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impulse . . . of schlemiel literature is generally to use this comic stance as a stage from which to challenge the political and philosophical status quo.
    Born in the shadow of nuclear weapons, coming of age during Vietnam, I was all for changing the status quo. The book confirmed my conviction that culture—and in particular Yiddish culture—could undermine political policy and in so doing become a powerful tool for social change. It showed why Yiddish literature could still speak to modern readers (or at least to me). And, not incidentally, it was one of the few academic books I had encountered that was not only profound but beautifully written: clear, fresh, and fun to read. I didn’t know at the time who Ruth Wisse was or whether she even offered a graduate course, but by the time I finished the book I knew for sure that there was no one else with whom I wanted to study.
    Fortunately Ruth had just established a graduate program at McGillin East European Jewish studies, and when I arrived in the fall of 1977 I found my teacher every bit as brilliant, human, and down-to-earth as her book suggested. As I had guessed, she was plenty political: though in exactly the opposite direction from what I had assumed. She was, in fact, the most right-wing person—or at least the most right-wing rational person—I had ever met: an unyielding hawk on Israel; a critic of feminism who opposed the ordination of women rabbis; a fierce anti-Communist who championed American military strength to a degree that made Ronald Reagan look like a dove. One might think, given my Hampshire College education, where feminism, pacifism, and critical theory are imparted as revealed truth, that Ruth’s stridency would prove a problem for me. And in a certain sense it did: She once handed back a paper, telling me it was an excellent effort, “even if it is inimical to everything I believe in.” I was still too young to question my own politics, but thankfully she was too much of a
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to let political differences stand in our way. She had been a student of Max Weinreich’s and she knew as much about Yiddish literature as any person alive. As a teacher she was unfailingly warm and generous. Her classes were intellectually exhilarating. And despite her literary acumen, despite her genius, she never lost sight of the fundamental humanity upon which Yiddish literature rests. One day, for example, we were pursuing a complex analysis of Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Hodel” when Ruth decided to underscore her point by reading directly from the text; she read out loud, in Yiddish, with such empathy and feeling that before she was through she and all her students were in tears.
    Did we ever read! Between Ruth and our other professor, Eugene Orenstein, we were often assigned two full-length novels a week. I still read relatively slowly in Yiddish, with frequent recourse to a dictionary, and my first year of graduate school found me at my desk till two or three in the morning every night but Shabbos.
    Where did we find all the books our teachers assigned? Thanks to itsnative bilingualism and a large postwar Jewish immigrant population, Montreal was, at the time, remarkably hospitable to Yiddish. There were quadrilingual Jewish schools in the city: English, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish; a thriving Yiddish theater (where the laughter always came in two waves: once when the line was delivered, and again after the Yiddish-speaking members of the audience had a chance to whisper the translation to their neighbors); and the Jewish Public Library, a unique institution where several hundred people turned out every Saturday night—often braving biting winds and subzero temperatures—to hear scholarly talks on Yiddish literature. So when Ruth or Eugene assigned a given Yiddish book—inevitably out of print—the four or five students in our class knew exactly where to go. The fastest would claim the copy at the Jewish Public Library. If we were lucky, there