by Lawrence Bush on May 11, 2012
Sheva Zucker, editor of Afn Shvel (On the Threshold), the all-Yiddish magazine published by the League for Yiddish, launched a blog of Yiddish poems about mothers in February, in memory of her own mother, Miriam Pearlman Zucker, who died on January 25 of this year.
Sheva has given Jewish Currents permission to post these translations, along with the Yiddish originals (and in transliteration) at our website. This is our sixth entry. We urge readers to visit her blog as well as the website of the League for Yiddish (for non-Yiddish speakers, the website can be viewed in English).
This is the second poem we are selecting by Rashel Veprinski. The translation is by Sheva. Happy Mother’s Day, all! [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on May 8, 2012
“[Y]ou would do better to inoculate your children with typhus and syphillis than to let in the Sassoons, Rothschilds, and Warburgs,” said poet Ezra Pound on Italian radio on this date in 1942, in one of 120 broadcasts he made on behalf of the fascist cause during World War II. In this particular broadcast, Pound focused (like a precursor of Glenn Beck) on the gold standard and the purity of American money. All American wars, he argued, were campaigns to fight “the kikified usurers . . . to git an honest day’s pay for a day’s real work by the people,” and “to have the government money run honest” — and it would make ” any young man more American if he sticks to seein’ American history FIRST before swallowin’ exotic perversions.” Pound, a world-renowned literary figure, would be arrested for treason after the war and spend twelve years in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, an institution for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. In 1949, he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his “Pisan Cantos,” which he wrote while interred in an army prison camp. To read any number of Pound’s broadcasts, click here.
“You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, and you yourselves out-jewed the Jew. . . . Corrupting the whole earth, you have lost yourselves to yourselves. And the big Jew has rotted EVERY nation he has wormed into.” —Ezra Pound, Mach 15, 1942
by Lawrence Bush on April 13, 2012
Sheva Zucker, editor of Afn Shvel (On the Threshold), launched a blog of Yiddish poems about mothers in February, in memory of her own mother, Miriam Pearlman Zucker, who died on January 25 of this year.
Sheva has given Jewish Currents permission to post these translations, along with the Yiddish originals (and in transliteration) at our website. We urge readers to visit her blog.
This fourth poem, “Mother,” is by a living poet, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, about whom Sheva writes: “Born in the Bronx, New York, Gitl grew up in a Yiddish-speaking, staunchly Yiddishist home. She studied in the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul 21, United Mittleshul and Jewish Teachers Seminary, where she graduated with a degree in Jewish literature. She also earned degrees in Russian (Barnard College), nursing (Columbia University) and health administration (New York University), and currently works as a clinical consultant in long-term care. She has been active in the Yiddish movement her entire life, and has worked as editor for several Yiddish magazines. Since 2005 she has been stylistic editor of Afn Shvel, the periodical of the League for Yiddish. She lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, and is the mother of three Yiddish-speaking children. She has published one volume of poetry, Sudden Rain: Yiddish Poems (Israel Book, Tel Aviv, 2003).” [click to continue…]
by admin on March 8, 2012
Sheva Zucker, editor of Afn Shvel (On the Threshold), the all-Yiddish magazine published by the League for Yiddish, launched a blog of Yiddish poems about mothers in February, in memory of her own mother, Miriam Pearlman Zucker, who died on January 25 of this year.
Sheva has given Jewish Currents permission to post these translations, along with the Yiddish originals (and in transliteration) at our website on a regular basis. We urge readers to visit her blog as well as the website of the League for Yiddish (for non-Yiddish speakers, the website can be viewed in English).
The second poem, “How Did You Get So Wise, Mama,” by Malke Heifetz Tussman, was translated by Marcia Falk in her volume, With Teeth in Earth: Selected Poems of Malke Heifetz Tussman. [click to continue…]
