Jewish Literary Review

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Steve Pollak

'The lilt of a Yiddish-Irish brogue'

I'm having a hard time conceiving of what a 'Yiddish-Irish' brogue would even sound like. But it's apparently something that's been heard in Chippewa Lake, Ohio, of all places.

Here's more from an essay written by Sean Martin, associate curator of Jewish history at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, posted May 8 on The Forward's Web site:

The lilt of a Yiddish-Irish brogue is not heard often in northeastern Ohio. But thanks to the efforts of Eudice Landy Gilman, we can now connect Jewish Cleveland to the Emerald Isle.

Gilman, 91 — who remembers sitting on the porch of her family’s cottage in Chippewa Lake, Ohio, and listening to her grandmother’s stories about life in Ireland — recently resurrected an artifact from her family’s past, bringing those stories to a much wider audience. Gilman’s grandfather, Hyam (Hyman) Singer, a cantor who left Riga in 1888 and immigrated to Dublin, and then to Chicago in 1901, left behind a journal of writings in Yiddish and Hebrew. The poetry records his memories from Eastern Europe and his transition to life in Ireland. Gilman, a published writer herself, received the journal in the 1960s from her sister after their mother’s death, and she promised to find a translator.

She eventually succeeded and the journal was published under the title “I Will Sing You a Verse.” Cantor Singer apparently wrote about themes that would be familiar to modern readers. Here's more from Martin's essay:

Singer weaves together universal themes, such as the tension between tradition and modernity and the sufferings of Jews over the centuries, and more common domestic themes, such as relatives’ weddings or his own marriage. Firmly rooted in the traditional Judaism of his day, Singer seems both impatient toward and tolerant of unusual behavior and changing attitudes. For example, he writes of one friend, Reb Shimen: “How do you abandon high style and pleasure? How can you be so warped as to pray in a woman’s dress?” Then later, sounding both politically correct and respectably concerned, he writes that it is not fitting to treat a wife “like a mezuze on the door frame, first a kiss and then a rap.”

You should read the full article on The Forward's Web site. If for no other reason, you should go there to check out the photo slide show posted at the bottom of the article. It includes several photos of turn-of-the-century Jews and a shot of Singer's handwritten journal.

Now, if only they had an audio clip of 'the lilt of a Yiddish-Irish brogue.' That would be something.

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