Israel In Translation

This week, we feature a new collection of stories by Abraham Karpinowitz, Vilna My Vilna. Host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from “Chana-Merka, the Fishwife,” which follows the beginnings of the Max Weinreich Yiddish Institute, today called YIVO and housed in New York. Then in Vilna, Chana-Merka would meet with Dr. Weinreich to hand over lists of "Yiddish pearls" - Yiddish phrases and expressions to be recorded for posterity. Here are some of the Vilna curses Chana-Merka submits to Weinreich: "May you get a piece of straw in your eye and a splinter in your ear and not know which one to pull out first. How long do you think she’ll be sick? If she’s going to lie in bed with a fever for another month, let the month last five weeks. May a fish ball get stuck in your throat. They should call a doctor for you in an emergency and when he arrives, they should tell him he’s no longer needed." Karpinowitz was born in 1913 in Vilna, Lithuania, a city long considered the cultural and intellectual center of Jewish Euro