Lilke: "I breathe
in Yiddish"
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 Click here to watch this video of Lilke sharing her thoughts on Yiddish education from a Yiddishkayt event in 2007. |
Lilke in Yiddish
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 Click here to watch Lilke accept the Third IAYC Lifetime Yiddish Service Award in October, 2008. Lilke's entire speech is in Yiddish (in two parts). |
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Dear Friend of Yiddish,
It is our sad duty to share the news of the death of Lilke Majzner, who passed away on Friday, July 17, 2009.
The Los Angeles Jewish community has lost a giant, a tireless activist for the preservation and education of Yiddish. In many ways, the Yiddish organizations of the city, including Yiddishkayt, stood on her shoulders. Her passion was Yiddish, and it is difficult for many to imagine a future without her endless energy and eloquence.
A full obituary is below, courtesy of Miriam Koral.
Lilke's dream was for the entire Yiddish community to work together. This special newsletter is dedicated to celebrating her memory. Below, leaders of the Yiddish community share their thoughts and recollections of Lilke.
At a Yiddishkayt event about Yiddish education in 2007, Lilke said:
I think I was born with Yiddish. I was raised with Yiddish. I was studying Yiddish. I was breathing Yiddish.
... I think it's a good beginning. I hope that we will create an army [of Yiddishists] and we will storm the Bastille. And we will do it now -- it's time. Now it's time.
You can watch video of this speech here.
You can also watch video of Lilke accepting the Third IAYC Lifetime Yiddish Service Award at the International Association of Yiddish Clubs (IAYC) Conference last October (entirely in Yiddish).
Please join us on Sunday, August 23 for "Celebrating the Memory of Lilke Majzner." The shloyshim -- thirtieth day memorial -- will begin at 2:00pm at the L.A. Yiddish Culture Club. More details will be announced soon.
mit vareme vuntshn,
The Yiddishkayt Staff
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LILKE MAJZNER, 1921-2009
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The creative, active, and long-time director of the Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club, Lilke Majzner (pronounced Meizner), died last Friday evening, July 17, 2009, after a difficult but not lengthy illness. She was 87 years young.
She was born Lilke Nutkevitz in Lodz, Poland, to a Bundist family and grew up with an expansive education in Yiddish language and culture. She herself was active in the Bund her entire life. Her studies to become a nurse were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. She was initially in the Pietrokhov Ghetto with her father and younger brother. In the Ghetto, as a quite young woman, she worked for the Jewish underground (resistance) until she was deported to a concentration camp. She was in six concentration camps and barely survived Auschwitz. (Her experiences in Auschwitz are relayed in the acclaimed documentary film, Swimming in Auschwitz.)
After the War she spent some time in Brussels, Belgium, where she married Szalomon Majzner, whom she had met in the Ghetto when they both took part in the Jewish resistance. She then moved with her family to Detroit, Michigan, where she went to university and received her Teaching Certificate in Early Childhood Education.
Since 1955, she lived in Los Angeles, where she was very active as a nursery school teacher with Jewish schools and organizations and with the LA Yiddish Culture Club, both as a leader and essayist/writer. She wrote extensively for the
literary journal published by the Club, Kheshbn. She also published numerous articles in the Yiddish newspaper, Forverts (The Forward).
She was known for her passionate oratory, her colossal humanity, her generous hospitality, and her cholent.
In recent years she was also a member of the Boards of the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language and Yiddishkayt Los Angeles, two organizations dedicated to the revitalization of Yiddish.
She is survived by her daughter, Helen Schulman, son-in-law and two grandchildren, and many, many friends who will miss her terribly. The funeral took place on Tuesday, July 21, at 4 PM, at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA.
[Written by Miriam Koral, generously shared with permission.
For the full text and larger Yiddish text, visit yiddishinstitute.org]
Click here for larger Yiddish text.
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KEEPER OF THE YIDDISH CULTURE CLUB
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by Sheldon Londner, Treasurer of the Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club
"Khosheve farzamlte." For over 2 decades, these words signaled the opening of yet another
meeting of the Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club.
 Our Lilke, the president of this organization that
has been in existence for 80 years, took a no-holds-barred attitude towards
Yiddish. The Yiddish she spoke was precise, authentic, flowery, rich with idioms, and most of all ablaze with her passion, to
keep the Yiddish language and culture alive. It was a Yiddish that had its feet on the ground and
its head in the stars. When I first heard Lilke speak, I recognized it as the
Yiddish of my parents, but at the same time unique. Her style harkened back to the literary salons of
prewar Lodz, and her fervor was rooted in Bundist debate. When she spoke, the simplest ideas sounded profound, and the most abstract concepts became accessible.
The old Yiddish aphorism "one mother can take care of
ten children, but even ten children cannot take care of one mother" applies
here. How many people will it take to replace one Lilke?
More than a minyan, more than a hundred minyonim, that I can assure you.
She greeted the tentative newcomer with the same enthusiasm and warmth as the veteran mitglid, and her commitment was
infectious. For example, after softening me up with her shabes
cholent, I found myself volunteering to take on the position of Kaseer or
treasurer of the club. Three days later when the cholent wore off, I found
myself in shock at the enormity of the commitment I had made. But I never looked back. The hours spent with Lilke, addressing the business of the club, exploring Yiddish idioms, and reminiscing about the lives of my parents, and her
own life, helped fill a void in me that I had felt ever since losing my
parents some years before. Those were precious moments. Ikh dank dir, Lilke. I
thank you for this gift.
All of our determination together doesn't add up to
the power of this one extraordinary woman who kept the vision of the Los
Angeles Yiddish Culture Club alive.
But, we promise to honor her memory, and serve her muze, to keep Yiddish culture -- in Yiddish -- alive.
[Excerpt from eulogy delivered by Sheldon Londner on July 21, 2009.]
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JOINED TOGETHER, YIDDISH LIVES
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| by Aaron Paley, Founder & Chair, Yiddishkayt
Lilke was on our
board since its founding in 1994.
Lilke was our conscience
-- she would stand up -- to her full height, at our meetings, or maybe just stay
seated, and she would strike her fist on the table again and again to emphasize
her point -- and with us, it was always the same point -- what are you doing for
Yiddish. What are you really doing
for Yiddish -- not this talk, these endless points of niceties or details -- what
were we actually doing?
She was frustrated at
our pace -- and at the apparent divisions between the Yiddish groups in this
city -- all working toward the same goal -- her goal of a living language and
culture strong enough to continue on after she herself was no longer with us.
Together -- together, she
would emphasize again and again, together we can make a difference for Yiddish!
Lilke did not leave us
with her work complete. I believe
her life's work -- celebrating the richness of Yiddish -- and ensuring its
survival as a living, breathing, language -- this kind of work cannot be
completed in one person's lifetime -- even Lilke's.
It's the kind of work
that will engross my lifetime -- and that my generation will pass on to the next
generation of Yiddishists.
So, this is an end for
Lilke's time -- but not the end of her work, nor of Yiddishkayt, nor the Yiddish
Culture Club and definitely not the end of Yiddish.
Lilke wrote a short
chronicle of what happened to her and to her family in September 1939.
September-Lid:
September himl, bist
shvarts gevorn fun fayer un troyer, un mayn lid -- kh'hob keyn posike verter nit
gefunen -- vel ikh zingn shtil on verter a preliud tsu di unheyb-teg fun harbst,
velkhe zaynen oykh geven der sof funem onheyb.
September skies --
became black from fire and despair -- and my song -- I could not find the words --
I want to sing quietly without words a prelude to those first days of Autumn,
which also were the end of the beginning.
Today is the end of
the beginning -- but it's also the beginning
of a new beginning.
S'iz der onheyb fun a
naye onheyb.
Here with Lilke, and
with all of us joined together -- Yiddish lives.
[Excerpt from eulogy delivered by Aaron Paley on July 21, 2009.]
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CROWDING AROUND LILKE'S TABLE |
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by Miriam Koral, Founder of California Institute for Yiddish Culture & Language (CIYCL)
I have many fond memories of sitting at Lilke's kitchen table -- and it was not uncommon for those who came to know her to be invited to her cozy kitchen table for tea and snacks -- discussing our collaboration for events that would be produced by the California Institute for Yiddish Culture & Language, the organization that I founded and on whose Board Lilke was an active member.
Lilke was a key figure, the main point of contact between the reigning Yiddish world in L.A. and the next generation of upstart organizations. If it was a good idea -- that is, maintaining the high standards of the LA Yiddish Culture Club -- she was all for it. What this meant, literally, is that often she made the arrangements to use the Club premises, mailed out announcements and called the club members - often singlehandedly. And as if that weren't enough, she always arrived early and helped me set up and then clean up. So you have to imagine a tiny sparrow of a woman already advanced in years helping shlep tables and all the stuff that went on top of them. She brooked no objections. She did this unflaggingly until only the most recent event in May, matching me -- and even outdoing me -- in strength and energy.
But as if this weren't enough, when the Yiddish Institute was putting on its Art of Yiddish, the intensive Yiddish learning and cultural program we held in December since 2000, the kickoff was always an erev shabes, Friday night, for all the language teachers who had literally just flown in from various parts of the country and world.
Crowding around Lilke's table, eating her homemade cholent dinner, joined often by the esteemed poet Moshe Shklar, was like squeezing into the great chain of continuity transposed from the old world to the new.
An oak tree has fallen and for now all the birds can't find a place for themselves. But we will find one.
[Excerpt from eulogy delivered by Miri Koral on July 21, 2009. Read the full version here.]
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STRENGTH AND SENSITIVITY
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| by Hannah Pollin-Galay, Director of Education, Yiddishkayt
Lilke had a rare combination of strength and sensitivity. I remember her delivering fiery speeches about how and why we should honor the importance of Yiddish. Most vividly, I remember one statement she made at a Yiddishkayt event in which she said, "We have to stop asking people to include Yiddish in Jewish culture and start demanding it. We have to go to people and say, 'We have a treasure that you must respect.'" In the oh-so apologetic world of contemporary Yiddishism, where people are thrilled to have Yiddish ridiculed or misquoted--so long as it appears in public, Lilke revealed rare internal strength in setting her sights high. Her physical composure, her way of speaking, everything about her, emitted strength. I always thought to myself about her after such speeches, "I can understand why she survived the Holocaust."
 On the other hand, I have a different set of memories of Lilke--as a soft, loving friend. Every time I asked her to come and speak to my young students, she always said yes. Always. She addressed the kids happily, meeting them on their level, always distributing generous hugs at the end of her visit. I can still see her sitting with an otherwise sarcastic, "cool" teenage boy, holding his hand and speaking to him personally after such a visit.
She was also my neighbor for the second year that I lived in L.A. Whenever I wanted, I would walk over to her, ring her doorbell and come in and chat. She always asked to hear about my personal life and to try to help in any way she could. It was a gift to know such a nurturing and strong person.
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A LEGENDARY PASSION FOR YIDDISH |
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| by Eric Gordon, Director of Arbeter Ring (Workmen's Circle) Southern California
My own familiarity with Lilke dates back to a time before I became director of our Southern California District, when I started attending the Yiddish Culture Club, and began to realize how intensely "daytsh" my purported Yiddish actually was, until I started attending classes at Arbeter Ring.
Lilke's passion for Yiddish was legendary. I recall one time when we cosponsored our annual tribute to the martyred Soviet Yiddish Writers and one of the speakers--not her--abused our previously agreed-upon rule about no long speeches in Yiddish without translation. I'd been distressed to see several young non-Yiddish speakers walking out of the program. Afterward I asked her how did this happen and how could we prevent that in the future. I think she really didn't get my problem. She said, "People should hear a yidishe vort. They go to Wagner operas, don't they?"
We have this expression in Yiddish...someone is "away" or "gone" or "passed" into eternity...avek in der eybikayt. I'm sure you are familiar with the Bundist doctrine of doikayt...to be active -- "doh" -- in the here and now where you are. So in that spirit, let us say, as they do in Spanish, Lilke Majzner presente! Undzere tayere Lilke, doh in der eybikayt!
[Excerpt from eulogy delivered by Eric Gordon on July 21, 2009.]
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