Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 17, 2022

Avrom Sutzkever resentedbeing asked to play his Stradivariusin Hebrew. Nobody consentedto Yiddish, language spoken by nefariousNeanderthal deniers of the tonguethat Abraham, his namesake, usedwhen speaking to a God he hungaround with, although when abusedby Abimelech, Aramaicwas surely what they used to speakwith one another. Not archaic, as Aramaic would become,and Hebrew, too, before revived Yiddish language was the sum,in medieval times derived,from Hebrew, German and vernac-ulars of every country whereJews lived, then fled, and then came back.

Throughout the Ashkenazi airwas heard their mamma loshen speech,until these Yiddish words were turnedby gas into a ghastly screech,before six million speakers burned.A Yiddish poet must not die,wrote Sutzkever-six million did,their words lost, mostly every cryin Yiddishshver zu zayn a yid.

Avroms Stradivarius casewas shut after the Shoah whenthe Hebrew harps allowed no spacefor mamma loshen tongue or pen.But times are changing, I believe,and theres good news for Avroms tongue.Though for his death we all now grieve,his words are likely to be sungforever. After aharei motqedoshim, meaning: after killingapotheosis may be whatbecomes the fate, and so, God willing,on Avroms fiddle we may play,now posthumously recognizingthe instrument where he displayedhis gifts in sounds now sweetly rising,as Hebrew has, from deaths dark shade.

I recalled this poem, which I composed twelve years ago, after hearing Ruth Wisse in a podcast in her series Stories Jews Tell discuss a Yiddish poem by Abraham Sutzkever, What Will Remain? In his poem The Fiddle Rose, the neologistic fiddle-rose symbolizes the poet and the music of poetry struggling to survive death, the Holocaust, and the pain and tragedy of the modern world.

See the original post here:

Failing to Silence the Jewish Fiddle - Jewish Journal

Category: Ashkenazi
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