Manseau is the son of an ex-priest and an ex-nun, but the District resident started his career as one of the world’s last Yiddish typesetters. His latest novel, “Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter,” just won Hadassah Magazine’s Ribalow Prize for Jewish Fiction, his third major Jewish literary award.
How did you get into Yiddish typesetting?
Well, I stumbled into it after college. I studied religion in college and I quickly discovered that there were no real jobs in religion. But there was an organization just down the road from where I went to university, in Massachusetts, which was a Jewish cultural organization that collected used Yiddish books. And so, though I had no previous connection to the language or to Judaism generally, I ended up learning Yiddish and began working after that as a freelance Yiddish typesetter.
Do you still speak it?
I can still work with it. I still read it and can understand it if it’s spoken to me. But I don’t have much opportunity to speak it, except that when I’m off talking about my book often I’ll get a question from the audience in Yiddish and I’ll do my best to field it.
What was the oddest challenge of translating “Winnie the Pooh” into Yiddish?
I didn’t translate it, I just set the type. … Yiddish is a language that’s famously untranslatable. … But just very recently — just to show that they’re still making these books — I was at a Jewish book fair and I picked up for my daughter, who’s 4 years old, the Yiddish “Curious George.”
Does your daughter speak any Yiddish?
Oh, no, no. She knows what it is, which I think is saying quite a lot for a 4-year-old.
She hasn’t called you a “schmuck” yet?
I’m sure it will come to that — maybe when she’s 13 or so.
— Bill Myers
