Bates College SCARAB Honors Theses Capstone Projects 5-2019 Stealing Borders: The iddiY sh Book Center and Expansions of Postvernacular Yiddishland Sarah Elsa Freyd Bates College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses Recommended Citation Freyd, Sarah Elsa, "Stealing Borders: The iddY ish Book Center and Expansions of Postvernacular Yiddishland" (2019). Honors Theses. 272. https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/272 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Capstone Projects at SCARAB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of SCARAB. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Stealing Borders: The Yiddish Book Center and Expansions of Postvernacular Yiddishland An Honors Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Anthropology Bates College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts By Sarah Elsa Freyd Lewiston, Maine March 27, 2019 Acknowledgements There is no way I could have even come close to completing this thesis without the tremendous support of many. First and foremost, I want to thank everyone whose voices and ideas have quite literally made my thesis what it is and who took the time to speak with me about Yiddish. I am forever in debt to your thoughtfulness and your willingness to bear with me as I asked sometimes confusing questions. Without your collaboration, this thesis would not exist. I also want to thank the Yiddish Book Center for allowing me to learn about the incredible work that you do. I especially want to thank the Center’s academic director Josh Lambert. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy work day to so generously help out a random undergraduate student with her senior thesis. Of course, I would like to thank everyone I have encountered at Bates College for challenging me intellectually and teaching me more than I could have ever imagined. Thank you to the Anthropology and French departments for your endless support, and to Kirk Read for being especially flexible throughout this past semester. Thank you to my dear friends who have always been there when I needed good company, a good laugh, and a good excuse to procrastinate. Thank you to my Bates friends in particular for providing solidarity, warmth, and community through the long winters and through the collective thesis process. Thank you to my family for allowing me to fly across the country to go to a place like Bates, for your unwavering love and support, and for providing me with the most incredible opportunities. And thank you Mom for sending me snacks and scarves all the way to Maine. I cannot forget to thank those in my Jewish community for making me who I am today, for teaching me how to be a leader, and for inspiring me always. Thank you for the transformative experiences and the endless love. Thank you especially to Wendy Marcus. It was because of you that I was introduced to Yiddish in the first place. Lastly, I want to give a hearty thank you to my advisor Josh Rubin for always believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Your thoughtfulness and incredible insights have made me even more excited about this work. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. v Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Landing on Yiddish ................................................................................................................................... 7 Yiddishland and the Yiddish Book Center .............................................................................................. 13 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 16 Diaspora and its post-national properties .............................................................................................. 22 Chapter 1: The vitality of postvernacular Yiddishland ................................................................. 34 Meta ........................................................................................................................................................ 34 Language revitalization and the question of Yiddish ............................................................................. 36 Metalinguistic practice and postvernacularity theory ............................................................................ 42 The Yiddish Book Center as a postvernacular institution ...................................................................... 47 Translation as postvernacular engagement ............................................................................................ 49 A catalyst for engagement ...................................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 2: Vernacular Yiddish and its intentional forms ............................................................. 59 Bounded Yiddishlands ............................................................................................................................ 59 History of the vernacular form ............................................................................................................... 62 Vernacular Yiddish in a postvernacular landscape: an intentional endeavor ....................................... 70 Sites of vernacularity: Hasidic communities .......................................................................................... 77 Sites of vernacularity: episodes .............................................................................................................. 82 Language as home .................................................................................................................................. 87 Chapter 3: Yiddish, history, and constructing a portable homeland ............................................. 89 Beyond Nostalgia .................................................................................................................................... 89 iii Heritage and its public displays ............................................................................................................. 91 Recovering, celebrating, and regenerating a diasporic heritage ........................................................... 98 Subverting Yiddish’s historical narratives ........................................................................................... 107 Unbounding the historical realm .......................................................................................................... 112 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 114 Queer Yiddishkeit and Yiddish Expansions .......................................................................................... 114 Rethinking and disrupting continuities ................................................................................................. 118 Diaspora and its communal modes....................................................................................................... 120 Ganvenen dem grenets (stealing the border) ........................................................................................ 123 References ................................................................................................................................... 126 iv List of Figures Figure 1: A photo of the Yiddish Book Center’s exterior ............................................................ 48 Figure 2: “Restaurant Moishe Pipik” display in the YBC repository ........................................... 92 Figure 3: Menu from the “Restaurant Moishe Pipik” display in the YBC repository .................. 92 Figure 4: View from the center of the YBC repository ................................................................ 93 Figure 5: The Kligerman-Greenspun Performance Hall and a glimpse of the golden peacock chandelier .................................................................................................................................... 105 v Abstract This thesis examines the contemporary politics, uses, and mobilizations of Yiddish language and culture, particularly through the Yiddish Book Center located in Amherst, Massachusetts. This non-profit organization sponsors a wide array of programming, both on-site and virtual, with a broad goal of making available an expansive and diverse body of works and knowledge often neglected in a post-World War II context. Through its mission to “recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish language and culture,” it embodies “postvernacularity,” a theoretical framework and linguistic conceptualization introduced by Jeffrey Shandler. Engagements with Yiddish that are characterized by postvernacularity allow for increasingly expansive and accessible modes self and community making. Employing postnational and diasporic frameworks,