To the Editor:
I think your readers expect some sort of reply from me to Mortimer T Cohen’s “review” of The Joys of Yiddish [March] May I address myself only to where it is excessively false and misleading?
1) I am berated for not discussing the influence of “literary Yiddish” on English What influence? “Literary” Yiddish has exercised no discernible influence on English, my book deals with those Yiddish words and phrases that are encountered in English speech and print It is a peculiar mentality that attacks an author for not discussing a subject that does not exist
2) Your reviewer calls me too “ignorant” to know that Yiddish words invade English for “socioeconomic, not linguistic, reasons “To fortify his odd indictment, your “socioeconomist” says that Greek restaurants are concentrated in the South (I) and that in the English used “in the South, Midwest, the Far West Yiddishlsms are conspicuous by their absence “I was raised in the Midwest, lived for twelve years in the Far West, and have eaten in umpteen Greek restaurants in a dozen cities north of the Mason-Dixon line, your reviewer’s statements are as foolish as they are wrong
3) Your reviewer assails my “scholarly apparatus, references to professional journals, and the like” Should I, then, not have credited my sources? And in that case, would I not have been accused of (a) making unsupported statements, or (b) plagiarizing?
Compare your reviewer’s contempt for the canons of scholarship with the judgment of, say, several editors of The Great Yiddish Dictionary, or F Stuart Crawford of the Mernam Webster New International Dictionary, who writes “The Joys of Yiddish is an extremely useful tool for lexicography We are grateful for the attention given to the origins of Yiddish words, since no existing Yiddish dictionary gives etymologies”
4) Your reviewer says I “butcher” stories, citing a tale “in which the heart of the joke lies in the shadchen’s social activity” The poor man understands neither the joke nor its heart what the story illustrates is the remarkable intellectual gymnastics of ordinary Jews who apply sophisticated inductive analysis to everyday problems (I suspect that your peculiar mayvin would dismiss Freud’s Wit and the Unconscious as a “collection of stale jokes “)
5) I am scourged for “social bias” because I included two Yiddish words commonly used—and heard at Radcliffe Should I have omitted them because of Radcliffe? How perverse can reverse snobbery be?
6) Your reviewer charges that I have found a “formula” for humor I wish he would reveal it it would make my work easier As for his puzzling attack on The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P* L*A*N, I resign myself to the kinder verdict of three decades of readers and critics (one of whom, Isaiah Berlin, described Mr. Kaplan as “one of the great comic creations of the 20th century”)
7) Your reviewer raises the shabby flag of prudery to denounce me for including “vulgar” words in my catalogue Since when is a lexicon a censor? (Incidentally, each of the ten “street words” I included, out of a total of 486, was immediately identified as “obscene” or “vulgarism “) Compare your reviewer’s phobic reaction with the comments in another Jewish journal, Midstream (January), where S Shunra wrote “The Joys of Yiddish is to be recommended whole-heartedly All the words are good, all are a pleasure, and if some are a bit off-color, what of it? We all use these words anyway, so we may as well know what we are talking about
8) Your reviewer’s rage drove him to side-swipes about “a masked contempt for one’s own group spiritual self-immolation “Such slander (it is surely nothing less) may be set beside the contrary comments of such hardly anti-Semitic people as Professor Nathan Susskind, a leading authority on Yiddish, Maurice Samuel, David L Bazelon, Brooks Atkinson, Harold Taylor, Robert Ardrey, Rex Stout, Margaret Mead, Luigi Barzini, or Rabbis Solomon Freehof, Bernard Mandelbaum, Samuel Silver, Seymour Siegel, Andrew Robins, Solomon Goldfarb, or the Bulletin of the New York Board of Rabbis, in which Rabbi Theodore Lewis wrote “In contrast with many self-hating Jews who write about Jews and Judaism venomously, Rosten writes out of deep attachment, love, understanding, and knowledge His devotion to the Jewish people and its heritage makes the volume a pure delight”
I just received a beautiful brochure from the Commentary Library announcing its current choice, a book described as “having everything—scholarship, insight, illumination an wit” (Saul K Pad-over), “a major contribution to the study of Yiddish language and literature” (Rabbi Louis Finkelstein), “the best book about the American language since Mencken” (Daniel Boorstin), “a joy of a book—intelligent, scholarly” (Chaim Potok) And guess what the book is?
Leo Rosten
New York City
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Mr Cohen writes:
“A soft answer turneth away wrath” I would turn away Mr Rosten’s wrath by granting that the tone of the review was too sharp and the use of the word “ignorant” uncalled for But I ask him to consider that to me the merest tot in a Talmud Torah is the heir of a five-millennia-old civilization, and when I come across a joke which suggests that an English aristocrat or two Radcliffe girls are somehow superior to anyone who speaks Yiddish, I find it coarse and insulting Yet, I will admit that all nations have anecdotes which are self-critical and it is possible I over-reacted One thing is certain I am sure Mr Rosten is—as I am—a true lover of the Yiddish language and literature and the Jewish people However, I cannot withdraw my opinion about the basic vulgarity of the book It reminds me of night-culb entertainers, TV comedians, and hotel MC’s “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool” This is a subjective evaluation, and judging from the success of the book, I have not been able to impose it upon the reading public In any case, I would not make my own tastes the standard for others I regret that Mr Rosten was disturbed by the review
