Two recent articles in The Jewish Sound caught my eye regarding language and words.
In “A story of Polish-Jewish reconciliation, propelled by history’s personal gaps” (Dec. 20, 2013), the wordage — however unintentionally — defeats the purpose and intent of the story re: the goals of the person the article focuses on.
It addressed the quest by Jewish-American Louise Steinman to overcome self-described prejudice, as learned from her mother, about Polish Catholics and their relationships to Polish Jews. The opening sentence dismantles Steinman’s work: “When Louise Steinman first faced the suggestion of writing about Poles and Jews, she was unequivocal: No.”
I remember my summer studies in Poland, 1984 and ’85. One afternoon, led by an art history professor, our art group was on a tour of an art museum in Krakow’s famous Old Square. While standing next to a painting by the great Polish-Jewish painter Maurucy Gottlieb, I alone was the object of the professor’s intent looks and narrative as he hokked-a-chinik about “the Poles and the Jews, Poles and Jews.”
I had left my detachable horns at our dorm, yet with my black beard and “Semitic features,” my “Jewishness” must have had bowled him over as if I were one of those visiting black-attired Hassidic Jews one saw in Krakow then visiting the graves of departed rebbes.
But it was the “the Poles and the Jews” that snared me, as if there were neither Polish Catholics nor Polish Jews, nor a celebrated and lively history of intermingled Polish (Catholic) and Polish (Jewish) culture between the fin-de-siècle and 1939.
Outside of shetl life, there was enormous Polish Jewish and Catholic cultural intermingling: Art, literature, music, theatre. Other integral mixing included education, business-commerce, government, and even the military.
The photo caption with “Jaffa solicits youthful dancing partners for peace” (April 25) states, “Pierre Dulaine, champion dancer and teacher, brings together young Israelis and Palestinians to dance.” Oh? While some Israeli and Diaspora Jews say Palestinian when referring to all Israeli Arab citizens (and stateless Palestinians, too) its usage here is unclear. The Palestinians he references are Israeli.
Akiva Segan
Seattle