Bobe-Mania by Boris Sandler

Bobe-Mania[1] by Boris Sandler

You want to know when the affliction struck me? I can tell you precisely: three years ago, right after my grandmother Mania died. I was very attached to my grandmother. She used to tell me a lot of stories about her life in Europe. In English, of course. She spoke English poorly—she had come to America after everyone else, in the late 40s. But I understood almost everything. She often used to insert a Yiddish word or several words. Of course, I didn’t understand her right away; they sounded like old patches on someone else’s clothing. But they fitted into my grandmother’s stories so well that I used to understand them without her explaining them. I remembered quite a few of those Yiddish words. No, I didn’t make a special effort—they simply slipped into me by themselves and then remained forever. My grandmother Mania had a world of stories. Nevertheless, after every story she used to add: “Only if you understood Yiddish could I tell you the real stories; in English, the flavor is lost.”

When my grandmother died, I thought to myself: What can I do in her memory? And the thought came to me to learn Yiddish, my ‘bobe-loshn.’[2] I had just begun my studies at the University, so I enrolled in a Yiddish course. I picked up the language quickly. Now words and whole sentences of Yiddish started slipping out of me. Even more, they made themselves heard in my grandmother Mania’s voice: quietly, unhurriedly, the words drawn out, with exactly the same tones and the same emphases. I myself was amazed, and I licked my lips over every word.

That summer, I enrolled in Uriel Weinreich’s Yiddish program, where I made the acquaintance of other young people who had, just like me, a personal interest in Yiddish. There I also learned that there are certain groups—svives,[3] they’re called—where they speak the Yiddish they had heard in their homes. Since my grandmother came from the Polish village of Bzhezhin, I looked for a Bzhezhin svive. There was no such svive in New York. Apparently my grandmother was the last one who spoke Bzhezhin-style Yiddish. I met with an expert on Yiddish dialects who advised me to look for the Lodz svive or the Pietrikov svive, because Bzhezhin, he explained to me, was located not far from Lodz and Pietrikov, and the differences between the ways those communities spoke were not very great. Furthermore, the expert added, it was not clear how to say the name of my grandmother’s village: Bzhezhin, Brezhin, or Bzhezhini. I made a firm decision that I would call it by the name my grandmother used: Bzhezhin.

I was so taken by the language and by what the language had brought into my life that even in the streets, subways, and stores I used to look at signs (in English, of course) and immediately try to translate them into Yiddish. Previously, I had paid almost no attention to those signs and advertisements, but now they started to look quite different and to sound fresh, joyous, and even smarter. They had the flavor of my grandmother. I took special pleasure from the ones in the subway. After all, you know yourself that the subway cars are full of all kinds of advertisements and announcements. So I would ride along and look at the signs, and in my head the English words would immediately melt into Yiddish ones: “If you carry a revolver, your next stop is prison.” At the same time, I think to myself: “Interesting—how would that sound coming from my grandmother’s mouth?” So guess what—as soon as I thought that, I immediately heard “If you have a revolver without a document[4], a chair awaits you in the ‘kutshament’[5].” How do you like that—she even said it to me in rhyme!

Or take the widely distributed announcement that you can see these days, it seems to me, in every language spoken in New York—English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian—but not in Yiddish. Why? So I was not lazy, and I decided to translate that important announcement, and here’s how it sounds in Yiddish: “In the past year, 1944 New Yorkers have seen something or heard something. If you see something, say something. Let a police officer or a subway employee know about it, or telephone…” I hadn’t managed to finish my work when I heard in my ear the familiar squeaky little voice (when my grandmother got angry, her voice used to get thin and squeaky): “God forbid! Again informing? And they even boast about it! And they even call on you to inform on someone else! It’s a good thing I didn’t live to see such an ugly time!” But I couldn’t just swallow her words so easily, so I answered her: “We’re talking here about terrorists! And you mustn’t coddle terrorists!” Then I hear again: “Informing on someone is all right, but when you give them, the bad people, the murderers, a good squeeze, you immediately hear on all sides: ‘Human rights! Illegal!’”

The farther it went, the worse it got. My grandmother Manya followed me like a ghost. No! A ghost, as you know, generally plays its tricks silently, but my grandmother was just the opposite: she mixed into all my affairs with her advice and wishes. Of course, she did so with the best of intentions.

So what did I do? I was a graduate student about to get my degree in finance—my grandmother called that a bookkeeper. I was sitting at my computer reading an article by the American financial authority Alan Greenspan, and in my head his words were being immediately ‘converted’ into Yiddish. Suddenly my grandmother’s face swam up onto the screen. She looked me in the eye and smiled: “Back in Bzhezhin, there was also a certain bookkeeper with the same name, Greenspan, and everyone called him ‘Yosl-Vart.’[6] My grandmother winked at me, which meant “Listen carefully,” and continued: “Why ‘Yosl-Vart’? Because to anyone who came to ask him to calculate something, he always used to say ‘Vart’ (wait). Bzhezhin jokesters used to wisecrack that it was because of Yosl-Vart that the Messiah hadn’t transported the Jews to the Land of Israel. And here’s the story: When the Children of Israel were finally awaiting Messiah ben David and the whole village was already sitting on the cloud[7] waiting to be transported to the Holy Land, they realized that the bookkeeper Yosl-Vart wasn’t there. Where was he? He was rummaging in his thick ledgers to make the final summations. So Messiah ben David went to him and said: ‘Reb Yosl, it’s time already—the people of Israel are waiting.’ Yosl-Vart raised his head and answered: ‘Wait!’ ‘That’s what you say to me?!’ and the Messiah, shamed, disappeared. So know that a bookkeeper, after seven years, becomes so embroiled in his work that he grows oblivious, despite his sharp brain.”

I don’t want to take up too much of your time; after all, I came here for another purpose. Lately I had been dreaming constantly about meeting a girl who knew Yiddish too. As you can understand, that’s not so simple, so there too my grandmother Manya helped me out with a piece of advice: “A goat does indeed have a beard, but it doesn’t give milk,” she whispered in my ear, and added: “As long as she’s a god girl, you’ll teach her Yiddish yourself.” And that, indeed, is what happened. I met a girl and I told her immediately that in time we would have to go over to Yiddish. And she agreed. On every date, I spoke Yiddish to her, my grandmother’s Bzhezhin-style Yiddish, so she would absorb the sound of the words. She showed iron patience. She listened to everything and said nothing—didn’t let out a peep. Once—we had already known each other for nearly three weeks—we were sitting together in the park on a bench and were listening to our hearts pound. Suddenly I felt a stream of words come pouring out of my mouth. I had never heard, and certainly never said to anyone: “My sweet one, my little pearl, my little jewel, my little dove, my little bird, my little kitten, my little mouse, coochy-coo,” and with every word I heard my heart pounding. Suddenly she jumped up, as if all the pretty words were sticking up from the bench like little pins, and yelled, you should excuse me, “Shmuck!”

You can’t imagine how happy I was at that moment: she had begun to speak Yiddish! Later, however, when I telephoned her, she said to me, now in English, that I shouldn’t call any more and that I should go see a psychiatrist.

So I’ve come to ask you…What do you think—why did she run away? She had such a good feeling for the language, after all. Another week or two and we could have created a real Bzhezhin svive, the first one in New York.

[1] “Bobe” means grandmother; “mania” here is a pun on the name Mania and the state of mania.

[2] ‘Grandmother-tongue’, as opposed to ‘mame-loshn,’ or mother-tongue.

[7] In Jewish legend, the Messiah will transport the Jews to the Holy Land on a cloud.