This is too good an excuse to tell an old joke, one without any particular significance, just a chestnut from the early 20th century in America when there was a vibrant and large Yiddish culture in the USA.
It seems an elderly Jewish couple who loved the theater managed to scrape up the money to travel to London and see Hamlet performed. After the performance ended and they joined the crowd streaming out, someone spotted that they were tourists and asked how they had enjoyed the play. "Oh it was fine, fine," the wife said. "Although to tell you the truth," added the husband "we liked it better in the original Yiddish." On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > Just by coincidence it would seem, two films opened yesterday in New > York that would be of particular interest to any Jew who, like me, has > affection for the Yiddish language and more generally those who are > curious about Jewish culture. The more successful of the two is the > documentary “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness” playing at > Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Since it persuaded me to read some of the fiction > of a writer I had never considered worth my time, one can say that at > least one goal of the film’s makers had been achieved. > > The other is playing a couple of blocks away at Lincoln Center’s > brand-new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Titled “Romeo and Juliet in > Yiddish”, it is a Godardesque attempt at showing the attempts of an > aspiring Yiddishist, played by writer-director Eve Annenberg, at > creating a Yiddish version of Shakespeare’s classic with actors drawn > from the Satmar sect in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Since the > cast is made up primarily of young people who broke with the Satmar > sect, whose real-life struggles to define themselves are woven into the > film, it is noteworthy on that basis alone. > > full: > http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/sholem-aleichem-romeo-and-juliet-in-yiddish/ > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Grist Blog: http://www.grist.org/member/1598 Static page: http://www.nohairshirts.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
