Foiglman

Rating:
Summary: Troubling, haunting and beautiful novel
Review: This latest work of Aharon Megged to be translated into English is a haunting and beautifully woven novel that delves into the tension of modern day Israel and the remnants of Eastern European Yiddish culture and the Holocaust. Foiblman, a Holocaust survivor who writes poetry in Yiddish and lives in Paris, represents the tragic loss of the vibrant, heimishe world of Yiddish culture. The protagonist whom he befriends, Professor Tzvi Arbel is an Israeli researcher of Eastern European Jewry -- living in Tel Aviv while delving into Petliura in Ukraine. The story of their interaction and its effect on Tzvi's wife is revealed in flashbacks creating a fascinating mosaic of time and place. This novel is not only a pleasure to read for its language and descriptions; it also opens the painful issue of Israelis in their relation to the tragic history of the Jewish people, their languages and their tolerance for suffering.

Rating:
Summary: Between Yiddish and Hebrew
Review: When Shmuel Foiglman, a Yiddish poet and Holocaust survivor living in Paris, sends a collection of his poems to a professor of Jewish history in Tel Aviv, he sets in motion a chain of events that has dire and unforeseen consequences. As Zvi Arbel, the Israeli-born professor, is drawn into an uneasy, ambivalent friendship with Foiglman, his wife pulls away from him and his life is turned upside down.

But the confrontation between Foiglman and Arbel in Aharon Megged's "Foiglman" (Toby Press, October 2003) really takes place on a higher, cultural level, for it is the confrontation between Hebrew and Yiddish, between Israel and the Diaspora, and between the old world and the new.

Throughout the book, this contrast is emphasized. "What is harsh in Hebrew becomes soft in Yiddish. Troubles that Hebrew tackles with pathos, Yiddish treats with humor," Foiglman tells Arbel at one point.

The real question though, is how does Israel, the modern Jewish State, treat the old world writers of Yiddish, torchbearers of a tradition and culture that survived for hundreds of years in Europe, despite the pogroms and anti-Semitic feelings that threatened Jews there?

Foiglman's sole hope of Yiddish "after the great destruction" of the Holocaust is that "it might rise, like a phoenix, from its ashes, in that same land where the remnants of the destroyed house are now gathering to build their new home." Yet Foiglman is aware of the "family feud" that once prevailed between the two languages. Unfortunately, he finds out, there is little compassion in Israel for Yiddish writers and certainly not for those whose poems are translated into Hebrew.

"But this is precisely my point," Foiglman rails at one point, "that Hebrew is so proud and haughty that when one of her prodigal offspring comes back home, she receives him coldly, like a stepson. What should one do? No two languages are so far apart as Hebrew and Yiddish! As if spoken by two different peoples!"

For Foiglman, "Yiddish is not attached to the ground" of the State of Israel, his new home, but rather the language "is above the ground... it wanders from land to land... like the Holy One." Foiglman represents generations of Yiddish writers and poets that have been wandering the face of the earth through the centuries of the Diaspora, and their struggle to get their feet on the ground in the Hebrew-speaking State of Israel.