Lilke Majzner, who
sadly passed away some nine months after this conference, was a
Holocaust survivor from the ghetto of Lodz, Poland.
While living in Los Angeles,
California, she gave of herself quite willingly to works that were
involved with the preservation of the Yiddish language.
Lilke served as the Director of the
Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club and was a member of the Board of
the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language and
Yiddishkayt LA. She will be sorely missed by all who came to know
her.
Address by Lilke Majzner at the 2008 IAYC Conference
English
translation by Hershl Hartman, Secular Jewish vegvayzer
|
|
|
Honored attendees; honored
guests; Board of the International Association of Yiddish
Clubs; Friend Norman Serkin, Conference Chair; and our
beloved Fishl Kutner, the tireless fighter, editor of Der
Bay and the soul of this Conference…I thank my dear
comrades, Sabell Bender; I thank Hershl, whom I often
torment…I torture him, but that is the way of our world: he
who allows himself to be tormented is tormented (laughter).
Greetings to all of you. This is a celebration for all of
us.
Many, many years ago I had a teacher in the Yiddish folkshul
(elementary school) named for Vladimir Medem (a prominent
leader of the Bund—trans.) in my hometown of Lodz, Poland,
who would say to us in moments of deep emotion:
“Children—words fail me, so let us kiss!” That is how I feel
at this moment. So I send you all my kisses, the hundreds
and hundreds of kisses that my teacher send out with her
pupils. I send you my kisses and gratitude. Gratitude for
the recognition that is not for me alone, but for the 83
years of activity of the Yiddish Culture Club of Los
Angeles, which you also honor…the club which was founded by
such inspiring spirits as the Yiddish writers Rosenblatt and
Opatoshu, who was here for a certain time, and others who
had the vision to create an organization that would
encompass the new trends that were born here in 1923 and
proceeded from city to city. The Yiddish Culture Club became
a presence, a presence in Jewish life that took wing and
worked doggedly so that the Golden Chain of our cultural
treasures might not be broken.
The doors of our Yiddish
Culture Club were open to both old and young creators, so
that, in the course of these 83 years we did not merely
preserve old treasures, but welcomed young writers, young
creators, and established one of the most prominent literary
magazines, in existence for over 60 years, khezhbn, which
has been read not only on this coast, but across the country
and abroad. This dogged determination of the activists…they
were the bearers of our huge legacy who give us the will and
energy to push, to push farther our Yiddish wagon that, in
the course of history and of historical events, has become
still heavier. |
I belong to the generation that was
murderously destroyed. I am a charred branch of that great, strong
oak tree of Polish Jewry, ebullient, creative. Just as legendary
Atlas was thought to carry Earth on his shoulders, so we — you and I
— carry the legacy of our murder victims, the legacy of the unspoken
words, unfinished songs, dreams not fulfilled. Their spirits hover
in this room today, here, with me and with you.
May I be permitted to give thanks, to express my deepest feelings of
love to my parents, who implanted in me a tremendous love for
Yiddish; to my teachers in the Secular Yiddish schools in my
hometown, all of whom taught me to dream in Yiddish; to my Bundist
ideals of social justice, love for Yiddish cultural values and love
for the Jewish people. To my Shloyme, who was my life’s companion
and loved everything connected to Jewish values, and to our children
and grandchildren who have understanding and respect for our
destroyed world. And to the Yiddish Club in Los Angeles which gave
me the opportunity to continue further my Yiddish cultural work and,
together with its devoted membership, to spin further the tattered
thread.
We have gathered here under the sign of the Centennial of the
Czernowitz Conference that took place in 1908. In our academic
circles, in cities where that great historic event is discussed,
some facts are crippled and interpretations made that are
inaccurate. But the event in and of itself is very important. The
Czernowitz Conference was not only a language conference. It was the
beginning of the creation of a new approach, a new path in our
Jewish life. A new path in which Yiddish was the spoken national
language. And with it we could reach masses and we could create and
develop the strength that would build and enrich our Jewish life.
That new approach of Secular Jewishness was called by Dr. Khayim
Zhitlowsky “our new cultural foundation.”
The historical and political canvas was quite different in those
formative years. The past hundred years have seen the blossoming of
Jewish creativity and establishment of the new day. The idea of
doikayt (here-ness), which the General Jewish Workers’ Bund had as
its ideology, created the foundation on which were based all stages
of Yiddish culture: Yiddish education, the advanced concepts of
sport leagues, higher education, teachers’ seminaries, institutions
that reflected and impacted Jewish folk-life. That blossoming
period, for all its difficulties of anti-Semitism and assimilation,
was so tragically interrupted. Six million of our people were cut
down. The physical and cultural-spiritual banishment in the former
Soviet Union erased Jewish life. And yet…and yet we are here!
The emergence of the Jewish State did not solve the issues of the
Diaspora. We live in dispersal and will live on. We must go on with
our Jewish life, wherever we are, wherever we live. It is that
here-ness that demands of us responsibility, demands of us a
historical duty. Jewish cultural values that have existed for a
thousand years cannot and dare not be discarded.
Language is the instrument of creativity. Our creative treasure is
colossal. It is not only the legacy, it is the wonderful
metamorphosis of the wandering process of now. Our yesterdays must
be historically woven into today. The road is hard, not easy. We
live in a new technological world. Technology brings both good and
bad. But Yiddish vitality and endurance will come to our aid. We
must have faith and we must have great stubbornness. Together …
together we will preserve our values and build new values. Our
language and culture must be a component of our Jewish existence.
May the words of our great writer Leivick, “I rise up again and
stride off farther,” become our motto.
We must also bring order to our path. We must have a certain
structure, the discipline of a creative path. We no longer have a
specific Jewish quarter that might stimulate us, so we must
stimulate the so-called “Jewish street.” Our work is grouped around
academic circles which is good and well, but the beginning is not
there — that is not the nisn (biblical first month—trans.). We must
lay the foundation among the very young…children…children’s schools.
If we are not able to create such schools, we must bring our baggage
— our great Yiddish cultural baggage — into the Jewish day schools
in the cities in which they exist. We must create institutions that
will develop new Yiddish teachers and inspire them with the idea of
teaching Jewish children, to acquaint them with our great creative
road. We cannot easily return to our old paths, no. But if we were
all to be determined — all together — we will have the strength to
transmit to our young generation our stubbornness, our deep belief
that Yiddish culture lives, that it will live, that the heritage
that was created enriched Jewish life and existence. It enriched
them then and it will enrich them now. The legacy lies in our hands.
It must lie in secure hands. And the further creative process will
go on…it will go on if we become determined.
May the conference, which will conclude tomorrow, or Monday, be the
beginning of our great, determined path to create — not more
conferences, but wherever you live and wherever you are — to exert
yourselves, to enthuse your youth so that they may understand you,
that they may hear from your mouths that long, long, hundred-year
history of the Jewish people…and the old, old history that is
thousands and thousands of years old. Let us discuss the issues
practically and roll up our sleeves and begin the labors. Words
alone cannot help. Work must be done, and all of you must believe in
it. We must believe. We bear a heavy weight. But if we do this, it
will become lighter, and perhaps, after 120 years, they will come
and say to us “you were right, and now we will take over the
rudder.”
We dare not negate one thousand years of life, a thousand years of
creativity. We dare not and we cannot. So let us erect the bridges,
the bridges to the youth, and let us with them greet our great will
and determination to continue our Yiddish cultural work with the
great treasures that we bear.
I want to thank you and I would like to conclude these few words
with a poem by a great Yiddish writer (Moyshe Shklar) who lives with
us in Los Angeles, who has written these words:
The Sound of Yiddish
Oh no, oh no, not gone is Yiddish sound;
it is laughter and tears,
it is the song the generations found.
From generations’ path through joy and woe,
through darkness to the morning’s glow —
and lasting sound, and lasting sound, and lasting sound…”
Thank you. |