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What American Jews fight about when they fight about Israel
(JTA) — Eric Alterman, born in 1960, says the view of Israel he absorbed growing up in a Jewish family in suburban Scarsdale, New York, was decidedly one-sided.
“I went on this nerdy presidential classroom thing when I was in high school,” he recalls, “and some Christian kid from the South raised his hand and said to the rabbi, ‘I don’t get it, if the Jews could have a state, why can’t the Palestinians?’ And I was like, ‘How dare you?’”
Alterman would go on to attend Cornell University, where he wrote his honors thesis on Israel, Vietnam and neoconservatism; spend a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University; study Israeli military history while earning his master’s degree in international relations at Yale, and research a dissertation on American liberalism and the founding of Israel as a doctoral student at Stanford.
Although he frequently writes about Israel as a contributing writer at the Nation and the American Prospect, Alterman is best known for his liberal analysis of the media and U.S. politics. He’s written 11 previous books, including one on Bruce Springsteen.
Yet he never stopped thinking about the widening gap between the idealized Israel of his youth and the reality of its relations with the Palestinians, its Arab neighbors and the West. Even when Israel’s revisionist historians were uncovering evidence of massacres and forced expulsions of Palestinians during the War of Independence, and Israeli politicians and intellectuals began asking why, indeed, the Palestinians didn’t deserve a state of their own, he saw that such discussions were considered blasphemous in most American Jewish circles.
Alterman, now a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, explores that gap in his latest book, “We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel.” The book surveys U.S.-Israel relations, but with a focus on the ways defending Israel have shaped public discourse. It’s a book about arguments: within the administrations of 14 presidents, between Washington and Jerusalem, and mostly among Jews themselves.
Earlier this month we spoke about how the pro-Isael lobby became a powerful political force, the Jewish organizations and pundits who fight to limit the range of debate over Israel, and what he thinks is the high price American Jews have paid for tying their identities so closely to Israel.
“I try to take on shibboleths that in the past have shut down conversation and take them apart and sympathetically show the complexity of the actual situation that lies beneath — so that [criticism and disagreement] over Israel can be understood rather than whisked away by changing the subject, or what-aboutism, or by demonizing the person who is raising them,” said Alterman.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me start by congratulating you: It’s the first book about U.S.-Israel relations with a chapter named after a Bruce Springsteen album: “Working on a Dream.”
Eric Alterman: Nobody else has caught that. But it’s not about U.S.-Israel relations. It’s the first book about the debate over Israel in the United States. There’s a million books on U.S.-Israel relations.
So let’s define that more narrowly. The title reminds me of the United Jewish Appeal slogan over the years, “We Are One,” which was about American Jewish solidarity. So who is the “we” in your title, “We Are Not One”?
There are three or four different meanings. The “we” in this book are obviously the United States and Israel. An awful lot of people argue that the United States and Israel have identical interests in the world and that’s crazy, because Israel is this tiny little country in the Middle East and we’re a global superpower thousands of miles away. So obviously, we’re going to have differences. Number two, American Jews and Israeli Jews are very different people. They have very different life experiences. And they see things quite differently as evidenced by the political split between them. The title also refers specifically just to Americans, because we can’t even discuss most things anymore. The pro-Israel community, such as it ever was, is enormously split and it’s split in angry ways.
Much of your book is about what happens to American Jews when the idealized portrait of Israel’s founding and its presumed blamelessness in its actions toward the Palestinians comes up against reality. In that context, tell me a little about your choice to devote a chapter to the Leon Uris novel “Exodus,” an extremely sanitized version of Israel’s founding, and the 1960 movie based on it.
The influence of “Exodus” is something I didn’t understand until I wrote the book. It’s crazy, because Leon Uris was this egomaniac who wrote kind of a shitty book and said that he wanted to add a new chapter to the Bible, and he kind of succeeded. I was born in 1960. When I was growing up in suburban New York, every single family had “Exodus” on their shelves. When the movie came out Israelis understood this. They said, “We can just shut down our public relations office now.” And from the standpoint of reality the movie is worse than the book because it has Nazis — the Arabs in the book are working with Nazism. Uris didn’t have the nerve to do that. So the book created this idealized Israel and this idea of [Palestinians as] evil, subhuman Nazis.
What most Americans don’t understand, or choose not to understand, is that before the 1940s most Jews were anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist. This changed in the 1940s, when, as a result in part of the Holocaust, and the reaction to that, and the triumph of Zionists, they became intensely pro-Zionist, leading up to the creation of Israel. But after that, they kind of forgot about Israel. One might have given their children JNF boxes to carry on Halloween instead of UNICEF boxes, or maybe they paid to plant trees. But Israel doesn’t show up in the American Jewish Committee’s 1966 annual report until page 35 or 36, and Nathan Glazer’s 1957 book “American Judaism” says that the creation of the Jewish state has had “remarkably slight effects on the inner life of American Jewry.”
With the events of 1967, Uris’ idealized notion of Israel came together with this terrible fear of a second Holocaust, and the terror and shame and frightening nature of that combined to transform American Judaism overnight to an enormous degree.
You are referring to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War, which even non-religious Jews saw as a kind of miracle, and redemption two decades after the Holocaust. And that transformation, you argue, put defense of Israel, combined with Holocaust consciousness, at the center of Jewish identity.
More than just the center: It basically comprised almost all of it, for many secular Jews. I quote the neoconservative Irving Kristol in the book saying in 1976 that “the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel” was 100% of what Judaism means.
Which in turn led to a the tremendous pro-Israel lobbying efforts, political activism and punditry.
The budgets of American Jewish organizations overnight went from social services and liberal social justice causes to defense of Israel. And rabbis were replaced at the center of public discourse by the heads of these organizations — most of whom had no religious training or knowledge of history or Judaism.
Joe Biden, then vice president, speaks at the AIPAC 2016 Policy Conference in Washington, DC, March 20, 2016.
(Molly Riley/AFP via Getty Images)
One distinction you repeatedly make is between what most Jews believe compared to the Jewish organizations that claim to represent them. Surveys show the rank and file is consistently more liberal on Israel and less hawkish than the big organizations — a gap that showed up markedly around the Iraq War and the Iran nuclear deal.
Right. The big mistake that so many in the media make is that they go to the heads of these organizations who pretend to speak for American Jews when they don’t speak for American Jews. They speak for their boards and their donors.
The shift to Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel coincides with an era in which there is seldom daylight between what Israel wants and what the United States wants or agrees to — often to the frustration of presidents. You are critical of those who exaggerate the pro-Israel lobby’s influence — folks like Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, authors of the 2007 book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” — but, at the same time, you write, referring to the Israel debate in America, about “the continued stranglehold that money, power, organizational structure, and clearly defined paths to personal career advancement continue to hold over the shape of foreign policy.” How will you respond to critics who will say your book is trafficking in the myth of Jewish power and its conspiracy-minded hold over American policy?
The short answer is, that’s why I wrote a 500-page book — basically, for two reasons: One, everything is incredibly complicated. And some of those complications are consistent with antisemitic myths, and therefore they have to be teased out and broken down in such a way that you’re telling the truth rather than portraying the myth.
If you say things without context, they sound antisemitic. I say that yes, Jews are very powerful in the media and many use that power on or about Israel. But I think if you lay out the examples that I use, if you look at them and examine them, I don’t see how you can conclude otherwise. The people I describe often say that about themselves — how much power and influence they yield.
Secondly, I’ve always found it just about impossible to discuss Israel with anyone, because you have to share exactly the same assumptions with that person. And if you don’t, then they take it personally, or you’re an antisemite, or, at best, you’re insufficiently sensitive to how important antisemitism is. And if you describe ways in which American Jews act in ways that are consistent with antisemitic myth, it has a way of shutting down the conversation.
Undoubtedly there’s some criticism of Israel that is motivated by antisemitism, but there’s an awful lot of reasons to be critical of Israel, particularly if you are a Palestinian or care about Palestinians. This accusation [antisemitism] has shut down the discourse and part of my hopes in demonstrating the complexities of this history is to open this up.
So let me ask about your own stake in this. Your educational background and relationship to Israel are similar in many ways to the writers and thinkers in your book who tolerate no criticism of Israel. I don’t know if you call yourself a Zionist, but you have some connection to Israel, and you’re also willing to tolerate critiques of Israel. What’s the difference between you and some of the other people who went on the same journey?
For the longest time I was comfortable with the words “liberal Zionist,” but I don’t think they have any meaning anymore. I don’t think it’s possible to be a liberal Zionist — you have to choose. Israel is the only putatively democratic country that prefers Trump to either Obama or Biden, and it’s not even close. And young Israelis are moving further in that direction and young American Jews are moving further in the opposite direction.
So you ask me if I am a liberal Zionist. I don’t think the word “Zionist” is useful at all anymore, because Israel is a country and it’s not going anywhere. I sometimes call myself an anti-anti-Zionist, because anti-Zionism is dumb. I’m very anti-BDS. If I thought [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] could end occupation, I would support it, even though the idea of boycotting Jews puts a bad taste in my mouth. But the theory behind BDS apparently, and I’ve spent a lot of time on this, is that the world will force Israel to give up its identity and turn the country over to its enemies. It’s inconceivable that Israel would do that and inconceivable the United States would pressure them to do that. So BDS is entirely performative. It’s more of a political fashion statement than anything else.
And to me, it speaks to the failure of Palestinian politics throughout history. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinians and their bad politics because it’s based on two problems. One is that they have never been able to see the future very well. So they should have agreed in 1921 and 1937, or whenever they would have had the majority and they were being given a country by the British. They should have taken the lousy offer from Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in 2000. I kind of get it because they have so many competing constituencies, and it’s impossible to satisfy all of them at the same time. I understand that. It’s hard to imagine a Palestinian politician who could say yes, and if you look at Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in both cases, it’s hard to imagine making peace with them.
I read that in your book, and my first thought was, well, isn’t that basically just confirming what the pro-Israel right has always said — that Israel has no partner for peace? So maybe the best it can do is maintain a status quo that assures some security for Israel and a workable something for the Palestinians.
Well, number one I hold Israel significantly responsible for the conditions under which that has developed and that they can change those. And number two, that’s no excuse for the way Palestinians are treated, either in the occupation or in Israel. So yes, I agree. There’s no one to make peace with today, but there are many steps Israel could take that could vastly improve the lives of the Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside Israel. And there are a lot of steps they could take that could build confidence for a future that could weaken Hamas, that could strengthen the Palestinian Authority, so that one day peace would be possible. But they do the opposite.
An Israel supporter at a New York rally to tell the United Nations “no more anti-Israel documents or resolutions,” Jan. 12, 2017. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)
You talk about funding of Israel studies and Jewish studies departments as a reaction against fears of a pro-Palestinian takeover of academia. At the same time, you write how Palestinian supporters “succeeded in colonizing Middle East studies departments, student faculty organizations, and far-left political organizations.” Why does that matter in the long run if, as you also write, nothing’s really going to change American policy on Israel?
I gave a talk before the book came out at Tel Aviv University and someone asked me that question. I said, You care about these transformations for two reasons. One, you really will be all alone in the world. You’ll have the support of conservative [Evangelical] Christians who are in many respects antisemitic and are using you for their own purposes. So if you lose American Jews, you will be existentially alone in a way you’re not now and that strikes me as very unpleasant.
I do think that the quote-unquote pro-Israel community has a stranglehold on American politics that I can’t see changing anytime soon, and I think the change in the Democratic Party [that it will turn more pro-Palestinian] is very much exaggerated by both sides for their own reasons.
That being said, the people who are being trained now to be in the State Department and the National Security Council and the Defense Department and the think tanks and the places where the intellectual foundation of U.S. policy is made are learning something very different from what you and I learned in college. Right now, there’s no such thing as an influential Palestinian lobby in this country. There’s no pushing back. There’s no percentage for anyone opposing Israel who has a career interest in the future. That will change, and the whole shaping of the discourse will change and that will change the relationship between the United States and Israel. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but it’s definitely going to happen.
As Jews in this country have remained largely liberal, Israel appears to be getting more illiberal, as we’ve seen with a new government that is more right-wing than any previously. And Israel has become more of a divisive element among Jews than a unifying force. As this gap appears to be widening, do you have any real hope for changing the discourse?
No, I don’t have any hopes for that. I don’t have anything optimistic to say about Israel. I think, politically speaking, from the standpoint of American Jews, everything is going in the wrong direction. But by demonstrating just how different Israeli Jews are than American Jews, and how little Israeli Jews care what American Jews think, I do think that it presents an opportunity for American Jews to think about what it means to be an American Jew in the Diaspora. Roughly half of the Jews in the world live in the United States. And since 1967 American Jews have defined themselves vicariously through Israeli Jews and taking pride in Israel. They expressed their identities by defending Israel and attacking the media when the media didn’t defend Israel.
Meanwhile, American Jews hardly ever go to synagogue. According to Pew, 20% of American Jews regularly attend synagogue and half of them are Orthodox, who are 10% of the community. What brought me back into Judaism was studying Torah. And hardly any American Jews are ever exposed to that.
So I think there’s an opportunity to reimagine Diaspora Jewry now that the Israel story doesn’t work, and it’s clear that it doesn’t work. Young American Jews are leaving or voting with their feet. They’re walking away. Israel-centric Judaism is in part responsible, although it’s not the whole story. Intermarriage is a big part of the story. The de-religionization of all groups is part of the story. But personally, I don’t see what a liberal American Jew would see in a Judaism that defines itself as it has for the past 50 years as defending Israel and remembering the Holocaust.
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Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu. Now he won’t join protests against him.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he will not join protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city to address the United Nations annual gathering next week and pushed back on the suggestion that he ever encouraged New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader.
“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” Mamdani told reporters. “To New Yorkers, I have never encouraged them to protest. What I have always told them is that they have the right to do so in the city.”
But two months ago, when Mamdani was asked what New Yorkers frustrated with Netanyahu should do when the Israeli leader came to the city for the annual fall U.N. event, the mayor repeatedly pointed to protest as an option. “I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” Mamdani said at a July 22 press conference. “It is something that has been a part of what makes our city so special: that New Yorkers can express themselves, whether they are in support or in opposition, no matter the topic.”
Mamdani’s July remarks came after a legal review the mayor ordered concluded that he lacks the power to order the arrest of Netanyahu, a pledge he made during his mayoral election campaign.
In July, when a reporter followed up directly, “Are you urging them to protest?” Mamdani stopped short of saying yes. But he again pointed to protests as a way for New Yorkers who oppose Netanyahu to make their voices heard. “I’m simply saying that this is a city where — if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect,” Mamdani said. “I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision,” he added.
From arrest pledge to protest rights
Mamdani had campaigned on ordering Netanyahu’s arrest based on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024, which accused the Israeli prime minister, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu has rejected the charges. The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC months after it issued the warrants.
After taking office, Mamdani ordered a legal review and acknowledged in July that New York City does not have the authority to execute the ICC warrant.
He made that announcement in an unusual video address describing Netanyahu as “a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” and declared that the Israeli leader would not be welcome in New York, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
The address drew criticism from Jewish leaders who questioned why the mayor was devoting so much attention to an arrest he acknowledged he could not legally carry out. The criticism came amid growing tension between Mamdani and parts of New York’s Jewish community over his rhetoric about Israel. Jewish organizations have also raised concerns about it contributing to a hostile climate for Jews across the city.
It was against that backdrop that Mamdani was pressed at the July press conference about what he would tell Palestinian supporters who had welcomed his promise to arrest Netanyahu, and were disappointed that he could not fulfill it. That is when he turned to protest as a remaining option. “I want to make it very clear that that welcome ends with me,” Mamdani said. “ I will not be welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu or any other war criminals when they come to this city.”
Netanyahu is expected to arrive in New York City next Wednesday under heavy security measures and address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday before returning to Israel. One Israeli media outlet reported that the official plane carrying the Israeli leader, known as “Wings of Zion,” will land at Newark International Airport in New Jersey instead of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to concerns that Mamdani could try to prevent the aircraft from remaining parked at JFK during Netanyahu’s visit.
Protests against Netanyahu are planned outside his hotel and near the United Nations during his address. Jewish groups are also planning a mass rally against antisemitism on Wednesday.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Mamdani drew a sharper distinction between encouraging protests and defending the right to hold them. “We respect that right,” he said. “And this is a city that is proud of the Constitution, proud of the First Amendment; we’ll continue to do so.”
Mamdani cited the same First Amendment right when asked about students from Ramaz and SAR, two prominent Modern Orthodox schools, who are planning a prayer vigil outside the mayor’s residence on Friday morning in support of Israel. “They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a ‘protest,’” he said. “Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. Though, he added, he would “probably be somewhere else across the city” when they gather.
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Renoir’s paintings have been stolen again. Their history may never be found.
The timing was as swift as Auguste Renoir’s brushstrokes. In the pre-dawn darkness of Sept. 8, thieves in camouflage and helmets took less than three minutes to saw through a wire-mesh fence and carry off four paintings from the neo-Provençal villa in the south of France where the artist spent the final years of his life.
Perhaps spooked by the city’s newly acquired police dog, the looters dropped two works as they fled from the Musée Renoir across the hillside above Cagnes-sur-Mer, through ancient olive groves, orange trees and figs. Two Renoir works remain missing — a reminder of the peculiar power these paintings exert, not only on those who love them, but on those who covet them and yearn to possess them at almost any cost.
Three of the four stolen works were MNRs — Musées Nationaux Récupération, the French designation for “orphan” works recovered after World War II but never restituted because their rightful owners could not be identified or located. French museums hold them provisionally, a limbo that for some has lasted more than 70 years.
For one of the missing Renoirs, the latest theft amounts to a double tragedy: wartime spoliation followed by modern looting.
German property records show that, during World War II “Jeune femme au puits” was “confiscated by SS man Brandl,” an apparent reference to Hermann Brandl, a Nazi officer and black marketeer who went by the pseudonym “Otto,” and led an organization that bought goods and artworks outside normal channels. Recovered in Bavaria, the painting passed through the Munich Central Collecting Point and was returned to France.
The painting is small and unfinished, oil on wood. A woman in a blue apron stands at a well, drawing water. We do not know her name, but Renoir preserved her gesture and her face. History did not preserve who she was.
I find that omission difficult to leave alone.
I felt something similar in Paris in 2019, when I first stood before another Renoir, “La Petite Irène,” in an exhibition at the Musée Maillol. The portrait had not been publicly exhibited in Paris for 73 years. Yet there was little to explain the tragic history of the girl in blue — or the fact that her portrait itself had been looted during the German Occupation.
In 1946, a French critic had encountered the portrait in a Paris exhibition of artworks recovered from Germany. He wrote that the painting brought him to his knees and asked: “Who was Mlle. Irène Cahen d’Anvers?”
Seventy-three years later, I was asking essentially the same question.
The question became a search. The search became an investigation. The investigation became a book.
Irène Cahen d’Anvers was eight when Renoir painted her, with cascading ginger hair, a distant gaze and lips pressed red as if bitten. She was born into a family of art collectors who were also part of one of Belle Époque France’s great Jewish banking dynasties. She survived the German Occupation. Her sister Élisabeth, her daughter Béatrice de Camondo and her two grandchildren did not. All were victims of the Holocaust.
Before the arrests, Irène’s son-in-law Léon Reinach entrusted her Renoir portrait to the Louvre for safekeeping in 1939. The museum evacuated it with treasures including the Mona Lisa and the French crown jewels to the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley.
But it was not safe there. In 1941, a Nazi looting unit arrived with a list of works belonging to private Jewish collectors and seized Irène’s portrait along with other paintings. Reinach boldly demanded its return, enlisting senior French museum officials in an unsuccessful campaign. Instead, the portrait eventually passed through Hermann Göring’s art-looting network.
After the war, Monuments Men investigators traced it to a Bavarian farmhouse owned by a murky art merchant near Neuschwanstein castle, a repository for looted art. In 1946, the portrait was returned to Irène, who later described it as “a remembrance of my youth and of all.”
Yet three years later, she sold it to Emil Bührle in a choice that seems almost incomprehensible. Bührle was a German-born Swiss arms manufacturer whose wartime fortune was built in significant part on weapons sales to Nazi Germany. He had also bought looted paintings during the war and, afterwards, was forced to restitute them — only, in several cases, to buy them back because he could not bear to part with them.
French archival records show that museum officials fiercely opposed the sale of “La Petite Irène.” Bührle’s own broker acknowledged that the Louvre had been interested in acquiring it, and a French commission voted to deny the export license needed to remove the Renoir from France.
Yet somehow those objections fell away. The broker’s correspondence showed that he bargained over the price and currency exchange rates with Irène and her banker. Bührle ultimately paid 240,000 Swiss francs — roughly $1.5 million in today’s dollars.
To understand Irène’s decision, I had to understand what the war had done to her.
During the Occupation, Irène left her grand Paris residence for a smaller apartment on Rue de la Tour in the 16th arrondissement and lived under the Italian surname of her former second husband. She survived by hiding in plain sight in occupied Paris, moving within a world of older Jewish women who survived by rotating among friends and discreet addresses. Helped by political connections and by a Catholic conversion decades earlier, she had obtained a coveted certificate declaring that she was not Jewish..
After the war, survivors returning from Auschwitz wrote to that Rue de la Tour apartment. Their painful letters told Irène what had happened to her missing family.
Her daughter Béatrice had survived arrest, Drancy and deportation to Auschwitz, where she was put to work in an ammunition factory. Newly uncovered records of letters from survivors indicate that she was murdered on Jan. 3, 1945, with more than 800 other prisoners, only weeks before Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, which is now known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Béatrice died knowing that her two adult children were already dead, according to former prisoners who later wrote to Irène. Léon Reinach — the son-in-law who had fought to recover Irène’s portrait — also died at Auschwitz. Irène’s sister Élisabeth, painted beside her younger sister Alice in Renoir’s “Pink and Blue,” was murdered after deportation as well.
What, then, did Irène see when she looked at Renoir’s image of the eight-year-old girl she had once been?
A family relic? A remnant of a vanished world? A Jewish identity she had spent a lifetime navigating? Or simply losses too great to absorb?
The correspondence surrounding the 1949 sale offers one practical explanation. Bührle’s intermediary wrote that Irène, then 77, wanted to prevent the portrait from being sold at auction after her death because, given its value, it was unlikely any single heir could keep it.
It is an almost mundane explanation for a painting burdened with so much history: She wanted to avoid the public spectacle of an auction and Bührle had the fortune to pay for it quickly.
After the sale, “La Petite Irène” largely disappeared into Bührle’s private collection in Zürich. Only in recent years, now that the Bührle archives have been opened to greater scrutiny and much of the collection has gone on long-term loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich, has the history behind the painting received sustained public attention.
Today “La Petite Irène” hangs alone against an expanse of green in an austere reflection room at the Kunsthaus. Recently, the museum created the gallery around the portrait, inviting visitors to contemplate Irène’s story, record their reactions on a digital screen or draw responses to a history that is finally being confronted.
When I first saw the painting in Paris in 2019, I was struck not only by the girl but by the silence surrounding her. Now that silence is beginning to recede. The history has become part of the portrait’s biography — and part of the mystery of her gaze.
And now another Renoir has disappeared.
The woman in “Jeune femme au puits” still has no name. We know more about the travels of her painting than we know about her: taken during the war, recovered in Bavaria, returned to France, stolen again.
Paintings outlive the people who make them, own them, covet them, steal them and fight to recover them. Perhaps that is part of their strange power.
They carry what we remember — and what we fail to remember.
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Translation series connects English readers to prewar Eastern European Jewish life
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אַ דאַנק אַ סעריע נײַע ענגלישע איבערזעצונגען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדישע ווערק, האָבן ענגליש־לייענערס הײַנט אַ געלעגנהײט זיך צו באַקענען מיטן ייִדישן לעבן־שטייגער פֿאַרן חורבן.
די סעריע, „ייִדישע שטימען“ — אַ בשותּפֿותדיקער איניציאַטיוו פֿון ייִװאָ און דעם פֿאַרלאַג בלומסבערי — איז שוין צו ניץ געקומען סײַ לערערס פֿון קורסן, וווּ די סטודענטן פֿאַרשטייען ניט קיין ייִדיש, סײַ לייענערס מיט אַן אינטערעס צו דער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
„ייִדישע שטימען“ באַשטייט פֿון ביכער װאָס זענען קײן מאָל פֿריִער ניט איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף ענגליש. זיי נעמען אַרײַן אַ ברײטע גאַמע אידעעס און פּערספּעקטיװן װאָס האָבן צוגעטראָגן צו דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער קולטור אין (און מחוץ) מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
זינט 2023, װען די סעריע איז לאַנצירט געװאָרן, זענען אַרױס פֿינעף בענד, װאָס צװײ פֿון זײ — „מיסיסיפּי“ און „די חסידישע װאַרשע“ — זענען ערשט דערשינען מיט אַ פּאָר װאָכן צוריק. ביז איצט האָט מען איבערגעזעצט בלויז ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע װערק אָבער מיט דער צײַט װעט מען איבערזעצן טעקסטן פֿון אַנדערע לשונות, אַזױ װי פּױליש און העברעיִש, וואָס מע האָט ביז איצט ניט איבערגעזעצט אויף ענגליש.
די סעריע, סובסידירט פֿון דער משפּחה פֿון האַריעט יאַסקי, װערט רעדאַקטירט פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט און עליסאַ בן-פּורת. (איך אַלײן אַרבעט מיט זײ װי אַן אַסיסטענטקע). קװינט איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער, און בן-פּורת איז אַ היסטאָריקערין פֿונעם ייִדישן לעבן אין רוסלאַנד און אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. ס׳איז דערפֿאַר נישט קײן חידוש אַז דער סעריעס קוקװינקל איז אַ היסטאָרישער. כאָטש די איבערגעזעצטע װערק רעפּרעזענטירן פֿאַרשײדענע קאַטעגאָריעס — למשל פּיעסעס, זכרונות און דערצײלונגען — איז דער עיקר זײער היסטאָרישע רײַכקײט.
„מיר קלײַבן אױס טעקסטן װאָס װאַרפֿן אַ שײַן סײַ אױף ברײטע טענדענצן, סײַ אױף ספּעציפֿישע פֿראַגעס װעגן ייִדיש לעבן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע, און אין אַנדערע לענדער װוּ מיזרח־אייראָפּעיִשע ייִדן האָבן געװױנט װי אימיגראַנטן אָדער פּליטים. אַפֿילו די ׳ליטעראַרישע׳ װערק װי דערצײלוגען און פּיעסעס פֿאָרשן מיר פֿון אַ היסטאָרישן שטאַנדפּונקט“, האָט מיר קװינט געזאָגט.
צוליב דעם דאָזיקן שליחות שפּילט אַ װיכטיקע ראָלע דער אַרײַנפֿיר צו יעדן באַנד, װאָס איז תּמיד געשריבן פֿון אַ היסטאָריקער. אַ מאָל איז דער מחבר פֿון דער הקדמה אױך דער איבערזעצער, און אַ מאָל נעמען אונטער באַזונדערע מענטשן די צװײ אױפֿגאַבעס. „דעם היסטאָריקערס אַרבעט אינעם אַרײַנפֿיר איז אַרױסצוציִען און צוצובינדן די ביאָגראַפֿישע, גײַסטיקע און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע אַספּעקטן פֿונעם װערק, אױף אַן אופֿן װאָס איז גלײַכצײַטיק װיסנשאַפֿטלעך און צוטריטלעך צו אַלע לײענערס, אַרײַננעמענדיק די װאָס האָבן פֿריִער ניט געװוּסט קײן סך װעגן דער טעמע,“ האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט.
ביז אַהער באַשטײט די סעריע פֿון די דאָזיקע בענד, װאָס זענען אַלע בראָשירטע ביכלעך גרינג אַרומצוטראָגן אין אַ רוקזאַק און צו לײענען אַבי װוּ:
— „דרײַ ייִדישע פּיעסעס פֿון פֿרױען׃ װײַבערשע ייִדישע פּערספּעקטיװן“, איבערגעזעצט פֿון אַלען לויִס ריקמאַן, מיראָ מניעװסקי און אליע פּיאַצאַ, מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט. דאָס בוך נעמט אַרײַן דרײַ פּיעסעס אָנגעשריבן פֿון דראַמאַטורגינס אין דער רוסישער אימפּעריע, אין פּױלן און אין ברוקלין, ניו־יאָרק, צװישן 1880 און 1920. אַלע דרײַ באַהאַנדלען קאָנטראָװערסיעלע „װײַבערשע“ טעמעס אַזױ װי חתונה און גט, שװאַנגערשאַפֿט, קינדל־קאָנטראָל און פּראָסטיטוציע. דראַמעס װאָס באַטראַכטן איבערלעבונגען דורך װײַבערשע אױגן זענען אַ זעלטנקײט אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור.
— „חורבן דובאָװע׃ אַ פּינקס פֿון אַ טױטער שטאָט“, פֿון רחל פֿײַגנבערג (1926), איבערגעזעצט פֿון סינטיע און אַלבערט מאַדאַנסקי, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון עליסאַ בן-פּורת (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). פֿײַגנבערג באַשרײַבט דאָס לעבן און דעם טראַגישן אוקמום פֿונעם שטעטל דובאָװע אין אוקראַיִנע, װוּ כּמעט אַלע ייִדן זענען בעת דער רוסישער בירגערקריג אין 1919 אָדער פֿאַרטיליקט אָדער פֿאַרטריבן געװאָרן. װען נישט פֿײַגנבערגס רירנדיקע דערצײלונג װאָלט דאָס ייִדישע לעבן אין דובאָװע אין גאַנצן פֿאַרגעסן געװאָרן. איר נאַראַטיװ האָט געדינט פֿאַר אַ גבֿית־עדות אינעם מישפּט פֿון שלום שװאַרצבאָרד אין 1927.
— „די מוטער פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער׃ זכרונות פֿון אסתּר־רחל קאַמינסקאַ“ (1927-1926), איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון מיכל יאַשינסקי (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). קאַמינסקאַ איז געװען די באַרימטסטע ייִדישע אַקטריסע פֿון איר דור — טאַקע אַ „סופּערשטערן“ סײַ אױף דער בינע, סײַ אין ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע פֿילמען. זי איז געװען ספּעציעל באַקאַנט פֿאַר אירע מאַמע־ראָלעס: דער טיטל פֿון דער איבערזעצונג פֿאַררופֿט זיך סײַ אױף דעם, סײַ אױף איר השפּעה אױף דער אַנטװיקלונג פֿון ייִדישן טעאַטער. קאַמינסקאַס זכרונות זײַנען פֿול מיט אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע געשיכטעס װעגן די פֿריילעכע מאָמענטן און די שװעריקײטן פֿונעם טעאַטער־לעבן, און מיט באַמערקונגען װעגן דער טעאַטער־קונסט װאָס זי האָט געהאָלפֿן אױספֿורעמען.
— „מיסיסיפּי׃ אַ ייִדישע פּיעסע װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין“ (1935), פֿון לײב מלאך, איבערגעזעצט פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אַליסאַ קװינט (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). מלאך האָט אָנגעשריבן די פּיעסע בתּשובֿה אױפֿן טרויעריק באַרימטן סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין אין די דרום־שטאַטן, װען נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקער זענען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ װײַסע פֿרױען אין אַ באַן. די װאַרשעװער טרופּע „יונג טעאַטער“, רעזשיסירט פֿון מיכל װײַכערט, האָט געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ איבער 100 מאָל. דער ייִדישער עולם האָט מיטגעפֿילט מיט די שװאַרצע פּערסאָנאַזשן, סײַ פֿון אַ הומאַניסטישן שטאַנדפּונקט, סײַ צולוב די אײגענע איבערלעבונגען מיט אַנטיסעמיטיזם אין פּױלן.
— „די חסידישע װאַרשע׃ ר׳ זלמן און דאָס אַלעקסאַנדער־שטיבל“ (1960), פֿון יחיאל האָפֿער, איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון יונתּן בױאַרין (לײענט װײַטער דאָ). די מעשׂיות דערצײלן די אָפֿט־הומאָריסטישע טווּנגען פֿון ר׳ זלמן, אַן עקסצענטרישער לופֿטמענטש און אַ חסיד פֿונעם אַלעקסאַנדער־רבין. דורך זלמנס אַוואַנטורעס שילדערט האָפֿער דאָס לעבן פֿון אַ װאַרשעװער שטיבל, װוּ מענער האָבן געדאַװנט, געלערנט תּורה, געגעסן און זיך אויסגעטענהט. די דערצײלונגען מאָלן אױס אַ לעבעדיק בילד פֿון פֿאַר־מלחמהדיקן חסידות אין װאַרשע, װאָס איז געבליבן פֿעסט, נישט־געקוקט אױף דער ייִדישער מאָדערניזירונג ביזן חורבן.
אין 2027 און 2028 װעט „ייִדישע שטימען“ אַרױסגעבן:
— די דראַמאַטישע זכרונות פֿון שמעון דזשיגאַן, פֿונעם גאָר באַרימטן קאָמעדיע־פּאָר, דזשיגאַן און שומאַכער (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מרים אייזיקס, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון דיעגאָ ראָטמאַן).
— חיים גראַדעס נישט־פּובליקירט מײַסטערװערק, „די פֿרױען פֿון דער געטאָ“, װעגן אַ גרופּע פֿרױען װאָס האָבן איבערגעלעבט די װילנער געטאָ (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַ הקדמה פֿון דוד פֿישמאַן).
— די פּױליש־שפּראַכיקע זכרונות פֿון יולאַ װאַלד, די טאָכטער פֿון אַ חסידישן קרעטשמער אין דער צײַט פֿון דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה (איבערגעזעצט פֿון מאַרטאַ דודזיק־רודקאָװסקאַ, מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון גלען דײַנער).
— אױטאָביאָגראַפֿישע מעשׂיות װעגן די רײַזעס פֿון יוסף יצחק שניאורסון (דעם ריי״ץ), דער זעקסטער ליובאַוויטשער רבי (איבערגעזעצט און מיט אַן אַרײַנפֿיר פֿון אלי רובין).
„מיר האָבן כּמעט ניט קײן צײַט אָפּצוכאַפּן דעם אָטעם“, האָט אַליסאַ קװינט געזאָגט. „יעדער פּראָיעקט איז אַן אוצר, מיטן אײגענעם קוקװינקל אױף די דערפֿאַרונגען און געדאַנקען פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּעיִשע ייִדן. ס׳איז אַ פּריװילעגיע זיך צו טײלן מיט אַזעלכע באַטײַטיקע טעקסטן מיט ענגליש־רעדנדיקע לײענערס.“
קױפֿט דאָ אַלע פֿינעף בענד פֿון דער סעריע ( כּדי צו פֿאַרשפּאָרן 20%, ניצט דעם קאָד YIDDISHVOICES בעתן באַצאָלן).
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