Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds (review)

150 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol. 12, No.2 also a Chelmish blend of naive impracticality with philosophical brilliance: equally bewildered by modern appliances as by women's fashions and sexual mores of the urban elite, he ruminates on Spinoza's use of the Cabala and demolishes the facile utopianism of both communists and Zionists. The moral tone of the book is also lightened by its satiric treatment of "emancipated" Jews, especially the denizens of the Writers' Club, whom Singer represents as pompous, crass, hypocritical careerists. The book's playfulness is finally underscored by its reflexivity: Bendiger is making notes for a novel even as he lives through the experiences The Certificate describes, implying that these events will become grist for a writer's mill, as indeed they have. Michael Shapiro Department of English University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds, by J. Hoberman. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Schocken Books, 1991. 401 pp. $40.00. For most Jewish scholars, film is not a source material that they are accustomed to using. Although many are familiar with the documentary footage evolving around World War II and the Holocaust, the term "Jewish film" probably has little meaning other than to recall some of the worst excesses of Hollywood. But a rich body of work does exist, created by Jewish entrepreneurs and artists and targeted for a Jewish audience. These works, all in the Yiddish language, number in the hundreds (the exact number is still debated) and were produced in Russia, Poland, and the U.S., primarily from the late 1920s until the end of the next decade. Although they vary greatly in concept and artistic merit, their use as sociological documents of a world which no longer exists is invaluable. Although several books already exist on this subject,l by far the most complete and readable is J. Hoberman's The Bridge ofLight: Yiddish Film 'See Eric A. Goldman's Visions, [mages, and Dreams: Yiddish Film Past and Present (1983), Judith N. Goldberg's Laughter Through Tears: The Yiddish Cinerna (1983), and Patricia Erens, "Mentshlekhkayt Conquers All," in Film Comment, 1976. Book Reviews 151 Between Two Worlds. In addition, the book is handsomely produced with invaluable illustrations. But most important is Hoberman's concern for historic context. Although Hoberman comes to his material as a film critic (he writes a weekly column for The Village Voice), his efforts to integrate Yiddish cinema within a Jewish socio-cultural history adds immeasurably to the study. In addition to detailed film analyses, Hoberman focuses on Jewish communal life in the U.S., the Soviet Union, Poland, and Austria, situating the films as part of a cultural phenomenon which spoke to certain Jews at a moment in history. (Clearly, many segments of the Jewish population would not have seen these films.) In the main, the 1920s and 1930s constituted a traumatic period involving emigration, immigration, and annihilation. Set against this epic background, certain aspects-for instance, the shift from a cinema frequently critical of religiOUS orthodoxy and secular insularity to one steeped in nostalgia and traditionalism-take on new meaning. In an effort to provide a full picture of how both Yiddish art films and the less respected musicals and melodramas were related to contemporary Jewish culture, Hoberman makes a wise decision to include a good deal of factual material on production, distribution, and especially exhibition and reception. My favorite quote concerns a stage production of Der Yidisher Kening Lir (The Yiddish King Lear). "Watching Moshele's eldest daughter begrudge her father a bowl of soup, one spectator supposedly rose and cried: 'To hell with your stingy daughter. Yankl! She has a stone, not a heart. Spit on her and come home with me. My yidene is a good cook; she'll fix you up!'" Film viewers were hardly less vocal. In fact, in my experience of showing and lecturing on Yiddish cinema, it is a rare occasion when someone in the audience, usually an elder citizen, does not share a story concerning memories of seeing these films as a young child. It is too bad that more serious work is not being devoted to saving this aspect...