"DEAD BLOSSOMS" LAND, LANGUAGE & MEMORY IN CHAIM GRADE'S RECONSTRUCTION OF JEWISH VILNA by Blake A. Jordan A thesis submitted to Sonoma State University In partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in English r. Ann E. Goldman Dr. Catherine Kroll Date i Copyright 2011 By Blake A. Jordan 11 AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER'S THESIS I grant pennission for the reproduction ofparts ofthis thesis project without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorb the cost and provide proper acknowledgment of authorship. DATE: __fd_!" ~'~J ~-~I~I___ Signature Street Address City, State, Zip iii "DEAD BLOSSOMS" LAND, LANGUAGE & MEMORY IN CHAIM GRADE'S RECONSTRUCTION OF JEWISH VILNA Thesis by Blake A. Jordan ABSTRACT This thesis explores two ways that Lithuanian-born Yiddish writer Chaim Grade (1910­ 1982) deconstructs Jewish history and tradition in order to restore a sense ofpermanence and center to a community that was destroyed during the Holocaust. The:first way he accomplishes this is through the rich texturing ofland and the natural environment in his narratives. While the relationship between Jews and land throughout the centuries has been a fractured one, Grade's points to their coexistence, both on a historical and spiritual leveL In essence, Grade shows that the natural world should not be subordinated to the world ofrabbinic study. Additionally, the parallelism found in Grade's writing between nature and women, as well as his featuring of numerous female protagonists, demonstrates the need for women, as well as nature, to achieve equality within the patriarchal tradition ofJewish culture. The second way that Grade invests Jewish Vilna with a sense of permanence is by its reconstruction through the material power of memory and language. Moreover, his decision to write exclusively in Yiddish, in a style reminiscent. of social realism brings his readers closer to the culture he desires to keep alive. Additionally, Grade's choice, save for his memoirs, to write only about his native Vilna and environs as they were before the Shoah, sidesteps the recent tendency of Holocaust writing to dwell in genocide to the point ofdesensitization. Instead, his intimate portraits ofthe community in between the two world wars allow his readers to appreciate what Eastern European Jewish life was like before it was destroyed. Finally, the social equality evoked by Grade's writing about the natural world, along with the unavoidable fact that Grade's world no longer exists, allow for the re-imagining ofa Jewish homeland that does not negatively affect the rights and land ofothers, thereby avoiding the perpetual cycle ofpolitical and cultural violence that has come to characterize the Zionist project. Chair: MA Program: Englisli Sonoma State University Date: o/,.e/H iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to express my appreciation to the following professors for their immeasurable talents and unflagging commitment to their students. You have helped me acquire the confidence and skills to achieve success here at SSU and to stand me in good stead for my upcoming academic adventure on the other coast: To Anne Goldman, I thank you for your peerless ability to understand just what I want to say, even if I don't know it yet myself. Your tough love and sound, straightforward advice has guided me through this project's many stages and helped me produce a thesis that I am proud of. To Cathy Kroll, I thank you for your wisdom and support both as professor and as teaching mentor. I will continue to be inspired by your egalitarianism and indefatigable work (and play!) ethic. To Chingling Wo, I thank you for pointing me in new directions and helping me to see the "problem" in everything. I will miss our weeknight dinners and conversation. To Bob Coleman, I thank you for your smile, your sneer, and for motivating me to be my authentic self. May we meet again someday in the Land of Happy Readers. Most importantly, I thank all four of you for introducing me to some damn fme books. v DEDICATION For Samantha, who set me on this path ... & for Christy, who helped me complete the journey ... VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1 A Jewish "Inhabitancy": Deconstructing the Sacred and the Profane 10 Chapter 2 Towards a Reconstruction of"Center": Rebuilding Community with the Materials OfMemory and Language 45 Epilogue Grade's "Diasporic Consciousness" 69 Works Cited 75 Vll 1 Introduction When I was introduced to the work ofLithuanian-born writer Chaim Grade (1910-1982), I had just gotten married to Samantha, a Jewish woman whose strong connection to the left-leaning, Yiddish-speaking, secular Jewish tradition became a vicarious source of pride for me. Our move to Cotati, California, the town in which her great-aunt and great-uncle spent time amongst the Socialist chicken ranchers in Petaluma, only highlighted the distance I had from my own maternal history, partly due to my grandfather'S (and his parents') deliberate severance of old world ties, as well as the unfortunate and irrevocable fact that I had never thought to ask either ofmy mother's parents where they came from while they were still alive. Therefore, there was a confluence of two events that made me particularly receptive to the work ofChaim Grade, whose longer fictional works reimagine, in minute detail, the people and places of Eastern European Jewry. First, I had developed an interest in the politics and literature of human-land relationships, particularly those developed in communities no longer extant (e.g., Native American, pre-imperial Britain). At the same time, I was realizing that my own roots, my own ties to family, land, and space, were fated to remain a mystery. Getting to know Samantha's family, observing Jewish-isms that had only infrequently been invoked by my grandmother-and which had all but disappeared since her death-spurred the desire in me to rediscover, or re­ imagine, if you will, where my origins really lay. In a sense, Grade's work, a unique blend of social realism, lyrical poetry and compendium of Jewish custom, has provided me with an imaginary ancestral homeland, a touchstone for what quite possibly may have been my great-great-grandparents' way of 2 life. Where I once had no picture ofwhat Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement was like, suddenly, in passages like this, I was given a remarkably clear picture ofits quotidian existence, framed in a dialectical juxtaposition ofthe sacred and the profane: In the hallway ofthe synagogue a porter stood praying every morning in a threadbare coat with patched elbows and a rope around his waist. From his pious face with its pitch-black beard looked out a pair ofbig, lusterless eyes filled with the fear and humility ofone who felt he was only a guest in this world. The porter held a tattered prayer book in his hands as he listened through the open doors to the services going on inside the beth midrash. Each time the Porush [Rabbi Weintraub, a Talmudic scholar] passed the porter on his way into the beth midrash, a sickening odor hit him in the nose: the reek ofrotten sauerkraut and the salty stench of empty herring barrels left out uncleaned to dry in the sun. Rabbi Y oel Weintraub once asked the porter why he prayed in the hallway and not inside. "The people tell me they can't stand being next to me," the porter answered, and from his eyes shone the damp darkness of the cellars where he handled pots ofkraut, and all but immersed himself in the brine of the herring barrels ("Laybe-Layzar's Courtyard" 135). Standing in the hallway ofthe synagogue, the porter is kept by his odor from entering the place of worship. The passage thus implicitly references the stratification ofthe participants ofJewish worship, where one's wealth and one's sex determines where one sits. In addition, the porter's exaggerated connection to the material world of olfactorily­ offensive victuals permeates his most sincere effort to be a part of the spiritual world of his neighbors. On the heels ofa passage which invokes the profane, the reader is given a picture ofthe sacred, written by someone who spent a portion of his childhood as a Yeshiva student, and therefore knows the minutiae of this world quite well: The worshippers did not notice [the porter] slip in because at that moment they were engrossed with eyes shut in the heartfelt recitation of the Shema, "Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One." Reb Heskiah, the locksmith, enunciated each word with greater care than the rest. All the worshippers accentuated and prolonged the "EHAD!"­ "One"-but Reb Heskiah rose above the rest with a stubborn, chilling 3 exultation [ ...] Reb Heskiah struggled to clearly pronounce "Veshinantom"-"thou shalt teach them." He was dissatisfied with his "sh," it sounded more like an "s." And when he reached "Vedibarto Bom"-"and thou shlat speak of them"-he did not like his pronunciation of the "m." Reb Heskiah paused a moment and mentally leafed through the Code for a ruling on what was to be done. He repeated the phrase "Vedibarto Born" so many times that he began to sound like a bell pealing: "Born! Born! Born!" (136). On one hand, it could be said that whereas in the first passage, we see a portrait of humility, in this second passage, we see hypocrisy and excessive pride. Reb Heskiah, if he wasn't so concerned with his own vocalization ofprayer, would probably be one of the folks who desired to keep the porter out.