{"id":18368,"date":"2016-04-15T00:57:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T07:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=18368"},"modified":"2016-04-13T13:38:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T20:38:08","slug":"vilna-the-place-its-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/04\/15\/vilna-the-place-its-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Vilna, the place, its people"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a master storyteller who can make you feel like you\u2019ve met someone you never knew, visited a city to which you\u2019ve never been, make you long for a people, place and culture you\u2019ve never experienced but from a generation, location and language once, twice or thrice removed. Abraham Karpinowitz (1913-2004) is such a writer. And, thanks to local master storyteller and translator Helen Mintz, more of us can now visit Karpinowitz\u2019s Vilna \u2013 a city full of colorful characters, both real and not, and share in a small part of their lives.<\/p>\n

Vilna My Vilna<\/em> (Syracuse University Press, 2016) is a collection of 13 short stories and two brief memoirs by Karpinowitz, translated from Yiddish into English by Mintz. For context and a better understanding of Karpinowitz and his work \u2013 notably one of the main \u201ccharacters\u201d in his writing, Vilna \u2013 there is a foreword by Justin Cammy, an associate professor of Jewish studies and comparative literature at Smith College in Massachusetts, and an introduction by Mintz. These two scholarly essays are invaluable, but if you\u2019re completely unfamiliar with Karpinowitz, perhaps jump ahead and read a few of the stories before heading back to these parts of the book. It\u2019s kind of a Catch-22, in that their insight enhances the enjoyment of the stories, but the stories enhance the understanding of the analysis and history.<\/p>\n

\"bookRomantics will appreciate most the linked stories of \u201cThe Folklorist\u201d and \u201cChana-Merka the Fishwife.\u201d In the first tale, Rubinshteyn heads to the Vilna fish market to collect material for YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute) because he knows that, if the \u201cgenuine language of the people\u201d is not documented, \u201cit would be a great loss for the culture.\u201d Dedicated to his work, and a dedicated bachelor, he fails to notice that Chana-Merka has fallen in love with him and, once his research is complete, he stops visiting the fish market, much to her \u2013 and his \u2013 sadness. In the second tale, Chana-Merka heads to YIVO herself to make sure that Max Weinreich, its director, knows from whom all of Rubinshteyn\u2019s material came: she makes lists of curses for Weinreich, such as \u201cMay you speak so beautifully that only cats understand you,\u201d and \u201cMay you be lucky and go crazy in a more important city than Vilna.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weinreich is one of the real people who appear in this collection where fiction and non-fiction meld. Yoysef Giligitsh, a teacher at the Re\u2019al Gymnasium, is another. Most readers will not be able to identify all of these people and, while there will be added realism for those who can, the characters stand on their own. Besides, these people are secondary to the protagonists, who are the fishwives, the prostitutes, the criminals, the poor.<\/p>\n

Despite that everyone is trying to eke out an existence, even the criminals follow a moral code. For example, Karpinowitz notes, in \u201cVilna, Vilna, Our Native City\u201d that the Golden Flag criminal organization\u2019s constitution includes the admonition, \u201cOur members should behave properly and not forget that even though we are who we are, we are still Jews,\u201d and that \u201c[t]here was a directive for the general treasury to provide dowries for poor brides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karpinowitz pokes fun at communism, capitalism, politics in general. His descriptions put readers right into the scene, almost as if they\u2019re standing on the opposite street corner watching events unfold. And he has some wonderful turns of phrase. In \u201cShibele\u2019s Lottery Ticket,\u201d for example, Sheyndel\u2019s husband goes off to fill the water bucket and never returns: \u201cSheyndel missed her husband, the shiksa chaser, less than the bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, in one of the two memoirs, \u201cThe Tree Beside the Theatre,\u201d Karpinowitz writes about his father\u2019s choice to sell his print shop to run a theatre, \u201cIf he\u2019d stayed in the print shop, he\u2019d be a rich man. My mother reminded him of this every time she couldn\u2019t cover expenses. But everything in the print shop, including the machines and the letters, was black, and everything in the theatre was colorful, even the poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karpinowitz\u2019s characters have self-dignity and hope. They are not passive, for the most part, but are actively trying to change their situation for the better or to help someone else. Not surprisingly, many of the stories have bleak endings, with the narratives going from charming and\/or humorous to horrific, illustrating just how abruptly and brutally this world came to an end.<\/p>\n

These stories that turn on a dime are so moving. They emphasize just how little people at the time understood that most of them would soon be murdered. As Karpinowitz writes in \u201cVilna, Vilna, Our Native City\u201d: \u201cFor years, a Jew with blue spectacles stood on Daytshe Street begging, \u2018Take me across to the other side.\u2019 His plea was so heartrending that, rather than asking to be taken across the few cobblestones separating Gitke Toybe\u2019s Lane from Yiddishe Street, he sounded like he needed to cross a deep and dangerous abyss. Maybe he was the first Jew in Vilna with a premonition about the Holocaust. Just the name of the street, Daytshe Gas<\/em>, German Street, drove him from one side to the other. We could all see the little water pump and Yoshe\u2019s kvass stall on the other side of the street, but through his dark spectacles, that Jew saw farther. Fate didn\u2019t take him to the safer side. He ended up in the abyss at Ponar with everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karpinowitz survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, having left Vilna in 1937. He briefly returned in 1944 and then, after two years in a displaced persons camp in Cyprus, moved to Israel. Mintz notes that he wrote seven works of fiction, two biographies, a play and five short story collections. He was awarded the Manger Prize (1981), among several other honors.<\/p>\n

In the stories of Vilna My Vilna<\/em>, the geography of the city is integral, and the maps included are useful in situating the action. The glossary is also an essential part of the book: kvass<\/em>, for example, is a \u201cfermented beverage made from black or regular rye bread.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding even more value to this collection are three illustrations by Yosl Bergner that were in the original 1967 Yiddish publication of Karpinowitz\u2019s Baym Vilner durkhhoyf<\/em> and the painting \u201cSoutine Street\u201d by Samuel Bak is the cover of Vilna My Vilna<\/em>. Both artists (and the Pucker Gallery, in the case of Bak\u2019s painting) gave permission for their work to be used at no charge, which is an indication of the translation\u2019s import beyond entertainment.<\/p>\n

Mintz\u2019s acknowledgements are many, and that she accepted so much input into the book speaks volumes about her integrity and the quality of her work. \u201cTranslating these stories brought me great joy,\u201d she writes. \u201cWhile never swerving from the truth, Abraham Karpinowitz answered genocide with love: love for his characters and love for his craft as a writer.\u201d With Vilna My Vilna<\/em>, Mintz adds her love, and that of many others, to ensure that Vilna, its people and its stories will not be forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a master storyteller who can make you feel like you\u2019ve met someone you never knew, visited a city to which you\u2019ve never been, make you long for a people, place and culture you\u2019ve never experienced but from a generation, location and language once, twice or thrice removed. Abraham Karpinowitz (1913-2004) is such a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[53,5676,3825,5675,186,5677],"class_list":["post-18368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-holocaust","tag-karpinowitz","tag-translation","tag-vilna","tag-yiddish","tag-yivo"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}