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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Enlightening the Skin: Travel, Racial Language, and Rabbinic Intertextuality in Modern Yiddish Literature Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8vs7p0bg Author Rosenblatt, Eli Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Enlightening the Skin: Travel, RacLDO/DQJXDJH and Rabbinic Intertextuality in Modern Yiddish Literature By Eli Rosenblatt A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair Professor Naomi Seidman Professor John Efron Spring 2017 Enlightening the Skin: Travel, RacLDO/DQJXDJH and Rabbinic Intertextuality in Modern Yiddish Literature © 2017 by Eli Rosenblatt Abstract Enlightening the Skin: Travel, RaFLDO/DQJXDJH and Rabbinic Intertextuality in Modern Yiddish Literature by Eli Rosenblatt Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair This dissertation argues for a new model of continuity - offered by the Jewish travel narrative form - to explain the appearance of race and racism in the literary history of Ashkenazi Jews. The ascendance of emigration in its heyday invigorated a new social order that derived its legitimacy from entirely different ways of conceptualizing Jewish identity - from a structured, territorialized Yiddishkayt of rabbinic authority, ritual observance, and the vernacular to a more ethereal Ashkenazi individuality embedded in the colonial and racial contingencies of the Atlantic world. The first part of this study examines the first Yiddish adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Vilna, 1868), retitled Slavery or Serfdom , by Isaac Meir Dik. I show how the author’s rereading of rabbinic slave laws transformed Stowe’s sentimental novel of Christian abolitionism into a travel report about the ethical superiority of Jewish over Christian slaveholding practices, and thus the socio-political benefit of Jewish emigration to the United States. During the 19th century Yiddish, in contrast to Hebrew, offered a stylistically pliant medium for Atlantic and racial language to be disseminated to all segments of Jewish society. The second part of the dissertation traces the development of Lithuanian Yiddish in Southern Africa in triangulated contexts of race, travel and intertextuality. I focus on the development of Yiddish literary modernism, which first appears in the midst of the South African War (1898-1902) and culminates in the reappearance of Yiddish as a language of white resistance in the Apartheid era. I analyze biblical and rabbinic intertextuality in the Yiddish literature of Southern Africa, including in texts narrated from the point of view of black Africans. By reassessing the travel form, I argue that the literature of “Black-Jewish Relations” ought not to be understood as the objective assessment of interracial contact between Jews and African-Americans, but rather an imagined and imaginative construct, internal to modern Jewish literature and culture, and rooted in the global dynamics of Jewish modernization. 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements_________________________________________ii-iii Prologue__________________________________________________v-xx Part 1____________________________________________________1-47 Part 2____________________________________________________48-101 Epilogue_________________________________________________102 Bibliography______________________________________________103-26 Appendix 1_______________________________________________127- i Acknowledgements I thank the members of my committee: Chana Kronfeld, Naomi Seidman and John Efron for shepherding this dissertation to completion. Chana, who read every word, has been a steadfast supporter of my work and continues to model the ethical commitments of engaged scholarship. I thank Naomi for introducing me to Isaac Meir Dik and years of incisive dialogue about Jewish culture in the past, present and future. I thank John Efron for modeling clear-eyed analysis and for cultivating my sensitivity to the interdependent tasks of the cultural historian and literary critic. I would also like to thank the Jewish Studies Program at UC-Berkeley, the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, the Newhouse Foundation, and the Diller Foundation for supporting my research and participation in a true stronghold of the Jewish vanguard. I also thank Robert Alter, Amos Bitzan, Daniel Boyarin, Jonathan Boyarin, Glenn Dynner, Itzik Gottesman, Shaun Halper, Deborah Hertz, Rachel Rubinstein, Scott Saul, Francesco Spagnolo'DYLG+HQNLQ(OL\DKX6WHUQ and Miriam Udel, and my Freshman/Sophomore Seminar students for discussing, reading and commenting on the ideas and the writing. This dissertation would have been impossible without the broader community in which this project was conceived. I thank Alan Tansman, William Melvin Kelley ʬµʦ, Komozi Woodard, Francine Masiello, Tabitha Kanogo, Scott Saul, Kent Puckett, and Donna V. Jones. I also thank Paul Hamburg, Corey Walker, Nick Baer, Eyal Bassan, Mindl Cohen, Saul Friedman, Zehavit Stern, Riki Ophir, Rokhl Walmsley, Jenna Ingalls, Shikl Parshall, Mikhl Casper, Robert Adler-Peckerar, Mira Wasserman, Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Shaina Hammerman, Marina Zilbergerts-Bitzan, Laura Matson, Jon Grinspan, James Redfield, Stephen Russell, Iris Idelsohn- Shein, Hanna Tzuker-Seltzer, and Yahil Zaban for their insights and comradeship. I thank Elizabeth Thomas and Roger Smith for helping me and countless other public school students discover the power and beauty of language. I would like to thank Rabbi Milton and Dr. Laurie Wakschlag for their unwavering support of my graduate studies and constant encouragement. Their faith in my work was crucial to the completion of this project. Without their insight, rooted in a passion for the ancient sources of Yiddishkayt, many evocations of rabbinic tradition would have been one-dimensional. I also thank my parents Paul and Jessica, who ably modeled the discipline and sense of responsibility that ultimately led me to the completion of this dissertation. For their support I am always grateful. My mother cultivated my individuality and sense of self. My father, the hardest worker I’ll ever know, modeled integrity and selflessness. Without my entire family’s loving embrace and story, I would have never written my first poem, which in effect began the process that shaped each page here. I dedicate this dissertation to my grandfather Maurice ʬµʦ. He earned acceptance to a university but was compelled to stay home and labor to support his family. He worked beside a die cutting machine in Lynn, Massachusetts for the duration of his life, though he (and not I) ii might have been the first in my family to earn a doctorate, had he been given a torch to light the way. And to Shira, my beloved and best friend, without you none of this is even possible; and to my two daughters, Maerav Lila and Bella Basha, whose wit, love and hugs keep me going, may this work sustain yours to come. iii ʺʩʩʤʥ ʧʫʭʩʸʡʣ ʤʦʠʸʷʮʬʲʸʲʨʶʮʩʺʩʩʤʩʮʩʬʫʩʱʥʩʩʡʸʸʮʠ ʸʥʲʬʤʩʬʺʴʫʠʤʮʩʫʥʤʬʴʠʡʸʥʲʤʹʹʮʩʸʹʠʫʭʩʸʤʶʡʹʹʮʮ ʯʥʹʩʠʡʪʬʤʮʩʺʩʩʤʺʧʠʭʲʴʩʣʩʬʤʹʲ אמר רבי יוסי כל ימי הייתי מצטער על מקרא זה (דברים כ"ח) והיית ממשש בצהרים כאשר ימשש העור באפלה וכי מה אכפת ליה לעור בין אפילה לאורה עד שבא מעשה לידי פעם אחת הייתי מהלך באישון לילה ואפלה וראיתי סומא שהיה מהלך בדרך ואב בידו אמרתי לו בני אבוקה זו למה לך אמר לי כל זמן שאבוקה בידי בני אדם רואין אותי ומצילין אותי מן הפחתין ומן הקוצין ומן הברקנין תלמוד בבלי מגילה פרק שלישי כ׳ד – ʣʾʫʩʹʩʬʹʷʸʴʤʬʩʢʮʩʬʡʡʣʥʮʬʺ – ʸʥʠʬʤʬʩʴʠʯʩʡ ʩʰʡʥʬʩʺʸʮʠʥʣʩʡʡʠʥʪʸʣʡʪʬʤʮʤʩʤʹʠʮʥʱʩʺʩʠʸʥʤʬʴʠʥʤʬʩʬ ʩʺʥʠʯʩʠʥʸʭʣʠʩʰʡʩʣʩʡʤʷʥʡʠʹʯʮʦʬʫʩʬʸʮʠʪʬʤʮʬʥʦʤʷʥʡʠ Rebbe Yossi said: I was long perplexed by this verse:ʯʩʰʷʸʡʤʯʮʥʯʩʶʥʷʤʯʮʥʯʩʺʧʴʤʯʮʩʺʥʠʯʩʬʩʶʮʥ And thou shalt grope at noonday as the blind gropeth in darkness (Deut. xxvii, 29.) Now what difference [I asked] does it make to a blind man whether it is dark or light? [Nor did I find the answer] until the following incident occurred. I was once walking on a pitch black night when I saw a blind man walking in the road with a torch in his hand. I said to him, my son, why do you carry this torch? He replied: As long as I have this torch in my hand, people see me and save me from the pits and the thorns and briars. – Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 24b, Soncino translation [slightly modified]. iv Terra Incognita in Jewish Form "I know very well that my ancestors had no des i r e t o come to this place: but neither did the ancestor s o f t h e people who became white and who require of my captivity a song. They require of me a song less to celebrate my captivity than to justify their own." - - J a m e s B a l d w i n , “ T h e P r i c e o f T h e T i c k e t ” The voyage, or the prospect and anticipation of travel, is a central facet of Jewish experience. The first time we read about Abraham, he is on a journey. The book of Genesis describes how he first traveled with his family from Ur in Mesopotamia to Haran, and later, after leaving his family behind, embarked towards the Land of Canaan.1 The idea of terra incognita, unknown or unexplored territory, is both central to the Jewish