All this rain, maybe not.
I'm moved in to Prescott 75, in a loft room (pretty much the sweetest deal ever and those of us who have them are maaaad excited) and then internet hookup is in the closet which means that computer + bed (bed being in the loft) is not quite working, but I'm managing. Computer directly underneath skylight in the loft is pretty sweet, though. Mod life is fabulous, people are wonderful.
Speaking of people, I love Internship life. We spent all day today in various lectures and classes (which is a looong day and the only time we are doing so) but it was so incredibly fascinating that I can't begin to complain. There are 3 people (including me) in the intermediate Yiddish class right now, but that might change. In any case, that is a wonderfully intimate class and I know I'm going to learn a ton, even if I'm kind of terrified right now (I cannot form a sentence in Yiddish but I do try). The professor leading the culture class this week is so knowledgeable and a very entertaining speaker, so I'm really glad I'm getting the chance to work with him. I have this opportunity to work with so many leaders of Yiddish academia this summer, and I can't believe my luck- these are the people whose books I read, and now they're here, talking to me! Aaron Lansky did a lecture on a Bashevis story and a Peretz story and I was acutely aware of how incredibly not Jewish I am and we spent a lot of time in general talking about how religion and culture weren't different things for Jews of this time period- religion wasn't thought about at all as separate from daily life- praying and hanging out with your friends and having Shabbat dinner and sleeping were all just things that you did. Of course, I still identify very much with Yiddish culture, but not in a religious sense. And I think a lot of what's important about Yiddishkeit is precisely that it's not Christian, and there's a lot of Christian influence in Judaism today (just because a lot of Christian values have shaped modern Western values) and, although no one said it in so many words today, getting into a Yiddish headspace means getting rid of Christian thinking. Which is easy to do when you point something out to a bunch of Jews as being very Christian-influenced, but not so easy for the Christian in the group. So much of what we're doing has a lot to do with one's own identity. Jewish culture is about identity. Aaron's lecture focused a lot on determining how Jewish Peretz and Bashevis are. And, no matter how much I adore Peretz and Bashevis, I don't know that I can ever judge their Jewishness. Nor will I ever read them like a Jew. We have a wide range of religious observance here (from the not-driving-on-shabbes types to the atheists), but only 2 goyim and I'm the only one who's observant. And that's going to color my treatment of Yiddish literature. And I feel the need to constantly be upfront about it, to start every sentence with "I'm a Christian, and I see this as blah blah blah" or "I'm not Jewish, but I think yadda yadda." And I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's just my attempt to maintain an identity while being a minority, or to admit that I am woefully ignorant of so many basic Jewish things (although I'm learning and I know more than some) or what, but I feel like it's going to be crucial to my Yiddish career.
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Oddly enough, I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm the only non-Jew in my Hebrew class (Intermediate = 4 people, but next year in Advanced, we'll only have 3). We've also had several big names in Hebrew literature come to campus (Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, etc.), and I am always very aware of the fact that I can't see their work from a Jewish perspective. Or one time someone said something about ancestors from Russia and someone else was like, "But I mean, don't we all have family from Russia?" Uh, no. Not me. Even just when it was Passover and we were eating kosher-for-Passover cookies, I was like, "Oh dang, these are good," and everyone else was like, "Not when you can't eat anything else." And this kid Yishai knows all these Bible stories that I don't know, but I was the only one who knew Psalm 23. It's weird, dude!
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