Yiddish Poets Fighting

The Yiddish poet Tino Moskovich wrote a damning critique in HaAretz about the anthology of the known Yiddish poetess Kadia Molodovsky titled Laylot Heshvan (Nights of the Month of Heshvan). The Yiddishist Amir Shomroni - who edited Kadia's book - wrote a mordant counter-criticism against Moskovich's  attack. Moskovich judges Kadia a "good poetess" but finds serious errors in Shomroni's translation: "Nothing less than a terrible mistake". Line by line, Moskovich analyses the translation's "problems" like the contrived rhymes and its pedestrian vulgarity.

Amir Shomroni does not suffer silently these insults to his opus magna (600 pages). He points out that the poem was originally translated and published by the eminent Yiddish poet Dov Stock (Sadan) in 1934, that is, 84 years ago, and that he attached a footnote explaining the archaic Hebrew used by Sadan. The Hebrew of those almost pre-historic eras cannot be compared to modern Hebrew that underwent much evolution and enrichment since then. And that Dov Sadan is among the best  researchers of Yiddish of his generation, and "further explanations are superfluous as the thing is well known".

If there is a literature presumed long dead, it is Yiddish poetry. I am surprised and happy that it is alive and able to fire such a furious dispute in October 2018. As Bashevis Singer said at his Nobel Prize ceremony: Yiddish is a long-dead language that has been dying ever since .