Satire has been defined as one of the highest forms of literary art, and if any one literary figure in Jewish literature can be associated with this form of writing, it would be Gershon Rosenzweig (1861-1914), a Russian-American editor, author, and poet. Born in Hrodna, Rosenzweig arrived in New York in 1888, and experienced the travails typical of the American Jewish immigrant of the era. He worked as a peddler, bookkeeper, cook, retailer, teacher, tutor and finally as the principal of the Harlem Hebrew School.
Recently, I acquired several of his satirical publications, published in the first decade of the 1900s in New York. These satirical works were written in the style and language of the Talmud, duplicating the layout and fonts of the standard Talmudic page, with a main text in the center flanked by commentaries in Rashi text. In Masechet America, Rosenzweig pokes fun at the greed of some of the immigrants, the faults in the rabbinical establishments, and the weak state of Jewish education. He also finds humor in the daily challenge of the struggling immigrants. Talmud Yankee is separated in to six portions, parallel to the six sedarim of the Mishnah, with an additional parody on the Haggadah and Megillat Esther.
His books were met with great success, several of them being republished multiple times and translations appearing in Yiddish and English periodicals, including in The Sun. Rosenzweig passed away in Feb of 1914, and his funeral, conducted by the famed American maggid, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Masliansky, was attended by over 5000 people.
