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May 2009 · New books · Previous · Next   PDF

New Books

By Benjamin Moser

The Brazilians have an expression, para inglês ver, which literally means “for the Englishman to see.” In the nineteenth century, the English abolished the slave trade and insisted that others do the same. As dependent on English capital as it was on slave labor, Brazil found a way to satisfy interests both foreign and domestic. The law was passed with great fanfare, along with the tacit understanding that it was to be ignored; and ever since, something done for the Englishman to see is done for form’s sake alone.

Sholem Aleichem’s novel WANDERING STARS (Viking, $29.95) shows, inadvertently, what people let slip when they’re sure nobody is eavesdropping. Writing in Yiddish is almost by definition different from writing in a non-Jewish language, simply because writers could assume that their works were inaccessible to non-Jews. It’s hard to imagine a Jewish writer in English or French—or a goyisher writer outside the pages of Mein Kampf—declaring that “Jews who run to hear Sonnenthal or are satisfied with a cabaret or some little tavern . . . such Jews ought to be hanged from a tree or shot.”

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SEE ALSO: Armenian Golgotha (Book); Collected poems (Book); Collected poems/C.P. Cavafy (Book); Cavafy, Constantine; Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam; Palak'ean, Grigoris; Mamdani, Mahmood; Saviors and survivors: Darfur, politics, and the war on terror (Book); Aleichem, Sholem; The unfinished poems (Book); The unfinished poems/C.P. Cavafy (Book); Wandering stars (Book)

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