Years Have Sped By

An actor reads the poem, “Years Have Sped By”:

Years have sped, eternally streaming —

Life has shaped you in course of time; –

Still you sang...

And still you created rhyme.

Still, in your own fashion, you prayed...

Or composed songs

Of sadness and joy...

Or with children played.

You shortened,

Or the garment lengthened...

Years long...and oft regretted

You counted them to the good...

Winters and summers

In their array —

Passed by in eternal procession...

Now you sing again

Songs of bygone days...

Of love eternal, —

Rooted so deeply; —

Of the ordinary

Day to day chores,

You sing your song

Once more,

Of the days of yore.

•••

Host Aaron Henne: Welcome to Episode One of the third season of theatre dybbuk’s The Dybbukast. I'm Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk. In this episode, presented in collaboration with the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, we investigate the life and work of the poet, Chaya Rochel Andres, who emigrated as a young woman from Poland to Dallas, Texas, where she spent most of her adult life. Her story serves as an entry point for us to explore some of the social, political, and cultural dynamics of Jewish life in the South. At the top, you heard actor Julie Lockhart read a selection from Chaya Rochel's poem, “Years Have Sped By”. Throughout the episode, Julie will perform a variety of poems from Chaya Rochel's body of work, all of which will be intercut with information about the circumstances of her life, the time in which she lived, and the organization with which she was involved, The Arbeter Ring, which many people now know as The Workers Circle.

And now, Season Three, Episode One: “Years Have Sped By”.

•••

Chaya Rochel Andres: I never, never know when — at what — at what time I'm going to write; when I'm going to write. I don't say I'm, I'm going to write a poem. I sit down and I write, and sometimes it comes out, the very best thing. But then I start thinking back, let's see, why did I say that? And all of a sudden I say, no, that's no good. I tear it up and throw it away. And then, at another time, I come back to the same thought that I had before, and I write something different, and it comes out so beautifully nice without any trouble.

Aaron: That’s Chaya Rochel Andres, in an interview from 1981, courtesy of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society. During the interview, she shared about her writing and her personal history.

Dr. Josh Parshall: Her story is a story about, in part, tenacity of a Yiddish speaker, a Yiddish reader, and a Yiddish writer to continue working in their native language in a way that's meaningful to them, even when that audience is dwindling.

Aaron: That’s Dr. Josh Parshall, Director of History at the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. He talked with us about Chaya Rochel’s work and its connections to the Yiddish speaking world, as well as Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the South.

Chaya Rochel: Well, I was a very happy child. I was born in Poland, in Suwałk — in Suwałki. We were four sisters, including myself, and a brother. My brother was the oldest. I was the second. I was a child who didn't have any kind of worries.

Josh: Chaya Rochel Andres was born in 1899. Her parents’ names were Mordecai Meyer and Chana Klejman.

Chaya Rochel: I was born in a middle class family. My father was a scholar. He was a very pious man. My mother was the breadwinner. I went to school at six, studied Yiddish for probably one year, and right away went into private schools where we learned all kinds of languages. And I did very well in school.

Josh: During her teenage years, she also discovered Yiddish literature.

Chaya Rochel: I loved the poetry of the Bund in those days. I used to love “Di Shvue,” and all those heartbreaking songs of the working class.

Josh: Really, she was coming of age during a real heyday for secular Yiddish culture, which included theater and which included literature.

Chaya Rochel: I was more a thinking girl. That's when I started writing, and I wrote only about the poor people.

Josh: She’d been engaged to a prosperous but unappealing fiancé. I believe this was a friend of her father's who was significantly older.

Chaya Rochel: This man was quite well off, but when I heard that he has to do with pig's hair — he had a factory of pig's hair — I just almost died. My mother had a sister and a brother right here in Dallas, Texas. I wrote letters to my uncle and aunt that if they could possibly bring me to this country, to America, then they would just save me from marrying someone that I don't love. They answered my letter right away, not only with a letter, but right away I got the whole package with affidavits of support and a ticket from New York.

Josh: This is a side note, but I have to tell it. When Chaya Rochel and her parents, presumably, went and broke the engagement with this fiancé that she didn't want to be with, he actually warned her parents that if she broke off the engagement and went to Dallas, she would end up marrying a Black man there. Very interesting that this idea of, first of all, racial difference in the South, and also the threat of miscegenation, were circulating in Poland in 1921 or 1920. In 1921, she immigrated to the United States. So when we look at the story of Chaya Rochel Andres and her immigration, she's arriving in Dallas at the end of a period of mass Jewish migration to the United States. I think a lot of people will be familiar with this — the idea that between 1880 and the early 1920s, you get millions of Jews from Eastern Europe, primarily the Russian Empire, who arrive in the United States. And this is transformational for American Jewish life at the time and for American Jewish history.

Chaya Rochel: On the boat, I met a lot of young men, young girls, and we were singing and we were just having such a marvelous time. I was never sick even a day on the boat.

Josh: She lives with an aunt and uncle in Dallas, and they introduced her to the local Jewish community, the local Yiddish speaking immigrants. She married one of these other immigrants, a fellow immigrant, in 1922 — Harry, or Hershl, Andres.

Chaya Rochel: He spoke beautiful Yiddish. I didn't look for anything else at that time. I guess I didn't have sense enough to look for anything else.

Josh: It speaks to the centrality of Yiddish in her life — Yiddish being her home culture, something that was important to her and was a comfort to her in this new place.

Chaya Rochel: He was about 12 years older than I was too, but he was a very fine gentleman — very fine.

Actor: My dear Hershl, you have sown

Grass, trees and flowers —

With your efforts — beauty spread,

So much loveliness created.

Sacredly, your devotion hovers...

Your roots demand my enduring...

Not with tears, but with strength

You dissipate my sorrow, my yearning!

So near to me’s your body and soul!

All about reminds of you.

Your name enlivens my lips,

I hear your wisdom answer me...

Josh: She really spent the next few years raising their three sons, as well as helping out in the family business. They owned a grocery store in, you know, what is now really central Dallas.

Chaya Rochel: My oldest son was born about a year and a half after we got married. And then my second son came 22 months later, and my third son came five years later.

Nora Katz: I think that the story of Jewish life in the South can tell us so much about what it means to be American.

Aaron: That’s Nora Katz, Director of Heritage and Interpretation at the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. She spoke to us about how Chaya Rochel’s story intersects with the Jewish history of migration to, and within, the southern United States.

Nora: So the first Jews to arrive in the South arrive in Charleston and Savannah. And it's because especially South Carolina was much more welcoming of non-Christians than say, you know, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which is very specifically sort of this Puritan colony. And so there is sort of freedom of religion guaranteed by the colonial government of South Carolina. Of course, it has some caveats, which is the hope that if they're very welcoming to Jews and other “heathens” — that’s what they're called in the constitution — that perhaps they might see fit to convert. That doesn't really happen, but it does mean that Jews are more able to come to the South, settle in the South. They're able to own land, to build synagogues, and Charleston and Savannah, in this time, in the 17th century, are the northern edge of what some southern Jewish historians call a Gulf Caribbean plantation region. So there are all of these port cities that are all around the South — New Orleans, Galveston, Texas — and as Jews are arriving in those places, they may stay there for a few years, they may move inland.

Actor: Ere long, you've drifted far afield.

Whither are you flying?

What will you see afar?

What greetings will you bring and what sort of an answer?

Josh: Most of the Jews that come from Eastern Europe during 1880 to 1920 arrive in New York City. Most Jews from Eastern Europe in the period go to the urban North. And this is transformational for American Jewish life at the time and for American Jewish history. So, in terms of the South, it's also transformational. It makes the overall Jewish population of the United States more northern. So in, say, the 1860s, American Jewry was like, say, 13% Southern. 13% of American Jews lived in the South at the outset of the Civil War. That number drops to 5% or so by 1924 when immigration restrictions really cut off Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. Even though most Jews who arrive in this period go to the urban North, some trickle south, and they do add to an overall increase in the number of Jews living in the South, especially in some of the new urban centers that are really on the rise at this time, whether we're talking about Atlanta or Houston or Dallas or any of the other southern cities. They are bringing in renewed activity in Orthodox congregations. There are new congregations being founded in places like Dallas. Even in a number of small cities, you get a second congregation where maybe there had been a Reform synagogue before. You also get new political groups. You get East European Zionists, you get some of these Jewish leftists of different stripes who make their way south, and it's a new type of Jewish activity that may not have been present in these cities before. You also get some conflict, right, in some of the larger cities, and as well as the small ones. You get tensions between long-standing families who are fairly well acculturated, who may have a fair amount of social prestige, or, you know, relative acceptance, and these newcomers, who are, you know, lower on the class ladder, who speak with thicker accents, who might still adhere to seemingly foreign religious practices. And so you see efforts by established Jewish communities to try to show these newcomers the right way to be Jewish Americans. This is certainly the case in New York or elsewhere. This is not unique to the South, but in places like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, there is some tension. There is also some paternalism.

Nora: They’re coming to a place a few decades after the end of the Civil War — a deeply segregated South, a South where Jim Crow is everywhere. Life is much different if you're a Black person in the South than if you're a white person in the South. And so I think Jews have to learn how to navigate that and how to understand that. Some Jews, like Chaya, are joining The Workmen’s Circle.

Josh: Harry was a central figure at the time of their marriage in the local Arbeter Ring, The Workers Circle. The Arbeter Ring took root in the South around 1908. Like in the North, it’s a fraternal organization. It offers health benefits, burial benefits, other perks for members, but appeals specifically to Yiddish speakers, Jewish Yiddish speakers of a leftish orientation. Not long after her arrival and their marriage were really the peak years of the organization in Dallas, and she got involved in a couple different ways. I think she, at some points, was doing sort of the work of secretary for the branch or for the women's auxiliary of the branch, which I think actually increased her confidence as a writer. But I think it was actually sort of corresponding for The Arbeter Ring that really increased her sense of herself as someone who can really sort of write in Yiddish as well as, you know, reading and everything else.

We hear part of a poem spoken in Yiddish.

Josh: She was probably involved with the women's auxiliary, and she became involved with its schools. They opened an after-school Yiddish program in 1926. I believe the Dallas branch had at one point about 200 members, which was a pretty good size for one of the southern branches. You know, if you compared it to say a Houston or Atlanta, it was — it was up there, it was significant. What it offers these folks, in addition to the material benefits, which were really important, is a social base, a social world in which they can recreate or reimagine aspects of their home cultures — which are Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking cultures — in this new environment. But at the same time, it gives them some tools for making a home for themselves in these new places. They also connect these Jewish people to this wider Jewish world. I mentioned that Chaya Rochel Andres came of age as secular Yiddish culture worldwide was continuing to come into its own. It had been there for a while, but it — it’s continuing to blossom new forms of literature, all sorts of different kinds of Yiddish poetry. I mentioned theater, but there's also journalism and just this whole public sphere taking place in Yiddish transnationally. The Arbeter Ring is the connecting point for a number of southern Jews to those transnational trends. A number of branches bought their own buildings. They refer to them as lyceums. There would be lending libraries that the branch would keep in that space. You could read literature. You could read works of history, works on American civics. There would be literary events or debates where people would talk about the ideas in these books or in these magazines or journals or newspapers.

Chaya Rochel: I read then. I read a lot. I read all of our Yiddish classics, and I was interested only in a cultural life.

Josh: And it was very much a culture of, you know, sort of self-education. That was a big emphasis of theirs. It was in part about modernizing themselves. It was in part about Americanizing themselves, even if it was in Yiddish. And so, as they're becoming accustomed to the new place through The Arbeter Ring, they're also organizing as a group, and, in some cases, at least to some degree, trying to exert influence on the places where they’ve arrived. That might mean campaigning for the Socialist Party as a number of Arbeter Ring members did in a number of southern cities. That might mean trying to forge connections with similarly minded activists in the city or in the state. That might mean contributing to labor or leftist causes in other places.

Nora: Something that's really interesting to me about Jewish life in the South is that I think a lot of folks assume the entire South is this distinctive place. Jewish life in the entire South must be so different than Jewish life in another region. And I think that part of this is kind of these ideas about Southern exceptionalism that I hope that we are dismantling, but I think it’s — it might be worthwhile to argue that the similarities would be between more rural Jewish communities. So a more rural, southern Jewish community and a more rural community in the Midwest or even in the Northeast — those places might have a lot of similarities — and a larger city like Dallas, like Atlanta, like Houston, might have a lot in common with a slightly larger city elsewhere in the country.

Josh: If you look at Jewish Dallas in 1920, and if you look at Jewish Dallas today, her path and really the trajectory of her family in terms of Jewish life in the city does typify a few things. For one thing, they started out downtown. So if you look at where the congregations and other Jewish institutions were in Dallas in 1920, they're in South Dallas, or they're somewhere in the downtown.

Chaya Rochel: My wedding was in Parkview Club — the first wedding – in Parkview Club was the Jewish Federation, the very first building that they had.

Josh: So you can really just sort of trace the family if you look at their residences over the years, because they eventually do well enough in their store that they're able to buy a new house in one of the newer neighborhoods north of downtown — very much sort of in line with what a lot of other Jewish folks in Dallas do.

Chaya Rochel: We never had to worry about money. We had a store, we had always food, and I didn't, uh, I wasn't interested in money. However, money is a very good thing to have.

Josh: By the time that World War II was over, there was already movement northward, and you see the major congregations starting to shift northward as well.

Chaya Rochel: Well, in the meantime, the Holocaust came, and I lost my whole family in the Holocaust. And my family — I think I told you, we were four sisters, including me. It was three sisters and their husbands and their children, and my brother and his wife, and his two children. They were all lost.

Actor: I take note – most especially,

Of the suffering during the Holocaust;

I take a reckoning — essentially

In multiples, of those I’ve lost: —

My younger sisters three,

And their husbands, that makes six;

Add seven children to the sum; —

A paragon — every one…

Father and mother

With gifted children blessed

Then cut down, in bloom of youth,

And not even covered with earth...

Josh: This decision of hers to write — it reflects first of all that Yiddish does not die with Nazi genocide.

Chaya Rochel: Everything that came out of the depth of my heart was the Holocaust, and it was all published right away.

Josh: It’s now well after World War II, and she begins, I suppose, corresponding with some people at some literary journals. She sends her poems to writers she admires, and sort of finds her way into publishing.

Chaya Rochel: Oh, Sholem Shtern — I read his books, you know, his first few books that he had written, and I wrote to him how much I enjoyed his writings, his poetry. And when I got a letter from him, he says, where in the world did you learn such a Yiddish? I had many, many poems published in Toronto in their weekly. They published everything Sholem Shtern sent to them.

Josh: So she publishes this series of books really later in her life. It begins with poetry, but the later volumes also have prose memoir written there. The poetry itself is very memoiristic. With Chaya Rochel Andres’ writing, we see a lot of engagement with religious themes. There are really — you can look — tons of examples in her poetry, and she writes a number of poems that are specifically about holidays. Her poems about the holidays are also tied in with the seasonal rhythm of life in Eastern Europe. She's writing about nature as she's writing about Jewish practice.

Actor: Out into the fresh air I stroll,

Tread on the soil with sprouting grass...

I hear and I feel

In the gardens, the movement

Of the fruit trees...

I hear the gentle sounds that herald

The coming of the spring...

“Mother Earth” preparing

Ample food to bring

Forth the seeds of the pregnant earth,

To which she hastens to give birth…

So I sing with springtime expectancy,

To you, my yearning Jew...

With pride and all human dignity,

Hold your head up high!

The sun will also shine for us

And — the flowers bloom...

The stars will wink down from above

And the birds will sing their tunes…

We will play a part, significant,

As for a Jew is befitting...

We will sow, and we will plant...

There’ll be digging and building...

We will fly

Into the furthest reaches of the sky...

And all that humanity seeks,

We shall reach!...

Josh: The Andres family did not stay in the grocery business forever. At some point, they switched over and started doing real estate because they had accumulated a number of properties, and they started renting those out to other businesses. You know, again, that sort of typifies this changing class status, really, of these Jewish families.

Nora: The first generation of Jews might arrive in the United States. They might work as peddlers. They might get a job in a retail store. The next generation is running that retail store. The next generation might, you know — their family might have made enough money in the retail store to send them off to college, and then those people are tending to work in different kinds of jobs than in retail.

Josh: Then, what distinguishes the Andres family from many other families in Dallas, but not all of them, is that they were part of The Workers Circle. They were part of The Arbeter Ring, and that meant, especially for Chaya Rochel and for Harry, a commitment to Yiddish language and some sort of commitment to radical or progressive politics. So she writes about hosting an event for the 1948 Henry Wallace campaign. Henry Wallace was running for President as the candidate of the Progressive Party, and this was really a — you know — left wing or progressive, third-party candidate, who was specifically running an integrated campaign. Henry Wallace was running on a campaign of, you know, desegregation, and Chaya Rochel writes about having African American attendees at this event. And that would've been somewhat unusual, I think, in Dallas at that time. It would've been somewhat unusual for someone living in a white, affluent Dallas neighborhood to host a political event and also invite African American supporters of the candidate to their home.

So I've written about this particular poem called “The New Life,” — “Dos Naye Lebn” – where she really seems to be expressing ambivalence about perhaps the ease of American life in her later years.

Actor: If you look at things frivolously,

And take everything in fun,

Your life will become mundane,

You’ll be among the tedious ones…

You scarcely wish to revive your world,

And you’ve spotted a ray of light?

Strive for sun and brightness,

Block the way to injustice and suffering

Days and years pass by,

springs, summers, falls and winters...

You encounter many thorns on the way,

If you triumph, you remain chipper,

And you don’t fall down.

If ever your heart should pump

With freshly boiling blood —

Thoughts swim in the depths

Let loose your outcry —

It will be good for your health

Don’t get bored, and don’t be surprised

That time passes by too quick

Grasp the song of eternity

In the trill of a whistling bird

Time moves to difference,

Fit yourself in a frame...

You’ve lived stubbornly long enough,

You too will be swept downstream!...

We hear text of the poem spoken in Yiddish.

Josh: She does choose to publish things bilingually, so she recognizes that making it bilingual, that employing a translator, will improve the likelihood that these will be read and looked at and useful to future generations. But she's not willing to give up on writing in Yiddish as her first language. It’s the language that she writes in, and that's significant, and, again, reflects its centrality in her life, reflects its centrality in her relationship to her husband, as well as her deceased family. That commitment, I think, is really — is important and is a real important factor of what she's writing and why she's doing it.

Chaya Rochel: I tell my youngest granddaughter, who is very bright — I tell her that I'm not going to write to you about beautiful skies and beautiful flowers, beautiful birds, and beautiful poetry about nature. I'm going to write to you something about children, poor children who are standing on their threshold with their hands stretched out, begging for a piece of stale bread. To notice those things —

Actor: Press your little head to me,

And listen to my modest plea: –

Not of little birds aloft –

Nor of pretty blooms, or sweet scents they waft,

While I sing my song to you now....

Listen, my child, so its meaning you'll follow: —

Yonder, on tiny streets, wet... quagmired –

On threshold of each house there stands

With staring, hungry eyes – a child,

With small, skeleton hands....

Unashamed... ragged...

Begging... with arms outstretched...

For stale crusts of bread....

Children who have not been fated

With the fruits of the earth to be sated...

So they suffer –

Hungry and affronted....

And we, my child, are plagued by conscience....

Wonder if the world will note their presence?

Will their hunger pangs be eased?

Will there be an end to children's graves, or children's caves?

Will a sunny radiance ever be reached?

•••

Aaron: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Dybbukast, “Years Have Sped By”. Chaya Rochel’s poems were read by actor Julie Lockhart. The readings in Yiddish were performed by Miri Koral, the CEO and Founding Director of the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language. Thank you to Dr. Josh Parshall and Nora Katz for sharing their insights. Thank you to the Dallas Jewish Historical Society for granting permission to use the 1981 interview featuring Chaya Rochel Andres. Thanks also to Chaya Rochel’s family for all their support, and we are especially grateful to her granddaughter, Rachel Andres. Most of the poems featured in this episode were translated by Yudel Cohen. “The New Life” was translated by Dr. Josh Parshall, with assistance of the editors at In geveb: a Journal of Yiddish Studies, which published it. 

Our theme music is composed by Michael Skloff and produced by Sam K.S. Story editing on this episode was led by Clay Steakley and Julie Lockhart, with support from me, Aaron Henne. This episode was edited by Mark McClain Wilson. Please visit us at theatredybbuk.org, where you will find links to a wide variety of materials, which expand upon the episode's explorations. And if you want to know more about theatre dybbuk's work in general, please sign up for our mailing list on that same website on the contact page.

This season is generously supported by a grant from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. And this episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. This episode was presented in collaboration with the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Information about that organization and its programs can be found at isjl.org. The Dybbukast is produced by theatre dybbuk.

•••

Actor: Where do the years vanish?

Where do swiftly fly the days?

Can years merely wander afar...

Or be retained at a distant shore?...

Does life stretch, like the longest span?

Do the years in circles turn?

Still...our lives are with years laden...

What’s once passed, can no longer return…

Now it comes to mind,

That to stride back is an impossibility...

What’s gone – toss like feathers to the wind...

Utilize your creative powers fully…

Do not carry your deeds to the great beyond...

In this world, see that humanity its bounty gets...

Make of life what is righteous and good...

Give it thought, and by all means – a precedent set!...

While our life is heavily overladen, —

And our years do not in circles turn,

Life stretches like the longest span...

What has once gone — will never more return!