag about what I didn't buy at the SOY Seforim Sale. I could have spent hundreds of dollars there, but I figured that Blanca needs a chance at a college education, and, more immediately, enough space to sleep in our apartment. But I'll also list what I did come home with, along with an interesting tidbit from a few of them. Sociologically speaking, and surprisingly enough, I didn't eavesdrop on chance to overhear any spicy conversations or anything otherwise revelatory of the state of today's Orthodoxy. Shucks. (I wonder what the Students of JTS Seforim -- sorry, Sefarim -- Sale would look like? Sexual orientation checked at the door? [See next post.])

What I didn't buy (not because I didn't want to! Who is a hero? He who conquers his impulse!):

Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, & Messianism in Izbica & Radzin Hasidism, by Shaul Magid et al.;

פיוטי סליחות, a collection of out-of-print liturgical poetry edited by an all-star team of "those who wake the slumbering" (the traditional term for those who recover forgotten manuscripts), including Daniel Goldschmidt and Israel Ta-Shma;

כתר ירושלים, The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, According to the Text and Masorah of the Aleppo Codex and Related Manuscripts, Following the Methods of Rabbi Mordechai Breuer;

Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being, by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson.

What I did buy:

God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God, by Alvin Plantinga. ("[B]elief in other minds and belief in God are in the same epistemiological boat; hence if either is rational, so is the other. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.")

Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature, by Daniel Sperber. ("[Describing a source in Tanhuma] [The] Biblical teraphim . . . were made of slaughtered first-born men, salted and oiled. Then certain magical formulae were engraved on a golden plate. The resultant image was then placed in a niche in the wall, candles were lit beside it; it would speak in oracular fashion, answering questions and no doubt foretelling the future.") I particularly look forward to his translation and treatment of Yerushalmi Berachot 1:1.

בעלי התוספות, The Tosaphotists: Their History, Writings, and Methods, by Ephraim Urbach (Expect me to wax even more Ashkenazic over the next weeks and months . . .)

The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised, by Marc Shapiro ("Some kabbalists taught that as a punishment for what Maimonides wrote in his philosophical writings he was condemned to be reincarnated as a worm.")

הלכה, מנהג ומציאות באשכנז 1000-1350, Ritual, Custom and Reality in Franco-Germany, 1000-1350, by Israel M. Tashma

(As for Agnon's A Simple Story, suffice it to say that my purchase thereof is not so simple. I've tried to buy it twice from D-book, an Israeli on-line firm, which I would have recommended once upon a time. Now I have to go buy it somewhere in person, which might take me a while. Just -- cough, cough -- go on without me, fellow Book Schnooks! Leave me by the side of the road! And do so with the help of Kobi Haron's Web page.)

Blanca Berger Sollod!

Or, in Jewish: Beyle Nekhome bas Kale Khane!

Today, Sunday (24 Teves in the Jewish calendar), we gave her a name and had a party. She is named after two folks, olevasholem, worthy of esteem. Blanca (or Beyle) Seifter was a elderly Czech-Jewish woman who lived with her husband Dalek next to my wife Celeste while she was growing up in San Francisco. Celeste and the Seifters adopted each other: they were her surrogate grandparents, and since they had no children, she became their surrogate grandchild. It seems they had lived a hard life, and did not find the world a congenial place to bring new people into.

Celeste would flee to them when the burden of parental rule -- homework, for example, or being made to eat foods she didn't like -- became too much. The Seifters would ply her with pound cake, bananas, and tea, this last served in a little orange mug-and-saucer. The mug and saucer now have pride of place in our kitchen. We save used tea bags in it so that Blanca can go to college. (This is Celeste's theory of waste-not-want-not. You didn't hear it from me.)

My grandfather, Nathan (Nachum) Nemirow, was a hard worker of practical intelligence who made his living in different ways. Among other things, he was a navigator in a bomber during the Second World War (competing with other crews to see who could calculate the fastest), and owned a bar in Denver for some decades after the war. He liked a joke and a Scotch. He used to complain, "How can you be so good at school and so awful at chess?" It should be only days before Beylke will be able to beat my pants off.

As they say in Yiddish, I hope that they will be good intercessors for our child, and I hope she distinguishes their names as much as they did in their lifetimes.

You can skip the following if you don't need more details about the people in the photos. Incidentally, pictures of the party are thanks to my friend from Caltech, Andrew Grangaard. Thanks, Andrew! (Though NB: Berger Sollod is her last name.)

Pictures 1, 2, and 3: various views of the social hall downstairs at our shul. Picture 4: me 'n' her. (More pictures of her passim.) Picture 9: your host and his wife.

Thanks, readers, for indulging me. Hope to see you by her wedding canopy.

Enentation comments

A joyful aside

As I write this post, my daughter's lying in a nursery on the 13th floor of a local hospital. She's nearly twelve hours old.

My wife is sleeping soundly down the hall from her.

As for me, I feel a sudden sharp desire to change diapers.

Enentation comments