Brooklyn Dispatches: Rokhl Kafrissen's Yiddish Ideal Community
Rokhl Kafrissen's Yiddish Translation of "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)"
Rokhl Kafrissen, a contemporary Yiddish writer, translator, and educator, has made a bold and culturally significant move by translating Jimmy Buffett's popular song "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)" into Yiddish. This translation brings a modern and irreverent pop-cultural moment into the realm of Yiddish, challenging the perception of the language as solely serious or historical.
Context
Kafrissen is known for revitalizing Yiddish language through modern literary and cultural works. Buffett's song, with its cheeky, humorous lyrics embracing adult themes, is a stark contrast to the traditional associations of Yiddish with religious texts, folklore, and classic literature.
Significance
The translation of this song into Yiddish helps bring the language into new cultural spaces, appealing to younger generations and non-traditional audiences. It challenges the view of Yiddish as only a serious or historical language. The contrast between the song’s casual, provocative lyrics and the deep cultural resonance of Yiddish offers a fresh way to think about identity, humor, and language.
Cultural Impact
This project has sparked conversations within Jewish cultural circles about the place of modern life and language evolution. Scholars of linguistics, Jewish studies, and translation studies might analyze it as an example of contemporary Yiddish language use and creative translation practices.
Such translations often get shared in performances, readings, or online forums, promoting Yiddish learning through accessible and entertaining content. It inspires others to creatively use minority or heritage languages in unexpected ways, helping keep them vibrant.
Summary
Kafrissen's Yiddish translation of "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)" is a culturally significant artistic act that blends a classic Americana song with Yiddish linguistic heritage. It plays a role in the ongoing revitalization of Yiddish by introducing modern humor and themes, challenging stereotypes about the language and its communities, and highlighting the dynamic, evolving nature of cultural identity through language.
Naomi Seidman's book, A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish, discusses the gendered language politics of Yiddish. The song is a parody and intentionally subverts the original's retrograde gender narrative. Volokhl and freygish are Yiddish terms used to describe scales or modal concepts in music, with freygish becoming a synecdoche for Jewishness in music through its association with popular melodies such as Avinu Malkeinu or Hava Nagilah.
- Rokhl Kafrissen's translation of Jimmy Buffett's "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)" into Yiddish demonstrates an intriguing fusion of modern pop-culture and traditional language, opening up opportunities for the language's engagement with lifestyle, fashion-and-beauty, entertainment, and music among younger generations.
- The translation of Buffett's song is not just a mere linguistic exercise, but a significant step towards education-and-self-development, as it encourages learners to embrace Yiddish in an accessible and entertaining manner, promoting personal-growth and skills-training in the process.
- By subverting gendered language politics through parody, Kafrissen's translation challenges the traditional stereotypes associated with Yiddish and its communities, thus fostering career-development opportunities in fields such as translation studies, linguistics, and Jewish studies.
- This project not only showcases Kafrissen's contribution to modern Yiddish literature but also reflects on the broader cultural impact of language evolution, encouraging individuals to explore creativity and personal expression in their cultural heritage, such as books and music, as facets of personal-growth and cultural identity.
