TO JEST PO POLSKU

Jaka to jest smakowita książka!

Wiem, że brzmi to jak slogan dopasowany do nazwy wydawcy (Smak Słowa), ale nic na to nie poradzę - to pierwsze, co przychodzi mi do głowy po lekturze “Przechytrzyć historię”. Aaron Lansky bezpretensjonalnie gawędzi o niezwykłym dziele, którego się podjął, w fascynujący sposób zachęcając do nauki języka jidysz, pokazując najważniejszych autorów i autorki, a - co chyba najistotniejsze - przypominając, że za każdym egzemplarzem zgromadzonym w olbrzymiej aktualnie bibliotece Yiddish Book Center stoi ich właściciel i ich wspólny los.

Lansky w latach 80. studiował historię literatury jidysz na koledżu w Massachusetts i sfrustrowany ciągłym problemem z dostępnością książek dla studentów, wpadł na pomysł, by zacząć je gromadzić. Umierali ich właściciele, którzy przeważnie jeszcze przed wojną przywieźli książki do Stanów, likwidowały się organizacje żydowskie, których liczba członków dramatycznie spadała, a książki lądowały na wysypiskach śmieci.

Specjaliści twierdzili, że w całym kraju w prywatnych zbiorach znajduje się zaledwie kilkadziesiąt tysięcy egzemplarzy książek w jidysz. Jak szybko udowodnił to Lansky i jego pomocnicy - byli w dużym błędzie. W mieszkaniach, piwnicach, magazynach znajdowały się setki tysięcy książek, a młodzi ludzie, którzy ogłosili, że chcą je zachować dla potomności zaczęli jeździć od domu do domu i zabierać je do swojej organizacji, która dość szybko przeobraziła się w Yiddish Book Center - dziś jedną z najważniejszych organizacji upowszechniających kulturę jidyszową na świecie.

Książka napisana jest prostym językiem, chwilami jest może zbyt lokalna i nazbyt anegdotyczna, ale warto przymknąć oko na jedną czy dwie historie, gdzie fascynacja Lansky’ego nie spotyka się z naszą, by utonąć w jakiejś opowieści, po której nie można zasnąć i chce się więcej. “Przechytrzyć historię” czyta się bowiem jak powieść sensacyjną z wątkiem edukacyjnym. Sam pisze, że “Żydzi są nazywani narodem kaznodziejów” i nie da się ukryć - Lansky potrafi prawić kazanie. Trafnie, acz nienachalnie opowiada historię literatury jidysz, przeprowadza czytelnika przez zawiłości związane z jej recepcją wśród samych Żydów, którzy - zwłaszcza w Izraelu i Stanach - odcinają się od jidysz jako języka, który powinien wymrzeć. Z drugiej strony - nie mogą umrzeć książki, bo Naród Księgi jednak zachowuje każdy egzemplarz, nawet jak nim pogardza.

Nie da się ukryć, że Lansky preferuje historię żydowską pisaną z amerykańskiej perspektywy - Stany to taki lepszy “erec”, w którym wszystko jest możliwe - także organizacja taka jak Yiddish Book Center. Momentami książka - mimo pasji autora i tego jak dobrze się ją czyta - jest taką przesadzoną reklamówką organizacji, którą założył.

“Przechytrzyć historię” Lansky’ego ma słuszny podtytuł - “przygody” - nie jest to powieść wybitna literacko, czy intrygująca strukturalnie, ale historia, którą czyta się z przyjemnością, choć chwilami gorzką. Książkę przełożyła Agnieszka Nowak-Młynikowska i trochę nie ufam jej przekładowi w kwestiach jidyszowych - brakuje mi jakiejkolwiek glosy od tłumaczki jakie decyzje podjęła, czy jest to “jeden do jednego” przekład z wersji Lansky’ego, czy gdzieś jednak zapis jidysz uległ zmianie. Bo np. ciekawe czemu u Lansky’ego pojawia się zapis “l'khayim” zamiast znanego nam “l'chayim”. Ja bym chętnie się więcej dowiedział na ten temat.

Za to na pewno źle są skonstruowane przepisy - niekonsekwentne, czasem naiwne, jak wtedy gdy pisze, że takie słowa jak “mucid” czy “mucus” “we współczesnej angielszczyźnie” są rzadko spotykane.

Niezależnie od tego opowieść Lansky’ego to ważne świadectwo wiary w zbieractwo. Jidysz sam w sobie magazynuje tysiące lat żydowskich doświadczeń i wrażliwości. Jidyszowa literatura jest kluczem do zrozumienia żydowskiej historii, o czym wiele osób próbowało jeszcze nie tak dawno zapomnieć, a niektórzy wciąż nie pamiętają. Lansky w swojej hiper-optymistycznej, amerykańskiej wizji świata stara się powiedzieć, że współcześni Żydzi muszą oddawać się niekoniecznie nostalgii za utraconym shtetl, ale czerpać z tradycji siłę do budowania nowego świata. Co ciekawe dzięki inicjatywie Lansky’ego mogą to robić też goje, bo jidysz sam w sobie nie daje żadnych już odpowiedzi, bez wszelkiej maści popularyzatorów będzie językiem martwym. I dlatego autor uważa, że trzeba “przechytrzyć historię”. Słusznie, choć ten amerykański duch wielkiego sukcesu od pucybuta do milionera nad tą książką unosi się trochę jak dla mnie za blisko. Ale warto, bo Państwa to wciągnie na długie godziny.

This is one of those amazing books, that is a well-written, engaging narrative, as well as chock full of information on a subject I knew absolutely nothing about. Lots of great stuff about books, and generations, and culture. Although this is about a specific effort to save Yiddish books, it has broader applications for the hundreds of languages currently considered endangered. It would make a good pairing with Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.

Aaron Lansky has written an amusing and moving memoir about his adventures in preserving (and eventually digitizing) tens of thousands of Yiddish books. In his ability to tell a good yarn, Lansky reflects the dozens of great story tellers he has helped save from oblivion; and if some of the stories appear a bit ben trovato, this reader at least is willing to wink at whatever may be the pleasant embroidery.

There are poignant personal moments here, as well as a brief history of the Yiddish language and a succinct explanation of how it became so intimately connected with leftist politics. To his credit, Lansky does not over sentimentalize Yiddish culture, and the reader need not be familiar with any of the literature or even be Jewish. But it helps to be a bibliophile.

Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books describes the life work of its author, Aaron Lansky. Yiddish was the spoken language of the 75% of the world’s Jews for the past 1,000 years. Books were a portable homeland for Jews and defined Jewish national identity. The loss of the books was also the loss of Eastern European Jewish culture and history.

Lansky’s story begins when he was a graduate student of Yiddish Literature and found it nearly impossible to locate the Yiddish books he was assigned to read. Lansky began putting up signs, stating that he was a young graduate student in need of Yiddish books. He got many responses and soon found himself inundated with books. Lansky discovered that countless Yiddish books were being discarded by a new generation of people who could not read or speak the language. To save the books, Lansky decided to go around and collect them. Some books were handed to him by the owners. These books came with a price; the donors wanted to talk about each of the books. They were handing over treasures that their children and grandchildren didn’t want. It was an emotional experience for them. Other books were rescued from dumpsters and demolition sites.

Soon, it became clear that it was impossible for a handful of people to collect thousands of books. So, Lansky organized a network of zamlers (volunteer book collectors). Books were collected nationwide and from around the world. Lansky’s mission was a matter of cultural preservation. Jewish culture was largely destroyed by the Holocaust (one out of two Yiddish-speaking Jews was killed in the Holocaust) and assimilation. In 1980, Lansky’s work led to the establishment of the Yiddish Book Center, located in Amherst, MA, on the campus of Hampshire College. It is one of the largest Jewish cultural organizations in the country. Lansky’s book is an inspirational one, and his life is a blessing.

Books. I love books! But Aaron Lansky really loves books. And his story make us want to preserve books even more. More importantly, he makes us want to understand and preserve our heritage. Mr. Lansky, you are as good a storyteller as any of the authors that you have saved. Thank you.

Wow what an adventure! I happen to zamler (treasure collect) for Old Jewish Recordings, so our adventures are apt to be similar to those endeavored by the kids in this book. Fun for everyone, even/especially if you don't know anything about yiddish.

Sholom Aleichem!

Great history of the National Yiddish Book Center and all the stories of contributors, donors, travels, interns, things and people that made it possible. This book really is a bit of a cross between autobiography and an adventure. That said, to me the story could have been successfully told in about a hundred less pages, but hey, we're Jews, we like to talk! If this book doesn't inspire you to want to learn Yiddish, nothing will.

Let's just get this out of the way: this book is essentially a long-form fundraising appeal by the director of the Yiddish Book Center, describing the unique treasures of Yiddish literature and the dire need to rescue this language and culture before its last native speakers die of old age and their tattered books are thrown in the dumpster. And, at every turn, the ways that even a small amount of money makes the difference between success and failure on missions into the Lower East Side, the gang-torn Bronx, Soviet Russia, and Cuba. It's a persuasive and persistent sales pitch.

But if that's all it was, I wouldn't have finished the book. I found myself caring about the older couple who had supported Yiddish writers as young radicals and now spent their golden years rescuing Yiddish books, and I ached as they began to decline, knowing what was coming. I was fascinated by the religious Jews who didn't want to disrespect books by destroying them, but were determined that no one should ever read them and be corrupted by them. And I was intrigued by the thumbnail descriptions of political tracts from the Russian Revolution, poems by eighteenth and nineteenth-century women, postmodern novels, and Holocaust-era sociological studies, offering a raw and complex view of Jewish and world history. Despite the fact that I'm terrible at languages, Lansky makes me want to know more.

In 1980, Aaron Lansky stumbled somewhat haphazardly upon the plight of Yiddish books, which were being destroyed en masse by the very families of the people who had so painstakingly collected them over the preceding century. With rampant assimilation and secularization, Yiddish was quickly becoming a dead language, and its literature was no longer considered useful to rising generations of Americanized Jews. Lansky, then twenty-three years old, decided that something must be done to save the remaining Yiddish books, and has since dedicated his life to saving these books -- not just the 70,000 scholars believed to be remaining, but more than 1.5 million altogether.

The collection grew so quickly that Lanksy decided to found the National Yiddish Book Center, which has evolved over time to be one of the most valuable resources to the Jewish community worldwide, offering a variety of multimedia resources to educate visitors about Yiddish language and literature, Jewish community and culture, history, and more. What started out as one man's dumpster diving to save a few books has grown into an amazing cultural resource.

This is the remarkably engaging story of Lansky's quest to save the world's Yiddish books -- but more than that, it is a story of nostalgia, neglect, revival, and rebirth. Lanksy's efforts not only saved more than 1.5 million Yiddish books, but they helped to revive the language and people's interest in the culture of Eastern European Jews and their American immigrant counterparts. The story is told with humor and compassion, and is by turns both outright hilarious and deeply moving, bringing the reader to laughter and tears as Lanksy recounts the stories of the Jews who once owned the books now forsaken. Above all, the story is immensely inspiring, and shows what a difference one man's efforts can make, even when all seems lost.

When I was a child, my father read to me, in English, stories about Motl, by Sholem Aleichem, from a bilingual English-Yiddish edition. Both my mother and grandmother could read Yiddish, yet I have no recollection of them reading to me the Yiddish version of the Motl stories. Eventually, like the families and institutions in Aaron Lansky's memoir of his adventures collecting books, we had Yiddish books no one could read.

Most families had a point where the link was broken. My grandmother continued to live in an Americanized version of Yiddish culture until she died. She belonged to many of the organizations, read the Yiddish newspaper and made the traditional food that Lansky writes about. Other than occasionally telling her children they were a mshugener, my mother did not pass on this Yiddish culture. Mostly, she discouraged it, yet at the same time, mourned its passing.

I think my family was one example, from many, of what Lansky and his colleagues faced. An older generation that continued their Yiddish culture and passed it on to a generation that did not want it, that wanted something different, whether it was a purely religious Judaism or something else. The third generation only has limited understanding, or as Lansky sometimes found, no understanding, of what was lost.

Did saving Yiddish books save the culture? That would be incredible to be able to point to one person as saving a culture. But if no place is using Yiddish as a language, I am not sure the culture was saved.

I not only like this book because of its relation to my personal history, but because it is a great story. Not everyone has saved 1.5 million books and created a center of culture and learning, in any language.

I wish Lansky had explained a little better how he went from being a shoestring operation, if that, to an organization that sent rare editions to the Bodleian Library, slipped books into Estonia & Lithuania and become a center with 10,000 visitors a year. Mostly this information is gleaned from the adventures he writes about, however a little explanation would have been helpful.

I have read The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu and now this book. Saving books and manuscripts is not for the faint of heart. They are inspiring stories. My lone, minor contribution is that I still have the bilingual book of Sholem Aleichem stories that I enjoyed as a child.

Pick up this unassuming book about a nonprofit that rescues Yiddish books and you might think it would make a good article but not much of a book. Oh how wrong you would be. It's amazing. The author is a gifted writer with a wicked sense of humor. I'm not the type who usually busts out laughing while reading, but I did here, a couple dozen times. Had a few tears too. If you love books for their own sake, you'll love this particular one, even if you know nothing about Judaism or Yiddish culture. But if you do, then read it why don't you?

I laughed, I cried - all around a good read. Although I needed some translation help for a few of the Yiddish words!