The merry merry month of Kislev has almost passed us by, but it’s never too late to spread the wintry, holiday love! The Yiddishkayt staff has assembled this gift guide with akht (8) matònes that will be sure to please any Yiddish-lover in your life. Special thanks to Rob Adler Peckerar, Mindl Cohen, Clare Fester, Mikhl Casper, and Abbie Phillips for their contributions!
First Night: A Fabulous Meyshe Kulbak T-Shirt
Anyone familiar with Yiddishkayt or The Helix Project will know how we feel about Meyshe Kulbak, the dashing Litvak poet laureate. {Hint: the feelings are quite positive.} Whether or not you or your lyubenyu are personally familiar with Kulbak’s work, you’ll love wearing his words in the form of our handmade T-Shirts.
Would you like to announce to the world that you (like handsome Kulbak and the also-attractive students of the Helix Project) are ready to “go and leave the weak behind”? Then we recommend our “Let’s Go” shirt.
Or would you prefer to commemorate the bear training academy that once flourished in Kulbak’s hometown of Smorgon? Well, we’ve got you covered with our “Dancing Bears” t-shirt, which features the Smorgon and Berlin city bears and a line from Kulbak’s topical poem “Asore Dibraye.”
Second Night: An Interwar Yiddish Political Poster
Is your shtub feeling a little drab, aesthetically or ideologically? Spruce up the joint with a beautiful Yiddish poster that highlights the diverse and vibrant Jewish political scene in inter-war Eastern Europe.
Encourage your guests to vote for the Folkspartay with a poster inspired by a photograph from An-sky’s ethnographic expedition to the Pale.
For the full-on kolkhozniks, however, nothing beats a poster urging the viewer to “come with us to the collective farms.” Who could resist the call of these arbeter froyen?
Third Night: A Surrealist Children’s Book About a Yiddish-Speaking Fish
Santiago Cohen’s The Yiddish Fish is a short book, so we won’t give too much away, but let’s just say that 1) there is a fish involved, 2) said fish speaks (grammatically and orthographically correct) Yiddish, and 3) certain things are left unexplained. Great for open-minded, pescatarian kinderlekh.
Fourth Night: Traditional Belarusian Jewish Folk Music
New York klezmer band Litvakus recently released the album Raysn: The Music of Jewish Belarus, and seeing as Jewish Belarus is kind of the Helix Project’s stomping grounds, we’re pretty excited about it. There is a Belarusian song about a Jewish girl named Chajka; there is a Meyshe Kulbak poem about a scoundrel named Shalopay; there are svirels, which sound like bagpipes but are actually Belarusian shawms. It’s the real deal — but don’t take our word for it.
Fifth Night: Luscious Persian Poetry Pomegranate Earrings
Yes, you read that right: Persian Poetry Pomegranate Earrings. But just bear with us. These handmade earrings actually have a Persian poem inside of them! If you or your mahboob can read Persian, this gift is just perfect. If you or your mahboob can read Yiddish, you can pretend that the earring is inspired by Leyb Naydus‘s poem Intime nigunim (Intimate Melodies):
Lie on the carpet, wild and tender. Open
The pomegranate of your mouth, and close
Your eyes: Astarte stands above us, keeping
Guard like a eunuch with her watchful gaze.
(translated by Naomi Wolf)
If we get (considerably) craftier by next Khanike, we will definitely make Yiddish Poetry Pomegranate Earrings ourselves.
Sixth Night: More Erotic Poetry
If you want more intimate melodies, we have good news for you. Celia Dropkin was a contemporary of Leyb Naydus and a fellow Litvak, and her poetry is especially remarkable for its erotic energy. The Acrobat, new bilingual edition of Dropkin’s under-appreciated work, was recently published by Tebot Bach, with translations by Faith Jones, Jennifer Kronovet, and Samuel Solomon. Read a review and some of the translations here.
Seventh Night: A Vegetarian Yiddish Cookbook
This book won’t be released until the spring, but us vegetarian Yiddishists are used to waiting, and other slight annoyances like being served quinoa as a substitute for brisket. It turns out that the vegetarian scene in pre-war Yiddishland was not as bleak as you might’ve imagined. In 1995, someone at a book fair in England came across a copy of a 1938 Yiddish-language vegetarian cookbook published in Vilna by a vegetarian restauranteur named Fania Lewando. YIVO commissioned Eve Jochnowitz to translate the cookbook, The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen and it’ll be available in May, 2015. If you’ve ever worried that your vegetarianism is preventing you from eating in true Litvak style, well this is what you’ve been waiting for — and what’s another six months?
Eighth Night: Belorussian Żubr Sweater
Вы любите Беларуси? Вы любіце Беларусі? האָסטו ליב ווײַסרוסלאַנד — Do you love Belarus? Whether it’s with a и оr an і, in Russian, Belarusian, or Yiddish — if the answer is yes, this attractive sweatshirt can be yours for only 400,000 rubles (don’t worry, that’s about $40). It features one of the lesser-known inhabitants of the historical Lithuanian borderlands, the Żubr, or European bison. If you’re of age and want to send out the year with some lekhayims, here’s another Żubr-inspired treat you might enjoy.
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