Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky

Endnotes

ENDNOTES The endnotes intend to remind the reader of the connotations of language that are necessarily changed in or absent from the English translation. The notes define culture-specific words or concepts, such as Hebraic words or phrases that denote Jewish custom or law, Slavic words that connote the interaction between Jewish and Christian cultures, and archaic Yiddish terms that allude to Jewish folkways. The notes also point out where the poet draws on literary sources. The following dictionaries were consulted: Reuben Alcalay, The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary (Jerusalem: Massada, 1975); Alexander Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary (New York: YIVO and Schocken, 1988), reprint of 1928 expanded second edition ; Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish/Yiddish-English Dictionary (New York: YIVO and McGraw-Hill, 1968); Yitskhok Niborski and Simon Neuberg, Verterbukhfun loshn-kodesh-shtamike verier in Yidish (Paris: Bibliotheque Medem, 1997); Yudah A. Yofe and Yudl Mark, Groyser verterbukhfun deryidisher shprakh, 4 vols. (New York: Yiddish Dictionary Committee, 1961-80); and Yehoash (Sh. Bloomgarden) and C. D. Spivak, Yidish verterbukh (New York: FarlagVeker, 1926). 1. Two alternate translations of the entire sequence: Kathryn Hellerstein , "Songs of Women," Yiddish 7, nos. 2-3 (1988): 182-87, and E Pecznik, "Women's Songs," Yiddish 7, nos. 2-3 (1988): 174-80. Alternate translations of individual poems from the sequence: Adrienne Rich, "Women Songs" (I 519 ENDNOTES and VII), A Treasury ofYiddish Poetry, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 284-85. Irving Feldman, "Women's Songs" (II and VI), Penguin Book ofModern Yiddish Verse, ed. Irving Howe, Ruth R. Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk (New York: Viking, 1987), 320-22. 2. The Hebraic word agune denotes the Jewish legal category of an abandoned or deserted wife who cannot remarry until her husband is either proven dead or grants her a divorce. The word agune derives from the Hebrew verb agon, meaning, "to shut oneself in or off, especially from marriage, to imprison, to anchor." Thus the agune, literally "anchored" by law to a husband whose very existence is ambiguous, is the epitome of a woman caught in a bind. 3. The Hebraic word tumah denotes Levitical uncleanliness or ritual impurity. Marcus Jastrow, Sefer Milim: A Dictionary of the Targum, Talmud Babli and Yerushalim, and the Midrashic Literature, vol. 1 (Israel: Reissue, 1970), 524. Reissued by Rabbi Salomon Alter Halpern. 4. The Yiddish participle farrisn can denote "smudged" (Weinreich), "torn up," or "haughty" (Harkavy). Another translator, F. Peczenik, defines the word as "blotted out." Yiddish 7, nos. 2-3 (1988): 174. 5. Tammuz is the tenth month and Av is the eleventh month in the Jewish calendar, corresponding respectively to June and July, July and August . 6. Hamapil is the benediction, "who maketh bands of sleep to fall" in Kri'at shema c al hamittah (Krishme, in Yiddish), and is recited before the Shema, the prayer of the central tenets of the Jewish faith, before going to bed. 7. The Yiddish syntax is ambiguous here, for the second sentence is a threat, leading the translator to ask whether the lips of the mother are dried out because they did not fear God or because they did fear God. 8. Ambiguous Yiddish syntax and punctuation. The following lines could read: And now that I am a woman, And wear brown silk decollete With my head bare[,] And my own life's misfortune has hunted me down[.] [And] like a crow falling upon a chick, My room is lit up all night 9. The Yiddish line reads: "un kh'halt di hent iber mayn kop farvorfh." farvorfn are oyfuorf(n), reproach(es), reproof(s). 10. Molodowsky plays on two meanings of the word bleter—the leaves of a tree and the leaves or pages of a book. 11. Alternate translation: Aaron Kramer, A Century of Yiddish Poetry (New York: Cornwall Books, 1989), 171. 12. I have translated as "prayerbook" (lines 1, 13, 18) Molodowsky's 520 Endnotes term sider (Hebrew siddur) and as "women's prayers" and "a prayer") (lines 3 and 8), her term tkhine(s) (Hebrew tehinah; tehinot). Sider here serves as a generic term for any prayerbook, although it usually refers specifically to a volume containing the traditional Hebrew liturgy. Tkhine denotes a genre of supplicatory prayers in Yiddish, composed for women's private devotions. The sider Molodowsky describes here also contains two stories from the Tsenerene (Hebrew Tse'enah UYe'enah), the so-called Women...