Written by Diane Cypkin
Even more than the huge bookcase chock-full of Yiddish books that Papa somehow got
through our front door, I remember the look on his face. There was the warm smile that went
from ear to ear. There was the joyful glint in his grey-green eyes. There were the happy
touches of a pretty pink that suddenly colored his cheeks. It all seemed to wordlessly say,
“Look! Look at the treasure I’ve brought home!” An older gentleman in our building was
moving to Florida and didn’t want to take his Yiddish books with him. So Papa volunteered to
“save” them. It’s not surprising. Papa was a real “Yiddishist.” He loved the language.
Mama didn’t say anything about the “treasure” Papa brought into the house. She just
looked at me. I know what she wanted to say. It’s not that she didn’t love books, too, it’s just
that she preferred library books—the kind you read and return. Mama always looked at books
you bought as soon-to-be dust collectors—and Mama had a running battle with dust. I can still
hear her now, complaining about it to anyone who would listen—usually me.
Throughout the coming years I’d often see Papa in the evenings take out one of those books
and sit down to enjoy the world of Yiddish it offered him, a world he loved and missed. I’d see
him smile, I’d hear him laugh, I’d feel him grow very serious—all in reaction to what he was
reading. That, and a good, crisp McIntosh apple made him more than happy.
Funny, I always thought about reading them myself, especially when I saw Papa’s
reaction to them. But there was school. Then, there was work. And time passes.
Why did I finally begin reading his Yiddish books? Initially, it was because I missed Papa.
Then I realized, in the reading, that it was about much more than that. I missed the full-
blooded, zaftig Yiddish Papa spoke, a beautifully descriptive Yiddish, a fun-loving Yiddish, a
heartfelt compassionate Yiddish. And I missed the old-world culture presented in these
volumes, a culture that could clearly recognize right from wrong, that encouraged goodness,
that valued life—all life.
So here I sit, reading All the Works of Sholem Aleichem (Ale verk fun Sholem Aleichem)
in the original, enjoying every last story in the more than two dozen books that make up the
collection. True some of this has been translated, but it misses what only Yiddish can
communicate. What exactly is that? In Yiddish we’d say “es felt tam.” It’s missing flavor. It’s
like buying canned chicken soup in the supermarket, made by who-knows-who, who-knows-
where—fine if you haven’t tasted Grandma Feige’s chicken soup, but not so fine if you have.
***By the way, my father, Abraham Cypkin, in the Kovno ghetto during the war years, wrote
Yiddish lyrics to Russian and Yiddish melodies popular during those days. His lyrics, well-known
to Kovno Jews, were later published in Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the Ghettos and
Camps), collected and edited by Shmerke Kaczerginski.
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Diane Cypkin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at Pace University, is an academic and a professional singer/actress. She has published articles in academic journals and has appeared in many Yiddish and English language productions. She currently presents her one-woman shows in the tri-state area. She has won awards for her teaching and public service. Diane is also a child of Holocaust Survivors.