Hello Joan!  I like that about Napoleon renewing Europe, restoring youth and energy -- it seems true.  He definitely inspired so many young men, even those who also felt disappointed in him like Beethoven and Pushkin.  Coulaincourt says Napoleon shocked him once.  After a battle he was walking over the field strewn with bodies.  He says Napoleon's entire staff, hardened soldiers all, felt sickened and ashamed by the slaughter around them.  Napoleon looked at them with amusement, and quoted the Roman saying, "There is no more beautiful sight than that of one's dead enemies."  Coulaincourt realized that Napoleon was cut of a different cloth than most of humanity.  Throughout the Russian expedition, in the midst of all the suffering, Napoleon showed no sign of compassion for the soldiers, just worry about the deteriorating situation.  I don't suppose lovingkindness is a proper quality in a military commander.
Newt reminds me of Napoleon a little -- a belief in his own destiny, fascination with himself and his own brilliance, willingness to shift whenever the winds of change require it.  It makes for an attractive personality, full of energy and surprises, even amusement, while remaining somewhat strange for people outside the immediate charm of his presence.
Does the Takacz measure up to the Guarneri?
My lovely atheistic and revolutionary Tsar, Alexander I, has fallen under the influence of a Christian mystic and now renounces his entire past, a prey to the superstition that upended the dynasty in Nicholas II.  Too bad; I imagine the strain of his reign, which began with patricide and went on to many years of war, was too much.  I hadn't realized how difficult the final defeat of Napoleon was after the Russian expedition -- Napoleon still raised several hundred troops, and only Alexander's firm resolve to defeat him and strategic gifts made it possible.  After the last battle, when Napoleon defeated a cavalry detachment but found it was not the advance guard of the main army but a diversion that opened the road to Paris to the Coalition, he said, "I would not have thought such a trick possible for their generals."  It was Alexander's idea.  Take care, Sidney

More dolphins

Hello Joan!  It's been many years since I listened to Toscanini; I remember I found his tempos "off" for some reason, too drawn out in the slow parts and too fast in the fast ones.
Napoleon is a riddle for me as well.  I sympathize with his projects, but he was clearly a monster of ego -- that comes out in all the writings about him.  At some point he decided that the only way to bring stability to French politics was to imitate Louis XIV and establish a court with all of Louis' formality.  This was largely successful, but the price was giving up many of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution.  We have to keep in mind the incredible difficulty of governing a country of such vanity as France.
Noah and Rivka are in 7th and 5th grades.  They don't have any extracurricular activities -- Noah loves video games and Rivka chatting on Skype with her friends at the computer.  They abhor the things Carolyn and I like to do -- going on hikes, visiting museums, so it's a challenge to keep them busy over the holidays.  Today Carolyn took them bowling while I work and bought them some hamsters, "Cookie" and "Skiddles."  They're both nice, affectionate children, and seem to be improving steadily in consideration for others and taking responsibility for their actions.  I'd like to inspire them with love for some activity, but don't believe in forcing them to do things they don't want to.  Noah was great at musical theater, but finds the practices boring (I agree); Rivka played clarinet for a while but says it hurts her mouth.  I haven't insisted that they continue.
The dolphins just seem to ooze affection and love for their trainers; maybe it's the smile frozen on their mouth by the shape of their jaws.  Still, I like to think that the love we experience is not our own creation, but a piece of a great cosmic love pervading the universe.  Since love just comes over me like an irresistible force, it seems reasonable to believe that it has its origin somewhere beyond myself, and that I'm part of a great system based on love.  It's a nice, comforting thought, and a reasonable one I think.  Take care, Sidney

Dolphins

Hello Joan!  The Takacs is the only recording l have of the Razumovsky quartets -- I like it a lot but can't compare it to other ones.  I almost always like recordings by anyone, even the most obscure performers, since even their technical ability astounds me.  The only conductor I never liked was Toscanini, I don't know why.  Michael Tilson Thomas here in San Francisco I sometimes find overblown, too loud and showy.  I've noticed that the recordings I listen to on our local classical station, KDFC, sound really superb these days, with many new and interesting interpretations of the classics.  I wonder whether the technology of recording has improved -- every instrument sounds so clear and distinct in its unique tone.
The story of Alexander I is engrossing -- such lows and highs, such a gulf between his well-developed democratic beliefs and his career as a victorious autocrat.  I had wondered why Napoleon retreated through the same devastated country he had advanced through, and consequently starved his troops.  Troyat loves Kutuzov, and says he blocked Napoleon from using his intended retreat route to the south with a battle at Maloyaroslavl, and cleverly forced him into his disastrous choice of route.
We had a great day at the Six Flags amusement park yesterday.  Rivka and I went on our highest roller coaster yet, terrifying and exhiliarating.  We watched a wonderful dolphin show -- dolphins really are the tenderest, most attractive creatures.  To see love and joy expressed in animals so different from us in form is inspiring.  Take care, Sidney

Troyat

Hello Joan! Good to hear from you -- I've been wondering how you are. I like your characterization of Jane Austen's writings -- it seems very true and insightful. I suppose that society became more individualistic later, so the often tenuous bonds that tie it together became less of a focus for writers. I've been trapped for some time in the works of Henri Troyat, an unfortunately prolific French writer of Russian descent and interest. He has written the life of every Tsar -- I've read Paul, Nicholas the First and Second, and Alexander the Second, all in Russian translation (our library doesn't have the original French). Now I'm on Alexander the First, and looking at the Third and Peter the Great which are awaiting me. They take a long time to read, but I find the grand sweep of the empire and the fateful string of events irresistable. It could have turned out differently at many points, but the luck wasn't good. The assassination of Alexander the Second, the Liberator, was really the worst piece of bad luck. He escaped the first bomb thrown at him, which killed several of his entourage, but he wanted to speak to the assailant on the spot, which gave his accomplice the opportunity to throw a second bomb at short range.
I'm listening to a lot of Bernstein lately, especially his songs. He is a congenial voice to me, of similar background (American Jewish), which I suppose brings his music close to me. I read delightful book on our current financial state, Boomerang by Michael Lewis. He's very funny and makes the innumerable economic errors the result of natural human biases. I'm also reading a book on symbolic logic by Douglas Hofstadter. Not much time for other books with all this, plus the entire New York Times every day!
Take care and keep writing!

Hello! I hear you're over the flu and like your job a lot -- great news. We had a very fun Thanksgiving vacation here in S.F. Mom made a great Thanksgiving dinner for our family, Ron Migdal, Marsha Fine and our best friends, the Bibliowicz family from Columbia, whose son Gabriel is Noah's constant companion from Hebrew School and Claire Lilienthal. The pumpkin pie and stuffing were especially good.
On Friday I got up at 4 a.m. (my usual time to wake up) and went to Best Buy and Office Depot where the old Sears used to be to buy things for Black Friday. I got the new laptop I saw advertised, a video game for Noah, and a camera. The person I was standing in line next to had purchased a "netbook" (small laptop) and some earbuds that were 70% off, so afterwards I went back and bought those too. The netbook -- earbud combination is wonderful. I read the lives of composers in the evening, and when the author speaks about a great piece I don't know I go to Youtube and listen to it on the netbook; the music sounds terrific with good earbuds. So we're continuing to mount up to cyber heaven.
Friday night was a reunion and Friday night service for Camp Tawonga, and Rivka saw the boy she likes, Ben, for the first time since camp. Unfortunately she didn't go up and say hello to him; he was talking with a friend. Maybe she's a little shy.
On Saturday we went to the Scandia Family Fun Fair in Fairfield with the Bibliowiczes, and had a fine time. They have gocarts to race with, lazer tag, miniature golf, and boats with squirt guns attached. Naturally the kids enjoyed it, and I liked racing the carts that go pretty fast -- you have to turn your whole body around to make the sharp turns on the course.
Yesterday we went to the annual Dickens Fair for the first time. The people who had the original idea for the Renaissance Faire many years ago (remember it?) have been putting on this one every Christmas time, and since Noah loves the Renaissance Faire (under new management), we thought he'd like this and learn some history about Victorian times in London. Many people walk around in Victorian costumes -- quite elaborate, as soldiers, drunks, fine ladies -- and there are many stages with plays of all kinds. The best were dancing demonstrations of cotillions, waltzes, etc. by dancers in costume, and my favorite an opera house with a performance of the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan and other opera arias. I just love opera singing, so I was in heaven. It's happening to Neal Bertram too -- he's completely given himself over to music, like me. Must have to do with aging.
I heard it was 70 degrees last week in N.Y. Enjoy the nice weather, and take care! Sidney

Ben Stiegler

Hello Ben!  It certainly is remarkable, our parallel lives.  I met my wife Carolyn Glaser in the Jewish Singles Hiking Club as well.  My children are in a Korean immersion program in a public school in S.F., Claire Lilienthal, which has given me license to indulge in my favorite pastime, learning languages.  When my children were in preschool at Beth Sholom I started relearning Hebrew from my childhood.   I read an Israeli magazine, Laisha, cover to cover for a year until my Hebrew got good enough to read novels and histories -- a great time.  Then I switched to Korean for several years, and now I'm reading mostly in Russian (except for science books which I read in English) -- there's a large Russian population among the users of the JCC  I enjoy interacting with, and Russian literature is of course tremendous.  Being a librarian is a good match for someone whose interests are all over the map like me.  Nothing beats fatherhood, though!  I always admired and envied your technical insights and ability.  Take care, Sidney

The Mating Mind

My favorite line from Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind -- It was bad enough to replace an omniscient creator with Nature, but to replace Him with the pebble-sized brains of invertebrates lusting after one another, that was scandalous! (On why Darwin's favorite theory of Sexual Selection did not catch on after his death.)

Troyat and Stendhal

Good to hear from you.  I know what it's like to get lost in an author -- I was too in Stendhal for about a year soon after college.  I read his two great novels, but my favorite book of his was his Life of Rossini.  It is great fun and quite wise about music.  The people who fascinate Stendhal -- young up-and-comers full of ambition -- are so different from me that while I admire his writing and insights, they don't touch me very directly.  You can't beat him for an understanding of a time and place.
Yes, I'm reading Troyat in Russian -- they don't have him in French in our library here.  The translations are very good, the Russians here agree, so I'm quite happy with them.  He's the best introduction to Russian history I've come across -- a light touch and no heavy axes to grind.  He's interested in the personalities of the individual Czars, which makes it interesting and easy to follow.  The Russians have an enormous number of biographies of literary figures like Pushkin for young readers (to inculcate them with a love for literature), which I enjoy a lot.  I seem to like simple, straightforward writing with a focus on an individual hero, his or her choices and destiny.  I loved the Harry Potter books.
Someone recommended the history Niall Ferguson to me, and I've started his works.  Since I loved the conservative historian Paul Johnson I thought I would like Ferguson too.  He's very interesting but doesn't write as well as Johnson.  I'm halfway into Fukuyama's latest book on the Origins of Political Order, but have found it rather heavy going.  So that's it!  Take care, Sidney

Hello Nina!  I had dinner at a friend's this weekend with Rabbi Fisdel -- I love the way he combines complete down-to-earthiness with high theological experience.  He was the manager of an army surplus store in Chicago which was across the street from the law firm I worked in during the 80s; I used to wander into it from time to time.  We have pretty different theological perspectives, I think.  I told the story at dinner how the most wonderful discovery for me was "Anatman," the Buddhist teaching that we don't in fact have an "Atman," the Hindu word for "soul."  The Buddhists teach long, delicate introspection during meditation to look for one's inmost soul -- the final, last discovery on this quest is that we don't have one.  We're just a hodge-podge, an agglomeration of ingredients of the whole rest of the universe.  At first this seems deflating, but actually it's inspiring and wonderful -- we don't have to worry what will happen to our souls when we die (there's no such thing), and we lose every vestige of individuality and can merge with the whole universe.  Rabbi Fisdel seemed sceptical about this idea.  I was amazed that such a subversive, radical, "modern" idea could form the core of Buddhism, such an ancient and venerable tradition.  I have the same reaction when I read Maimonides.  Take care, Sidney

The Mating Mind

Hello Diego!  I've been wondering how the semester has been going for you.  Are the trees at their most colorful now?  I always miss the East during this time.
 I'm reading a very delightful book called "The Mating Mind" by Geoffrey Miller.  It's an argument, easy to make, that the human mind developed through Sexual Selection -- by people choosing mates who they found witty and intelligent over thousands of years.  He's witty himself and quite funny.  His metaphor for the mind is not a blank slate, a computer, or a hydraulic system under pressure (Freud), but an Entertainment System.  Just like peacocks' tails have grown to be extravagant to advertise overall fitness even with a handicap, so our minds are given to extravagant fantasy and wasteful artistic activities to advertise to the opposite sex our fitness.  It seems a sensible blending of psychology and biology.

Balzac

Hello Peter!  I hope Alex wasn't too disappointed when the Yankees lost the series to the Tigers.  Was Alex Rodriguez, the fellow who struck out twice, one of his heroes?  I've started a Pilates program in the hope of holding myself up more straight -- I do feel "aligned" a little more upright than before.  I've finally gotten a hold from my parents of Francis Fukuyama's book on the Origins of Political Order, which I'm just starting.  Otherwise it's been a long biography of Honore de Balzac -- his family was just as difficult as the characters he protrays in his novels, and accounts for some of his cynicism about society.  He tried writing high-flown plays in Alexandrine couplets, which no one liked, until he got a job producing trashy romances under pseudonyms.  These taught him the rudiments of novel-writing, and then he became a success.  Take care, Sidney

=

Renaissance

Hello Peter!  I'm impressed that you figured out what that passage means; I can't quite get my mind around it.  It's a good message in any case.  That meeting between us in Hendy Woods will go down in the annals of my family as a wondrous event -- what were the chances of your cousin taking you to Hendy Woods of all places, and of us choosing to look for blackberries so late in the day at exactly that place?  Did you suggest a trip to Hendy Woods because you knew that we would be there?  I assume that you didn't because the name wouldn't stick in your memory, it being so far away. 
Noah's enthusiasm for the Giants was red hot for a few days after the game -- he wore his Ross the Boss shirt everywhere, but by now it's waned.  His new love is Cesare Borgia and the Italian Renaissance, which he is studying at school, and a video game called "Assassin's Creed" in which Borgia and Machiavelli are prominent characters.  He wants to visit Rome now, which would be an excellent idea to foster his love for history.  We're trying to find ways to do that over Christmas or during the summer that won't break the bank.   We visited the local Renaissance Faire yesterday and had a great time.  They have real jousts with horsemen in armor and with lances; Noah and his friend took a fencing course on the longsword.
A car ran a stop sign and hit my bike today during a long bike ride through the city to visit the last remaining Borders store before it closes and buy some mangos at my favorite Mexican produce store.  I'm fine but the bike's wheel is a bit bent.  Take care, Sidney

Hello Peter!  I hope you had a pleasant trip back, and an easier time returning than coming out here.  That was amazing see you at Hendy Woods State Park; no one can believe it here.  My father tells that the Giants game after the one we saw together, when Lincecom was pitching, was miserable -- the Giants got only one run and were trounced; that's the kind of game that's no fun to watch, when your team is behind by a lot the whole time and has little chance of winning.  That should console Alex on not seeing Lincecum pitch! 
The next day after our meeting we went to a series of holiday fairs up and down the Mendocino coast.  At the last one, on the way back, the tiny town of Yorkville has a fair we go to every year to raise money for their volunteer fire department to buy a new fire truck.  After all this time, they're still raising money to buy the truck; I suppose it takes a lot of bake sales to buy a fire engine.  At this one on Labor Day we won a huge lemon cake at the cake walk -- Carolyn is taking the remainder if to work to put out for her fellow teachers, and I found Cross's Encyclopedia of Music in two volumes and an old British trot for Aristophanes' plays, by Frere I think.  I remember liking the trots used by British schoolboys to cheat during their Greek classes for their accuracy, so that was a great find.  I also love Milton Cross's writing on great composers -- do you know him?

Thoughts on reading

I haven't scanned my thesis into a digital format; that's a good idea so I can send you a copy via email.  Your knowledge of Italian grammar is impressive; I get along in Russian without even being able often to distinguish dative from accusative, let alone recognizing different shades of the subjunctive.  I just try to guess the meaning of the sentence by context (not always successfully).  I regard my reading of some difficult languages as an active, interactive process -- the author supplying some of the meaning, and me the rest!  It frees up the imagination, while losing much of the author's original intent. For example, in the biography I just read of Pushkin's wife Natalie, the author referred to her ancestral home which welcomed Pushkin as the "Cotton Factory."  A sly name, I thought, referring to the many children Pushkin sired there amidst the sheets, but a few sentences later the author explained that Natalie's grandfather had built a factory there that made the sails for Peter the Great's fleet.  I got to enjoy my own pun in a way I wouldn't have had I been reading in English. 
I keep on meaning to review Russian grammar, but it doesn't hold my interest compared to the long list of fascinating books waiting to be read.  I've just started a biography of Potemkin, an amazing character in Russian history.
I read some of Lolita in English a long time ago; I remember being just in awe of the language, which I found to be the most gorgeous English I had ever read, but not being so impressed by the story itself or the ideas.  I think he's an author I have to read in English; the Russian would be just too hard.

Article about me in Novaya Zhizn, the JCCSF Russian newspaper

Here is my translation of an article on me that appeared in the May, 2011 edition of the Russian language monthly newspaper of the JCCSF, where I work, called 'Novaya Zhizn."

-------Sidney Keith – Librarian and Polyglot

A graduate of Yale University, holder of a doctorate from the University of Toronto and a doctor of law from the University of Chicago. He has been a schoolteacher and a university lecturer, worked as a lawyer; he has lived in different countries; he reads in a dozen languages. You can imagine how surprised the workers at the Jewish library were when they received his resume. Sidney Keith considers the position of a librarian to be ideal – here he can read himself and help others who love to read. You certainly have seen Sidney Keith at the JCC. He sits next to a modest cart of books, sometimes in the JCCSF Atrium, sometimes in the “Beit Midrash” on the second floor, and if there are no readers, he reads. Curious people are interested what is in Sidney's hands this time, and now there is a surprise – for the last few months Sidney has been reading in Russian. Hearing from Russian clients how antisemitic Gogol was, Sidney decided to find out for himself, and he mastered volumes of Gogol. Now he is one of his favorite authors. In just the same way he decided to find out how another well-known Russian writer – Solzhenitsyn, would fare in this matter when he wrote his “Two Hundred Years Together” (a history of Russian-Jewish relations). Sidney again marshaled his imposing Russian-English dictionary, and read through the Solzhenitsyn. Lately, what can be discovered on Sidney's table – “Yevgeny Onegin” (by Pushkin). With this very “Yevgeny Onegin” he appears in the photograph. True, sometimes Sidney looks at a translation, made by Nabokov. And he has also read Nabokov's lengthy commentary on the work.
How can one not ask Sidney Keith, how and why he began to study the Russian language? Sometimes he refers to his Russian grandmother, sometimes to his interest in foreign languages in general. Today Sidney will answer a few questions about himself, his family, and how he came to become a polyglot. However, you can pose Sidney Keith your own questions. Just go up to him and greet him in Russian. He will adjust his glasses, smile and somewhat ceremoniously interest himself in you – “What can I do for you?” (in Russian).

Russian Grandmother from Kishinev and other Forebears

Sidney's Russian grandmother was named Rivka. She was born in Jewish Kishinev family at the end o the 19th century. Thus her sharpest memories of her childhood were linked with one of the Kishinev pogroms. She remembered, how the streets in Kishinev ran red with blood. A friend of her father's was killed. They were waiting for the worst … Her father put the family in a wagon and they left the city. When they had gone as far as the suburbs, it became evident that Cossacks were pursuing them. The horses pulled as strongly as they could, but the Cossacks overtook them. “Turn around! We are here to escort you to town; you will be safe there. We have received orders to take the Jews under protection,” boomed the voice of the Cossack elder. The wagon turned back, back to Kishinev.
The grandmother's father couldn't adapt to the constant surprises of his life. His grandmother's stories about her father's life were like frightening legends to Sidney. One night, when his great-grandfather was returning to Kishinev, bandits stopped him. They didn't give him the choice “Your money or your life,” so that he understood, that he should prepare himself for the worst. “Let me get ready for death,” the unhappy one pleaded. They conferred, vacillated, and agreed. The great-grandfather put on his Tallis and pronounced the first words of the prayer “Shma Yisroel.” “He is calling the devil on us” the leader cried. There was commotion and clattering – and suddenly the poor victim alone on the road all by himself, finding his miraculous salvation hard to believe.
The grandmother came to America in 1910. She was then 16 years old.
It can be said that Sidney's maternal grandfather was also “Russian.” He was born in Palestine, in the little village of Rosh Pina not far from Sfad. His father had come there with other young Eastern European enthusiasts with the intention of living in the land of their ancestors. He married a Sephardic girl, and they had children. But after a series of terrible epidemics of malaria the family decided to move to the New World. The journey was long and indirect – through Brazil. “So now I have relatives in Brazil. They former cultural attache from Brazil was a relative,” smiled Sidney. Now the fact that Sidney has taken up the Portugese language seems completely natural.
My grandmother and grandfather met in Colorado, got married, started a family. Pueblo was quite a prosperous little town, when it suffered one of the most catastrophic floods of the 20th century. In this flood the entire lower part of the town was washed away. My grandmother was saved then by a miracle. On that Friday she was sitting in the reception area of her dentist, whose office was destined to disappear within an hour. The doctor could not finish with the previous patient, and my grandmother realized that if she waited any longer, she would miss the right time to light the Sabbath candles. She asked to postpone the appointment to Monday and left for home. A pain in her tooth was not sufficient reason, to violate the Sabbath …
My daughter is named Rivka – in honor of my grandmother, her great-grandmother, my mother's mother.
Sidney's Russian grandmother from Kishinev spoke Yiddish. When she spoke English, she would introduce Yiddish words and expressions. She used isolated Russian words as well, of course.

Jews in the “Wild” and civilized West

“My father,” explained Sidney Keith, is an offspring of the “western” Jews.
People don't realize that at the era of the Frontier and the time of the “Gold Fever, the Jews here in the West were quite numerous. When you watch Westerns, they show the lively little towns of the “Wild West,” and without fail an attribute of such towns are the stores which sell everything to everyone. The owners of these stores, not even speaking of the peddlers on the streets, were in large part Jews – recent immigrants. Eastern European Jews were especially suited to trade as peddlers. In these circumstances this was a valuable skill. The occupation with trading did not prevent my father's predecessors from studying Talmud diligently. My great-grandfather was a serious and honored student of Talmud. He was from a family of Lithuanian-Latvian rabbis.
My grandfather firmly did not want to be a Talmudist. And he didn't want to be a “Litvak” at all. Sidney knows precisely how the offspring of an honored rabbinic family got such an unjewish last name:
One fine day my grandfather Moishe Shoichet became Jimmy Keith. He took the name ”Jimmy” as a real American one, and the last name shone out from the name of one of the movie studios – Radio Keith Orpheum. That sounded chic in American English.
Sidney explains his interest in foreign languages as due to the fact that he grew up in California, where there are so many languages, which are so tempting to try out and taste, although one of them has proved resistant:
I also am a “Western” Jew. I grew up in San Francisco. I went to the same school as my father. Now my children also study there. It is called Claire Lilienthal Elementary School. The school is not far from the Korean consulate. I then adored everything Japanese, and Korean is a very closely related language. I decided that I had to study.Korean. I graduated George Washington High School, where I began French …

Languages in which I have been interested

In Soviet life we rarely came across polyglots. In the USSR an interest in foreign languages was a completely dubious merit. Only the phrase “knowing German with a dictionary” did not particularly raise suspicion. But look – Sidney has mastered with a dictionary a good dozen languages, and he is entirely capable of becoming acquainted with the texts of ideological opponents.
Languages have always attracted me. From my grandmother's Yiddish I took a delight in the ability to express the same thing in different ways, in different languages. On Sundays I went to synagogue Beth Sholom. Part of Jewish education there was the study of Hebrew. It seemed as though I was the only student who was genuinely interested in Hebrew. The rest of the kids couldn't abide it. I threw myself into the study of new languages. I could never stop. Afterward came Italian, Portuguese, German, Latin. For my Ph.D. A the University of Toronto I specialized in “ancient political philosophy,” so I had to know Greek reasonably well in order to read Herodotus...
I graduated from the law school of the University of Chicago, but the language of the law didn't seem so interesting to me. I sat in an office of a law firm, read tax law and thought how interesting it would be to use my time studying Slavic languages, Russian for example. In 1991 I received an offer to teach law in Eastern Europe, in Prague. I spent two years there. It was a marvelous time, although the Russian language wasn't of much use there. But I came back to it after my trip.
Sidney Keith maintains that learning new languages is not complicated at all. To the question, how he goes about studying them, he enthusiastically described his simple method.
To start I get a self-study book and try to understand the grammatical structure of the language. Then I get a simple children's book and a dictionary. The most important thing is that the little book be interesting.. I don't like to be bored. I can guess at the meaning of some words, and for others I look at the dictionary. After I have looked up a word twelve times in the dictionary, finally I know it. In particular I never memorize words.
I can't say that I know all these languages, but I read them. To speak – that is an entirely different matter. You see I speak Russian with great difficulty. My spoken Russian is completely childish. It is unbelievably complicated – all the time to be thinking what form to use, and which not. All this merely in order to come up with the necessary form of the prolific genitive case.
I am far from being able to speak all the languages I know. Korean and Japanese I only read. But I speak German passably. And French as well, since I used to live in France. I can express myself in several languages, of course.
It is fine that such a person works at the Jewish Library. If you need a book on the “Russian” shelf, if you want a consultation on matters of language, Sidney's help will be priceless. How did Sidney become a librarian after all?
It all began with Hebrew, which my children studied at their kindergarten. I took this as a chance for me to involve myself with Hebrew seriously. I went to the Jewish Library, took out a simple grammar book and borrowed children's books. I went there more and more frequently, and the books which I took out grew more and more complicated. So they took me on as a library worker. Now it has been several years since I started this work.
Sidney Keith in discussion with Barbara Litt and Svetlana Kristal.

Sidney Keith – Librarian and Polyglot (summary in English)
Sidney is the erudite and friendly librarian from the Jewish Community Library who works on-site at the JCCSF. We often see him reading a Russian book or novel, his Russian-English dictionary at his side. His book choices have included Dead Souls, the Life of Paganini and most recently Eugene Onegin. New Life thought it would be interesting to interview him. It turns out that we have in our midst at the JCCSF a scholar who truly loves to learn. Sidney went to Yale University where he majored in Ancient Greek. He also has a Ph.D. In Political Science and a law degree. Along with his degrees, he learned by himself to read in other languages, one of them being Russian. He has never studied Russian in the classroom. Molodets! (A fine fellow!)

July 27, 2011

I'm reading a fascinating life of Ivan the Terrible by Henri Troyat, translated from French to Russian.  Do you know Troyat?  He wrote many history books, especially on Russian history, and is very good.  Ivan is remarkable.  He used to throw puppies off the Kremlin wall when he was a boy, and enjoyed their squeals as they fell and their death-throes on the bottom.  As an adult, he used to spend hours a day watching his torturers at work in the dungeons, and then would go upstairs for a feast and a drinking bout.  In some ways he seems worse than Hitler, who watched some videos of his enemies strung up on piano wire but didn't revel in gore like Ivan.  Ivan was at the same time very religious, and believed that his infliction of pain was a divine attribute, the same as God's visiting mortals with disease and death.  Stalin seems to have copied some of his techniques from Ivan too, like creating a special corps of murderers outside the law under his direct control.  When Novgorod annoyed Ivan, he sent them there where they killed many thousands, including all the clergy.

Mariage de Devorah Lauter

J'ai assiste hier avec ma famille au mariage de Devorah avec Jean-Bernard Prouhet de Paris, un jeune homme tres sympa parassait-il.  Il travaille dans le Ministere de Defense.  Tous les hommes americains la-bas, et les femmes aussi, s'habillaient assez simple et morne, tandis que la famille Prouhet avec ces deux soeurs et la mere etait splendide avec chapeaux tres grandes et les vetements tres colores (en vert frappant).  Ils doivent considerer que les amerloques n'ont aucun sens de style -- le nom est juste dans cette contexte.  J'ai parle un peu avec un bon ami de Devorah, egalement parisien, un normalien qui enseigne la logique mathematique et informatique a Martinique -- il dit que c'est une vie de reve.  Les mathes et la plage -- qu'est-ce qui peut etre mieux?   Je t'embrasse tres tres fort!

July 25, 2011

My family, with all my numerous in-laws, is going on a cruise from S.F. to Alaska on Friday, so I'll be out of touch for 10 days or so.
I read a fine biography of Ehud Barak in Hebrew -- it took me a couple of months.  He has had an amazing life; most of his secret missions as head of Israel's elite special forces are still secret, and couldn't be discussed, but the ones that are public are brilliant enough (hijacked Sabena airplane, Tunis, Beirut, Entebbe).  Bibi Netanyahu was one of his soldiers, and Yonatan Netanyahu was his best friend -- their families lived on different floors of the same apartment building so they could be together, and their wives spent much of every day together.  It's nice to know how well the political class in Israel know each other, even on opposite sides.  Barak had such profound respect and love for Ariel Sharon as a soldier that he always treated him with the utmost courtesy, even while they were heading rival campaigns, Barak for Labor and Sharon for Likud.
Now I'm reading a life of Ivan the Terrible by Henri Troyat, translated from French to Russian.  Troyat is very good -- thorough and open-minded; I might read more of his many, many biographies.
The book that has enchanted everyone here is Fukuyama's latest history of the world.  I can't wait to read it when my father is finished.  I won't wait for a Russian or Hebrew translation to appear.  The father of the bride at the above wedding, for example, called Fukuyama to tell him how much he reveres the book, and he said he would see him when he comes out this way next.