A 'landsman', in Yiddish, is someone from the same country, or especially the same town as you. In my grandparents' time, it was common for Jewish immigrants from the same shtetl (hamlet) to form a landsmanschaft - a landsman's association, once they got to the Goldene Medina (Golden Country, i.e. the US). Yesterday I discovered a landsman of mine in the blogosphere: Daniel in Brookline. Brookline, Massachusetts was my hometown for the first 25 years of my life. Not just a geographical landsman, he appears to be an ideological landsman as well. An unusual thing for that part of the world. If you missed it, check out this comment that he left here on Rishon Rishon.
UPDATE: I just realized that Solomon of Solomonia is from Boston, a landsman in only a slightly wider sense of the word.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at January 4, 2005 06:55 PMHey neighbor!
Well, I never lived there, but spent plenty of time around your environs - attended BU - crossed the highway many a time for food and party (and still do!)...used up a lot of shoe rubber walking up and down Harvard and Beacon. Ah for the days when I had time to take walks from place to place!
Posted by: Solomon at January 5, 2005 01:53 AM PermalinkI lived in Brookline Village and now live on the West Coast. A local Jewish paper called the East Coast "the Old Country."
Galus, galus Rus
I grew up in Brookline as well, cant think why I never mentioned it before.
Posted by: benjamin at January 12, 2005 08:46 AM PermalinkBenjamin, I didn't know! The hometown you described once seemed so far left that I didn't recognize as the leftish town I grew up in. I guess times change.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 12, 2005 09:02 AM PermalinkHow about that! A small world, indeed...
Many thanks for the reference, David!
For the record, I only recently moved to Brookline (Sept. 2004), just before my fiancee and I got married. So if my opinions seem out-of-step for the Boston area, it might be that I'm not truly a Bostonian myself.
(On the other hand, my opinions don't seem all that unusual. As I noted in one of my posts a while back, a lot of people around here didn't buy into the John-Kerry-is-my-personal-savior business... and had the bumper stickers to prove it.)
My wedding was in Brookline -- Temple Beth Zion on Beacon Street, if that rings bells for anyone...
kol tuv,
Daniel