“Oh,language of exile – woven of sorrow and mockery”: the Kalevala centennial jubilee as a bone of contention between Hebraists and Yiddishists

The article explores contacts between eminent Jewish Zionists and the Finnish cultural and political elite using the Kalevala centennial jubilee as a case study. The article shows how Finnish nationalists sympathised with the cause of Zionists propagating the use of modern Hebrew: members of the Kalevala Society warm‐heartedly invited the Hebrew poet Saul Tchernichowsky from Palestine to the centennial jubilee in 1935. The article also deals with the exclusion of the Yiddish representative, Hersh Rosenfeld, recommended by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Vilna, and discusses the possibility of anti‐communism and anti‐cosmopolitanism behind his omission from the centennial jubilee. The Jewish community of Helsinki, which was experiencing a rapid Finnification process, was involved in inviting the Hebrew representative to Finland. The article ends by analysing a Yiddishist poem that can be interpreted as an individual’s protest about the exclusion of the Yiddish language from the Kalevala centenary.     

Families: “They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait” 1

Strategic Outreach to Families of All Reservists (SOFAR) is a pro bono mental health project that offers support, psychotherapy, psychoeducation, and prevention services to extended family members of National Guard and Reservists who have served in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) from deployment through reunion and reintegration. SOFAR began in Massachusetts in 2004. In this article, I discuss the plight of all families of soldiers with an emphasis on the special burdens of National Guard and Reservists, citizen‐soldiers. I also show how SOFAR has helped these families and make recommendations for expansion of services to these family members.