bluma.bsky.social
Werewolf advocate, Golem appreciator. Writes a little about H. Leivick on https://blumalangerobertson.substack.com/
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I mean, I recognise he’s got a bit of self-interest there, being a writer himself, and now (then?) an editor of the perpetually in-the-hole Tsukunft.
But the theory of ‘Artists should just work making the art and people should pay them for that’ is pretty sound.
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As for the first story, sometimes he says it happened at five, sometimes at seven. Which doesn’t really matter, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, but does illuminate something for me, because I’m odd. (4/4)
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Incidentally, the particular cell situation he describes *isn't* in Oyf Tsarisher Katorge (which is actually highly selective and I’ve got a fistful of stories from that period which aren’t in there)
The road-trip to Pohost is a new one on me.
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Tsebion, writing for Forverts, has said that while there is antisemitism in gentile literature and culture, there exists a reciprocal anti-gentile sentiment in Jewish literature and culture.
Leivick begs to differ
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What I do wind up posting is really the tip of an iceberg.
I’ve typed up everything I’ve read (short of the short Simon biography, because I read that on proper vacation)
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Having something to do, though, beyond ‘mothering’ or ‘wife-ing’ is what keeps me going.
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It really does make me weep for the incomplete nature of the scans from 1950.
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I don’t comment much on these for a reason — yes, you’re not getting the context from 1937, but you’re not getting 2025 me imposing anything on this.
Wherever he does or doesn’t see this leading — that’s the important thing.
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Oh, no. I should stop typing while I’m ahead.
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Chekhow?
Okay. This is the was it is now.
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Don’t even get me started on the length of things…where do you send a five, ten, fifteen page poem you translated?
Who even reads that?
(And if they take that, they surely, surely don’t want your book length analysis alongside it…)
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Oh, we had lab groups. I just didn’t get on with people that didn’t really see the sort of meditative side of it and wanted to rush home for TV.
I was happy with running gels, titrations and stuff.
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I loved quadrant streaking.
I’d honestly have been very had I been left forever doing that sort of thing in a lab with no one bothering me.
The hiss of the medium if you didn’t let the loop cool enough…wonderful.
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I have passed through my Wednesday and Morticia years and am entering my Grandmama era.
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And then your thesis supervisor asks you why you’ve double spaced after every full stop, what did you learn how to type on a typewriter or something and you have to shuffle away in shame.
(It was nice and electric, ta)
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As an immigrant myself, I find the dynamic changes when you’re viewed as coming from a ‘good’ country.
And boy howdy does being Jewish layer on top of that in weird ways.
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The first story, intriguingly, grazes the issues of colonialism and Jewish whiteness…
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Personally, I think there’s a bit of back engineering going on.
It doesn’t make me popular, but I have a certain level of personal annoyance with the idea that Yiddish flatly =Antizionist.
(Don’t start me up on Yiddishists who co-opt names of other groups for new, vague, unrelated enterprises)
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In his own rather inimitable style, I think he rather views every Yiddish artist in Israel as martyr for the causes of both Israel *and* Yiddish.
And boy does he love martyrs.
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Honestly, the best bit about just going through article by article. Any given day could either be a spat with Itzik Manger or an article that makes you think that *someone* would have enjoyed the hell out of ‘People’s Court’
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This turns into something of a long-running issue with the Hebrew PEN Club, where they have a very good swipe at him during his 1950 visit and he, quite elegantly (if I may say so) essentially calls them Sabbateans.
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We also saw ‘Crossing Delancey’ (and less good, Neil Diamond’s ‘Jazz Singer’ and ‘A Stranger Among Us’) as part of the same course.
Looking back, it seems remarkable how we danced around the edges of things. And also how much that was like a college course on Jewish film.