A drunkard at age 6, Jonah actually turned out quite well. Not only is he one of the flagship students in both the economics and religion departments, but he is also heavily involved in Wesleyan’s Jewish community. Join him Wednesday nights at 10 as he hosts the Yiddish club.
JH&JS: Tell us about Yiddish Club.
JB: It’s the most exciting thing that I’ve ever done in my life! We had about 30 people show up, which was amazing, and it’s really, really promising. I think that the Yiddish club will fill a gap that we have. It’s something that we don’t have that our grandparents did have, which is a huge cultural way of being Jewish that doesn’t have to do with Israel, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with God.
JH&JS: What are some activities you have planned for the club?
JB: We want to do a Yiddish film series. There’s a really broad range of Yiddish movies out there: great Yiddish tragedies, comedies, and really sappy movies. There’s actually a new genre of Hasidic Yiddish movies that are intensely terrible actions and dramas and spy movies that all end up being morality tales about believing in God. We’d also like to bring in Yiddish speakers. There are actually native Yiddish speakers in Middletown that I’d love to bring in, and I’d like to bring people in to do a lecture series.
JH&JS: So when is Yiddish club?
JB: Wednesday nights at 10 in the Bayis.
JH&JS: During “Project Runway.”
JB: You can tape that. And I hear there are reruns at midnight.
JH&JS: Will you be speaking Yiddish in the club?
JB: There are only two of us who speak Yiddish.
JH&JS: Why did you start the Yiddish Club?
JB: I grew up in the Lower East Side, so my friends in the neighborhood were old Jewish men, and they spoke Yiddish. They were huge characters. They were my buddies, and the universal language among them was Yiddish. I always felt that I was missing out on a central part of the guys who I grew up with, because I couldn’t speak in their language. I did a summer internship in Yiddish at the National Yiddish Literature Center in Amherst, and I realized that there was nothing for Yiddish at Wesleyan. I started thinking that I now had the training, so I kinda owed it to the school to do this.
JH&JS: What did you do during your internship?
JB: In the afternoons we went to this warehouse and sorted Yiddish books. A lot of them were from Mexico City, and I had no idea that there is this huge Jewish population there. A lot of the books are about being Jewish in Mexico.
JH&JS: What’s the history of the language?
JB: In a Yiddish textbook there’s a whole section about German and Yiddish. A lot of people say that Yiddish is just a dialect of German, and the textbook says, “No! It’s like comparing a monkey and a human being. They evolved from the same common ancestor 1,000 years ago.”
JH&JS: What do you think about religion at Wesleyan? A lot of people say that Wesleyan is void of religion.
JB: I don’t know that much about the other communities, but it seems to me that the Jewish community is one of the most active. I think that it’s because Jewishness is not only a religion. It’s a way of being culturally different and having a different identity. A lot of people at Wesleyan are looking for a religious way of being Jewish, and some people are looking for any way of being Jewish and exploring that.
JH&JS: You’re a religion and economics double major. What do you see yourself doing after college?
JB: I’ll probably end up doing something Jewish. It kinda seems like I’m destined towards it, doesn’t it? My mother made me do the econ major, but she’s really into Yiddish and Jewish stuff, too. I talk to [my parents] in Yiddish. It’s really great. Both of them grew up knowing a little, but they went and took classes as young adults, which is why I thought that I could do it too. They can speak Yiddish now, and they just had to go and work hard at it for a couple of years. So I dunno. Some Jewish studies shit. Maybe I’ll become a Rabbi. But not a sexist one. There’s actually a great feminist tradition in Yiddish. Every Yiddish theatre production has cross-dressing, and there’s a neuter case already. I actually thought for a while that Wesleyan could have gotten [gender neutral pronouns] from Yiddish, but probably not.
JH&JS: Why do you call your house the “Bayis”?
JB: The traditional Ashkenazis had the Jewish way to pronounce it, but most Jews at Wesleyan pronounce it “Bayit” because there was a Zionist project about 100 years ago to construct a modern Israeli Hebrew language. They decided to abandon their Ashkenazi ways to do something more biblical, more Semitic, so they based it off a more local dialect, Lebanese Jewish before there was a Lebanon, and in that dialect it’s pronounced “Bayit.” And a problem with Zionism is that a lot of schools teach the language of Zionists, which is not the language of many people’s grandparents. I show that I’m aware of what’s going on, and I’m not a Zionist.
JH&JS: Any funny Yom Kippur fasting stories?
JB: Actually, when I was six years old, I wasn’t fasting, but I was trying not to eat or drink that much, and I was really thirsty, and I went to the rabbi’s grandkids, and I was like “Hey, do you guys have anything to drink?” And they were like “Sure, we got appy juice for you.” And I was like “OK. Word. Appy juice.” And they handed me the appy juice, and I knocked it back…and the shit was whiskey. I was really drunk for like the next hour since I weighed thirty pounds.
JH&JS: And you probably hadn’t eaten.
JB: Right. I wasn’t eating much.
JH&JS: I feel like getting drunk is not how you should atone for your sins.
JB: No. Those kids were animals. But I developed a taste for whiskey. On the Lower East Side, you drink whiskey early and often. There’s no social event without some Schnapps and some herring.
JH&JS: What do you think will happen to the neighborhood in the next 40 years?
JB: Right now it’s become really hipsterish. When I was growing up, it was pretty safe, but you didn’t go a block or two east because there were a lot of drugs and drug dealers. But now it’s a lot of sushi and cool bars and stuff. In terms of the Jews, there may be a decline. There has been a long decline of Jewish population in the neighborhood.
JH&JS: Where are they going?
JB: After World War II, the Jews started getting wealthier, they started being perceived as white in America, and having white privilege. The GI Bill helped that, and people decided to move out to the suburbs and to Long Island. But there is a new influx of people, young couples in their late 20s and 30s, not a huge demographic, but the only reason why my shul still exists is that these people came and they’re great. Many of their grandparents are from the Lower East Side, and they’re raising kids there. When I was younger, there really weren’t any kids there. Now, kids are growing up together in a Jewish community, which is amazing. I don’t think a Jewish presence will really fade in the Lower East Side.
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