Abraham Sutzkever

Abraham Sutzkever (Yiddish: Avrom Sutskever; Hebrew: Avraham Sutskever) (b. 1913–d. 2010) was a titan of Yiddish literature. Over the course of six decades, he published more than thirty volumes of poetry and prose. He also edited the most important postwar Yiddish journal of arts and letters, Di goldene keyt, from 1949 to 1995. From his youth in Vilna and Siberia to his later years in Tel Aviv, Sutzkever insistently posited the power of poetry to sustain life and culture. His wartime experiences further marked the writer as both poet and hero. During his incarceration in the Vilna Ghetto, he served as a member of the “Paper Brigade,” rescuing the cultural heritage of the Jewish community of the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” He also took up arms as a partisan fighter in the forests surrounding the city. After the war, he testified in graphic detail at the Nuremberg Tribunals at the request of the Soviet Union. A writer of wide-ranging interests—from the frozen tundra of Omsk to the cafés of Paris, from the cellars of the Vilna Ghetto to the shores of the Red Sea—Sutzkever continually exercised his neologistic skills, poeticizing his present life in conversation with the memories of his past and his cultural ambitions for the future. Some of his most prominent volumes include his first collection, Lider (Poems), published in Warsaw in 1937; his epic poem Sibir (Siberia), illustrated by Marc Chagall and published in Jerusalem in 1953; the series of experimental prose poems of memorialization, Griner akvaryum (Green Aquarium), published in Jerusalem in 1975; and one of his later volumes, Lider fun togbukh (Poems from a Diary), published in Tel Aviv in 1977.

2. The Yiddish self

“The Yiddish self” analyzes the emergence and dissemination of Yiddish as the lingua franca of eastern European Jews from the thirteenth century to the Holocaust and beyond, focusing on the three founders of Yiddish literature: Mendele Mokher Sforim, Israel Joshua Singer, and Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem’s volume of interconnected stories Tevye the Dairyman is arguably the most important narrative ever to be produced in the Yiddish language. Yiddish writers have reflected on anti-Semitism and migration. Yiddish writing in the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world and the Singer siblings (Israel Joshua, and Isaac Bashevis) in particular are examples of adaptation to different environments after the Second World War.

It Could Lead to Dancing

Dances and balls appear throughout literature as a place for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships: as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest, dance scenes provide an opportunity for writers to criticize societal expectations about courtship and partner choice, while simultaneously entertaining their readers. In this book, Sonia Gollance examines Jewish mixed-gender dancing in German and Yiddish literature, arguing that dance provides a powerful lens for understanding Jewish acculturation, secularization, and modernization. Gollance examines the specific literary qualities of dance scenes, such as the parallels between dance figures and plot structures, while also paying close attention to the broader social implications of Jewish engagement with dance during in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While traditional Jewish dance was among men only (or women only), mixed-sex dancing was the very sign of modernity, and thus a charged and complex arena for understanding the limits of acculturation, the dangers of class mixing, and the role of erotic engagement in modernization. Gollance’s book is organized around the spaces in which mixed dancing would take place: the tavern, the ballroom, the wedding, and the dance hall. Gollance also draws connections between the cultural history of social dance and contemporary popular culture, illustrating how mixed-sex dancing continues to function as a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions.

The Choreography of Acculturation

The prohibition on men and women dancing together was derived from biblical precedent and Jewish laws regulating sexual behavior. While even traditional communities had varied interpretations of what mixed-sex dancing entailed, in literature such boundaries were frequently transgressed. Where rabbinic condemnations of mixed-sex dancing before 1780 emphasize the connection between dancing and forbidden sexual behavior, later and more literary texts use dance to discuss influences from outside of the Jewish community. Writers utilized dance as a metaphor for Jewish modernity, which communicates their concerns with society while entertaining their readers. German Jewish and Yiddish literature targeted readerships that often differed in terms of class background and knowledge of Jewish tradition, yet they shared a fascination with literary dance scenes.

Deterioration and Recovery

In the 1970s and early 1980s the Jewish community in East Berlin was able to restore its declining cultural life, in spite of a shrinking membership. Events at the new culture hall at Oranienburger Straße ensued with programs featuring discussions of Judaism, Yiddish literature, and other literary works, as well as recitals. Unlike the community center at Fasanenstraße in West Berlin, the East Berlin community closely adhered to Jewish cultural heritage and especially embraced Yiddish culture. In parallel, Yiddish music as a perceived expression of Jewish secularity and antifascism began to attain a new position in mainstream events, a development mainly driven by Lin Jaldati. Aside from this, the Jewish community maintained their Kultus at Rykestraße Synagogue, continued the series of synagogue concerts, and the annual Kristallnacht commemorations. In parallel to the community, alternative Jewish groups began to form.

Rachela Fajgenberg

The project “Canon of the Memoir Literature of Polish Jews”is currently being prepared at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Polish Scientific Publishers PWN in Warsaw. Its purpose is to introduce 27 volumes of Jewish memoirs that make up the Jews. Poland. Autobiography series into Polish academic and literary circulation, and to integrate this corpus into the current scholarly discourse on Polish history and culture. This section presents excerpts from the autobiographies of two Jewish writers translated from Yiddish: Rachel (Rokhl) Feygenberg (1885–1972) and Kadia Molodowsky (1894–1975). Rachel Feygenberg depicts her childhood in the shtetl of Lubańin Minsk province, reminiscing about her education, her family’s religiosity, her work in a shop, and the first signs of her writing talent. Molodowsky describes her work teaching homeless children during World War I and the beginnings of her poetic career. She also portrays the Jewish literary milieu in Kiev centered around the Eygns almanac, and her meeting with the patron of Yiddish literature and publisher Boris Kletskin that resulted in the publication of her first volume of poetry Kheshvendike nekht [Nights of Cheshvan].

Kadia Mołodowska

The project “Canon of the Memoir Literature of Polish Jews”is currently being prepared at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Polish Scientific Publishers PWN in Warsaw. Its purpose is to introduce 27 volumes of Jewish memoirs that make up the Jews. Poland. Autobiography series into Polish academic and literary circulation, and to integrate this corpus into the current scholarly discourse on Polish history and culture. This section presents excerpts from the autobiographies of two Jewish writers translated from Yiddish: Rachel (Rokhl) Feygenberg (1885–1972) and Kadia Molodowsky (1894–1975). Rachel Feygenberg depicts her childhood in the shtetl of Lubańin Minsk province, reminiscing about her education, her family’s religiosity, her work in a shop, and the first signs of her writing talent. Molodowsky describes her work teaching homeless children during World War I and the beginnings of her poetic career. She also portrays the Jewish literary milieu in Kiev centered around the Eygns almanac, and her meeting with the patron of Yiddish literature and publisher Boris Kletskin that resulted in the publication of her first volume of poetry Kheshvendike nekht [Nights of Cheshvan].

No More “Little Jews Without Beards”: Insights into Yiddish Children’s Literature in Eastern Europe Prior to World War I1

The first modern publications in Yiddish which were intended for young readers in Eastern Europe—either original works or translations from foreign languages—appeared at the turn of the twentieth century as the sporadic initiatives of a few writers. A more systematic literature for children in Yiddish started relatively late, and was linked to the developing Yiddish school system. A growing number of writers and cultural activists, including Sholem Aleichem and Y. L. Peretz, became gradually aware of the importance and need for appropriate literature for children. Within less than a decade, the Yiddish book market was enriched with a variety of publications focused upon young readers whose ages ranged between 5 and 12 years. These publications included many translations (or adaptations) from foreign languages—either directly or indirectly—as well as original works by known Yiddish writers. The first Yiddish periodicals for youngsters as well as textbooks also appeared then, prior to World War I. Yiddishists and publishers established publishing companies for this purpose and initiated pretentious projects of which few were realized, or even partly realized. The current article will review and examine the first initiatives for publishing Yiddish children’s literature and periodicals, who the initiators were and what their purpose was. Also, to what extent these publications were accepted, and their contribution to modern Yiddish literature.