מענדעלע

Archive-Name: gov/us/fed/congress/record/1998/may/21/1998CRS5347A [Congressional Record: May 21, 1998 (Senate)] [Page S5347-S5348] >From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr21my98-177]

MORDECHAI STRIGLER

<bullet> Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today is a bittersweet day at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where the annual commencement ceremony will include an unprecedented presentation of a posthumous honorary doctorate to Mordechai Strigler, the talented editor of the Yiddish Forward who died last week at the age of 76. I rose almost a year ago today to share with the Senate the news of the Forward's centenary. This remarkable newspaper, which once helped hundreds of thousands of new immigrants learn about their new homeland, now prints Yiddish, Russian and English weekly editions. The Yiddish edition has gone from a daily press run of 250,000 copies to a weekly run of 10,000, but has retained much of the literary excellence and social conscience that has so characterized the Forward during its storied history. Mordechai Strigler was born in 1921 in Zamosc, Poland, and was sent to study in a yeshiva at age 11. In 1937 he began work as a rabbi and teacher in Warsaw. When the Germans occupied Poland in 1939, he tried to escape to Russia, but was caught at the border. He spent

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a few months at the Zamosc ghetto with his parents and then five years in several concentration camps. In Buchenwald, he was a member of the Resistance and served as a covert teacher for the children incarcerated there. He was liberated on April 11, 1945. After the war, he began writing furiously and prolifically for the next 53 years until his death. He chronicled the slave-labor camps and death factories in a six-volume Yiddish series called ``Oysgebrente Likht'', which means ``Extinguished Candles''. In 1955, Strigler published two volumes called ``Arm in Arm with the Wind,'' a historical novel about Jewish life in Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries. His newspaper career began in Warsaw just before the war and flourished in Paris after the war. In France, he served as editor of Unzer Vort (Our world), a Yiddish daily. While in New York, he was offered the editorship of the Kemfer, a position he held until 1995. He published such classic Yiddish writers as Abraham Reizen, H. Leivik, Chaim Grade, and Jacob Glatstein. In 1978, Strigler was awarded the Itzak Manger Prize in Jewish Literature, one of the most distinguished prizes in the field. He became editor of the Yiddish Forward in 1987, following the retirement of Simon Weber, and he remained at its helm until last month. ``The death of Strigler marks not only a sad transition for his colleagues in the Yiddish, Russian, and English editions of the Forward but also a milestone in the area of Yiddish-language journalism and the literature of the Holocaust,'' the English-language Forward said in an obituary. I ask to have printed in the Record the English edition of the Forward's moving editorial tribute to this talented journalist.

Mordechai Strigler

Mordechai Strigler, the editor of the Yiddish Forward who died Sunday at the age of 76, was one of the giants. Born at Zamosc, Poland, he became famous at a young age as a genius of Talmud. He was apprenticed to the greatest sages of his time. He was at the barricades in Warsaw when the Germans invaded. He fled toward Russia, but was captured by the Nazis, who cast him into concentration camps. His parents and three of his seven sisters perished. He himself was in, among other camps, Maidenek, Skarhisko and Buchenwald, where he was a member of the Resistance and where on liberation he was spotted by Meyer Levin, who wrote about his heroism in his memoir ``In Search''. Levin told of Strigler gathering children secretly in the barracks and teaching them Yiddish and Hebrew. He had lost his pre-war manuscripts during the war. It is said that upon liberation he began writing furiously. He continued until weeks before he died. He turned out cycles of poetry and novels, as well as biblical commentaries and analysis of rabbinic responsa and thousands of items of journalism--editorials, dispatches, criticism and feuilletons. Moving to Paris immediately after the war, he became editor of Unzer Vort and joined the Labor Zionist movement. As editor of the Yiddisher Kemfer and, later, the Yiddish Forward as well, he maintained a courteous and gentle exterior, but it belied an extraordinary toughness. No matter how others around him might fume, he would go on doing what he thought was right. His achievements are well known. He touched Jews the world over, inspired his colleagues and set a standard to which all the editors of the Forward, in Yiddish, Russian, and English, look up. Yet for all these achievements, there was a dimension to Mordechai Strigler that remained a mystery, even to many of us who worked in the same editorial rooms with him for years. It had to do with his spiritual journey. Had history taken a different turn, it is as a Torah sage that he might be remembered today. But the Holocaust shook his faith and led him to quarrel with God. He emerged to write poetry and fiction. He entered the political fray for the labor faction. Hope came to him from the establishment of the Jewish state, which became, along with Jewish unity, his abiding passion. After he reached America, he began corresponding with a young woman in Jerusalem, Esther Bonni, a scientist. When they finally met in Israel, a romance developed and marriage followed. After the birth of their daughter, Leah, the glimmer of Strigler's spiritual life began to shine again. Leah talked at his funeral of Strigler's enduring attachment to text and of his powers as a teacher. He was obsessed with the accuracy of citations of Torah and Talmud, so that whenever she asked a question, he would insist on checking sources, even though he almost always knew the references by heart. In recent years, his intimates relate, he had occasion to lay tefillin. Even then it was said that he had not again become a believer but was merely observing a mitzvah. Yet as he lay dying at Roosevelt Hospital, his daughter read to him for days from the Bible, holding the text in one hand and here father's hand in the other. His daughter and wife sang prayers in Yiddish and Hebrew, which for precious moments brought him out of his coma. This is how this editor who had lived and chronicled and tragedies and triumphs of our century spent his last days--called back to consciousness, however fleetingly, by the languages of the Jews.<bullet>

The following appeared in The Daily Telegraph (London). Sorry for the delay but I've only just picked up the electronic version.

Mordechai Strigler, who has died aged 76, was the editor of Forward (Forverts), the Yiddish-language newspaper which was founded in New York in 1897 and provided a gateway into American life for generations of newly-arrived Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, guiding them to the mysteries and manners of the New World.

At the peak of its influence, in the 1920s, Forward's circulation exceeded a quarter of a million, but by the time Strigler took over the editorship, in the late 1980s, its readership was declining. From his office, in the Workmen's Circle Building on East 33rd Street, Manhattan, Strigler struggled to keep the paper alive.

Strigler was one of the most prolific Yiddish writers of the post-war period; he was a poet, essayist, cultural historian, rabbinic scholar, political commentator and writer of fiction. He wrote thousands of articles. His Oysgebrente Likht (Extinguished Candle), a six-volume autobiographical work written in a poetic style about his experiences during the Holocaust, was an astounding work, and among the first accounts written of that period by a survivor.

Mordechai Strigler was born on September 18 1921 at Zamosc, near Lublin, in Poland, one of eight children in an Hasidic family. At 11, he was sent to the Kletzker Yeshiva, one of Poland's most distinguished Jewish theological institution, and at 16 he was ordained as a rabbi. He then went to Warsaw, where he worked as a secretary for a well-known rabbi, Zvi Yehezkel Michelson, and taught classes in the Talmud to adults in various synagogues. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Strigler fought at the barricades of Warsaw alongside Polish partisans. Trying to escape to Russia, he was arrested at the border by German soldiers who carved swastikas into his cheeks and forehead with a razor blade.

[...]

"Our camp was put on the march," Strigler told Levin. "We had to go 15 miles, in a column 10 abreast. They told us to run and they rode alongside the column and fired into it all the time. Our comrades dropped around us, and we filled up to 10 abreast and they shot, shot, shot."

Strigler and the other Jews had been herded into the Ishbitza ghetto, about 30 miles from Lublin, where a mass slaughter began. His parents and three of his sisters perished in the camps.

Strigler was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11 1945. After recuperation, he accompanied a transport of Jewish orphans to Paris, where he stayed and began his autobiographical series. All his manuscripts of the war years were lost. The autobiography consisted of Majdanek in 1947; In Di Fabrikn Fun Toyt (In the Death Factories) in 1948; Verk Tze (Factory C), two volumes in 1950; and Goyroles (Destinies), two volumes in 1952. In Paris he also became editor of the daily Yiddish newspaper, Unzer Vort (Our Word).

In 1953, Strigler travelled to America on a lecture tour and decided to stay, becoming editor of the labour Zionist weekly journal Yidisher Kemfer (Jewish Struggler). At Yidisher Kemfer, Strigler published most of the great Yiddish writers of his time, including Abraham Reizen, H Leivik, Chaim Grade, Jacob Glatstein and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

He wrote for the paper using some 20 pseudonyms, a tradition in Yiddish writing, with a special pseudonym reserved for a particular topic. Among these pseudonyms were: A Kore (A Reader), A Ben Ami (Son of the People), M Ragil (A Simple Person), and Z Kamai (An Old-Fashioned Man).

Around the time Strigler took on the editorship of Yidisher Kemfer (he remained there until 1995), he began writing for the Yiddish Forward. Among his first contributions was She'elot ve T'shuvot (Questions and Answers), a series on Jewish responsa literature, about the questions people ask rabbis.

In 1987, Strigler became editor of Forward, which then had about 10,000 readers, mostly in the United States and the former Soviet Union. But with the number of readers dying off, Strigler founded, in 1990, the English language Forward for a new English-speaking generation of Jews who did not know Yiddish. Its circulation is about 26,000.

With most of his colleagues older than himself, Strigler, a diminutive scholar with thick glasses and titanic energy, had to do most of the writing and editing. "I come in, and here someone is sick, there someone is sick, so I have to finish things on my own," he told the New Yorker in 1994. "What can I do?"

Strigler considered leaving New York and going to Israel, where his wife Esther was a teacher at the Hebrew University. But in the end, he said, "I'm the last one that can edit the paper. That's what they tell me."

Strigler and his wife had a daughter.

Percy Mett

Sholem Berger asked about computerized Yiddish dictionary.

I am not aware of the YIVO project. However, I have begun building my own "online" Yiddish-English dictionary using Dvir Software's Q-Text (ver 8.0). I only have a few hundred entries, but it is a beginning. This type of document could be put on the Internet, but it would only be available to users of Q-Text. I wonder if there are other Mendelyaner's who have done something similar? I am open to any kind of collaborative effort. You can reply to me privately at alm@sonic.net.

Thank you, Allen Hillel Merkrebs

I have to tell you that the discussion about "vilde chaya" has mystified me, because to me it is such a commonplace term! When my brothers and I were little (I'm 22 now) and behaving rowdy, running around and making noise, my parents would call us vilde chayas. The same would go for any such group of kids, or even an individual child. And the phrase was as ordinary as "mamele" or "zeiskeyt". I have never heard any darker uses for "vilde chaya" either.

Deena Mersky hoped "that there was an element of affection in the appellation." I never felt any-- to me it just sounded like the expression of a harried parent. Hershl Bershady wrote about "bandeet". In our family, "BAHN-dit" was also common. A small child who cleverly got into something he wasn't supposed to would be called a little bahndit. That was a term that had the element of affection. But only boys could be bahndits.

Aviva Starkman Los Angeles, CA

To the gentlemen who said he hasn't found anyone under 40 who knows of the term vilde chaye, please meet my 7 year old daughter and 3 year old son. They are all too well versed in this phrase and others such as bandeet, paskudniak, etc. I suppose they've been called these phrases a few times.

Eve Edelman Russ Larchmont, New York

viele gedanken zu allen re your comments on vilde chaya also received a few others outside the MENDELE list should anyone like a copy of the review (it was of THE BUTCHER BOY) please let me have your snailmail addresses as AOL is very chancy about downloading

altho my yiddish is extremely imperfect, I will continue following your very interesting threads

harvey roy greenberg

Dan Leeson was wondering about the meaning and origins of Schlemiel. The following information may help.

In 1813, the German Romantic writer Adelbert von Chamisso wrote the novella "Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte" (Peter Schlemihl's strange story) which is about a man who is giving away his shadow to the devil in exchange for a magic bag which produces money.

In a letter to his brother, Chamisso explained the name Schlemihl: "It is a Hebrew name and means Gottlieb (the one who loves God), Theophil...This is the term Jews use for clumsy or unhappy people."

Whether or not Chamisso is correct in his assumption about the Hebrew origin is another matter; what is interesting is that this was his association with the word Schlemiel.

Within 2 decades the story had been translated into French, Italian, and English and was well-known all over Europe. Thus the connection to "Hoffmanns Erzaehlungen."

Nina Warnke Indiana University

As I mentioned once before on Mendele, when I was studying German in high school we used a reader containing several German folk tales (Maerchen). One of these was called "Peter Schlemiel's Wundersame Geschichte" (Peter Schlemiel's Remarkable Tale). The unfortunate Peter lost his shadow.

I have always assumed that Offenbach took the character from this tale, and that the Yiddish word derived from the same source. But of course my evidence is pretty weak. Any more informed opinions?

Martin Davis

Dan Leeson's comments about the word "Schlemiehl" in Germany need some revision. The character of Peter Schlemiehl, the man who lost his shadow, was actually created not by Jews but by two German Gentile authors, Adalbert Chamisso (1781-1838) and E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), long before the Bismarck regime emancipated Germany's Jews (at least on paper) during the 1870s-1880s). Schlemiehl, stressed on the last syllable (contrary to Leeson's erroneous stress on the first syllable), is indeed a character in Offenbach's opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann (posthumously revised by Leo Delibes); since the libretto was written in French by (if memory serves me) Meilhac and Halevi, the character's name, like any native or borrowed French word, is stressed on the final syllable. In German, the word Schlemiehl, although probably of Yiddish origin, does not specifically refer to a Jew--it's synonymous with "Pechvogel"--an unlucky person. The word is virtually extinct in German, but I still hear it occasionally among older German-speaking Jews. In English its effect is comical, but not in the German fantasies about the man who lost his shadow--he's actually a grotesquely tragic figure--with, however a certain goofy shadow-bereftness.

Incidentally, the Offenbach opera is based on more than three Hoffmann tales: for instance, the wonderful first-act aria "Kleinzach" derives from Hoffman's story "Klein Zaches" (no, the character isn't Jewish). Offenbach, who was born in Cologne in 1819 (and moved to Paris in 1833) presumably got the Schlemiehl character from Hoffmann and Chamisso.

Mr. Leeson could find all this information in various dictionaries and other reference works.

Joachim Neugroschel