Jewish-American Splendor Harvey Pekar’s final grumble.   By Sephora Markson Hartz Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & the New Land Edited by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle; Introduction by Neal Gabler Published by Abrams ComicArts If you want proof that Yiddish is a living language, and not—as many have contended—a “dead” one, just take a walk through Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or pay a trip to Monsey in upstate New York. If the ads for shtreimels don’t reassure you, the sidewalk chatter surely will. Besides Yiddish, these communities have something else in common: they are deeply religious. Walking up Bedford Ave., you may wonder if you accidentally wandered into a time warp and wound up in the shtetlekh circa 1862. I may be exaggerating a bit, but the loss of a secular, cosmopolitan Yiddish culture after World War II is not an exaggeration. This loss, and its slow but steady rebirth is at the core of Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land, a graphic novel edited by Harvey Pekar (of American Splendor fame) and Paul Buhle, a distinguished scholar of, among other things, American-Jewish culture. Like nearly all of Pekar’s work, Yiddishkeit’s point of departure is the author’s autobiography. In the prologue, we meet a young Harvey growing up in Jewish Cleveland, a product of what Buhle describes as “an immigrant, Yiddish-speaking milieu.” Pekar’s milieu was also staunchly socialist and steadfastly secular, so much that his own “Yiddish” story begins to reflect the broader history of Yiddishkeit in the United States: As his grandparents’ generation begins to die out, Pekar’s facility with Yiddish begins to diminish. The language falls in disuse, assimilation takes its toll, and further atrophy inevitably follows. In telling this sad story, Yiddishkeit is at least partially Pekar’s lament, although it’s unclear what exactly he’s lamenting. The decay of secular Yiddish culture in America? Or the Yiddish literary tradition itself, whose plots he often describes as “shmaltzy” and whose characters he accuses of being guileless to a fault. In a sweeping survey of some of the great authors of Yiddish literature (though with some notable absences), Harvey gives his readers a guided tour of the Yiddish literary scene—from its first recorded usage in 1272 to Yiddish modernists of fin-de-siecle Europe and beyond. We are introduced to the heroes of Yiddish storytelling, including its high priest in the U.S., Isaac Bashevis Singer. But Pekar isn’t always kind to the major literary macher. As though the book’s graphic vignettes were slices of secular-socialist Talmud, Harvey routinely comments from the margins while staples of Yiddish storytelling are rehashed. Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of his favorite targets. Consider this excerpt:   I. J. Singer, I. B. Singer’s brother, fares somewhat better, because of his socialist politics, but in the end, even he isn’t spared. In the concluding pages of Yiddishkeit, when Pekar mentions I. J. Singer’s Yoshe Kalb, he has only this to say about it: “Well, maybe The Brothers Ashkenzai is better.” The tone of the book is gentler when discussing Yiddish in the performing arts (theater, music, film), but at this point, the book changes gears, becomes more of an illustrated anthology-cum-historical review of famous Yiddish productions. We also get a sampling of Yiddish-speakers in Hollywood, represented by two illustrated panels: “Celebrities Fluent in Yiddish” and “Performers Who Used Yiddish.” Talk about shmalz! I almost expected a line to follow that read, “Name all 25 and win a prize.” Yiddishkeit is not Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar’s first collaboration, although it will, unfortunately, be their last (Harvey Pekar passed away in July 2010, as work on this project was underway). It is preceded by two prior studies: Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation, and Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History. Clearly, the two find common ground in leftist politics--linkages between socialism and Yiddish culture are a recurrent motif in Yiddishkeit. But why choose the graphic novel as their mode of exploration? For one, it is Pekar’s preferred genre, if not his only genre. But aside from that, comics are a special medium. As Buhle once put it, comics “offer new ways of seeing the connections between art and life.” Pekar and Buhle also agreed that graphic novels appeal to a younger generation. For them it is crucial that important stories—important histories—be passed down to readers who might not otherwise be exposed to them. Theirs is a project in generational continuity, and as Yiddishkeit makes clear, if there were ever a cultural movement in need of a defibrillator, it’s Yiddish. Although this revival has already begun (notably through the efforts of Aaron Lansky and the Yiddish Book Center), Yiddishkeit is also its editors’ contribution to that continuing effort. In the end, Yiddishkeit is worth reading not because Pekar is a dazzling storyteller, but because he is,as Buhle notes, an “idiosyncratic” one. The force of Harvey Pekar’s personality has always been his greatest asset, as is his life-long interest in giving new life—and pressing new relevance—to seemingly marginal subjects. True, you may dispute some of Pekar’s assessments of Yiddish culture, but nevermind. You’ll find yourself blissfully enchanted by his eccentricities.   Sephora Markson Hartz is the Assistant Editor for Secular Culture & Ideas. She received her Master’s of Theological Studies in Jewish Studies from Harvard Divinity School (’10), and a Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Berkeley, in Religious Studies, with an area of emphasis in Jewish Studies (‘07).     Art citation: Panel taken from "Yiddishland, Part Two: Yiddish Modernists," pg. 76. Written by Harvey Pekar; Illustrated by Dan Archer.