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Wednesday, December 25, 2024
An Index of Classic Yiddish Cinema
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Moving to Substack (Kind of)
Sunday, November 24, 2024
How the Movie Der Dybbuk Uses Hoshanas as Foreshadowing
As we have just finished celebrating the holidays of Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret, I was reflecting on how the iconic Sukkot ritual of Hoshanot is protrayed in the movie Der Dybbuk. When I first had the opportunity to watch the Der Dybbuk, I was initially struck with how proper and correct its portrayal of Jewish ritual felt to me. All of the cinematic portrayals of Judaism in American media that I was exposed to felt inauthentic. Either the writers don't really understand Jewish ritual or they are trying to simplify and explain it to their audience.
Der Dybbuk was written for an audience that was already familiar with Jewish ritual. The writers and director were able to just place a scene of Hoshanot, a Sukkot ritual that is often overshadowed in depictions of the holiday by the Sukkah and the Arba Minim, with the full confidence that their audience would understand what was happening.
The opening act of the movie introduces Nisn (chonon's father) and Sender (Leah's father) while they visit their Rebbe during the holiday of Sukkot. In the first scene of the movie both Nisn and Sender keep missing opportunities to get their Rebbe's approval for a vow they have both accepted. We, the audience do not yet know exactly what this vow entails. Sender commits to trying again the next day, which is Hoshana Rabba.
The next scene opens in the synagogue while the Chazan is reciting Hallel. We hear the Chazan chanting last verses of Psalm 115.
There are two scenes that take place within the synagogue during the opening act of the movie. The first scene contains a small portion of the Hallel. Specifically, we hear the Chazan recite:
השמים שמים ליי והארץ נתן לבני אדם
"The heavens belong to God, but the earth, he gave to mankind."
לא המתים יהללו יה ולא כל ירדי דומה
"The dead cannot praise God, nor any who go down in silence"
The inability for the dead to praise and worship God is a common motif in the Hebrew Bible. In addition to it literally meaning the dead cannot worship God, this statement comes with other implications. The dead cannot offer praise because they cannot speak. Perhaps the dead enter a domain of existence that prevents them from offer praise to God. For a viewer who is already familiar with the story of the Dybbuk, this line is ominous. The Dybbuk is a dead person who has stolen the ability to speak from a living person. In some ways this line is a prayer beseaching God to keep the dead quiet and at peace. It is also a warning that any dead person who does attempt to speak will not be doing anything righteous with that power. All this forboding information is contained within this short line.
The first verse the Chazan recites is also foreshadowing the final act of the movie. After being presented with Leah possessed by a dybbuk, Rav Azriel of Miropol holds two Din Torahs. The first Din Torah is to nullify the vow that Sender and Nisn made which is drawing Chonon and Leah's souls together. The second Din Torah is to force Chonon to leave Leah's body by putting his soul in Cherem. (Although not exactly addressing the ideology behind dybbuk trials, I recommend Historia Civilis' video on animal trials for a background on using trials to combat evil forces.) During the first Din Torah, the meshulach informs Rav Azriel that Nisn did not accept the nullification of the vow. Rav Azriel responds that if the heavenly worlds tried to maintain the vow, he would overturn their decision. In this instance he is drawing from an established tradition in Jewish theology that rabbinic courts on earth have more authority over interpreting the Torah law than God does. The verse in Psalm 115 states, "but the earth, he gave to mankind." The implication is he gave the earth to mankind to govern. This verse can be read as an affirmation of the tradition of mortal rabbinic decisions overriding divine understanding of Torah law.
Another potential reading of first verse is the spirits/souls of the dead belong in heaven and the living human beings belong on earth. Though verse literally says, "The heavens belong to God," you can broaden God to include all divine and spiritual entities. There are ideas within Jewish mysticism that understand each human soul to be a small part of God. These souls, after they are freed from their human shells upon death, must return back to heaven and should not linger on earth. If one soul does linger on earth it can cause become a dybbuk. By declearing the heavens to be the realm of the divine, this verse can also be read a plea to prevent the conditions, that can create a dybbuk, from forming.
After this short section of Hallel the scene shifts to the street outside of the synagogue. We see the meshulach figure appear outside and make his way into the synagogue. When he enters the synagogue, the congregation is up to the Hoshanas. Specifically, the Chazan is reciting אבן שתיה, which is the second round of Hoshanas that are recited on Hoshana Rabba. Each round of the Hoshanas has a theme or topic, and אבן שתיה describes the temple in Jerusalem. The section is a plea to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
While the Chazan recites the Hoshanas, Sender and Nisn discuss the details of their vow with someone who was standing next to them. This scene is where we the audience finally learn of the details of the vow and its dangerous implications. Interlaced within the dialogue describing the vow, we hear the Chazan chanting the Hoshanas.
The word הושענא, which is the refrain of the entire Hoshana ceremony, means 'please save.' The whole ceremony is meant to beseach God for salvation. The ceremony is based upon a ceremony that was performed in the temple in Jerusalem which was meant to ask God for a good rain season in the winter. The success of the crops in Palestine were reliant upon a good rain season. In exile, the prayer has expanded to ask for all manner of divine salvation and blessing. In the Jewish tradition, rain is a symbol of God's blessings in general.
The cries of 'please save' us echoing in the background of Sender and Nisn's doomed vow are a warning that the vow will require salvation. The Hoshana prayer becomes of foreboding chant for the clamity of the dybbuk that is to come.
As I mentioned above, the specific section of the Hoshanas that the Chazan recites describes the temple in Jerusalem and serves as plea to rebuild it. The symbolism of the temple as the holiest place on earth represents the holiest acts a person can do, which are love,sex, and marriage. Chonon ends up corrupting the holiness of these acts and causes a disaster.
Through Chonon's conversations with his friend Henoch, we the audience learn that Chonon has a somewhat Sabbatean ideology. He believes that holiness can be found in the most impure of places. He concludes that his love for Leah must be channeled through a Satanic lust in order for him to secure his marriage to her. When he reaches out to the Satanic forces for help, they grant his wish to be with Leah, but he becomes bound to her as a dybbuk and not through a marriage.
Marriage and love are very holy things within the Jewish tradition. The Song of Solomon, which is sung throughout the movie, is considered one of the most holy texts within the Hebrew Bible. The most holy acts are also the most dangerous and can be easily corrupted if done improperly. In the opening scene of the movie, Rav Azriel of Miropol, holds his Hasidic court. He delivers a drasha in which he explains the great risk the high priest takes when he enters the holiest chamber of the temple on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and recites the holiest name of God. If the high priest had improper intentions when performing the ceremony, he could cause great destruction. Through this speech, Rav Azriel describes the main theme of the movie, the holiest acts are both the easiest to corrupt and when corrupted have grave consequences.
When the movie juxtaposes the Hoshana about the temple in Jerusalem with Sender and Nisn's vow to marry their children, it is infroming us the audience that the holiness of the temple is representing the holiness of love, sex, and marriage. The resulting calamity of the vow will defile the temple; Chonon's sacred love for Leah will become a dangerous lust that consumes him and transforms him into a dybbuk.
I may come back to offer more thoughts about Chonon's lust itself, Leah's autonomy and relationship with Chonon, the various homosocial pairings of Sender and Nisn and Chonon and Henoch. There is also a good chance that it may take me a few years before I revisit this.
Sunday, November 17, 2024
My Favorite Biblical Hebrew Imperative
I've decided that I need to practice writing more casually. I was reminded of my favorite biblical Hebrew imperative word, since it shows up in פרשת וירא.
Most of the language of the Hebrew Bible is written in some kind of formal register. Often you can tell the difference between the style narratives, such as the events of plagues in וארא and בא, and the style of legal codes, such as in משפטים.
In many of the stories in בראשית, the narration of stories is in one register, but the dialogue of the charaters is in poetic verse. The story of גן עדן in the second chapter of בראשית is the perfect example of this. Most biblical stories do not write the dialogue of the characters in poetic verse. Sometimes it seems that the dialogue is written in a jargon register. The narrative tries to highlight that the characters are speaking and that they speak differently than how the narrator speaks in the story.
This is where my favorite imeprative comes into play. The imperative form in bilblical Hebrew is almost always used in dialogue. When a character uses the imperative, it signifies that they are speaking differently from the narrator. My favorite imperative is גש, גשה or גשי. These are used as commands for someone to move somewhere. They aren't moving very far. If you want to tell someone to move a few steps to the left, it seems like you would use גש. Whereas if you wanted to tell someone to go to a different location, you would say בא. The word גש appears in its imperfect form, when used by the narrator. There are plenty of examples of ויגש, in context they usually refer to someone approaching something.
Many of the imperative phrases that us גש are very short and quick to say. I suspect that brevity is a signifier of more colloquial speech, or at the very least, the language of commands.
In וירא, we have (Genesis 19:9):
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Songs of Volozhin
Sunday, October 6, 2024
The Golem as a Medium of Self-Defense
And I have heard, in a certain and explicit way, from several respectable persons that one man, [living] close to our time, in the holy community of Helm, whose name is R. Eliyahu, the master of the name, who made a creature out of matter [Golem] and form [ẓurah] and it performed hard work for him, for a long period, and the name of 'emet was hanging upon his neck, until he finally removed for a certain reason, the name from his neck and it turned to dust.
Later retellings of this story would add a specific justification for why Rav Eliyahu Baal Shem of Chelm deactivated his golem. Rav Yaakov Emden, a descendant of Rav Eliyahu, in שאילת יעב"ץ ב:פ"ב explained that the golem slowly grew and Rav Eliyahu deactivated it out of a fear that it would destroy the world. This becomes the core of later more elaborate versions of the story. In which a rabbi creates a golem and the golem becomes a threat to the community or the wider world.
In the earliest versions of the Maharal of Prague's golem, the Maharal creates a golem which he uses to help him with chores. When the Maharal forgets to deactivate the golem before Shabbat, the golem begins to go rougue and damages property. Then the Maharal deactivates the golem and hides the golem's body away.
The story of the Maharal's golem is a historically romantic folktale that exists in the context of other romantic literature in the 19th century. These other romantic short stories and novels play with the idea of a golem or golem-like being developing feelings as an individual character. Most famously, there's Frankenstein's monster, but there are versions of this story that are specific to the golem. Rudolf Lother's short story The Golem of Rabbi Loeb, which was published in english translation in the Menorah magazine, portrays the golem as the manifestation of Eleazar's love for his reluctantly bethrothed Esther. (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3); (Also see Eden Dekel and David Gantt Gurley, "How the Golem Came to Prague," in Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Spring 2013): 241–238.)
None of these stories contain any events in which the golem becomes the protector of the Jewish communtiy. Yet somehow, in the 1920 film The Golem: How He Came into the World, the golem is specifically created to protect the Jewish community of Prague.
In the narrative of the film, the emperor sends a decree to expell the Jews from Prague since they have been accussed of killing Christ and oppressing the Christian residents of the city. In response, the Maharal creates the golem. For a bit the Maharal tests the golem's abilities by having him aid in household chores. The Maharal and his golem soon set out to meet with the emperor during a festival and somehow convince him to repeal the decree.
Upon arriving at the festival, the emperor asks the Maharal to entertain the crowd with one of his magic tricks. The Maharal offers to show a moving picture of Jewish history, but warns that if the audience laughs at all there will be dangerous consequences. This stipulation is a trap. The Maharal projects the image of a caravan of middle eastern nomads, one particularly wizzened man looks to the audience and declares that he is Ahasuerus the wandering Jew. The audience bursts out laughing. With the pretext, the Maharal causes the roof of the banquet hall to begin collapsing. Some people get crushed in the rubble, while others jump out of the windows to their deaths. In desparation the emporer offers to repeal his decree against the Jews if the Maharal saves him. Immediately, the Maharal orders the golem hold up the collapsing roof, saving the emperor and the others who haven't been crushed yet.
Using the literary motifs of the romantic versions of the golem story, the movie translates the increasing power of the golem into the golem distancing itself from its creator and becoming more human. It is this emotional development of the golem that eventually leads it to kidnap the Maharal's daughter Miriam and accidentally set the ghetto on fire.
The golem movie seems to have greatly popularized the self-defense element of the golem story. Almost all of the versions of the story that follow contain some element of Jewish community self-defense in the golem story. This element of community protection becomes integral to the comic book super heros that were based on the golem.
The golem movie did not orginate the self-defense motif in the golem story. I was able to locate one published version of the golem story contianing a narrative of communal self-defense. It's likely there are a few more that pre-date the 1920 golem movie, but I have not been able to locate them.
In 1897, the Jewish Publication Society produced a small book of Jewish folktales by Henry Iliowizi called In The Pale. One of the stories in this book is titled The Baal Shem and His Golem. Although the title seems to make it fit right into the tradition of previous golem stories, almost everything contained within it is a departure from the traditional golem story.
This is the plot summary:
Payutin, the recently appointed magistrate of Karolin, falls in love with Mayor Pozanow’s daughter Tilka. The couple, holding deeply antisemitic beliefs, recruit Russian Orthodox Father Shapirow, the son of a Jewish convert, to convince Mayor Pozanow to target the Karolin Hassidim. Mayor Pozanow instructs the Karolin fire brigade to respond to any loud festive noise created by the Hassidim worshiping as if it was a call of emergency, and then charge the Hassidim with disorderly conduct and fine them for the cost of the false alarm.
Rav Aarele Baal Shem of Karolin instructs his Hassidim to ignore the new policy and continue worshiping as usual. Then, he enlists the help of the local Jewish blacksmith Pulasky to create a golem. After spiritually cleansing himself, Pulasky studies the divine names with Rav Aarele and summons a divine workforce to staff his workshop all night. When the sun rises, Pulasky and his spirit team have created a fire breathing iron monster. On the day of Payutin and Tilka’s wedding, Rav Aarele sent the iron golem to attack the wedding. The golem killed all the people at the wedding and destroyed the mayor’s house.
That's the story, its just the Jews lived happily ever after and defeated their enemies. There's no part where the golem turns on the Jewish community. In fact the story stresses "Not a Jewish house was damaged; not a Jewish body hurt."
Although the story refers to Rav Aarele's creation as a golem, the creature is quite different from the traditional golem. In the underlying mystical reasoning for the golem, it is necessary for the golem to created from clay just like God created humans from dirt. The golem is created in a human form. The fact that the golem appears on the outside to be almost human was intriguing to the romantic authors who sought to explore the similarly almost human mind contained within the golem.
Rav Aarele's golem is neither made from clay nor formed to look like a human. This is how Rav Aarele describes the golem to the blacksmith Pulasky,
. . . forge for me a horror of black iron. It shall be as awe-inspiring as Death, as terrible as the Plague, gigantic as the Anak who followed Noah's Ark through the waters of the deluge, implacable as Satan the Beast and Lilith the Harlot. Hissing serpents shall be its hair; its eyes shall glow like the fire of hell; from its mouth shall shoot forth a live dragon as tongue; its claws shall be like those of the tiger; and its tail a venomous hydra. The Golem's hands shall reach to the soles of its feet. Dress it in a garb of feathers as black as Abaddon. It shall stride forth with wings outspread, shall breathe fire and vomit flame; a hellish roar shall issue from its throat; and I shall cause it to move and act as a power possessed of reason and will.
This golem is as inhuman as possible. Iliowizi specifically rejects any of the romantic human weakness or instability of the traditional golem. Rav Aarele's golem is simply an agent of death that can only harm oppressors of the Jewish community. The reference to the safety of Jewish houses during the golem's rampage is a clear reference to the death of the Egyptian firstborn in the Exodus story. Iliowizi's golem is an idealized form of divine protection and defense.
In creating this perfect divine agent of retribution, Iliowizi rejects the foundational message of earliest golem stories. Looking back to Rav Yaakov Emden's retelling of the story, the golem is inherently a growing threat to safety of the world. Later story tellers found different ways of expressing this threat. They all illustrated it with some harm befalling the Jewish community. While transforming the golem into an agent for community defense, Iliowizi sheds the fundamental message of all the golem stories. That a human cannot create a perfect creation.
Paul Wegener synthesized Iliowizi's golem of self-defense with human feeling golem of the romantic stories. He created a powerful message about the dangers of violent self-defense and how it can backfire. In doing so, he maintained foundational message of the limits of human achievement.
The archetype of Iliowizi's golem is still very present in the cultural imagination of the modern Jewish community. We tell ourselves that Rav Aarele's monster golem is attacking the bad guys, and everyone it kills deserves to die. We tell ourselves that no Jewish houses will be harmed by the golem. After all the golem we created has been ridden of human weakness and will only target our oppressors.
Just because Iliowizi denies that the golem is a danger to the world, does not make it true. He simply gives us permission to pretend that the golem can maintain our communal defense forever without any consequences. Such a blind attitude will only lead us to severe consequences.
Iliowizi's golem is a complete fantasy, whether or not he intended it to be read as such, that's what it is. An army is made up of people, not divine mechanical monsters. Unlike divine mechanical monsters, people are immoral. There is no such thing as a moral army, let alone a 'most moral army in the world.'
Sunday, September 29, 2024
YU's Non-Academic Properties in Washington Heights
Yeshiva University as an educational institution has owned real estate for well over a century. From its origins as the parochial elementary school, Yeshivas Etz Chaim, it has owned the property from which it operated since at least 1890. YU's primary founding school, Yeshivas Rabbenu Yitzchak Elchanan first sought to own its building in 1904.
YU students are well aware of the academic and dormitory properties that YU owns. Students visit many of these buildings daily and develop an intimate knowledge of their layouts and functions.
YU also has maps of its campuses which list academic buildings, dormitories, and parking lots.
Like other universities YU has invested in real estate. Sometimes the land holdings can be developed into more academic buildings or dormitories, sometimes the land holdings are investments that are intended to generate income.
During the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, YU linquidated its more valuable property assets in order to maintain cashflow and just keep the university running. The university has maintained ownership of several properties in Washington Heights. Many of these properties were purchased within the past few decades, and many are also kept under holding companies that are owned by YU.
Occupied in Use:
2498 Amsterdam Avenue
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this tenement building in 2007 under the name of the 2948 Amsterdam Avenue LLC. It has both commercial and residential tenants. The department of buildings reports that there are 3 residential units in the building.
Annual Income as reported on 990 tax forms:
- 2023 - $44,370
- 2022 - $54,178
- 2021 - $60,930
- 2020 - $59,219
- 2019 - $56,687
- 2018 - $55,933
- 2017 - $50,544
- 2016 - $56,377
2479 Amsterdam Avenue
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this garage in 2007 under the name 2479 Amsterdam Avenue LLC, and leases it to Icon parking to operate as a commercial parking garage.
Annual Income as reported on 990 tax forms:
- 2023 - $442,813
- 2022 - $484,197
- 2021 - $376,341
- 2020 - $482,879
- 2019 - $564,959
- 2018 - $609,590
- 2017 - $539,325
- 2016 - $524,496
Both 2479 Amsterdam Ave and 2498 Amsterdam Avenue were purchased together from the estate of Michael Parrino
24-36 Laurel Hill Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this apartment building in 2007 from real estate developer Richard Parkoff.
Annual Income as reported on 990 tax forms:
- 2023 - $448,185
- 2022 - $507,276
- 2021 - $527,703
- 2020 - $648,715
- 2019 - $642,620
- 2018 - $608,541
- 2017 - $623,817
- 2016 - $655,701
The department of buildings reports 48 residential units in the building. Presently, YU leases the units to tenants
Abandoned Buildings:
2496 Amsterdam Ave
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this old factory building in 2005, and has kept it vacant since.
557 W 185th St
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased the property on Dec. 28, 1987 under the name 557 West 185th St Corp.
12 Washington Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this house in 2006, from its resident homeowner. It is currently vacant.
10 Washington Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this property in 2006 from its resident homeowner. It is currently vacant.
Both 10 and 12 Washington Terrace have fences around stairs at the entrance to the house. The wooden porch awnings for both houses were removed.
Empty Lots:
6 Washington Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this house in 2001, and then demolished it in 2003, leaving the lot vacant to the present day.
2 Washington Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this house in 1984, under the alias of the CFIP Corp. YU seems to have left the building vacant, letting it decay until it demolished it in 2003.
13 Washington Terrace
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this building in 1997 under the alias of the OBC Corp. They demolished it in 2003.
2506 Amsterdam Ave
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased the four story tenement house that used to stand here in 1967. They demolished it in 1995.
2461 Amsterdam Ave
Property Information Portal Profile
YU purchased this property in 2007 under the name "2461 Amsterdam I LLC." They kept the building vacant of tenants and neglected to do any maintenance. In 2017 the roof collapsed into the upper stories of the buildings. YU finished demolishing the building in 2022, and the lot remains vacant at the present.
See my article and other sources.
At some point I may make another post about YU's parking lots, many of which were previously occupied by buildings.
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Dos Vashingtoner Leben
I have been scouring around for Jewish history in Washington, DC for a few years now. Which means that I’m always eager to locate primary source material produced by the Washington area’s Jewish community. The community of Eastern European immigrants that comprised most of the District’s Jewish community from the 1880s to 1920s definitely engaged with one another in Yiddish. The fairly small size of that community means that little of the material survives and is accessible in the present day. When I learned of the digitized 1921 Vashingtoner Yidishe Shtime on the National Library of Israel’s website, I assumed this was a rare and unique publication. After all, how many Yiddish newspapers were actually printed in the District, and how many of those would be saved in a library somewhere?
It turns out that the New York Public Library maintained a subscription of another short lived Washington Yiddish newspaper from 1911. This paper was called Dos Vashingtoner Leben (The Washington Life דאס וואשינגטאנער לעבען). I requested the microfilm of this paper at the Dorot Jewish Division and I was able to view it on August 22. I made sure to bring a flashdrive (that ancient technology) so I could save scans of the paper. I scanned all 22 issues of the paper contained on the reel. The paper began in August 1911 and its first two issues were published monthly, each being eight pages in length. In September 1911, the paper transitioned to be a four page weekly paper. The microfilm had all the issues of the paper from August 1911 until February 23, 1912 missing just one issue from the last week of November.
Header of the August 15, 1911 issue of Dos Vashingtoner Leben |
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Bibliography of Early RIETS History 1897 - 1915
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