Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Sunday, October 29, 2017

“Tainted” - A Short Story by Micha Josef Berdyczewsi (1899, translated by James Redfield)





Very good biographical article- from The Yivo Encyclopaedia of Eastern European Jews


You may read this story and two others by the author at The Yiddish Book Center Website

Very good lecture on the history of the Yiddish Language and literature


Micha Berdyczewski (born in the Ukraine in 1865, died in Berlin in 1921) was a journalist, a scholar, a political writer but is now best remembered for his Yiddish language stories about life in Jewish shtetls in the Pale in the Ukraine (“shtetl” means “town” but has become in the parlance to refer to 
a small Eastern European largely Jewish community)

He was born into a very scholarly family, he was destined to be a rabbi but an ideological conflict with his father in law lead to divorce and his moving to Berlin, with studies at Bern also, where he obtained a PhD, focusing on German philosophy.  

There are three stories on the link to the Yiddish Book Center, “Tainted” about a Very highly regarded Kosher butcher is my favourite.  The kosher butcher is a very important personage, it takes serious study to master the rituals.  A lot of butchers take short cuts to maximise profit but not our butcher

“Yonosn was the deeply learned one, the God-fearing one, and above all, he was skilled at his craft. He would remove the worst adhesion from an animal’s lungs like plucking off a hair, and never once did he happen to make an ox unkosher or, heaven forbid, not to fully slaughter a cow, large or small. Other butchers in Drazhne would have cut off their own fingers for him, yet he never took a thing from them. Not one of them could say that he ever accepted a pound of free meat or a foot for Shabbat like most kosher butchers do. When he was called upon to slaughter he didn’t hesitate; he didn’t waste his time or keep anyone else waiting or make a poor lady stand there holding a chicken while he slaughtered a goose that some fancy customer’s servant had brought over—to him, rich and poor were no different. He didn’t fight with the other butchers or slander them or argue with the cantor about the donation from this or that Torah reading.” 

He has a very high standing in the community.  Some terrible, an uncontrolled moment, send him into disgrace.  He wanders homeless and alone for 13 years then dies.  If you want to know why, you should read the story.  

All these stories are a delight to read.  

Mel u 











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2 comments:

Buried In Print said...

Homeless and alone for 13 years? Now there must be an amazing (and sad) story behind that, for sure.

Your mention of the butcher as a character makes me think of a Louise Erdrich character (I think in The Master Butcher's Singing Club) and also in Canadian author Alissa York's disturbingly beautiful novel Effigy.

More recently, I have been rereading Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and smiling at the efforts young Francie has to go through, when following her mother's instructions about dealing with the two neighbourhood butchers, trying to meet her mother's expectations but not quite grasping the adult-ness of some of the business aspects of the men's work.

Mel u said...

The Kosher Butcher was a person of great import in Eastern European and Russian Jewish communities. You probably would find an extension of this in the early 20th century in large American and Canadian cities.