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Keeping the past present
(by Megan Fowler - April 20, 2008)
In the years surrounding World War II, many European Jews fled the terror of their homelands for the safety of the United States. These immigrants sacrificed their careers, families and identities to escape some of modern history’s most horrific events.
On the first Thursday of each month, some of them get to return home. That’s the day the Morris Lenga Yiddish Club meets, hosted by Nusach Hari B’nai Zion, and members gather to sing songs, speak their native tongue and teach that beloved language to others.
The club is the brainchild of Ethan Schuman, the cantor at Nusach Hari B’nai Zion, an Orthodox synagogue located at the border of University City and Olivette.
Schuman had been associated with the congregation for less than a year when, in 2002, he realized his congregation contained a valuable resource. “These Holocaust survivors were the last of the Mohicans,” he said. “This was our last link to people who spoke Yiddish in the vernacular.”
Yiddish was the traditional language spoken by Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. It began as a Germanic dialect and evolved into an independent language, incorporating elements of Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as Slavic and Romance languages. Before World War II the language flourished, but the Holocaust decimated the language by annihilating the people who spoke it. According to the National Yiddish Book Center, an organization dedicated to rescuing Yiddish books and celebrating the culture, 75 percent of the 11 million Jews living in 1939 spoke Yiddish as their primary or only language. The center estimates that 50 percent of Yiddish speakers were killed in the Holocaust.
With the permission of the congregation, Schuman — who taught himself Yiddish — established the Yiddish club “to invite in those who were born into the language and those who heard it as children and don’t use it any longer,” he said. To Schuman’s delight, the group has been a success. More than 50 people attended the April meeting.
Among those in attendance at this month’s meeting were Gary and Nancy Benson of the Central West End. Both of the Bensons have Eastern European ancestry, and Gary Benson enjoys attending the meetings to improve his Yiddish. Nancy Benson doesn’t speak Yiddish, but she heard the language at home in her childhood.
“My father was a musician, and I used to listen to his Yiddish records,” she said. “I knew they were funny, but I just couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
Gary Benson believes Jews have a renewed interest in this language that represents such an integral part of their cultural heritage, but “the older generation is dying off,” he said. There are fewer than 200,000 Americans who report speaking Yiddish at home, according to the 2000 Census Report.
At the monthly meetings, attendees participate in Yiddish lessons and in discussions that focus on a topic or aspect of Jewish history pertinent to Yiddish speakers. Schuman serves as the group moderator, but the teaching and lecturing come from Szyfra Braitberg, a Polish Jew who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Russia.
Schuman is thrilled to have resources as knowledgeable as Szyrfra Braitberg and her husband Gregor. “They are the brains and soul of our group,” Schuman said at April’s meeting. “They are … the repository of Yiddish knowledge and history and music.”
April’s meeting diverged from the typical format to mark a new era for the Yiddish Club. The group — previously known as the NHBZ Yiddish club — renamed itself in memory of Morris Lenga, a recently deceased member.
Until his death in February at age 85, Lenga had been a devoted member of NHBZ. He and Schuman became friends on Schuman’s first visit to NHBZ when he sat next to Lenga. “We had a lot of interests in common,” Schuman said. “He was a watchmaker, I’m a watchmaker.”
Lenga’s death left an indelible mark on Schuman and the NHBZ congregation, so Schuman’s proposal to rename the club in Lenga’s honor had overwhelming support.
At the meeting, Schuman honored his friend by presenting the Lenga family with a photo of Lenga taken in 2006 as he rolled matzoh dough for Passover. Schuman noted that the photo marked the first time Lenga had prepared the dough since 1939, before he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. In the photo, Lenga’s left arm bears his tattoo from Auschwitz.
“It is that clarion call of freedom that he leaves to all of us — a point worth noting as we enter the time of [Passover],” Schuman said. During the presentation, Ann Lenga, Morris’ widow, was crying where she sat in the back of the room.
After the presentation, the Braitbergs entertained listeners with stories and music from before “the war,” the term commonly used in the group to refer to World War II. Gregor Braitberg, a violinist, played songs he learned growing up in Poland. His nimble fingers transported listeners back to a time when the world knew nothing of Hitler. Some listened, some sang along, others wiped away tears.
For the next generation of Yiddish speakers, the meeting offered a glimpse of life before “the war.” For those who grew up speaking Yiddish, it was a chance to feel as though they were home once more.
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