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The Joy(?) of Yiddish
Yiddish humor, it’s often said, is about laughing to keep the darkness away. I’m sure I’m not the first to make this connection, which is funny (in the classic Yiddish manner) but requires explanation. (How can a joke be funny if you have to explain it? I don’t know; ask a comedian.) First, you need… Read more
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Covid thoughts
When my children were growing up, I noticed that, no matter what else I was doing, a small part of my brain was constantly occupied with a single question: Like a constant radio signal, or background hum, sporadically heard but always there. “Is it safe enough?” Not simply “Is it safe?” because of course there… Read more
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B. Cassel
My grandfather, Boruch Chaim Cassel, was born in Keidan, then part of the Russian empire, in 1877, and arrived in New York in 1904. He had served as a clerk in the Russian army and worked as a bookkeeper in Riga, but his first business enterprise in the U.S. was a candy store. The photos… Read more
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Unburying the past
From 1935 until his death in 1941, my grandfather, Boruch Chaim Cassel, edited a monthly bulletin called “The Keidaner,” a publication of his landsmanshaft, or immigrants’ club. The Keidaner Association of New York began in 1900, like all such groups, as a mutual-aid society. Its members, recently arrived in the U.S., helped each other find housing, jobs… Read more
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The Keidaner Blog, v3.0
This is another shot at setting up a blog to accompany the Keidan website. Or rather, it was. I’ve now consolidated the site at keidaner.com . Please click or browse there to learn more. Thanks. Read more
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Postscript: Berlin
My month in Vilnius was followed by a few touristic days in Berlin. For American children in the 1950s, this may have been the first non-U.S. city to enter our consciousness, via newsreels, cartoons and the general sense that WWII was still very much with us. For Jewish children, moreover, this was Mordor – the seat… Read more
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