7: Article excerpt, Goldie Morgentaler's “Bontshe Shvayg in Lethbridge,” Pakn Treger, 2010.

7: Article excerpt, Goldie Morgentaler's “Bontshe Shvayg in Lethbridge,” Pakn Treger, 2010.

From resource kit: I. L. Peretz's "Bontshe the Silent"

In this excerpt from the magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, professor Goldie Morgentaler explains how her students, at a university in Lethbridge, Alberta, misinterpreted Peretz’s story when she first introduced it to them. 

Suggested activity: Read the excerpt and discuss: why did Morgentaler’s students think Bontshe is Christian, or Jesus Christ? Does the story support this interpretation? What differences are there, in your experience, between Jewish and Christian ideas of silence and what it means to suffer? Do you think that Bontshe is "saintly"?

Source: Goldie Morgentaler, “Bontshe Shvayg in Lethbridge: Teaching Yiddish Literature in the Canadian Bible Belt,” Pakn Treger 62 (Amherst, MA: Yiddish Book Center, Winter 2010 / 5771), <https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/pakn-treger/bontshe-shvayg-lethbridge-teaching-yiddish-literature>, accessed May 20, 2018.