Back in February, 2022 I wrote what I thought of as a short story entitled A Planet Safe for Yidden and posted it to my blog.
Soon, though, that story burrowed into my skull and wouldn't let go. I began to wonder how it came about that there is a planet far from Earth inhabited by Jews, so I began to explore the “history” of these people and posted the snippets on my blog as well. Then, I wanted to know what would become of the little boy, Dovid, in my original story so I chronicled his personal voyage from childhood to adulthood.
One thing led to another and around thirty of these pieces - which I began referring to as the Planet Birobidzhan story - were eventually posted. These posts evolved into a novel, after some editing and restructuring, which is entitled The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan. The novel is still unpublished (leads to sympathetic publishers are appreciated) but the original posts are still accessible via the blog.
This is the link to A Planet Safe for Yidden and the subsequent links can be found there.
https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/02/on-planet-safe-for-yidden.html
Below is the introduction to The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan, accessible for the first time. Enjoy.
A Preface
Tayere khaveyrim, dear friends,
The Luftmenschen of Planet Birobidzhan is a work of fiction. The setting for most of this book is very far away and in the distant future. Although this book is largely about Jews on other planets, one need not be a Yid (a Jew) or a luftmentsh (a spaceman) to read this story any more than one, for instance, would need to be a Hobbit or an Elf to read a book such as Lord of the Rings.
This book is a future history. To gaze into the future, we will also need to gaze into the past.
Planet Birobidzhan was settled by exiles separated from the Home Planet for a long time. The exiles developed their own unique culture and speak primarily Yiddish. Some awareness of Yiddishkeit is certainly helpful to understand this tale. To make this story more accessible, I have included a glossary.
This is a story of displacement, exile, and entrapment by fate. This is also the saga of the few that strive to break free from those entanglements. This story is told from various vantage points, with different voices. The tale spans hundreds of years.
Where to begin? Long before the Yidden came to the gallus in the stars, we lived on Planet Earth where we were also often displaced. But, that is not really the beginning, either.
The very beginning is described in Bereshis, what others call Genesis. "When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said 'Let there be light' and there was light."
All humanity, we are told, derived from one mother and a single spark. We even all had a single shprakh. What that language was, we do not know.
Humanity dispersed globally. Each region developed a unique Mamaloshen, I suppose. Farsheteyt? I can't say that I really understand, but the shprakh of each of us became babbling in each other's ears.
Our Father Abraham originated in Ur Kasdim. Abraham developed a personal relationship with God. Because of this, our bashert became distinct from the rest of the mentshen of Planet Earth. The relationship with the Creator is our inheritance, but that inheritance is not evenly distributed amongst the Children of Abraham.
What we know of Abraham's immediate family, and those that follow, we learn from the Tanakh, the assemblage of texts that others call the Old Testament.
Father Abraham's wife was barren. Mother Sarah, in her old age, offered her servant as a surrogate to bear children. The servant and Abraham's first son are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness because Sarah's reasoning was displaced with jealousy.
I am quite uncertain about how it all ends. Our prophets offer veiled suggestions, but no conclusions. We have no scriptures describing an Apocalyptic End Times as those of other peoples.
The middle is quite garbled. Most of our tale here is likely closer to the end than the beginning. Es tut mir layd for a lack of greater clarity.
Our story seems to backtrack and twist in on itself, full of doubt and uncertainty. That rambling is, perhaps, a continuation on the trajectory that reaches back to the very earliest days of the Jewish People. Ikh vis nisht.
I suffer from a condition of nostalgia, a dissatisfaction with the present. I long for something better. This life of mine is an anachronism. Maybe that explains it. Ikh vis nisht.
A disjointed sense of time and place is not an exclusively Jewish condition. It may be a widespread human phenomenon. A condition of nostalgia and displacement does seem particularly pervasive amongst the Yidden.
Questions of lineage fill our Tanakh with instances of displaced lines of inheritance, periods of exile, and separation trauma.
Brothers fought within wombs for dominance. Birthrights were traded for bowls of soup. Children were conceived through subterfuge and seduction. Moshe was raised by Pharaoh's daughter. Hadassah married the King of Persia.
These sorts of plot twists repeat throughout our Tanakh, reappearing amongst the Nations in barely camouflaged folk tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Cinderella. The Roma fortune tellers use Tarot Cards to retool the Tanakh for those lacking a tradition of literacy.
Family roots are taken very seriously by Yidden. Perhaps our historical obsession with assurances of ethnicity derives from the obvious lack of lineage purity. We are, after all, of many hues and physical types, mixed and blended.
We mirror this concern with our dietary laws, obsessing on separations. We refrain, for instance, from mixing milk and meat. Nonetheless, the meals that we perceive as Jewish borrow heavily from our Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian neighbors, representing a confluence of cultures.
We tend to blend our foods. Our kugel, gefilte fish, kneidelach, chopped liver, tzimmes, and cholent all reflect our tendency to bring some order out of chaos, imitating the act of Creation. Our foods are as mixed up as our bloodlines.
Wherever we migrated, we carried our burdens and contradictions with us. We carried Eretz Yisrael with us into exile. We carry the habits, values, and customs absorbed in exile from one Diaspora to another.
This was our fate on Planet Earth and continues to be so as we transit across galaxies.
I hope that readers find this introduction and explanation of sorts to be of some use.
A hartsikn dank, a heartfelt thanks, for your indulgence.
