Exploring Brooklyn: Rokhl Kafrissen's Yiddish Community Haven
In a bold move that bridges classical and modern cultural forms, playwright and critic Rokhl Kafrissen has released a Yiddish translation of Jimmy Buffett's "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)", titled Kum tsu mir. The song, released on August 20, 2021, is a noteworthy example of contemporary artists revitalising Yiddish through fresh, inventive expressions.
Rokhl Kafrissen, a renowned figure in the Yiddish and klezmer worlds of New York, has been a lecturer at Yiddish New York and an educator and administrator for KlezKanada. She has also been a columnist for Tablet for the past four years, offering unique coverage of the Yiddish and klezmer worlds.
Kum tsu mir showcases Kafrissen's practices of reclamation centred on the sounds and stories of Yiddish culture. The song uses the Volokhl and Freygish scales, significant in Yiddish music, and aims to celebrate Yiddish modernist culture while undermining the flattening effect of monolingualism and assimilation on Jewish culture and life in America.
The song rewrites the original's narrative about a drunken man propositioning a woman in a bar, instead telling a story about a Jewish woman initiating a sexual encounter with her husband on the eve of the Sabbath. This creative reworking reflects Kafrissen's commitment to challenging preconceived boundaries about what kinds of content are suitable for Yiddish translation.
Kafrissen's translation reflects and advances her larger artistic and cultural goals. It modernises Yiddish expression, celebrates Yiddish as a living language, demonstrates innovative creative productivity, fosters cultural dialogue and hybridization, and encourages further work in the field.
In her work, Kafrissen discusses the gendered language politics of Yiddish, as seen in Naomi Seidman's A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. She also advocates for the importance of Jewish heritage languages and musics as a means of generating new expressive culture.
In an article published in The Conversationalist in May 2019, Kafrissen argued for the importance of bilingualism. Her bi-monthly column, "Rokhl's Golden City," offers unique coverage of the Yiddish and klezmer worlds of New York.
Kafrissen's article "How the Jewish-American Elite Has Manufactured the Intermarriage 'Crisis'" was published in Haaretz in October 2018, while her article "Yiddish: The Living Language of the Jewish People" was published in Contact: The Journal of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life in 2008. The song was produced by the Congress for Jewish Culture.
Kum tsu mir features well-known klezmer musicians Lorin Sklamberg, Sasha Lurje, and Craig Judelman, adding to its cultural significance. This project contributes to recent Yiddish translations of American popular songs, demonstrating that Yiddish isn't just a language of the past or solely for traditional or religious texts but can actively engage with modern and even irreverent pop culture.
In essence, Kafrissen's Yiddish translation of Jimmy Buffett's song illustrates a dynamic and playful method of cultural transmission, where the modernist Yiddish ethos of innovation and engagement is carried forward through creative productivity that embraces the unexpected and contemporary.
- Rokhl Kafrissen's work, such as her bi-monthly column in The Conversationalist and her articles discussing the role of Jewish heritage languages and musics, falls under the category of education and self-development, offering insights into the gendered language politics of Yiddish and advocating for bilingualism.
- Kafrissen's translation of Jimmy Buffett's song, Kum tsu mir, is a notable example of the intersection of fashion-and-beauty and entertainment, as it showcases Yiddish modernist culture while blending contemporary pop music with traditional Yiddish sounds and stories.
- Kafrissen's efforts in translating and revitalizing Yiddish, including her work on Kum tsu mir, can also be found within the realms of lifestyle and books, as demonstrated by her commitment to modernizing Yiddish expression, celebrating Yiddish as a living language, and encouraging further work in the field.
