Aaron Lansky: The 'yungerman' who outwitted history and saved a civilization one book at a time
By Judy Polan 

 "No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life."  - Schmuel Gelbfisz (also known as Sam Goldwyn), Hollywood film mogul

Oct 8, 2004 - Aaron Lansky, 49-year-old founder of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, has kept the once-flickering flame of Eastern European Jewish culture burning brightly in America and throughout the world for more than 25 years, while projecting boundless good humor, chutzpah, and an almost elfin lightness of being. 
In his just-released book "Outwitting History: How One Man Rescued a Million Books and Saved a Civilization" (Algonquin Books, 2004) he chronicles - in cinematic prose that reads like an adventure saga - his quest to document the vanishing Yiddish culture of the shtetl, and to make it relevant and accessible to generations to come.
Critics across the country are already kvelling about "Outwitting History." Author Jonathan Rosen, author of "Joy Comes in the Morning," and "The Talmud and the Internet," enthused, "This is more than a fascinating account of how an institution can rise from the ruins. It is a love story about a man smitten with a whole culture, an inspiring tale of American optimism wedded to the Yiddish past." Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's "Morning Edition," wrote, "This against-all-odds story is engaging and surprising, culturally significant and a whole lot of fun. Aaron Lansky, who lived it, tells it beautifully."
As an undergraduate at Hampshire College, Lansky studied Yiddish under the demanding tutelage of Jules Piccus, a University of Massachusetts professor of medieval Spanish literature who had spoken Yiddish when he was growing up in Brooklyn. Lansky became painfully aware of how difficult it was to find the books he needed to complete his reading assignments. Along with a small group of friends, he spent a good deal of time trying to track down precious literary works by Shalom Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Avrom Sutzkever, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many other notable authors, and scouting out Yiddish books in sagging attics and creaky apartment buildings on New York‘s Lower East Side.
He set about making contacts in the city by sitting down for a meal at one of the Lower East Side's legendary eating establishments. 
"Right next to the 10-story Forward building was the Garden Cafeteria, a culinary landmark where Yiddish writers, intellectuals, shopkeepers, and workers had been coming for years to farbrengen -- to eat, talk, and argue. Hands were waving, fingers pointing, sentences punctuated with heaping spoonfuls of sour cream... Figuring that someone among all those elderly Jews would know where we could find some Yiddish books, we opened the door and stepped inside... We were 50 years too young, we spoke English, and every one of us sported long hair and jeans." 
The limited success and somewhat startling results of this encounter are hilariously described in a chapter called "Come Back After Yontef!"
Lansky was a 23-year-old graduate student in Eastern European Jewish Studies at McGill University when he had an epiphany: the alarming realization that throughout North America, thousands of priceless, irreplaceable Yiddish books - books that had survived Hitler and Stalin - were being discarded and destroyed. He feared that an entire culture was on the verge of extinction, and felt an urgent responsibility to save these books before it was too late. With the full support of his mentor, preeminent Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse, he took what he thought would be a two-year leave of absence from graduate school, to "save the Yiddish books of the world."
Lansky's prodigious anecdotes recounting his book-rescue mission alternate between the achingly poignant and knee-slappingly hilarious. In one of the first such episodes, Mr. Temmelman of Atlantic City, N.J., waited in the lobby of his apartment building for five hours, for a noon appointment, because "I didn't want I should miss you." Lansky quickly realized that Temmelman "was handing me not merely his books but his world, his yerushe, the inheritance his own children had rejected. I was a stranger, but he had no other choice: Book by book, he was placing all his hopes in me. We were enacting a ritual of cultural transmission."
Other neighbors appeared unexpectedly to give books to the yungerman (young man), smiling and clapping their hands, emerging from their apartments with overflowing shopping bags, cardboard boxes, wicker baskets, and suitcases. 
Lansky quickly decided that the book pickup expeditions must be done in groups of three - two people to schlep and one to be the "designated eater." Everywhere he went, he was plied with an overwhelming amount of food - a glezele tey (glass of hot tea), homemade cookies, lokshn kuglekh (noodle puddings), Entenmann's cakes, kasha varnishkes, blintzes and sour cream, potato latkes, and "a little something extra for the drive home." Eventually he learned to pack a travel kit consisting of Ben Gay ointment and Ace bandages for the schleppers, and Tums and Alka Seltzer for the designated eater.
Although Lansky's story has been widely profiled in the media, he "understood immediately, despite my naivete when I first started out" that some day he would write his own book about his experiences. Early on, he began carrying around a portable tape recorder, propping it up "against a jar of gefilte fish, or whatever I could find," and - with permission - recording the stories with which people were regaling him as they entrusted him with their cherished books.
Along the way he met and befriended not only extraordinary unknown people, but also relatives of several celebrities, like Abbie Hoffman's mother, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg's stepmother, who remarked "Kerouac couldn't get enough of my flanken (stewed meat)!" He developed a warm working relationship with Marjorie Guthrie, a former professional dancer who is the widow of legendary folk singer Woody, mother of Arlo, and daughter of acclaimed Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt. Arlo, who lives in Western Mass., eventually contacted Lansky to find a Yiddish tutor. "Only in America!" writes Lansky.
In 1997, the National Yiddish Book Center opened its stunning, multi-million dollar permanent home on the Hampshire College campus, Its expanding collection previously having been warehoused in seven different rented or borrowed buildings - including a former roller rink and a defunct shopping mall. Though it may seem strange to some people that such an institution would be located at the edge of an apple orchard in bucolic Western Massachusetts - as opposed to a more urban landscape like Brooklyn or Manhattan - Lansky sees this as a very distinctive and positive aspect of his organization. He followed the astute advice of Ruth Wisse, his mentor at McGill, who urged that he establish the Center in a "Jewishly neutral" location - meaning a place free from the contentious politics of New York's Jewish institutional world and the rancorous environment of its Yiddish-speaking community in particular. 
"Sometimes," he sighs, "I look longingly at the size of the crowds who show up at Jewish cultural events in New York, but then I come home and realize that it is very liberating and refreshing to be in Amherst, in this beautiful spot. I'm glad we're here - Jewish identity is taken much less for granted here than it is in New York, and we have really put ourselves on the Yiddish map." 
He adds, "You should see the way this place is hopping on Christmas Day, when we schedule Jewish activities all day long, for people of all ages. It's better than a Chinese restaurant!"
Indeed, the National Yiddish Book Center - with its airy and welcoming architecture, one-of-a-kind library, magnificent performance space, extensive museum displays, and unique art exhibits - has become a destination for visitors and scholars from all over the world.
And so the once-bedraggled yungerman who started out in blue jeans, driving a dented truck, went on to organize a ragtag army of about 200 zamlers (volunteer book collectors) who came forth from across the country - Martha's Vineyard to Nome, Alaska. He defied the conventional wisdom proffered by many major Jewish organizations that "Yiddish is dead," won a prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, rescued 1.5 million priceless Yiddish volumes, partnered with Steven Spielberg to create a 14,000 title digital Yiddish Book Collection; and founded one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic Jewish cultural institutions in the world. In a life story as improbable as any of those chronicled in the beloved Yiddish tales of our ancestors, Lansky has become an integral part of the history and Jewish civilization that he succeeded in saving - one book at a time.
 
Judy Polan is an arts and features writer, chanteuse, music educator, and radio humor essayist for WAMC/Northeast Public Radio's show "Roundtable." She can be contacted via her Web site, www.judypolan.com © Judy Polan 2004