Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish speakers perceive a distinction between “Hungarian” and “Polish” Yiddish. This article explores that distinction by examining the Yiddish of the Bobover Hasidic community, the largest “Polish” Hasidic group in the United States; the Yiddish of its “Hungarian” counterpart, Satmar, and its rootedness in the Unterland Hungarian Yiddish was demonstrated by Krogh (2012), reflecting the origins of the Satmar dynasty. But is Bobover Yiddish similarly rooted in western Galician Yiddish? Interviews with informants from the Bobover community reveal a mixed picture. All showed phonological features of non-Hungarian Central Yiddish, but all featured “Hungarian” vocabulary. While most of the informants’ grandparents were from interwar Poland, several had grandparents from the Unterland region; one-third identified their spouses as “Hungarian” or were members of “Hungarian” Hasidic communities. This shows the permeability of the two groups, leading to a mixing of features, which creates the need for shibboleths as clear markers of identity.
T he World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as a pandemic in March 2020 (1). At the onset of the pandemic, WHO recognized transmission risks during gatherings and subsequently issued guidance and policy documents for gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic (2). Mass gatherings are defined by WHO as events involving large numbers of attendees at a specific location, for a specific purpose, over a specific duration of time (3). Given the high density and mobility of participants, mass gatherings can be associated with increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2. These gatherings can create conditions conducive for SARS-CoV-2 transmission, given crowding, challenges with physical distancing, and prolonged and frequent contact among mass gathering participants. Therefore, the WHO recommended that, during the pandemic, gatherings "should not take place unless the basic precautionary measures to prevent and control infection are strictly applied and adhered to by all attendees" (2). These basic precautionary measures include physical distancing, regular handwashing, adherence to mask guidance issued by local health authorities, staying outdoors and avoiding crowding, and ensuring proper ventilation when indoors.Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City (NYC), New York, USA, have been disproportionally affected by COVID-19. In the early fall of 2020, the incidence of COVID-19 in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods was 4 times higher than the citywide average (4). As of April 2020, the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park in Brooklyn had the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases in NYC, and the predominantly Orthodox County of Rockland County, New York, experienced the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases per capita in the United States (5).Each year, ≈30,000 Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews travel to Uman, a city that has 86,900 persons
There are two cities that are featured in Zeitlin’s poetry composed in America during and after the Holocaust, one real and one remembered. Zeitlin is physically in New York and often refers to the city of his real time; however, the author and his poems are possessed by the ghosts of Jewish Warsaw. The-Warsaw-that-is-no-more is often transposed on the geography of New York. Warsaw becomes New York’s ghostly twin, and Zeitlin, a walking shadow whose body is in New York, but whose spirit has gone up in flames with the murdered Jews of Warsaw. In this paper, I demonstrate how Zeitlin creates a paranormal rhetoric of ghosts, astrals, phantoms, and shadows in order to navigate an eradicated world. Various landmarks in New York become portals to this lost world, and crossing the street can become a metaphor for connecting with the deceased.
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