Uncategorized
Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure
(JTA) — Every Thursday, Brad Orsini gets on a conference call with dozens of other security specialists who, like him, focus on preventing threats to American Jews. But in a few days, and for the coming months, the conference call won’t just address the dangers of the present and future. It will also deal with events that occurred more than four years ago.
That’s because next week marks the beginning of the trial of the gunman who is accused of killing 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018.
Orsini, who oversaw the city’s Jewish communal security on the day of the attack in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, hopes to find a sense of closure in the alleged shooter’s prosecution. But he also knows that the trial threatens to broadcast the white supremacist ideas that lay behind the attack, and continue to pose risks for Jewish communities. And he worries that, in addition to providing a possible pathway for survivors and victims’ families to move into the future, it could also thrust them back into a painful past.
“It’s long overdue,” Orsini said. “This has been looming large over the Pittsburgh community and, quite honestly, the Jewish community in the nation. We’re all looking toward finishing this trial and prosecuting this actor for what he did.”
At the same time, he added, “This trial is going to reopen wounds that this community has suffered for almost five years now, and it’s going to have the ability to retraumatize many people in the community. And we have to be concerned about that.”
Beginning on Monday, those countervailing emotions and expectations will come to bear as the deadliest antisemitic attack in American Jewish history is litigated in court. The trial, which will begin with jury selection, is expected to last about three months. Few doubt the guilt of the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, whose name is hardly uttered by Jewish residents of Squirrel Hill. But what remains unclear is what the trial will mean for American Jews — and for the families most directly affected by the attack.
Some hope for the defendant to get the death penalty — even though that will mean prolonging the legal ordeal — while others have advocated against it. Some hope for the trial to shed light on the threat of white supremacy, even as renewed attention on the attack could inspire other violent extremists. And some hope the trial will help them move past the tragedy, even as they know it will be difficult to hear the details of the shooting laid out in court.
“The country is going to have to undergo this unprecedented trial of the country’s worst mass killer of Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s going to be really hard, so I think our community is really going to have to buckle down and brace ourselves.”
The attack on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, killed 11 people from three congregations, all of which met at the same building, and injured six others, including four police officers. The defendant faces 63 criminal charges, including hate crimes and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty — a choice some relatives of victims are vocally supporting. Previously, leaders of two of the three congregations that suffered the attack had opposed the death penalty in this case.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” Diane Rosenthal, sister of David and Cecil Rosethal, who died in the attack, told local journalists, according to reporting by the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
For the survivors and families of victims, the trial will likely be especially painful. Some told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that they intend to take time off work, delay a vacation or be away from family for an extended period of time to be present at the proceedings.
“I want to see justice happen, but at the same time, I hate to think about the families having to potentially see images of what happened and things of that sort,” Steve Weiss, who survived the attack, told the weekly Jewish newspaper. “I’m sure they have mental images, but to have to actually see photos of victims and things of that sort I think can really be difficult for them.”
One thing few people question is the shooter’s guilt, despite his plea of not guilty. He offered to plead guilty in 2019 in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, but prosecutors, determined to pursue capital punishment for the crime, rejected the plea.
It was the same thing that had happened in the case of the man charged with killing nine Black worshippers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. But there, despite the rejected guilty plea, the trial took place a year and a half after the attack, and the shooter was sentenced to death. (In an illustration of the length of death penalty cases, his latest court proceeding happened in October, and he has not yet been executed.)
In contrast, the Pittsburgh trial is not starting until four and a half years after the shooting there. Part of the reason for the delay stems from the work of the defense team, which has pushed back the trial through various court filings. The alleged shooter’s lead attorney, Judy Clarke, has defended a series of high-profile attackers: the Unabomber, the attacker in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing and the Boston Marathon bomber, among others. According to Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate, her singular goal is to avoid the death penalty for her client.
But in many other ways, the parallels between the Charleston trial and this one are clear. Both concern shootings by alleged white supremacists in houses of worship, tragedies that have become gruesome symbols of a national rise in bigotry. In both, the culpability of the defendant was assumed before the trial began. Like the Pittsburgh defendant, the Charleston shooter has been lionized by white supremacists, including some who cited him as an inspiration for their own violent acts.
And in both cases, there is an understanding that a conviction does not heal the wounds opened by the shooter.
“This trial has produced no winners, only losers,” said the judge in the Charleston shooter’s trial, Richard Gergel, according to the New Yorker. “This proceeding cannot give the families what they truly want, the return of their loved ones.”
Still, some who are watching the Pittsburgh trial closely hope that it will bring new facts and connections to light. Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that spearheaded a multimillion-dollar victory in a civil trial against the organizers of the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, hopes that the Pittsburgh trial illustrates the links among different white supremacist shootings — such as the attacks in El Paso, Texas; Christchurch, New Zealand; and at a synagogue in Poway, California.
Those attackers spouted similar conspiracy theories and referenced other recent violent attacks in their manifestos. Spitalnick said that the accused Pittsburgh shooter allegedly communicated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally on the social network Gab, which is known as a haven for right-wing extremists.
“Trials like this can really be illustrative of how deep the poison of white supremacy and antisemitism goes,” she said. In the Charlottesville trial, she said, “The reams and reams of evidence… really helped pull back the curtain on what motivated the defendants, how they operated, the tools and the tactics of the movement, the conspiracy theories at its core.”
There’s also the possibility that, with the attack resurfacing the shooter’s motivations, and putting him back in the spotlight, it will act as an inspiration for other white supremacists. In the years following the synagogue shooting, Pittsburgh became a kind of pilgrimage site for the defendant’s admirers — leading to continued harassment of local Jews.
“We’re giving a platform to an individual who is a Jew hater, who wanted to kill all Jews,” Orsini said. “What does that spark in other like-minded people? We need to be very cognizant throughout this trial on what kind of chatter is going to be out there on the deep dark web, or even in open portals.”
In the face of concerns about retraumatization, Greenblatt said the ADL is preparing resources on how to discuss the trial with students and amid the Jewish community.
“To relive the horrors of, the grief of, the event — this thing being constantly in the news — it’s going to be hard to avoid, it’s going to be difficult and it could be grisly and upsetting,” Greenblatt said. “I would much prefer this trial didn’t happen — I would much prefer this crime never happened, I would much prefer that those people were all still with us today — but this is where we are.”
He added, “If there might be some ability to raise awareness among the non-Jewish population of what we’re facing, [that] would be of value.”
One potential challenge for American Jews as a whole, Spitalnick said, is that federal prosecutors don’t necessarily share the needs of Jews who will be following the proceedings. While the trial will conjure a mix of emotions for Jews locally and beyond, she said, prosecutors will be more focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened that day and the details of the accused attacker’s actions and motives.
“We’re going to probably spend a lot of time hearing from the prosecution about what motivated him, but it’s not through the lens of what we as Jews think about when we think about Jewish safety,” she said. “It’s through the lens of making the case that this guy did what he did motivated by this extremism and hate… It’s going to be very deliberate and tactical and precise, versus where we as American Jews have been thinking about this from a deeply personal, communal safety perspective.”
The deliberate and detailed work of prosecutors, however, may not be at cross purposes with the emotional needs of Jews, Orsini said. When the trial ends, he said, the establishment of Bowers’ guilt may itself prove to be transformative for how Jews relate to the tragedy, in Pittsburgh and beyond.
“The fact that this individual has not been fully brought to justice… and is not convicted yet of this mass shooting — in some way, yes, that closure and finality will be done at the end of this trial,” he said. “The community can kind of regroup and truly become resilient once this phase is over with.”
—
The post Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
This 90-year-old Jewish performer and promoter is the Zelig of folk music
Harry Tuft was in a taxi with Judy Collins, who had her guitar with her. The cab driver looked back and asked if the two of them were folk singers. They replied in the affirmative.
“Folk music is dead,” the cab driver asserted.
“We kind of chuckled a little and said, ‘Oh, really, how come?’” Tuft recalled.
“Did you see Ed Sullivan last night?”
The passengers replied that they hadn’t.
“There was a group on there called The Beatles. Folk music is dead.”
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of folk music were an exaggeration.
“That was a time when, really, we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Tuft said during a recent Zoom interview from his home in Denver.
“I think it’s thanks to groups like Peter, Paul and Mary and maybe somebody like Joan Baez and Judy Collins and John Denver — people who were popular enough and smart enough to appeal to a larger segment of the population. They really kept folk music alive.”
The genre lived on, also, thanks to the efforts of the now-90-year-old Tuft, who was more than a bit player in the folk music revival during the 1960s. He founded the Denver Folklore Center in 1962 and, with others in 1979, founded the Swallow Hill Music Association, which presents concerts, teaches music classes for all ages and offers outreach programs. In 2012, Tuft was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
Tuft was also a link in the chain that led to Bob Dylan meeting the Beatles. He also may be the only nonagenarian who released an album this year.
“Friends, Lovers & Other Strangers” includes songs by artists like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, as well as ones by some of Tuft’s friends. It also includes a cover of the Nat King Cole Trio’s “Nature Boy.”
“I grew up in Philadelphia listening to pop music of the day on radio stations WPEN and WIBG, and R&B stations at night,” Tuft writes in the album’s liner notes. “This song was popular across the board.”
Tuft’s paternal grandfather, Dr. Jacob L. Manasses, was the founder of Bushkill Farms Camp, a Jewish boys camp in the Pocono mountains. Tuft went to Indian Lake, another Jewish camp in the Poconos. A counselor at his camp played the ukulele. Tuft, who played piano and clarinet, soon acquired a ukulele. “I found out there was such a thing as a baritone uke and it turns out that the tuning of the baritone is the same as the four highest strings of the guitar, so I was already two-thirds of the way to a guitar,” he said. “It was very customary in those days for Jewish kids somewhere in their college years to go to Europe so I bought a Chimes guitar and carried it with me.”
Tuft intended to become a doctor like his father and paternal grandfather. But his grades weren’t good enough to get into medical school. Instead, he graduated from Dartmouth in 1957 with a degree in philosophy. He went to graduate school for architecture at the University of Pennsylvania with thoughts of being a city planner.
“But music won out,” said Tuft.
While at Dartmouth, Tuft met Pete Seeger at a folk club. Seeger met with the club members in the afternoon and performed that night.
“He was really intent on getting us as a group to go out into the community and see if we could find people who had songs to offer. He arrived in a blue Plymouth station wagon with his kids on a mattress in the back. His wife, Toshi, set up a display in the hall and sold Pete’s Folkways Records after the concert. Here was this icon, this important person in my musical life in the moment, and he was just getting along,” he said.
“He requested a large log, and did a song called ‘Didn’t Old John (Cross the Water).’ It included a place to swing the axe. Unfortunately, the podium was very slick and Seeger ended up chasing the log all over the ‘stage.’”
After graduating from Dartmouth, Tuft joined the growing folk music scene that was centered around the Gilded Cage in Philadelphia. There, he met his lifelong friend Dick Weissman, a banjoist and guitarist who was in the Journeymen with John Phillips, who would go on to found the Mamas and the Papas.
Tuft eventually ventured out to Colorado, where he auditioned at The Exodus, a Denver folk club.
Tuft was told about the owner: “If he was going to hire you he would be critical and if he was not he would be nice to you. And he was nice to me, so I knew that I wasn’t going to get a job there.
“I had a repertoire that was out of the ordinary, and I was never really attracted to the ‘quote’ popular folk songs,” Tuft said. “As a matter of fact, when it came to trying to make a living playing in the bars what they wanted to hear were the popular songs by the Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul and Mary or the Brothers Four, and I didn’t know those songs.”
“I’m a sucker for a story, I’m a balladeer. I love ballads. Quite often, I do ballads of 10, 12, 14 verses because I like the form so much.”
The Exodus owner said that he thought someone could make a part-time living opening a folklore center like Izzy Young’s Folklore Center in Greenwich Village. “I sometimes joke and say that he was right. I opened a full-time folklore center in order to make a part-time living.”
Tuft also sold records, instruments, strings and accessories and it was the strings and accessories that paid the rent.
The shop became a way station for up-and-coming folk musicians traveling between Chicago and the West Coast. When Bob Dylan made his first cross-country tour and played in Denver, he had his mail forwarded to Tuft’s store.
“Even then, he had an attitude about him,” Tuft recalled. “The following summer I saw him at the Kettle of Fish in the Village, and he grudgingly acknowledged that we had met.”
After a visit to Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, he started a school for Denver musicians and soon branched out into promotion. His first job was for Joan Baez who sold out a 2,400 seat house in March 1964.
Baez was involved with Dylan at that time and wanted to get him to meet The Beatles, who were playing Red Rocks on August 26. Baez was scheduled to play at the venue a couple days earlier, so a plan was hatched for her to come out a few days early so that she could meet the lads and arrange for them to meet Dylan in New York, where The Beatles were going after Denver.
The day before The Beatles’ show, Tuft and Baez went to see A Hard Day’s Night. The musicians met before The Beatles show and Tuft recalled that Baez and the band members were deferential to one another. Except for Ringo, who wasn’t interested and was reading a comic book.
Tuft also brought the Mamas and the Papas to Denver’s Municipal Auditorium Theater with 7,600 seats in 1966. Richard “Dick” Lamm, a friend and lawyer, fronted him $5,000 for the guarantee. Lamm later admitted that he had absolutely no idea who the Mamas and the Papas were. “That showed the amount of trust he had in me,” Tuft said. “And he said he was nervous until a week before the concert until they were on the cover of Life magazine.” Lamm used his profits to fund his first run for the Denver statehouse.
Later, John Denver offered his services for a benefit Tuft organized and helped raise more than $40,000 for Lamm’s successful run for governor.
Folk music endures, Tuft said, “because the best of folk music involves music. And the best of music is melodic. And whatever it is in our physical makeup that involves not just the heartbeat, which is our basic rhythm, but something about our voice, maybe, and the way we speak and our desire to communicate that all put together leads to somebody creating a song about something that happened, and if the kernel of it, either the music or the words, or both are such that people like it and repeat it and you get musical history, and history of countries and our country in particular, of the songs.”
Tuft is already putting together his next album — a double album of cowboy and western songs, traditional on one side and contemporary on the other.
“I’m a song addict,” Tuft said. “And I like to think that I have pretty decent taste in songs. Nothing pleases me more than to be able to find a new song, make it my own, and pass it on and open it up to whatever audience I’m able to bring together.”
The post This 90-year-old Jewish performer and promoter is the Zelig of folk music appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel has a lot riding on Nvidia, whose CEO resigned today
Jensen Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and has run it for 33 years, resigned as chief executive on Thursday, ending a tenure that turned a maker of video-game chips into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom. The decision followed revelations of an affair with a businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials suspect of being a Chinese spy, and allegations of a second relationship, with an executive who reports to him.
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor.
The turmoil is a Silicon Valley story with a significantIsraeli subplot. Nvidia employs roughly 6,000 people in Israel, including on 18 floors of office space in a Tel Aviv skyscraper. Israel is home to the company’s largest R&D hub outside of the U.S. As well, Huang has been the driving force behind a plan to build a giant new campus in the country’s north. Huang has courted Israel for years, and the open question now is what happens to that commitment without him.
Nvidia’s Israeli business traces back to 2019, when it agreed to buy Mellanox, an Israeli chip company, for $6.9 billion. Mellanox made the technology that lets thousands of chips in a data center work together as one machine. That technology is now central to how AI data centers are built.
Huang kept Mellanox in Israel, along with its patents and its sales. The Israeli teams’ work is now woven into Nvidia’s newest products, and includes building a chip meant to rein in AI tools that act on their own.
In the second quarter of 2026 alone, Nvidia’s Israeli operation booked $17.5 billion in sales, nearly a fifth of the company’s worldwide revenue and more than four times the sales of Teva Pharmaceuticals, the multinational Israeli drugmaker. Analysts credit Nvidia with largely driving a 13% jump in Israeli tax revenue, and its workforce there has roughly doubled since Oct. 7, 2023.
A personal stake
Huang’s attachment to Israel is not purely commercial. On Oct. 7, Avinatan Or, a chip engineer at Nvidia’s Israeli operation, was captured at the Nova music festival along with his then-girlfriend, Noa Argamani, in a video seen around the world. She was rescued eight months later. Or remained a hostage for 738 days.
Nvidia colleagues held vigils with his mother, Ditza, and Huang stayed in touch with the family throughout. When Or was freed in Oct. 2025, Huang wrote to employees that “Avinatan has come home.” Huang later hosted Or and Argamani at the company’s headquarters in California. This March, as the war with Iran broke out, Huang told Israeli employees that he was “very worried” about them.
Huang has called Israel a “second home” for Nvidia.
That attachment is intended to last. In December, Nvidia announced plans for a campus in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, reportedly second in size only to its Silicon Valley headquarters. Construction is set to begin next year, and the offices are expected to open by 2031, with room for up to 10,000 employees.
What lies ahead
The next CEO has become a question in Israel, too. Kress, 59, has been Nvidia’s finance chief since 2013. The board says it will look both inside and outside the company for a permanent chief executive.
Haaretz speculated Thursday that two Israeli executives could be potential candidates. Both men studied at the Technion in Haifa. Michael Kagan, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and moved to Israel with his family after high school, co-founded Mellanox in 1999 and has been Nvidia’s chief technology officer for six years. Johny Srouji, born in Haifa to an Arab Christian family, joined Apple in 2008 and now leads its hardware work, including the chips inside its products.
Nothing so far suggests Nvidia’s plans in Israel will change. The Israeli teams work on products the company depends on, and the new campus has long been in the works.
Nvidia’s stock has fallen by about a third since early October, a loss of more than $1.5 trillion in market value, and the company is due to report earnings on Nov. 17. The numbers will matter in Israel. So will something they can’t show: whether Nvidia’s affection for the country outlasts its last CEO.
The post Israel has a lot riding on Nvidia, whose CEO resigned today appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
I. B. Singer predicted the war between Fascism and Communism
יצחק באַשעװיס איז אַרײַן אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור אין 1925, װען ער איז געװען בלויז 21 יאָר אַלט. אַז ער איז באַרימט געװאָרן אין אַמעריקע, האָט ער ניט געלאָזט איבערדרוקן אָדער איבערזעצן זײַנע פֿריִערדיקע װערק, װאָס זײַנען דערשינען אין ייִדישע צײַטשריפֿטן אין פּױלן.
לעצטנס האָט מען זײ אָבער אָפּגעזוכט און איבערגעזעצט אױף ענגליש אונטערן קעפּל „אױפֿן עולם־התּועה“. די דאָזיקע אױסגאַבע איז אַ קאָלעקטיװער אױפֿטו פֿון אַ גאַנצער גרופּע רעדאַקטאָרן און איבערזעצער, אַרײַנגערעכנט דניאל קענעדי, יאַן שװאַרץ, ראָזע װאַלדמאַן, אַגניעשקאַ לעגוטקאָ און אַנדערע.
אין זײַנע דערצײלונגען פֿון יענער תּקופֿה מאָלט באַשעװיס אַ ברײטן לײַװנט פֿון ייִדישע צרות אין דער נײַ־אױפֿגעקומענער פּױלישער רעפּובליק. כּמעט אַלע העלדן זײַנע זײַנען יורדים, װאָס שלאָגן זיך מיט די ביטערע עקאָנאָמישע באַדינגונגען און פֿאַלן נאָך טיפֿער אין יסורים און נױט.
גימפּל בעדנער, דער העלד פֿון „אױף דער עלטער“, איז אַ מאָל געװען אַ װאַסערטרעגער, אָבער איצט האָט ער מער ניט קײן כּוח פֿאַר אַזאַ אַרבעט. די אײנציקע שטיצע זײַנע קומט פֿון זײַנע טעכטער, װאָס האַלטן אַ שאַנדהױז. קײן סך אָרט איז דאָרט ניטאָ, מוז ער נעבעך ליגן אין דעם אײגענעם בעט, װוּ זײַן טאָכטער „באַדינט אירע געסט“.
דוד סװירסקי, דער העלד אין „צוריקװעגס“, קערט זיך אום קײן פּױלן פֿון ארץ־ישׂראל. אַן אַמאָליקער ציוניסט, איז ער אַנטױשט געװאָרן אינעם ציוניסטישן חלום און מיד פֿון זוכן „עבֿודה“ בײַ די חלוצישע ייִשובֿים. אָבער קײן מזל אין דער אַלטער הײם האָט ער ניט. זײַן פֿאָטער שיקט אים אַװעק, און מיר געזעגענען זיך מיט אים װען ער לאָזט זיך זוכן גליקן בײַ זײַן מאַמעס משפּחה אין אַ פֿאַרװאָרפֿענעם שטעטל.
באַשעװיס מאָלט אַ רײַכע פּאַנאָראַמע פֿון ייִדישן פּױלן נאָך דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה. אים זײַנען גוט באַקאַנט סײַ די אָרעמע ייִדישע גאַסן פֿון װאַרשע סײַ די װײַטע פֿאַרװאָרלאָזטע שטעטלעך. ער לאָזט דעם לײענער ממש שמעקן דעם ריח פֿונעם ביטערן דלות און ייִאוש. עס איז ניטאָ קײן נס װאָס קען ראַטעװען זײַנע העלדן פֿונעם ביטערן גורל.
די אַלטע סטאַבילע װעלט אונטער דער שליטה פֿון די מעכטיקע אימפּעריעס, דער רוסישער און דער עסטרײַך־אונגאַרישער, ליגט אין חורבֿות. די נײַע פּױלישע מלוכה איז שװאַך און אָרעם און זאָגט ניט צו קײן צוקונפֿט פֿאַר ייִדן.
אין די װערק פֿונעם װאַרשעװער פּעריאָד פֿון 1925 ביז 1935 דערקענט מען בפֿירוש די השפּעה פֿון י. ל. פּרץ, סײַ אין די פּרטימדיקע, נאַטוראַליסטישע שילדערונגען פֿון די שטעטלעך און סײַ אין די פֿיגורן פֿון כּלערלײ מערקװירדיקע פּערסאָנאַזשן: מקובלים, משׂכּילים, חסידים, ציוניסטן, אַפּיקורסים און סתּם ייִדן פֿון אַ גאַנץ יאָר.
דאָס זאַמלבוך נעמט אויך אַרײַן אינטערװיוען מיט ייִדישע מחברים, װאָס באַשעװיס האָט געמאַכט פֿאַר דער װאַרשעװער צײַטונג „ליטעראַרישע בלעטער“.
הלל צײטלין באַגריסט באַשעװיסן אין זײַן דירה, װוּ ער לערנט חסידות מיט זײַנע תּלמידים. ער האַלט, אַז מחוץ פּרץ, אַנ־סקי און דער נסתּר האָט די ייִדישע ליטעראַטור ניט קײן אמתע דערגרײכונגען. צײטלין באַדױערט, אַז ער מוז ציִען פּרנסה פֿון דער ליטעראַרישער אַרבעט און באַקלאָגט זיך, אַז ער קען קױם קריגן אַ פּאָר גראָשן פֿאַר זײַנע װערק. אָבער פֿאַר לערנען נעמט ער ניט קײן געלט.
מלך ראַװיטש זעט אױס מער װי אַ דײַטש אײדער אַ ייִד, שרײַבט באַשעװיס. אַנשטאָט צו באַגריסן באַשעוויסן מיט אַ „שלום־עליכם“ װײַזט ראַװיטש אױפֿן זײגער, װײַל באַשעװיס איז אַ פּאָר מינוט שפּעט. נאָך אײדער באַשעװיס שטעלט אַ פֿראַגע, הײבט ראַװיטש אָן צו דערצײלן װעגן זײַן ליטעראַרישן װעג. ער גיט באַשעװיסן אַ גאַנצע דרשה װעגן זײַן „אידעאַליסטישן“ צוגאַנג צו ליטעראַטור: די אידײ איז דער עיקר, זי איז די „נשמה“ פֿון אַ קונסטװערק. פֿאַר ראַװיטשן זײַנען די װיכטיקסטע ייִדישע דיכטער פּרץ מאַרקיש און ה. לײװיק.
דער סאַמע לעבעדיקסטער שמועס האָט באַשעװיס מיט פּרץ מאַרקיש. ער כאַפּט מאַרקישן ממש אַ פּאָר שעה פֿאַר זײַן צוריקפֿאָרן קײן סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אין יולי 1926. מאַרקיש איז אױפֿגערעגט, מסתּמא ווײַל ער מוז צוריקפֿאָרן, און „שרײַט“ זײַנע ענטפֿערס צו באַשעװיסעס פֿראַגעס.
ליטעראַטור איז פֿאַר מאַרקישן די „לעבעדיקע אָרגאַנישע ענערגיע“ װאָס פֿליסט פֿונעם יחיד צו דעם כּלל און צוריק. ליטעראַטור האָט ניט קײן צװעק, זי איז אַן אײביקער פּראָצעס פֿון װערן.
מאַרקיש טענהט, אַז די רעװאָלוציעס, מלחמות און פּאָגראָמען צװינגען מענטשן צו קערן זײערע פּנימער צו דעם רעאַלן לעבן. און איצט, האַלט ער, קומט די ייִדישע ליטעראַטור נענטער צו אָט דער נאַקעטער װירקלעכקײט.
עטלעכע חדשים נאָך מאַרקישעס אָפּפֿאָרן קײן סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד האָט זיך ישׂראל יהושע זינגער, באַשעװיסעס עלטערער ברודער, אומגעקערט קיין אַמעריקע פֿון אַ צװײ־חדשימדיקער רײַזע איבער „נײַ־רוסלאַנד“.
לױט זײַן אײַנדרוק, האָט די סאָװעטישע קונסט אָנגעװױרן דעם גײַסט פֿונעם ראַדיקאַלן אַװאַנגאַרד און האָט זיך אומגעקערט צום טראַדיציאָנעלן רעאַליזם. די דאָזיקע טענדענץ איז זינגערן געװען צום האַרצן װײַל ער איז אַלײן געװען אַן אָנהענגער פֿונעם רעאַליסטישן סטיל.
צום באַדױערן האָט דער איבערזעצער דאָ געמאַכט אַ פּאָר גרײַזן אין די נעמען פֿון סאָװעטישע שרײַבער: דער מחבר פֿון „גאַלאָפּ“ הײסט עזרא פֿינינבערג און ניט Feinberg, און איציק קיפּניס איז ניט קײן E. Kipnis. דערצו איז דער ענגלישער אױסלײג פֿון ייִדישע נעמען ניט אױסגעהאַלטן: איזי כאַריקס נאָמען שרײַבט מען סײַ Kharik סײַ Charik.
באַשעװיס האָט פֿאָרמולירט זײַן אײגענעם עסטעטישן אַני־מאמין אינעם עסײ „צו דער פֿראַגע װעגן דיכטונג און פּאָליטיק“, װאָס איז אַרױס אינעם קלײנעם ליטעראַרישן זשורנאַל „גלאָבוס“ אין 1932.
דאָס איז אַ װיכטיקער דאָקומענט אין דער געשיכטע פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, און עס קומט אַ ייִשר־כּוח די רעדאַקטאָרן און דער איבערזעצערין װעראַ סאַבאָ פֿאַר מאַכן דעם דאָזיקן מקור צוטריטלעך אױף ענגליש.
„דער גײַסט פֿון פּאָליטיק האָט אפֿשר נאָך קײן מאָל נישט אַזױ אַרומגעכאַפּט דעם מענטש װי הײַנט. […] די מלחמה צװישן װעלט־פּראָלעטאַריאַט און דעם פֿאַשיזם דערנענטערט זיך. אידעיִש איז די אַרמײ פֿון דער צוקונפֿטיקער װעלטשלאַכט שױן מאָביליזירט.“ אַזױ שטעלט באַשעװיס זײַן דיאַגנאָז דער תּקופֿה, װאָס װעט זיך ענדיקן מיטן חורבן.
באַשעװיס שרײַבט מיט לײַדנשאַפֿט און קלאָרקײט. ער איז אַ שאַרפֿער קריטיקער פֿון ראַדיקאַלע פּאָליטיקער, סײַ די רעכטע פֿאַשיסטן סײַ די לינקע קאָמוניסטן. סײַ די, סײַ יענע „צײלן שױן זײערע סטאַדעס און מ׳באַשטימט יעדן זײַן אָנטײל אין דעם צוקונפֿטיקן בלוטבאָד.“ די פּאָליטיקער פֿאָדערן, אַז אַ שרײַבער זאָל ענטפֿערן אױף דער פֿראַגע: „מיט װעמען גײסטו? פֿאַר װעמען ביסטו?“
אָבער דער קינסטלער, האַלט באַשעװיס, איז בטבֿע אַנדערש פֿון דעם פּאָליטיקער. דאָס איז „דער מענטשן, פֿאַר װעלכן די פֿלײש־אַריטמעטיק פֿון פּאָליטיקער איז פֿרעמד און עקלדיק“.
אַלע עכטע קינסטלער האָבן „אײן בשותּפֿותדיקע אײגנשאַפֿט: זײ האָבן אָפֿענע אױגן צו זען, װי אומגליקלעך דער מענטש איז. דערין באַשטײט זײער טאַלאַנט.“
ער איז געװען בטבֿע אַ פּעסימיסט, װאָס האָט ניט געגלױבט אין גליקלעכע חלומות. די סאַמע געלונגענע פּערסאָנאַזשן זײַנע האָבן ניט קײן מזל אין לעבן, סײַ אין פּױלן פֿאַרן חורבן און סײַ שפּעטער אין אַמעריקע. זײַנע ווערטער אין אָט דעם אַרטיקל דינען טאַקע ווי אַ שליסל צו באַשעװיסעס קינסטלערישן װעלטבאַנעם.
The post I. B. Singer predicted the war between Fascism and Communism appeared first on The Forward.
