Uncategorized
Netanyahu ally wants to stop Diaspora donors from funding pluralistic education in Israeli schools
(JTA) — In 2019, Israel’s Noam party drafted an internal report about an alleged plot by foreign forces to take control of the country’s schools in order to teach pluralistic values. At the time the party’s far-right leader, Avi Maoz, was a fringe politician with no authority to carry out the “cleansing” of which he dreamed.
Among the forces allegedly seeking to corrupt Israeli children, Maoz’s report named the European Union and the liberal New Israel Fund, both of which are longtime nemeses of the Israeli right.
But the plot to deny children what Noam considers a proper Jewish education doesn’t stop with the EU and NIF, according to the report. It also blamed many of the mainstream institutions of British and American Jewry, including the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, the Shalom Hartman Institute think tank, and U.S. donors to Israeli civil society organizations such as the Slifka and Mandel foundations.
“We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations,” Maoz once said, according to Haaretz. “I would be very happy to have sufficient power to be appointed minister of education, to cleanse the entire education system of all foreign influences and to add Judaism, tradition, heritage and Zionism to the education system.”
Maoz hasn’t been appointed minister of education, but his dream of banishing these groups came a little closer to reality in December when Benjamin Netanyahu cut a deal with Maoz to form his government. In negotiations, Maoz had secured an appointment as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office under Netanyahu with control over extracurricular content in schools through a new department called the Jewish National Identity Authority. A few weeks later, Netanyahu’s cabinet took a critical step toward putting Maoz in charge.
Amid headlines about Maoz’s ascendance, someone leaked to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth the Noam party’s 2019 education memo along with other internal reports focused on perceived enemies in the Israeli military and Justice Ministry, and on LGBTQ individuals in general.
While the Israeli press referred to the reports as “blacklists,” the backlash to them has become subsumed in the general outcry over Israel’s new far-right government, including the anti-gay politics popular among many new members and the plan to strip Israel’s judicial branch of some of its powers.
Yet it’s in the area of education that the Noam party has the clearest path forward to accomplishing a specific political goal. And success for Noam could lead to a new type of rift between Israel and American Jews. The organizations he attacks are more than charities for Israeli school children — through their billions of dollars in donations, the institutions of American Jewry made themselves into partners in the very founding and development of the Jewish state.
In his new position, he would oversee funding and accreditation for external programs in Israeli schools. Each school can choose from thousands of approved programs, which range from sexual education and bar mitzvah preparation, to the types of pluralistic lesson plans — often meaning alternatives to the strictly religious or strictly secular options offered in Israeli schools — that Maoz has railed against.
For Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, whose Israeli branch was named in the Naom report, Maoz’s rhetoric betrays ignorance about the integral role of outside contributions in Israeli history.
“It’s not clear to me that these folks understand the depth of how Diaspora Jews have invested in the whole infrastructure of Israeli civil society since the founding of the State of Israel,” Kurtzer said. “So the portrayal of this as somehow Diaspora Jews are burrowing under the system — well, that is basically the whole story of how Zionism succeeded.”
Mark Charendoff, a longtime executive in Jewish philanthropy, also pushed back against Noam.
“There is a long and positive history of Diaspora Jewry’s involvement with education in Israel,” said Charendoff , who currently serves as the president of the Maimonides Fund, an increasingly influential New York-based charity. “The Israeli school system should certainly protect its integrity but even [the medieval sage] Maimonides found wisdom he could learn from among other cultures and used it to enrich our own.”
The Noam party memos, at least one of which Maoz has endorsed as a blueprint for his tenure, were obtained by Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal, and recently shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Here are the American Jewish charities named in the memo and which of their programs were targeted:
The Cleveland-based Mandel Foundation is singled out for the leadership training it offers education professionals. The report says Mandel has spent more than $58 million on this effort and is accused of harboring a liberal agenda. Mandel programs have included training for educators from across the denominational spectrum.
The Abraham Initiatives, which is based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel and promotes equal rights for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, is described as a Jewish-Arab left-wing group. The report also singles out the programs, schools and teacher trainings aimed at supporting reconciliation and coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
The Shalom Hartman Institute, with offices in Jerusalem and New York City, earns a mention in the memo thanks to its Be’eri Program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity, which is dedicated to enhancing Jewish and democratic values among secondary school educators and their students in Israel.
American Judaism’s Conservative movement is implicated through the Schechter Institutes which it sponsors and the affiliated Tali Education Fund. Dozens of schools throughout Israel receive curriculum materials related to pluralistic Jewish culture and heritage from Tali.
The U.S.-based Reform movement makes the list thanks to the training offered to Jewish education teachers as part of a program run jointly by the Reform-affiliated Hebrew Union College and Hebrew University.
The New York City-based Alan B. Slifka Foundation is named in the memo as a supporter of the Abraham Initiatives and the Shalom Hartman Institute.
The Russell Berrie Foundation, which is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, is included because of its contributions to the New Israel Fund and the Shalom Hartman Institute.
With offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Israel Venture Network makes the list over its support for an independent program that trains all administrators in the Israeli school system.
Headquartered in New York City, the New Israel Fund is described as one of the main organs in the alleged conspiracy. “The New Israel Fund and funds affiliated with it have set out to take control of the education system,” read the first line of the report.
The organizations are named as “examples” in the memo, suggesting that the list is not exhaustive. Guilt by association with any of these groups would implicate a wide swath of American Jewry. IVN, or Israel Venture Network, for example, receives funding from the Jewish federations of multiple American cities and the Weinberg Foundation. The Abraham Initiatives lists numerous mainstream Jewish donors including the Klarman Family Foundation and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Kurtzer said the leaked memos didn’t come as much of a shock to him. Any organization that is “pro-democracy, pro-pluralism, and believes in strong relationships between Israel and the diaspora” is familiar with being targeted in this way, he said.
“Some of the elements of the far right have built a whole industry on classifying anybody who has commitments to any of these values and branding them as anti-democratic and anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist,” Kurtzer said. “It hasn’t really stopped our work in Israel, though, sometimes it makes it unpleasant and uncomfortable to have to fend off some of these accusations.”
One of the largest donors to Shalom Hartman Institute goes unmentioned in Noam’s report: the Claws Foundation, which has given the institute millions of dollars. It would be hard to condemn this particular foundation as a liberal interloper: Claws is run by Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik, a pair of American Wall Street billionaires and prominent libertarians who are reviled by the Israeli left. In 2021, Haaretz revealed that Yass and Dantchik are major donors to the Kohelet Policy Forum, an influential Israeli think tank behind many of the recent landmark initiatives of the right.
Maoz’s politics also fit awkwardly with those of his own political predecessors, said Eitan Cooper, executive vice president of the Schechter Institutes of Jewish Studies. Cooper helps run one of the programs targeted by Maoz, the Tali Education Fund, which provides a non-Orthodox Jewish curriculum to about 80 secular Israeli schools.
Cooper recalled how the Tali program got started in the 1980s with the help of Zevulun Hammer, who served as Israel’s education minister for many years while helping lead the National Religious Party. Noam is one of the offshoots to have emerged after the National Religious Party’s dissolution in 2008.
“Hammer was the one who adopted Tali as education minister,” Cooper said. “He thought it was great and in fact, he gave Tali its name.”
But Cooper also said that there had always been fringe members of Hammer’s circle who looked at Tali with skepticism because of its non-Orthodox orientation. Some even alleged that the program was run by covert Christian missionaries.
Prior experience has steeled Cooper for this moment, and he said he’s not particularly concerned that Maoz’s threats will pan out.
“This kind of negative response to what we do has always existed,” Cooper said. “The educational ministry continues on, it sets the criteria for the programs that are accepted. I really don’t know what he is positioned to do. He hasn’t done anything yet.”
He believes that the demand for Tali’s content ensures the program will carry on.
“Our target audience is still out there,” he said.
Nachum Blass, who chairs the education policy program at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, regards it as inevitable that Maoz will secure authority over external programs at schools. And Blass said that Maoz could proceed to cancel programs he didn’t like or block new programs.
“There are thousands of programs,” Blass said. “If Maoz wants to review every program and decide which to cancel, it’s a very long process, and he will face lawsuits and petition to the Supreme Court.”
But the bigger worry for Blass is the chilling effect of Maoz’s rhetoric.
“The real danger,” he said, “is that schools will censor themselves and not pick certain programs because they worry they doesn’t fit the spirit of the times.”
—
The post Netanyahu ally wants to stop Diaspora donors from funding pluralistic education in Israeli schools appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Christopher Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ is a Talmud-quoting, Tisha B’Av epic
“Before there were Jews… there was ‘The Odyssey,’” a theater manager infamously posted on a marquee in Portland, Oregon.
While the mythic, Bronze Age events recounted in the blockbuster film likely never transpired, Homer’s epic poem is by any measure younger than the Jewish people. And Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, now a proxy for a pitched battle over the essence of Western civilization, could not exist as it is without the Jews. Indeed, whether it knows it or not, it is telling a foundational story of our history.
Much of the criticism surrounding the film, which managed to agitate classicists from its first set photos of Matt Damon in a crested Grecian helmet (not a period-accurate Mycenaean boar-tusk ensemble) and bigots of all stripes with its casting of a trans man and people of color, has shifted since its release just before Tisha B’Av, taking aim at the film’s ideas and how they may clash with those of antiquity’s.
“Did you Christianize The Odyssey?” podcaster Zhong Shu asked Nolan in a now-viral interview.
Nolan explained that he was drawn to the ancient ethic of “xenia,” called “Zeus’ Law” in the film. In the Greek conception, this means welcoming guests because you never know if they may be a God. In Nolan’s blockbuster it’s described as treating others how you would be treated. When the law is breached, society as we know it comes undone, leading to our hero’s atonement and qualms that seem at odds with his traditional characterization.
While Nolan’s understanding mirrors the Christian Golden Rule, which itself is antedated by statements in the Torah and by Hillel, his vision of civilizational ruin when it is trespassed is more central to Judaism. Odysseus laments that, by creating the Trojan horse, and exploiting the code of hospitality to launch a massacre, he has broken something.
“To burn the walls of Troy is to burn the world entire,” Damon’s Odysseus tells Anne Hathaway’s Penelope. This is more or less a paraphrase from Talmudic wisdom: “To destroy one life is to destroy the world entire,” and its more recognizable corollary, “to save one life is to save the world entire.”
The Hebrew Bible is rife with examples of hospitality in extremis. In Sodom, Lot offers his daughters to a mob of rapists rather than have them violate his heavenly guests. The result: a destroyed city and a wife reduced to a table condiment. (Just before, Abraham fed these visitors, plus another angel of God.)
But watching the film Tuesday, I was reminded of another story. Remember when I mentioned Tisha B’Av, the holiday marking the destruction of Judaism’s ancient capital?
Our tradition teaches that the second temple fell because a man holding a banquet in Jerusalem kicked out his enemy, a fellow by the name of Bar Kamtza. Humiliated by his host, Bar Kamtza plots his revenge. He goes to Caesar and tells him the Jews are conspiring against his rule. To prove it, Bar Kamtza, like the wily Odysseus, concocts a ruse, suggesting the Romans send a sacrifice to the rabbis and see if they offer it.
They don’t, as Bar Kamtza blemishes the animal, making it unfit for offering.
In The Odyssey, the famous gift horse is presented as a tribute to Athena. Its blemish is the fighting force it hides inside, ready to sack the city.
The upshot of the rejected temple sacrifice was the razing of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans. The temple is desecrated, in much the way the temple of Athena is in the film.
Christian theology doesn’t argue quite so forcefully that the violation of the Golden Rule augurs a civilizational collapse. Quite the contrary today, where xenophobia and whispers of Great Replacement — akin to the trade-wind rumors of sea peoples in Nolan’s film — have taken root in the Evangelical right. (Ezra Klein, and really anyone attuned to commentary as subtle as IMAX subwoofers, picked up on this tension.)
Jewish history tells us we fare poorly in places where the stranger isn’t welcome.
In a departure from the text, Nolan ends Odysseus’ wandering with his voluntary exile. He sails west, predicting a benighted age to come, where his exploits will be sung as men lose the ability to write.
Our story ends on a similarly bleak, yet hopeful note.
When Jerusalem fell, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai devised his own deception, sneaking past the city walls in a casket (before he was let out, zealots wanted to stab the bier, recalling the Trojans’ stabbing of the horse).
But before Yohanan can make his escape he’s intercepted by the general Vespasian, who he mistakenly refers to as the emperor. Vespasian offers a correction, but almost instantly a messenger confirms this designation, telling him Caesar died and named him his successor. Regarding Yohanan’s mistake as prophecy, he offers him a request.
Jerusalem had fallen, self-determination was unrealistic, and so Yohannan asks for the city of Yavneh and its sages. From there our modern history began, literacy thrived and a dark age was subdued.
The Temple and Troy have yet to be rebuilt, but their legends live on.
The post Christopher Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ is a Talmud-quoting, Tisha B’Av epic appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Antisemitic incidents in Britain rose 21% in first half of 2026, remaining near record levels
(JTA) — Britain’s antisemitism watchdog says it received reports of nearly 2,000 incidents in the first half of 2026 — the second-most its recorded ever for the time period, following only the first half of 2024.
The new figures released Wednesday by the Community Security Trust represent a 21% increase in reported incidents over the same time period last year, which followed a surge in the early months of the war in Gaza that started when Israel attacked Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
Watchdogs in multiple countries have recorded surging antisemitism since and say the numbers portend an unsettling new normal when it comes to Jewish safety and security.
The increase in antisemitic incidents from January to June in Britain was driven, the CST found, by both violent attacks and a sharp rise in online abuse. While the largest category of incidents recorded was abusive behavior, which accounted for more than four-fifths of all reported incidents, the group also recorded a record number of assaults for any January-to-June period, while incidents affecting synagogues, schools and other Jewish institutions also reached new highs.
The CST has tracked, reported on and published antisemitic incidents since 1984.
Among the incidents highlighted in the report were the April stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in London’s heavily Orthodox Golders Green neighborhood, which British authorities treated as a terrorist attack, and a series of arson attacks targeting synagogues and Jewish organizations, including the destruction of ambulances belonging to the volunteer Jewish emergency service Hatzolah.
The report also cited suspected hostile activity linked to Iranian intelligence targeting Britain’s Jewish community. CST said the U.S-Israel war with Iran coincided with another spike in antisemitic incidents.
“These attacks are directed against British Jews but they are also attacks on Britain and our society,” CST’s chief executive, Mark Gardner, said in a statement, adding that the incidents should “concern everyone who cares about Britain and the threats against it, whether state-directed from Iran, or internally driven by Islamist, far Right, far Left, or other ideological extremes.”
The findings come as the British government has expanded funding for security at Jewish institutions following a series of violent attacks over the past year. Following the release of the report, Policing Minister Sarah Jones said, “Antisemitism goes against our country’s values and I will do everything in my power to protect our Jewish communities.”
CST compiles its statistics from incidents reported directly to it as well as cases recorded by police and other agencies. CST reviews each report before including it in its database. It says it does not include reports of anti-Israel rhetoric or activity that do not also include “explicit anti-Jewish language, targeting, or motivation.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Antisemitic incidents in Britain rose 21% in first half of 2026, remaining near record levels appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
In praise of difficult languages
די גאַנצע וועלט מיינט, אַז לערנען זיך ענגליש איז גרינג ווײַל ענגליש האָט אַזוי ווינציק סופֿיקסן: כּמעט אַלע סובסטאַנטיוון פֿורעמען דעם פּלוראַל אויף -s; ווערבאַלע קאָניוגאַציעס זענען זייער פּשוט; נישטאָ קיין גראַמאַטישער מין, בשעת פֿראַנצייזיש און שפּאַניש האָבן צו צוויי גראַמאַטישע מינים און רײַכע ווערבאַלע קאָניוגאַציעס.
וואָס שייך דײַטשיש און ייִדיש האָבן זיי אַלץ וואָס פֿראַנצייזיש און שפּאַניש, ווי אויך דרײַ גראַמאַטישע מינים, דרײַ אָדער פֿיר בייגפֿאַלן און כּלערליי פֿלעקסיעס (סופֿיקסן וואָס בײַטן דעם גראַמאַטישן טײַטש פֿון אַ זאַץ; grammatical inflections בלע״ז). וועגן לאַטײַן און די סלאַווישע לשונות שמועסט מען נישט: אַלץ וואָס אין דײַטשיש און ייִדיש, אָבער אויך פֿינעף, זעקס אָדער גאָר זיבן בייגפֿאַלן.
איז דאָך קלאָר ווי דער טאָג, אַז ענגליש איז דאָס גרינגסטע. וואָס דאַרפֿט איר מער? בער באָראָכאָוו, דער ייִדישער פֿילאָלאָג און טעאָרעטיקער פֿון דער ציוניסטישער אֵרבעטער־באַוועגונג (1881־1917), האָט נאָך געשריבן אין שמואל ניגערס „פּנקס“ (1913), אַז צוליב דעם וואָס די ענגלישע גראַמאַטיק איז אַזוי פּשוט איז ענגליש איינע פֿון די פּראָגרעסיווסטע שפּראַכן, און אַז הלוואַי וואָלט מאַמע־לשון געגאַנגען מיטן זעלביקן וועג און פֿאַרלוירן זײַנע איבעריקע סופֿיקסן: „דער געזעץ פֿון אַנאַליטישער שפּראַך־פֿאַראיינפֿאַכונג דריקט זיך בולט אויס סײַ אין די סעמיטישע, סײַ אין די [אינדאָאייראָפּעיִשע] פּראָגרעסיווסטע, די פֿאָלקסטימלעכסטע און צום מייסטן אַנאַליטישע שפּראַכן פֿון אונדזער צײַט: נײַ־פּערסיש, ענגליש, פֿראַנצייזיש און — ייִדיש“.
נו, מי לנו גדול כּבאָראָכאָוו, אָבער דאָ בין איך מיט אים מחולק: דאָס האָבן אַ שפּאָרע צאָל פֿלעקסיעס איז דווקא נישט קיין חסרון, נאָר גאָר אַ מעלה. פֿאַר וואָס?
לאָמיר אָנכאַפּן פּויליש. אמת, דער אָנהייבער מוז פֿאַרגעדענקען אָן אַ שיעור פֿאָרמעס: פֿלעקסיע פֿון סובסטאַנטיוון, ווערבן, אַדיעקטיוון, פּראָנאָמען און נאָך און נאָך, ווי אויך די דרײַ גראַמאַטישע מינים. אויף ענגליש, ווידער, דאַרף מען כּמעט גאָרנישט פֿאַרגעדענקען — עטלעכע אומרעגולערע סובסטאַנטיוון און אַ צאָל אומרעגולערע ווערבן. אָבער פֿאַר דער טירחה בײַם לערנען זיך פּויליש קריגט מען אַ „פֿעטן ביסן“: מע קען דאָס פֿאַרגלײַכן מיטן טעאַטער און מיטן קינאָ.
איז אַזוי: אַז איר זעט אַ פּיעסע אָדער קוקט אַ פֿילם דאַרפֿט איר דרינגען פֿון די טווּנגען ווער ס׳איז ווער: ווי די פּאַרשוינען הייסן, ווער ס׳האָט די הויפּטראָלע און ווער די קלענערע ראָלעס. טייל מאָל ווילט זיך זען די פֿאָרשטעלונג אַ צווייט מאָל כּדי בעסער צו פֿאַרשטיין דעם אָנהייב פֿונעם סיפּור־המעשׂה. אַזוי איז אויף ענגליש. כ׳ווייס נישט ווי איר, אָבער נישט איין מאָל מוז איך איבערלייענען אַ קעפּל אין אַ צײַטונג צוויי צי אַפֿילו דרײַ מאָל איידער איך פֿאַרשטיי עס, וואָרן מע דאַרף ערשט דערקענען וואָסער וואָרט ס׳איז אַ סובסטאַנטיוו, וואָסער אַן אַדיעקטיוו, וואָסער אַ ווערב. אויף ענגליש קען דאָך איין וואָרט זײַן אַלע דרײַ געווענדט אינעם קאָנטעקסט, און די מאָרפֿאָלאָגיע, ד״ה די פֿאָרעם פֿונעם וואָרט, העלפֿט גאָר נישט.
אויף פּויליש, ווידער, דאַרפֿט איר גאָרנישט דרינגען. מע דערקענט גלײַך וואָס ס׳איז דער סובסטאַנטיוו, וואָס ס׳איז דער ווערב און וואָס ס׳איז דער אַדיעקטיוו. ס׳איז אַזוי ווי אין טעאַטער אָדער אין קינאָ וואָלטן די אַקטיאָרן געטראָגן אויף זיך שילדן מיט אַלע פּרטים: „איך בין משה גאָלדבערג, דער הויפּטהעלד פֿון דער מעשׂה“, „איך בין דער צווייט וויכטיקסטער“ אד״גל. מע דאַרף אַפֿילו נישט קענען אַלע פֿלעסקיעס — אויב מע קען האַלב איז גענוג צו פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ אָדער אַ צײַטונגקעפּל. מע דאַרף גאָר נישט דרינגען; די גאַנצע אינפֿאָרמאַציע האָט מען אונטער דער האַנט און פֿאַר די אויגן.
ייִדיש האָט, פֿאַרשטייט זיך, נישט אַזוי פֿיל זיך אויסצולערנען ווי פּויליש, אָבער גענוג, אַז דאָס קענען זיי אויסנווייניק איז שווערלעך; אָבער פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ איז ווײַטער גרינגער ווי אויף ענגליש. חוץ דעם איז די בייגעוודיקייט פֿון מאַמע־לשון אַ מעלה. אַ שטייגער: אויף ייִדיש איז דער ווערטער־סדר אַ סך פֿרײַער; ענגליש איז געפּענטעט דערמיט וואָס דער ווערטער־סדר שפּילט אַזאַ גרויסע ראָלע בײַם פֿאַרשטיין אַ זאַץ. דהײַנו, אויף ענגליש מוז דער סוביעקט בדרך־כּלל קומען פֿאַרן ווערב, מע זאָל אים דערקענען, בשעת אויף ייִדיש, וואָס האָט די בייגפֿאַלן נאָמינאַטיוו, דאַטיוו און אַקוזאַטיוו, קען דער סוביעקט קומען אויף פֿאַרשיידענע ערטער, וואָס דאָס קען מען אויסניצן כּדי אונטערצושטרײַכן דאָס חשיבֿות פֿון אַ סובסטאַנטיוו וואָסער ראָלע ער זאָל אינעם קאָנטעקסט נישט שפּילן.
למשל: אויף ענגליש קען מען בלויז זאָגן Everyone knows David, בשעת אויף ייִדיש קען מען זאָגן „אַלע קענען דודן“ אָדער „דודן קענען אַלע,“ וואָס גיט דעם זאַץ אַ ביסל אַן אַנדער קנייטש.
מאַמע־לשון האָט אויך, פּונקט ווי דײַטשיש, די סלאַווישע און צום טייל אויך די ראָמאַנישע לשונות, אַ ברייטן באַניץ פֿונעם דאַטיוו, וווּ אויף ענגליש מוז מען אָנקומען צום נאָמינאַטיוו אָדער אין גאַנצן פּאַראַפֿראַזירן. למשל, דאָרטן וווּ ענגליש האָט אין תּוך אַרײַן בלויז איין מעגלעכן אופֿן דאָס אַרויסברענגען: he is cold, אַקעגן דרײַ מעגלעכקייטן אויף ייִדיש: „אים איז קאַלט, ער איז קאַלט, ער איז אַ קאַלטער“, טײַטש ׳ער פֿילט זיך קאַלט; ער איז טויט; ער איז אַ מענטש וואָס ווײַזט נישט אַרויס קיין געפֿילן׳.
נאָך אַ משל: מאָטל פּייסיעס „מיר איז גוט, איך בין אַ יתום“ — ווי זשע גיט מען דאָס איבער אויף ענגליש אַז מע האָט נישט קיין דאַטיוו? איך האָב געפֿונען I’m lucky — טאַקע נישט קיין שלעכטער עקוויוואַלענט, אָבער ס׳האָט נישט קיין ייִדישן טעם! אַגבֿ, ווען מע באַקלאָגט זיך, אַז ס׳איז אוממעגלעך איבערצוזעצן ייִדיש, גילט דאָס מער פֿאַר ענגליש ווי פֿאַר אֵנדערע אייראָפּעיִשע לשונות. אין דעם באַנד „מאַקס ווײַנרײַכן צו זײַן זיבעציקסטן געבוירן־טאָג״ (1964) האָט דער פֿילאָלאָג טעאָדאָר גוטמאַן געדרוקט אַן אַרבעט „שלום־עליכם אין די רויוואַרגשפּראַכן״, וווּ ער פֿאַרגלײכט איבערזעצונגען אויף דײַטש, העברעיִש, אוקראַיִניש, רוסיש און ענגליש פֿון שלום־עליכמס „דאָס טעפּל“. דאָרטן קומט ער צום אויספֿיר, אַז דער איבערזעץ וואָס שפּיגלט צום בעסטן אָפּ דער אָריגינאַל איז דער אוקראַיִנישער. דאָס איז צום טייל ווײַל שלום־עליכם האָט געלעבט און געשאַפֿן אין אוקראַיִנע, אָבער אויך דערפֿאַר וואָס די ענגלישע גראַמאַטיק איז אַזוי אומבייגעוודיק אַקעגן דער ייִדישער, וואָס דאָס שפּיגלט זיך אָפּ צווישן אַנדערן אין דעם, וואָס ענגליש האָט נישט קיין דאַטיוו!
דאָ קען מען אויך צוגעבן אַ משל פֿון פֿראַנצייזיש. דער אויסדריק s’il vous plaît פֿאַרטײַטשט מען אויף ענגליש if you please. נישטאָ קיין ספֿק, אַז 99% ענגליש־רעדערס מיינען, אַז דאָ איז you נאָמינאַטיוו, דער סוביעקט פֿונעם ווערב. דאָס פֿראַנצייזישע, אָבער, איז טײַטש if it pleases you, וווּ you איז דאַטיוו, דער אָביעקט פֿונעם ווערב. אויף ענגליש ווערט עס האַמעטנע; אויף ייִדיש, ווידער גיט מען עס גרינג איבער: אויב ס׳געפֿעלט אײַך.
אַ כּלל, באָראָכאָוו איז גערעכט, אַז די טענדענץ בײַ אַ סך לשונות איז צו פֿאַרלירן סופֿיקסן, אָבער דערפֿון קען מען נישט אויספֿירן, אַז אַזאַ פּראָצעס איז אַלע מאָל אַ ניצלעכער. ווען אים וואָלט געווען באַשערט לענגערע יאָרן וואָלט ער אפֿשר אײַנגעזען, אַז אין לשון קען פּראָגרעסיווקייט אויך זײַן אַ חסרון.
The post In praise of difficult languages appeared first on The Forward.
