{"id":28268,"date":"2020-12-09T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=28268"},"modified":"2020-12-09T16:25:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T21:25:56","slug":"max","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/09\/max\/","title":{"rendered":"MAX"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Max Burstyn <\/span><\/span><\/strong>lived<\/span><\/span>\u00a0in the Jewish highlands on the other side of the public park from me. No flooding in the highlands, and 99-percent yidlach<\/em>. Max spoke English, Yiddish and German. Max was born in Munich and came to America as a baby in the 1950s. His dad was a Galitzianer<\/em> from Krakow.<\/p>\n

\"Max

Max Burstyn, 1969<\/p><\/div>\n

I played tennis with Max in the park. That\u2019s where we met. Max still rants about my neighborhood — the lowlands, the other side of park. He says, \u201cYou lived with the goys<\/i> — like Stropki. I played Pony League with him. There were about eight Stropkis. What about Bobrowski? He was a Catholic too. Went to St. Joe\u2019s. He played third-string for the Browns. He was from your street. There was Mastrobuono. He had a funny walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Max was a mischling ersten grades<\/em>, self-described. (First-degree mixed race.) That\u2019s a Nazi term, but Max used it — at least around me. Max\u2019s mother was a German gentile. Max’s father and mother met in Germany after the war. Max was halachically converted as a baby.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Max knows<\/strong><\/span> some strange Yiddish words. He mentions kudraychik —<\/em> a swindler. I can\u2019t find that in the dictionary. It\u2019s probably Slavic, not Yiddish. Max says, \u201cThere was a kudraychik<\/em>, a Jewish barber, in the occupied zone after the war . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

You don’t hear that kind of language, except around Max.<\/p>\n

A groysn dank<\/em>, Max.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Check out my essay, “Some Acts of God Are Better Than Others,” in the Wall Street Journal<\/em> (12\/3\/20). The link, <\/a>here<\/a>, takes you over the WSJ paywall.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Burstyn lived\u00a0in the Jewish highlands on the other side of the public park from me. No flooding in the highlands, and 99-percent yidlach. Max spoke English, Yiddish and German. Max was born in Munich and came to America as a baby in the 1950s. His dad was a Galitzianer from Krakow. I played tennis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28268"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28404,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268\/revisions\/28404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}