RE: RE: Der yidisher tam

[Marvin3809 <Marvin3809...>]

It seems that the only difference between us is whether it is OK for tastes to
change.  Are you saying "Stop the world!  I want to get off"?

If you can't find a restaurant that serves the kind of food you like, perhaps
it is because the ones that didn't change their menus didn't have enough
customers.  I'd also like to have old-fashioned bagels, but there don't seem
to be enough of us left to keep some bakers producing them.

It least I can still get real bialy's at Kossars - and now they are kosher.
How long will that last?  When I go in there to buy, I'm dealing with
orientals, not Jews.

The biggest change of all would be if the world stopped changing.

> From: svzandt (at) igc(dot)apc(dot)org (Solidarity Foundation)
> Sender:       owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
> Reply-to:     jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
> To:   jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org (World music from a Jewish slant.)
> On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 20:47:56 EST, Marvin 3809 wrote:
> 
>  An article by David Pinski on the Jewish theater is
> too long to quote in full (5 1/2 pages), but I'll try to summarize it
> accurately.  Pinski praises Goldfaden's work in Russia, but notes that the
> Yioddish theater there didn't last long because the government shut it down.
> Goldfaden's plays became the mainstay of the Yiddish theater in New York,
"But
> the new environment soon began to make inroads upon the old life and the old
> habits, and this period of transition wrought havoc in the morale of the
> Yiddish theater.  Both outlook and content became demorilized."  Tastes
> changed.
> 
> Pinski continued, "The art of acting has made no progress simply because the
> actors are afraid to venture farther.  They are afraid to move forward, and
do
> not realize that they are really moving backward.
> _______
> 
> >From this quote, Marvin 3809, it's not clear to me whether you are trying
> to corroborate my point, or oppose it. Obviously conditions in New York in
> 9  1917 were already very different from the Europe of Goldfaden's day, and
> the conditions of today are a lot more different. I think everybody knows
> that. But the needs and the resources of the Jewish community in America
> in 1917 were also very different than what they are today. Furthermore,
> it's not at all clear, on the face of it, just WHAT Pinski meant by
> "moving forward." Forward to what? Finally, the point of view of Pinski,
> great literary man that he was, is only one person's point of view -- well,
> I'm sure there were others who agreed with him. 
> 
> Oh, one more thing. Goldfadebn, even in 1865 or so when he began his
> theatrical activities, like nearly all the maskilim of his time, was
> absolutely appalled at the tastes of the shtetl yidn that he was trying to
> uplift. What is not stated in the quotation I cited, is that Goldfaden
> was very familiar with the European opera of his day, and would have much
> preferred to have been able to use that kind of music in his plays. He
> also was ashamed of himself for having to write comedies like "Shmendrick's
> Khasene", to write "down" to his audience. This was the irony of these
> early _maskilim_, including Mendele Mokher Sforim -- they would have
> preferred NOT to have to write in Yiddish, and not to have written such
> "vulgar" stuff. They, of course, were somuch more "civilized".
> 
> Why do you think there's still practically no history of klezmer music
> written? BECAUSE nOBODY THOUGHT IT WAS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO CARE ABOUT!
> And the people who really liked it didn't write books. They were too busy
> sowing patches on trousers/.
> ________
> 
> Then you write:
>   New York City now has several gourmet restaurants to serve
> Jews who observe Kashruth but won't eat the heavy traditional dishes.  (It
is
> hard to find those dishes in Israell, where restaurants that serve Middle
> Eastern food far outnumber those that serve East European food.)
> 
> Exactly my point. They observe halakha, but the hell with the minhog, the
> "yidisher tam'. " I have no objection to such restaurants, but I do think
> it's interesting, at the same time, that there's scarecly one really
> good, traditional eastern-European style kosher restaurant left even in
> Manhattan! (2nd Avenue Deli is the only really good one I know of.) Bagels
> are
>  more popular than ever, but it's very hard to find a good, well-made bagel
> even in New York! Am I the only Jew that finds it shameful that the
> standards of all our melukhes (crafts) are declining so rapidly? It's the
> same thing as with the music.
> Itzik-Leyb
> 
> 
> 
>