You're shielded, glassy, unreadable, undetectable

[sovay]

I couldn't have gone to see it and there's no suggestion its premiere was available to watch streaming, but I can't believe I didn't hear until now about Evan Rapport and Daniel London's A Dying Person (A Goyses) (2023) because it is a chamber opera based on the Jewish Ethnographic Program conducted by An-sky in the Pale of Settlement between 1912–14. Thanks to the zeitgeist, I wondered what London had been doing with himself lately, because while I never watched Manhattan (2014–16), I did feel that as Oppenheimer he had a good face for it. Apparently the answer is writing a libretto for a language tsvishn tsvey veltn. It had better get a wider reception, or at least a recording. I keep wondering if An-sky who asked so many questions about Jewish magic knew when he was writing The Dybbuk that he was making a spell.

Comments

[sovay]

Wow! I only found out about An-sky's ethnography in the past couple of years (during the pandemic), and it blew me away.

If I have not already recommended Nathaniel Deutsch's The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement (2011), it's where I learned about An-sky and the Jewish Ethnographic Program. It contains the complete questionnaire.

--I wonder if people can have inchoate wishes, and if that leads to the casting of spells unawares.

I think so.

[asakiyume]

I think you did, and that concurrent with that, I had discovered it myself--it was through the exhibit I went to see at the Yiddish Book Center last year.

I adore the questions. They, themselves, are like spells.

[sovay]

I think you did, and that concurrent with that, I had discovered it myself--it was through the exhibit I went to see at the Yiddish Book Center last year.

I remember when you went to see that! It looked wonderful. I just couldn't remember if I had inevitably suggested following it up with Deutsch's book.

I adore the questions. They, themselves, are like spells.

They are. "What does the malakh doyme do with a deceased person who has forgotten the biblical verse associated with his name?"