Bad Rabbi

"The 'two-bit nobodies' to whom Portnoya wickedly sparkling writer, by the waydedicates Bad Rabbi include out-and-out criminals, crazies, eccentrics, hopeless dreamers and aspirant intellectuals. But they all share one thingfailure. Lobbes-dom is a wonderfully rich seam to mine, and mine it Portnoy does, using as excavating tools the unrestrained journalism of ancient file copies of Yiddish newspapers published in Warsaw and New York. I was enchanted by his accounts....Portnoy is a genius at putting the sting at the end of every chapter."

Auteur
Eddy Portnoy is Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Résumé

Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weirdJews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press.

An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowlin short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.

Contenu

Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: A Brief and Not Entirely Uncomplicated History of the Yiddish Press chapter abstractThis section provides a brief history of the modern Yiddish press of New York and Warsaw. It discusses the cultural, political and social contexts in which it appeared and why its development was a necessary and important phenomenon in Jewish life. Additionally, the chapter describes why and how the Yiddish press became a vehicle for drastic upheaval in Jewish life. Also discussed are the beginnings and nature of Yiddish journalism as a distinctly ethnic literary form and how a variety of journalistic occupations developed. The nature of its audience and elements of its subject matter is considered, as are the reasons for the importance of said subject matter for Jewish historiography in general. The introduction gives the reader an understanding of modern Yiddish culture while setting the stage for the subsequent chapters, which provide primary source data from the Yiddish press. 1Jewish Abortion Technician chapter abstract This chapter considers the story of Jacob Rosenzweig, a Jewish immigrant abortionist active in New York City during the late 1860s and early 1870s. In 1871, a patient died in his care. Rosenzweig stuffed her body in a trunk and attempted to ship it to Chicago, but the decaying body was discovered in a baggage depot and police were alerted. New York City Police investigating the case were eventually led to Rosenzweig, who was caught, placed on trial, and convicted. 2The Hebrew Girl Murderer of East New York chapter abstract This chapter details the story of Pesach Rubenstein, an eastern European Jewish immigrant in New York City who murdered his cousin/lover whom he had accidentally impregnated. Rubenstein's 1876 court case, reports of which appeared in nearly every newspaper in the United States, was the most significant interface between American media and Jews in the history of the country. 3The Jewish Mahatma chapter abstract This chapter presents a brief biography of Naphtali Herz Imber, a poet best known for writing "Hatikva," which became the Israeli national anthem. While Imber has been the subject of biographical studies, what official narratives ignore is Imber's work as a performance psychic during the late 19th century and a mercurial alcoholic during the early 20th. 4The Great Tonsil Riot of 1906 chapter abstract This chapter details an event that took place on New York City's Lower East Side in which rumors that children were having their throats slashed in public schools spread throughout immigrant Jewish neighborhoods. Upon hearing these rumors, tens of thousands of Jewish mothers rioted, besieging the area's public schools and demanding to see if their children were alive. 5Rivington Street's Wheel of (Mis)Fortune chapter abstract This chapter provides a biographical sketch of Professor Abraham Hochman, one of the Lower East Side's best known psychics. Famed, among other things, for finding husbands who had abandoned their wives, Hochman engaged in all manner of dubious stunts in order to generate publicity for his business. 6Yom Kippur Battle Royale chapter abstract This chapter details the history of anti-religious behavior on the solemn holiday of Yom Kippur and the reaction those activities engendered. Typically anarchist or socialist-oriented Jews would engage in acts of public eating on Yom Kippur, a holiday that requires a 25 hour fast. Such activity would enrage religious Jews and pitched battles would typically ensue. 7Attack of the Yiddish Journalists chapter abstract This chapter tells the story of Hillel Tseytlen, a famed journalist who broke away from a leading Yiddish paper in Warsaw to join a competing newspaper. Doing so provoked the ire of Tseytlen's original editor, who initiated an ugly smear campaign against him. Tseytlen and his new editors fought back and a war of words broke out between two daily papers with a third and fourth chiming in. 8Suicide Jew chapter abstract This chapter considers the phenomenon of suicide among Jews in Warsaw. During the interwar period, suicides were so common that reports of them appear nearly every day in the Warsaw Yiddish press. While doubtlessly a tragic and unpleasant issue, many of the suicide stories reported in the dailies contain odd and humorous twists. Such reportage revealed the delicate and difficult line Warsaw's Jews walked as an impoverished minority. 9Battle at the Bris chapter abstract This chapter details the story of a Warsaw-based Hasidic Rabbi who attempted to reconcile with another Hasidic Rabbi who had been his blood enemy by giving him a special duty at his son's circumcision ceremony. The problem was that the first rabbi's followers refused to accept the reconciliation. The ceremony, a joyous but also solemn affair, was rocked when a brawl exploded among the guests, nearly all Hasidim. 10Urke Nakhalnik: Fine Young Criminal chapter abstract This chapter tells the story of Urke Nachlnik, a yeshiva student who fell in with a bad crowd and who wound up becoming a professional criminal. After writing a prison memoir that became the best selling book in Poland in 1933, Nachalnik turned to literature and playwriting as a profession, churning out intense stories of the Yiddish criminal underworld that riveting readers throughout the country. Also included is a sample story that appeared in 1938, "Passover in the Joint." 11The Strange Case of Gimel Kuper, My…