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A New York celebration of Ladino aims to bust the myth that the Judeo-Spanish language is dead
(New York Jewish Week) — The sixth annual New York Ladino Day — which aims to celebrate and elevate Ladino culture in New York and throughout the world — will take place this Sunday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
For the first time since the pandemic, the program will be conducted in person, though a livestream option is also available. This year’s theme is “Kontar i Kantar” — “Storytelling and Singing” — and will include a performance from Tony- and Grammy-nominated Broadway singer Shoshana Bean and a conversation with Michael Frank, author of “One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World,” as well as additional music-oriented speakers and performances.
“Music is certainly one of the domains in which the language is doing well and generating new interest and new music,” said Bryan Kirschen, a professor of Hispanic Linguistics at Binghamton University and one of the event’s organizers. (Kirschen was one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” in 2017.)
Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was once the primary language spoken by Jews on the Iberian Peninsula. After the Jews’ expulsion in 1492, they brought language with them throughout the Ottoman Empire — Turkey, North Africa and the Balkans. Today, the estimated number of Ladino speakers around the world — mostly Sephardic Jews — ranges between 60,000 to 300,000, from fluent speakers to descendants who are familiar with some words.
Sephardic Jews were the first Jewish immigrants in New York, founding Congregation Shearith Israel in 1654, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. (It’s still in operation today at 2 West 70th St., where it has been since 1897.) Sephardic Jews remained the only active Jewish community in New York until the wave of German Jewish immigration in the early 19th century, followed by the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews that began at the tail-end of the 19th century.
Soon enough, Ashkenazi Jews quickly outnumbered New York’s Sephardic community, though Sephardic and Ladino culture continues to thrive today. Today, the main hubs for Sephardic and Ladino culture and education are the American Sephardi Federation and the Kehilla Kedosha Synagogue and Museum, a Greek Romaniote synagogue on the Lower East Side, said Kirschen, and there are large Sephardic synagogues in Canarsie, Brooklyn and Forest Hills, Queens that still conduct services in Ladino.
Ladino, said Kirschen, remains “a very living, in some ways thriving language, interestingly enough, particularly since the pandemic.”
Ahead of Sunday’s celebration — which is co-curated by Jane Mushabac, a professor emerita of English at City University of New York and a Ladino scholar and writer — the New York Jewish Week caught up with Kirschen to discuss the program, his personal interest in Ladino, and how Ashkenazi Jews can help uplift Ladino language and culture.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kirschen, far left, leads a panel discussion during the 2020 New York Ladino Day celebration. (Courtesy Bryan Kirschen)
New York Jewish Week: How did you become interested in Ladino culture? Are you from a Sephardic family?
I’m from an Ashkenazi, Yiddish-speaking family. So I’m not Sephardic. But for the past 15 years or so, I’ve been doing my best to learn as much about and embrace Sephardic culture as I can, and learn as much as I can about Ladino as well. My own interest stems from learning languages — I’m a Spanish professor at Binghamton University and I have also studied Hebrew for numerous years. So when I first came across Ladino as this Judeo-Spanish language, it interested me for a number of reasons. Once I started to meet actual speakers, it became so much more than just about the language — it became about celebrating and promoting the culture, the history, the connections, of course the food and the music.
What is the origin story of New York Ladino Day?
The idea of Ladino Day came about in 2013 — to have a day when communities around the world would celebrate all that remains. Originally, the day was selected to be during Hanukkah. But because there is no real central organization that governs the language — though there are different institutions, particularly in Israel, that try to foster the language and help promote it — Ladino Day grew in many different directions.
These days, some communities celebrate in January, some in February, some still in December. The National Authority of Ladino in Israel has their own International Day of Ladino in March. But the important thing is that communities all around the world are committed to celebrating it in their own ways.
As far as New York goes, the American Sephardi Federation at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan started holding a Ladino Day six years ago under the direction of my collaborator, Jane Mushabac, who is Sephardic from a Ladino-speaking family. I had been separately organizing Judeo-Spanish celebrations at a synagogue in Forest Hills, Queens, so the following year we joined forces and started co-curating the program together and have been doing that ever since.
The theme for this year’s program is “Kontar i Kantar.” How is this year’s theme different from years’ past?
Last year, we did “Salud y Vida,” which is a common expression for “health and life” and which was fitting for the time. Like most of the world, we had to pivot for the last two years and hold the program online. That afforded different opportunities — we were able to bring in speakers from around the world in a way that was much more doable, and we were able to open up our program to the world. Normally, we like to focus on New York talent and language, but the previous few years doing online events we were featuring different voices from the Sephardic world, so many new connections were made.
Because of that experience, this year’s program will be back in person at the Center for Jewish History, but with a hybrid option. The theme is “Kontar i Kantar,” “Storytelling and Singing.” It will both acknowledge how important music has been to Ladino, and celebrate how, in recent years, there have been so many initiatives for people to get together to share their stories in or about Ladino and to sing in Ladino.
Most Jews in New York have an Ashkenazi background. What role or responsibility do you think Ashkenazi Jews have in honoring and preserving Ladino culture?
Yes, the numbers [of Ashkenazi versus Sephardi Jews] don’t match up. Still, Sephardim from Turkey and areas of the former Ottoman Empire brought tens of thousands of Sephardic, Ladino-speaking Jews to New York City at the start of the 20th century, but as a minority — as a minority within the Jews, as a minority-speaking language, etc. So as someone who is Ashkenazi, I understand the enormous responsibility that I have to represent this language in a positive and genuine way to others and to work with and uplift speakers of Ladino.
Like Yiddish, thousands upon thousands of Ladino speakers were killed in the Holocaust, and those who didn’t experience the same fate often gave up their Ladino to assimilate. So many speakers today, who are typically in their 70s, 80s or 90s — or maybe younger generations who know some words here and there like foods, terms of kin — haven’t historically been so proud of using their Ladino. So aside from research and teaching, I’m really passionate about encouraging speakers and semi-speakers to use their language and to take pride in their language and ideally, to give them a platform to do so.
Bonus question: What are some common misconceptions about Ladino?
Ladino is not a dead language — that’s something I’m very vocal about. There are all sorts of ways to classify and categorize languages, but as long as they are living, breathing, speakers and semi-speakers, the language is living. So Ladino is a living language, despite all the obstacles. There are speakers and there are amazing resources out there willing to share their language and their story with people.
“Kontar i Kantar: The 6th Annual New York Ladino Day” will take place at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th St.) on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. A livestream option is available. Buy tickets and find more information here.
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The post A New York celebration of Ladino aims to bust the myth that the Judeo-Spanish language is dead appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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For poet Velvl Chernin, life is interwoven with the sword
אַז אַ פּאָעט באַטיטלט זײַן נײַ בוך „לעבן מיט אַ שװערד“ איז שׂכלדיק צו שטעלן צװײ פֿראַגעס: װעמענס לעבן, און װעלכע שװערד?
אין דער פּאָעזיע־קריטיק איז מען אָפֿט מאָל פֿאָרזיכטיק אַװעקצושטעלן אַ קלאָרן אונטערשײד צװישן דעם נאַראַטאָר פֿון די לידער, דאָס הײסט, דאָס קול, װאָס רעדט, און דעם פּאָעט אַלײן, דעם בעל־מחבר. דער נאַראַטאָר פֿון די לידער איז נישט גלאַט אַן אָפּשפּיגלונג פֿון דיכטער. (אַ באַרימטער בײַשפּיל: שעקספּירס סאָנעטן זײַנען נישט אַ פֿאַרצײכענונג פֿון זײַן ביאָגראַפֿיע, נאָר אַ נאַראַטיװ פֿון אַ פֿיקטיװן פּאַרשױן.)
מע קען אָבער אַ מאָל זײַן צו מדקדק וועגן דעם. אין דעם דאָזיקן בוך, איז קלאָר אַז דער הױפּט־נאַראַטאָר פֿון די לידער איז מער װײניקער דער זעלבער װאָס זײַן נאָמען געפֿינט זיך אױפֿן שער־בלאַט: װעלװל טשערנין, אַ באַקאַנטער פּאָעט, רעדאַקטאָר, אַרױסגעבער, און גרינדער פֿון זשורנאַל „ייִדישלאַנד“ װאָס װױנט כּמה יאָרן אין כּפֿר־אלדד, א קאָלאָניע אױפֿן מערבֿ־ברעג.
װי באַװוּסט איז ער אַ געבױרענער אינעם געוועזענעם סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, געאַרבעט אין רעדאַקציע „סאָװעטיש הײמלאַנד,“ געװען (אומלעגאַל) דאָרטן אַקטיװ װי אַ ציוניסט, און דערנאָך עולה געװען אין 1990. דאָס דאָזיקע בוך איז זײַן זעכצנטע. קײן ביכל איז דאָס נישט; ס׳איז אַ װאָגיק באַנד פֿון 200 זײַטלעך. דער לעצטער אָפּטײל פֿון בוך נעמט אַרײַן געשליפֿענע, שאַרפֿע איבערזעצונגען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע שפּראַכן, אַרײַנגערעכנט אוקראַיִניש, שפּאַניש, העברעיִש און רוסיש.
טשערנין, מיט אײן װאָרט, איז אַ פּאָעט אַ רעליגיעזער ציוניסט, אַ קאָלאָניסט אױפֿן מערבֿ־ברעג, און אַ כּלל־טוער אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַרישער װעלט. ער פֿירט אױך אַן אינטערנאַצינאַל לעבן. אַ סך פֿון די דאָזיקע לידער טראָגן די נעמען פֿון אײראָפּעיִשע שטעט, און די באַציִונג צװישן אײראָפּע און ישׂראל, דורך די אױגן פֿון אַ רוסישן ייִד אַן עולה, גיט צו אַ פֿאַרשידן־מיניקײט צו דער זאַמלונג. אַזאַ, אין סך־הכּל, איז טשערנין, און אַזאַ איז דאָס „לעבן“ פֿון טיטל.
װאָס איז ער אױסן אין דעם בוך? מיט דעם דאַרף מען אָנקוקן די „שװערד“ פֿונעם טיטל. כאָטש מער װײניקער אַ דריטל פֿון בוך איז אָנגעשריבן געװאָרן נאָך פֿאַרן גורלדיקן ייִדישן יאָר תּשפּ״ג, און פֿאַרן כאַמאַס־אַטאַק פֿון זיבעטן אָקטאָבער, איז דער צענטער און אױסגאַנגפּונקט פֿונעם בוך, װי אַ גאַנצקײט, יענער אַטאַק, און װי אַזױ דער לירישער איך פֿונעם פּאָעט רעאַגירט דערױף.
לױט טשערנין איז דאָס לעבן איצט געקניפּט און געבונדן מיט דער שװערד. כאָטש ער פֿילט זיך געריסן, האַלט ער אױך אַז דאָס פּרוּװן פֿונאַנדערטײלן לעבן און שװער איז נאַיִװ.
און דו וועסט לעבן מיט דײַן שווערד, אויב דו וועסט לעבן.
אַלטערנאַטיוועס זײַנען וויזיעס, ניט מער.
ס׳איז צו געפֿערלעך צו אַ שלום חְנוניש שטרעבן.
דעם פֿאַקט דערווײַזן איז לעת־עתּה גאָר ניט שווער.
עס זײַנען קעגן דיר די הענט כּמעט פֿון אַלע.
עס מוז אויף אַלעמען זײַן דײַן ברוטאַלע האַנט.
די ווערטער זײַנען אַ נבֿואה אַ באַנאַלע,
וואָס ווערט מקוים, כאָטש דו קלאַפּסט זיך קאָפּ אין וואַנט.
בודאַפּעשט תּשפּ״ד
מע מוז זײַן ברוטאַל, לױט טשערנין. די שװערד װעט מען האַלטן נישט נאָר װי אַ דערװײַליקע נײטיקײט, נאָר אין אַ װיזיע פֿון אַחרית־הימים, װי ער רעכנט אױס אין זײַן ליד „גמר חתימה טובֿה“:
עס וואַרטן פֿאַרבלוטיקטע שווערדן
אויף ריינער ווי אמת נעילה
אין הימלען אויף ימען אויף ערדן
בלוט שפּריצט דורך און דורך די לידער. דאָס זײַנען אַװדאי די מחשבֿות פֿון אַ יחיד בימי מלחמה. דער ליריקער איז דאָך אַן אינדיװידועל, װיל מען הערן זײַנע געדאַנקען. אַ מלחמה־בוך אָן בלוט װאָלט נישט געװען אַקוראַט.
װידער קערט מען זיך צוריק צום טיטל. „לעבן מיט אַ שװערד“: איז נאָר פֿאַראַן אײן לעבן מיט אַ שװערד? װער געפֿינט זיך אױפֿן צװײטן עק שװערד?
מע זעט נישט און מע הערט נישט פֿון קרבנות, פֿון די פֿאַרשניטענע. דאָס װאָרט פּאַלעסטינער װערט דאָ נישט דערמאָנט, דאָס װאָרט „אַראַבער“ אױך נישט.
טשערנין קען מען פֿאַרגלײַכן מיט אַן אַנדער פּאָעט, אַ גדול פֿון אונדזער ליטעראַטור, װאָס האָט געהאַלטן פֿון ייִדישער סופּרעמאַטיע און פֿון אומגעצאַמטן כּוח פֿון ייִדישער שװערד פֿעסט אין דער האַנט קעגן גױשע שׂונאים. אורי צבֿי גרינבערג האָט אָבער בפֿירוש דערמאָנט די שׂונאים און געטײלט זיך מיט זײַן קלאָרער װיזיע פֿון דער װעלט. טשערנין בלײַבט אײַנגעשלאָסן אין זײַנע אײגענע בלוטיקע דלתּ אמות.
אַ ליריקער װאָס לאָזט אױס האַלב פֿון דער מלחמה באַגײט נישט נאָר אַ מאָראַלישע נאָר אױך אַן עסטעטישע עוולה. װעמען הרגעט די שװערד? פֿאַר װאָס זעט מען נישט די מתים אױף דער דאָזיקער קאַנװע פֿון קריג?
ס׳איז אַקוראַט און נײטיק אָנצורופֿן טשערנין בײַם נאָמען: אַ טאַלאַנטירטער פּאָעט, אַ געשיקטער איבערזעצער פֿון פֿיל שפּראַכן, אַ שטיצער און דערמעגלעכער פֿון דער הײַנטיקער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור — און אױך אַזאַ װאָס איז גרײט מקריבֿ צו זײַן יענעם.
עס שמעקט די לופֿט מיט הייסן שטויב,
וואָס בלײַבט דעם זיגער פֿון זײַן רויב.
איך האָב געזיגט. עס טוט מיר באַנג.
אַלץ ווערט צעשטערט. אַ שיינעם דאַנק.
דער דאָזיקער בולטער רמז אױף סוצקעװערס „װאָס װעט בלײַבן“ איז אױך אַן אָנװוּנק אױף דער מאָס פֿון דער טראַגעדיע װאָס דאָס ייִדישע פֿאָלק האָט אַדורכגעלעבט מיטן זיבעטן אָקטאָבער, און װאָס װערט דאָ פֿאַרטײַטשט פֿון טשערנין.
לױטן דאָזיקן פּאָעט איז דער מוסר־השׂכּל אַ בלוטיקער, אױף אײביק, כאָטש מיט ספֿקות און אינערלעכע קאָנפֿליקטן. ס׳איז אַ לירישער אַפּאָקאַליפּסיס אין אַ הערמעטישן קאַמער.
עס קען זײַן אַז מיט דעם שטעלט זיך פֿאָר די צוקונפֿט פֿון דער ייִדישער פּאָעזיע, בלוט און שװערד, בשעת אַלע אַלטערנאַטיװן װערן טאַקע צעשטערט. װעמען זאָל מען באַדאַנקען?
The post For poet Velvl Chernin, life is interwoven with the sword appeared first on The Forward.
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5 important questions for Abdul El-Sayed
Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in the Michigan Democratic primary means he’s going to have to work hard to persuade skeptical liberal Michigan voters.
I’m not from Michigan, but I am liberal. And I am skeptical.
I appreciate El-Sayed’s political skills and his relentless focus on the health and economic disparities that undermine the American dream for so many.
But while many Jewish Michiganders supported El-Sayed, his narrow victory over Rep. Haley Stevens has many other Michigan Democratic voters worried. It’s “ridiculous” that Democratic Jews wouldn’t vote for El-Sayed based on his positions on Israel, former Rep. Andy Levin told the Forward, but I’m not sure El-Sayed’s views on Israel are the main concern.
“If he wants to be senator of a state that has such a large Jewish population,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told JTA, “he must demonstrate an ability to stand with that community as we face the rise of antisemitism.”
Many of El-Sayed’s comments and actions during the primary cast that support into doubt. Here are the five questions I’d like to see Michiganders put to him:
You said, “Hurt people hurt people.” Do you also believe that enraged people hurt people?
After a man whose family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon attacked children at a West Bloomfield, Michigan synagogue, you said, “Hurt people hurt people.” You said you were explaining the act of terror, not excusing it. But we know too that incendiary rhetoric also foments violence. The Egyptian man who attacked Jews at a peaceful march in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2025 screamed anti-Israel political phrases and said he targeted the group because he believed they were “Zionists.” You have called Israel “evil” like Hamas, “bloodthirsty,” and you singled out AIPAC as uniquely nefarious and powerful among all influence groups in the country. Doesn’t such rhetoric endanger the lives of constituents you claim you want to protect? After extremists attempted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, you accused President Donald Trump of inciting them via tweet. Will you cool your own rhetoric?
Is there any circumstance you would vote to send military aid to Israel?
Oct. 7, 2023 was supposed to be an all-out war. Hamas along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran and the Houthis discussed striking Israel in unison, and could have. In such a scenario, as in the October 1973 war, Israel would have faced many thousands of casualties if not an existential threat as it quickly exhausted its defensive shield. Now imagine you were in the Senate during such a scenario. Would you have voted to send help to an ally? You said you supported sending military aid to Ukraine when it faced invasion. Why not Israel in a similar scenario?
How would you work toward a two-state solution?
You told CNN that every definition of a Jewish state “ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one.” You told The New Yorker that you support a two-state solution with equal rights and self-determination for Israeli Jews and Palestinians — which is a mainstream liberal Zionist position. So explain: What’s so illiberal about a Jewish-majority state you support? And do you believe in it enough to work toward one?
Is money really the only reason politicians and others support Israel?
You accused Israel’s supporters in Congress of being motivated solely by money. Is there really no other possible reason? Until Israel’s post-Oct. 7 destruction of Gaza, a majority of Americans and the vast majority of American Jews supported Israel. Couldn’t congressional support reflect their constituents’ support or their own religious or political beliefs? Could they believe in Jewish self-determination, especially post-Holocaust? Or is support for a Jewish state only a function of Jewish money (see #1)?
Which do you care about more, the Jewish vote, or Hasan Piker?
The Twitch streamer Hasan Piker said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel. He called a Jewish man a “bloodthirsty violent pig dog.” You defended your appearance with Piker by saying you needed to reach his three million followers. I get that: Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris helped tank their campaigns by refusing to engage young voters wherever they could. But you continued to campaign with Piker, and refused to disavow his extreme rhetoric, saying you wouldn’t be distracted by “cancel culture.” No one is asking you to cancel him. But why won’t you, at least, confront him on his rhetoric?
There is, as you and countless pundits have pointed out, a lot at stake in this election. Right now too many American Jews feel that one of those things is their own safety. Please answer these questions, Dr. El-Sayed.
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The post 5 important questions for Abdul El-Sayed appeared first on The Forward.
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Sing to me, Muse, of two Moshes and their Odysseys!
If you have read any one of the at least 60 English translations of Homer’s Odyssey or have seen Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey movie, then you are probably aware that Odysseus leads a more active life than the average person. As if living through the Trojan War weren’t hard enough, he blinds the cyclops Polyphemus and gets cursed by Poseidon with epically bad weather. His men are regularly transformed into pigs, picked off by Laestrygonian giants, and drowned in storms. The nymph Calypso detains him on her island for seven years and forces him to be her lover, (although whether this counts as a hardship depends on your perspective). The man of twists and turns has seen a lot. But he probably never predicted his story would be translated into Yiddish. Or Ladino.
At first, the parallel lives of the two men who translated The Odyssey into Yiddish and Ladino sound like the makings of a sphinx’s riddle, or a cryptic prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi: both men would be called “Moshe”; both would be alive at the beginning of the Holocaust; only one would survive to the end. Their names were Moshe Leyb Pitshenik (1895 – 1941) of the Odiseye (אָדיסייע) and Moshe Ha-Elion (1925-2022) of La Odisea.
The two men never met, yet there are unexpected rhymes between the lives of the Moshes, as if their lives were composed in the same meter. Not even a photo survives of scholar, writer and translator Moshe Leyb Pitshenik, but the Congress for Jewish Culture records that he was born in Zlotshev, eastern Galicia, now Ukraine. He spent his whole life traveling various pathways to erudition. As a child, he attended a religious elementary school and a small synagogue study hall before working as a bank employee in Vienna. The corporate life must not have been for Pitshenik, for he soon moved back to Poland and enrolled in a teachers’ seminary. He spent the rest of his life as a teacher and director at the local Jewish high school in Loyvitsh (Łowicz), writing ferociously on the side.
His poems, articles, short stories, and translations appeared in publications in Krakow, Warsaw, Łodz, and Vilna. Occasionally he would publish under pen names like “A Zaytiker,” an outsider, and “Nekhed Mohel,” which translates to “the grandson of the mohel (ritual circumciser),” but sounds suspiciously like something else.
In 1937, he pulled off his translational tour de force: the Odiseye, so literally epic an achievement that he won an award from the Yiddish PEN Club, the Yiddish branch of the PEN international network with epicenters in Warsaw, Vilnius and New York City. In the book’s introduction, fellow poet and translator Shloyme Shaynberg gave Pitshenik a hearty mazal tov for “anchoring one of Homer’s magical ships on our shores.”
But the time to celebrate ran short. Just two years after the Odiseye’s publication, the Nazis invaded Poland, confining Pitshenik and thousands of other Jews in the Łowicz ghetto. He had been working on an original epic poem in ancient Greek at the time of the invasion. Had he been allowed to finish it, the poem would have been the first original ancient Greek epic to be published since the 5th century C.E. In 1941, he was led into the Kazimierz Forest and murdered, leaving the poem unfinished.
Pitshenik was already 30 years old when Moshe Ha-Elion, his Sephardic counterpart, was born in Thessaloniki in 1925. Like Pitshenik, Ha-Elion studied at a Jewish primary school before receiving a secular education, discovering The Iliad and The Odyssey in ancient Greek during junior high. Ha-Elion was 16 when the Nazis invaded Thessaloniki, he recounts in his oral history for the United States Holocaust Museum. Two years later, in 1943, Ha-Elion and his mother, sister, and grandparents boarded freight wagons believing that they would be resettled in Poland. But these wagons were headed for Auschwitz. On arrival, every member of Ha-Elion’s immediate family was sent to the gas chambers but him.
For the next 21 months, Ha-Elion labored in Auschwitz. Teaching became his lifeline: He gave Greek lessons to a Christian prisoner with special privileges in exchange for food. In 1945, as the Allies approached, the Nazis transferred Ha-Elion and thousands of other prisoners to concentration camps in Austria. The hunger, Ha-Elion recalled later in an interview with El Mundo, was so unbearable that he ate train coal to survive.
After the liberation of the camps, Ha-Elion entered mandatory Palestine on a refugee ship. He fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and earned a B.A. and an M.A. in Humanities at the University of Tel Aviv. Like Pitshenik, he spent the rest of his life stirring up a tornado of writing across genres: He wrote a memoir of his time in the camps, a book of autobiographical poems in Ladino entitled En Los Kampos de la Muerte, or In the Death Camps, and even music to accompany one of these poems, La Djovenika al Lager (The Young Girl in the Lager), about the murder of his sister Nina.
But it was not until the end of his life that Ha-Elion undertook his translation of The Odyssey. When Ha-Elion was 90, he and the Israeli poet Avner Peretz published a Hebrew and Ladino dual translation of The Odyssey. He even managed to keep the poem in dactylic hexameter, a line-for-line Ladino mirror of the ancient Greek epic.
There are strange reflections of each Moshe in the Odysseys that they translated. For Pitshenik, the story seems omen-like: In the poem’s first line, Pitshenik translates the first adjective to describe Odysseus, polútropon, as the Yiddish word farvoglt, or “far from home.” This is unusual. English translators usually style Odysseus as “cunning” or a “man of twists and turns” or just downright “complicated.” It is as if Pitshenik read the signs of his own coming displacement in Odysseus before he read them in himself. But the translation’s strange prescience deepens just a few words later. Odysseus, Pitshenik says, participated in the “khurboynes” of holy Troy. At the time Pitshenik wrote this, a “khurbn” meant a total, cataclysmic destruction. It was reserved to describe horrors like the destruction of the first and second Temples and pogroms in Russia during World War I. But Pitshenik could not have known then that the word “Khurbn” would one day be used as a metonym for the approaching Holocaust. In Pitshenik’s translation, far-from-home Odysseus would survive a “khurbn” and find his way back. But Pitshenik himself never did.
For Ha-Elion, The Odyssey is like another form of autobiography. Like Odysseus, he was flung far from home by war, and spent the rest of his life trying to find his way home — or some place that felt like it. If translation is the process of rendering something foreign into something familiar, then perhaps translation is an attempt at homecoming in itself. Pitshenik and Ha-Elion never returned to their homes again after the War. But in the Odiseye and La Odisea, a piece of home survives. And it sounds like this:
Kontame, Muza, del ombre astuto…
O Muze! Bazing mir di maysim fun farvogltn gvir…
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns!
The post Sing to me, Muse, of two Moshes and their Odysseys! appeared first on The Forward.
