Rachel Ertel may not be entirely positive about the chances of Yiddish surviving
much longer, but she is certainly doing her best to keep the language and the
culture as vibrant as possible for as long as possible. The 73-year-old Yiddish-
French translator and teacher is one of the speakers at the upcoming Kisufim
literary conference, which will take place at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem
on February 5 – 8.
Shmulik Atzmon, Yiddishpiel Theater founder and local
champion of the language and culture, recently talked about the way Yiddish has
acted as a bond among Jews from different parts of the world over the centuries.
Ertel is living proof of what Atzmon calls “the world’s first Internet,” as she
has taken Yiddish with her across the globe, both as a means of spoken
communication and an instant cultural link.
At the conference, Ertel will
enlighten her audience about the joys and pitfalls of her main line of work. “I
will try to show that everything is, at once, translatable and untranslatable,”
she says. “In brief, it means that when you translate between languages, there
is both loss and gain on both sides.”
Even so, Ertel believes that when
one of the languages involved is Yiddish, an added important historical and
cultural element comes into play. “It’s different when you translate from
Yiddish, and that is, of course, because of the Shoah, and because it is a dying
language. So anyone who translates from Yiddish is not only a translator, but he
also mourns for the language and is also a witness of what has been created in
the language. And, finally, he is, as [Italian Holocaust survivor and
chronicler] Primo Levy said, the only one who is the real witness. He has a kind
of mission to speak for those who can no longer speak.”
It is the
Holocaust connection, says Ertel, that makes the language so precious and so
fragile. “Yiddish is unique. It is the only language that was assassinated in
five years in one part of the world. One of the characters in Cynthia Ozick’s
short story “Yiddish in America” says, ‘There is no other language that died in
five years in one spot of the Earth’”
In fact, Yiddish is only one of several
languages in which Ertel is proficient. “I was born three months before the
outbreak of World War II in a small town in Poland, and I moved with my family
to Kazakhstan to get away from the Nazis,” she explains. “That is actually what
saved us because all the other Jews in the town died in the Shoah.”
Ertel
was multilingual from the word go. “My first three languages were Yiddish,
Russian and Kazakh,” she recalls. “After the war we returned to Poland, so I can
speak Polish – badly – and I learned English at university.”
Her command
of the latter, not to mention her slightly British accent, is admirable. French
became her sixth language when she moved to Paris with her family in
1948.
It was in the French capital as a young girl that Ertel really fell
in love with Yiddish and began to realize the importance of preserving it. “We
lived in a communal house in Paris with other refugees, mostly intellectuals,
writers and artists, all Yiddish speakers. I was nine years old, and we
lived there until I was 13. This, in a way, fashioned my whole life. I lived
with Yiddish-speaking writers and poets from Eastern Europe, and I met Yiddish
writers who came over from the United States. From that time on, I wouldn’t say
that Yiddish became a mission, because I don’t like big words, but I feel it is
my duty to preserve Yiddish. I am probably among the last native speakers of
Yiddish.”
Ertel’s efforts to keep the Yiddish flame burning brightly over
the last half century are impressive. In addition to translating important
literary works from Yiddish into French, she taught Yiddish and Yiddish
literature at a university in Paris for 35 years, although she says she used
some trickery to get the language into the university’s curriculum. “I taught
American literature and minority American literature, and I proclaimed that
Yiddish was one of these minorities, and that’s how I introduced the teaching of
Yiddish at the university as a language, culture and literature. That
was, as we say in Yiddish, like touching the right ear with the left hand. We
have also had to do this kind of trick to have the language
survive.”
Ertel was also the driving force behind a series of
Yiddish-based cultural events at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1976 and is
honorary president of the local Yiddish Cultural Center.
Ertel and Atzmon
recently met at a two-day UNESCO symposium on Yiddish in Paris. Ertel gave the
opening address at the gathering, and UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova
declared at the time that Yiddish “stands at the heart of Judaism’s unique
social and cultural identity and history in Europe.” Bokova also
referenced the devastating impact the Holocaust had on Yiddish, noting that the
survival of the language “was threatened by the Holocaust, and Yiddish is listed
today on UNESCO’s atlas of endangered languages.”
Official recognition
notwithstanding, Ertel still feels that Yiddish will not stand the test of
time. “The ultra-Orthodox speak Yiddish on a daily basis, but they are
not interested in translations from Yiddish,” she says.
Then again, she
says there is an increasing number of Yiddish books available to French
speakers. “I have translated 30 books – novels and poetry – from Yiddish into
French, and I worked with my students on translations. That helps to let French
people know about the beauty of Yiddish.”
No doubt, after Ertel’s session
at the Kisufim conference, a few more Israelis will be enlightened about that as
well.
For more information about the Kisufim conference: (02) 629-2214
and www.mishkenot.org.il
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