Ber Kotlerman
Bar-Ilan University, Literature of the People of Israel, Department Member
- Kokushikan University, School of Asia 21, Department MemberNational University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", Department of History, MA in Jewish Studies Program, Department Member, and 3 moreadd
- Yiddish, Hebrew Language, Religion and Politics, Literary Criticism, Hebrew Bible, Language Planning and Policy, and 16 moreLiterature and Society, Historical Films, Theatre History, Soviet History, Contact Linguistics, Yiddish Literature, Jewish History, Modern Jewish History, Jewish Studies, Far East, Refugee Studies, Jewish Cultural Studies, Fine Arts, Yiddish Language, Eastern European and Russian Jewish History, and S. Ansky The Dybbukedit
- Professor of Yiddish Studies, The Sznajderman Chair in Yiddish culture and Hasidism, Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israeledit
This monograph (in Hebrew) brings a rare testimony about the inner world of one of the last Hebraists in the Soviet Union, a former yeshiva student and Hebrew teacher from Belarus who survived the Stalin regime. His Hebrew letters reveal... more
This monograph (in Hebrew) brings a rare testimony about the inner world of one of the last Hebraists in the Soviet Union, a former yeshiva student and Hebrew teacher from Belarus who survived the Stalin regime. His Hebrew letters reveal Jewish life in the Soviet province (Birobidzhan) in the late 1950s from rare perspectives: Hebrew speakers, unofficial folklore collection, clandestine book exchanges, consumption of official Jewish culture, attitudes toward the State of Israel in Soviet media, the fate of regime victims, memory of the Holocaust, and more. All of this is seen through the sharp opposition to secular Yiddishism, even after decades of "language wars" between Hebrew and Yiddish. The research constitutes a significant contribution to the "historiography of shadows" of Soviet Jewish culture.
Research Interests:
In the summer of 1947, three years before his death in a labor camp hospital, one of the most significant Soviet Yiddish writers Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884–1950) made a trip from Moscow to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous... more
In the summer of 1947, three years before his death in a labor camp hospital, one of the most significant Soviet Yiddish writers Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884–1950) made a trip from Moscow to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. He traveled there on a special migrant train, together with a thousand Holocaust survivors. The present study examines this journey as an original protest against the conformism of the majority of Soviet Jewish activists. In his travel notes, Der Nister described the train as the “modern Noah’s ark,” heading “to put an end to the historical silliness.” This rhetoric paraphrasing Nietzsche’s “historical sickness,” challenged the Jewish history in the Diaspora, which “broke” the people's mythical “wholeness.” Der Nister formulated his vision of a post-Holocaust Jewish reconstruction more clearly in his previously unknown manifesto. Without their own territory, he wrote, the Jews were like “a soul without a body or a body without a soul, and in either case, always a cripple.” Records of the fabricated investigation case against the “anti-Soviet nationalist grouping in Birobidzhan” reveal details about Der Nister’s thoughts and real acts. Both the records and the manifesto are being published here for the first time.
Research Interests: Yiddish Literature, Yiddish, History of the Jews, Hasidism, Stalin and Stalinism, and 7 moreGULAG, Stalinism, Soviet Yiddish, Slavic Studies, Russian Studies, Literature and Cultural History of Gulag and Political Repressions In URSS; Literature and Culture of Russian Post-revolutionnary Emigration; Theory of Literature, Soviet Jewish History, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, and History of Jews In the Soviet Union
A simple tailor, the protagonist of the great Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem’s last theatrical drama, suddenly becomes rich, but loses his money on account of an obscure cinema deal. The author’s son-in-law and assistant, Y.D. Berkowitz,... more
A simple tailor, the protagonist of the great Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem’s last theatrical drama, suddenly becomes rich, but loses his money on account of an obscure cinema deal. The author’s son-in-law and assistant, Y.D. Berkowitz, insisted that the issue of moviemaking be removed from the plot. It seems he tried, among other things, to conceal his father-in-law’s “cinema obsession,” which played itself out between Moscow and New York during the final years of his short life. Until now this story of Sholem Aleichem’s “last love” remained virtually unknown because the majority of relevant documents, written in Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew, English, and other languages, as well as the author’s film scripts, have never been published. By reconstructing the picture of Sholem Aleichem’s extensive contacts with the world of cinema in Europe, Russia, and the US, this monograph throws new light on the famous writer’s life and work, on the background of the incipience of early Jewish cinematography.
Festschrift for Aaron Demsky. File includes cover, introduction and TOC. To order go to Maarav.com.
Research Interests:
Around the Point is a unique collection that brings to readers the works of almost thirty scholars dealing with Jewish literature in various Jewish and non-Jewish languages, such as Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, French, Italian, German,... more
Around the Point is a unique collection that brings to readers the works of almost thirty scholars dealing with Jewish literature in various Jewish and non-Jewish languages, such as Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Serbian, Polish, and Russian. Although this volume does not cover all the languages of Jewish letters, it is a significant endeavor in establishing the realm of multilingual international study of Jewish literature and culture. Among the questions under discussion, are the problems of the definition of Jewish identity and literature, literary history, language choice and diglossy, lingual and cultural influences, intertextuality, Holocaust literature, Kabbala and Hassidism, Jewish poetics, theatre and art, and the problems of the acceptance of literature.
התרבות היהודית ברוסיה, בה חי בתחילת המאה ה-20 הריכוז היהודי הגדול בעולם, הגיעה לאחד השיאים המרשימים בהתפתחותה בתקופה הקצרה בת שמונת החודשים שבין המהפכה הליברלית וביטול המלוכה במרץ 1917 לבין המהפכה הבולשביקית של נובמבר אותה שנה. כתוצאה... more
התרבות היהודית ברוסיה, בה חי בתחילת המאה ה-20 הריכוז היהודי הגדול בעולם, הגיעה לאחד השיאים המרשימים בהתפתחותה בתקופה הקצרה בת שמונת החודשים שבין המהפכה הליברלית וביטול המלוכה במרץ 1917 לבין המהפכה הבולשביקית של נובמבר אותה שנה. כתוצאה ממלה"ע ה-1 והתפרקות דה-פקטו של תחום המושב ב-1915 קמו מרכזי תרבות חדשים, כגון מוסקבה או חרקוב, כאשר המרכזים המסורתיים כמו ורשה או וילנה מצאו את עצמם בהתחלה תחת כיבוש גרמני ואחר כך מחוץ לגבולות רוסיה, בתחום פולין העצמאית. הקשרים הישנים הפסיקו להתקיים ויחסי כוחות חדשים נרקמו הן בתוך העולם היהודי והן בין היהודים לחברה הסובבת. למרות המשך המלחמה, אבדות קשות בקרב האוכלוסייה האזרחית היהודית ורבבות פליטים, גרמו ביטול תחום המושב והגבלות אחרות על היהודים ע"י הממשלה הזמנית, הענקת שוויון זכויות מלא וחופש הדת לרנסנס יהודי תרבותי של ממש. בבת אחת הופיעו במדינה עשרות עיתונים יהודים ברוסית, יידיש ועברית, נוסדו הוצאות לאור ציבוריות, הופיעו אגודות תרבות בתחומי התיאטרון, האמנות והמדע, נוסדו ארגונים מקצועיים למיניהם, נפתחו מוסדות חינוך חדשים. כמו כן, הגבירו את פועלם ארגוני תמיכה ועזרה הדדית ובחלקים מסוימים של רוסיה הצארית לשעבר התנסו היהודים אף במוסדות לשלטון עצמי.
המצב הזה נמשך בערך עד חורף 1919, כאשר החלו לפעול במלוא כוחם המוסדות המיוחדים שעסקו באוכלוסיה היהודית מטעם הבולשביקים, ששלטונם הלך והתבסס בניגוד לציפיות של רבים. המוסדות הללו - הקומיסריאט לענייני יהודים, הלשכה המרכזית של הסקציות היהודיות ליד המפלגה הבולשביקית ומחלקות יהודיות ליד מספר קומיסריאטים ארציים - החלו, לצד ביצוע משימות משקיות וחברתיות, בקידום תרבות יהודית חדשה, מהפכנית, רדיקלית ומשוחררת ממשקעי העבר ה"קליריקלי" וה"בורגני" ובו זמנית מגויסת בגלוי לטובת "הדיקטטורה של הפרולטריון". מטרת התרבות הזו הייתה להצעיד את העם היהודי לעתיד טוב יותר ולפתור אחת ולתמיד את "הבעיה היהודית". כ-30 שנה מאוחר יותר, בסתיו 1948 נסגר הגוף הרשמי היהודי האחרון במדינה והוא הוועד היהודי האנטי-פאשיסטי. המעצרים שבאו לאחר מכן חיסלו את כל גילויי הפעילות התרבותית היהודית הרשמית.
דווקא לפעילות הזו, שהתנהלה במהלך שלושה עשורים בסימן מעורבות ממשלתית או בהסכמה בשתיקה, מוקדשת היחידה "העולם התרבותי של יהודי ברה"מ".
המסגרת הכרונולוגית הנ"ל והקביעה שידובר אך ורק בפעילות תרבותית גלויה ומאורגנת בהשראת המהפכה ו"הבנייה הסוציאליסטית", משאירות מחוץ לתחום כמה היבטים חשובים בהחלט: שדה הפולקלור הנרחב, פועלם של יחידי סגולה ללא חסות ארגונית כלשהי (מלבד אנשי הספרות העברית), התרבות היהודית באוקראינה העצמאית (1917 – 1919), ברפובליקה הליטאית-בלורוסית (פברואר-אוגוסט 1919) וברפובליקה של המזרח הרחוק (1917 - 1922), כמו כן באזורים שנמצאו בתקופה הנדונה תחת שלטון אחר (לא-סובייטי) כלשהו ומאוחר יותר הפכו לחלק מברה"מ; פעילות "גולי רוסיה" היהודים מחוץ לגבולות ברה"מ; וחיי היצירה של היהדות המסורתית בתחום הדת. בד בבד, נותרה מחוץ לתחום גם השתתפותם רחבת ההיקף של היהודים בחיי התרבות הכלל-ארצית, בהנחה שהיות היוצר יהודי לאו דווקא משייך את יצירתו לתרבות היהודית. כמובן, בתנאי ברה"מ סוגיה זו אינה רלוונטית, כשמדובר במפעלי תרבות ביידיש, בעברית או בכל שפה יהודית אחרת, אך היא מובלטת שבעתיים בהתייחס לנעשה בשפה הרוסית או בשפות אחרות של העמים הסובייטיים. סוגיית "התרבות היהודית מה היא" כשלעצמה דורשת דיון נפרד ומעמיק, אך לצורך העניין החלטנו ליישם את המושג בעיקר בנוגע לכל פעילות תרבותית שיזמו יהודים, שכוונה במיוחד כלפי היהודים ושבוצעה בעיקר ע"י יהודים.
הלחץ הפוליטי והאידיאולוגי שהופעל על היהודים הסובייטיים בשנים הנדונות יצר בעיני רוב החוקרים דימוי מסוים שעל-פיו היוו חיי התרבות של היהודים בעיקר מאבק על הישרדות תרבותית ונסיגה מתמדת מערכי היהדות. תפיסה זו, שקשרה קשר חזק בין החיים התרבותיים לבין מצבם החברתי-פוליטי של היהודים בברה"מ, לרוב בהינתק מחיי התרבות הכלליים, תרמה להתייחסות לתרבות היהודית הסובייטית כאל תרבות של קרבן מחד או כאל תרבות של משתפי פעולה מאידך. רק גילויי תרבות אחדים, כגון יצירתו של האמן אליעזר ליסיצקי או פעילותו של השחקן והבמאי שלמה מיכואלס, הצליחו לחדור את מחסום התפיסה הזו, גם הם לרוב בזכות הערכת גורמים מערביים לא יהודיים. כתוצאה מכך, תרומתם התרבותית של יהודי ברה"מ, העשירה, המקורית והמרתקת כשלעצמה, נאלמה ונעלמה כמעט לחלוטין מדפי ההיסטוריה היהודית.
המצב הזה נמשך בערך עד חורף 1919, כאשר החלו לפעול במלוא כוחם המוסדות המיוחדים שעסקו באוכלוסיה היהודית מטעם הבולשביקים, ששלטונם הלך והתבסס בניגוד לציפיות של רבים. המוסדות הללו - הקומיסריאט לענייני יהודים, הלשכה המרכזית של הסקציות היהודיות ליד המפלגה הבולשביקית ומחלקות יהודיות ליד מספר קומיסריאטים ארציים - החלו, לצד ביצוע משימות משקיות וחברתיות, בקידום תרבות יהודית חדשה, מהפכנית, רדיקלית ומשוחררת ממשקעי העבר ה"קליריקלי" וה"בורגני" ובו זמנית מגויסת בגלוי לטובת "הדיקטטורה של הפרולטריון". מטרת התרבות הזו הייתה להצעיד את העם היהודי לעתיד טוב יותר ולפתור אחת ולתמיד את "הבעיה היהודית". כ-30 שנה מאוחר יותר, בסתיו 1948 נסגר הגוף הרשמי היהודי האחרון במדינה והוא הוועד היהודי האנטי-פאשיסטי. המעצרים שבאו לאחר מכן חיסלו את כל גילויי הפעילות התרבותית היהודית הרשמית.
דווקא לפעילות הזו, שהתנהלה במהלך שלושה עשורים בסימן מעורבות ממשלתית או בהסכמה בשתיקה, מוקדשת היחידה "העולם התרבותי של יהודי ברה"מ".
המסגרת הכרונולוגית הנ"ל והקביעה שידובר אך ורק בפעילות תרבותית גלויה ומאורגנת בהשראת המהפכה ו"הבנייה הסוציאליסטית", משאירות מחוץ לתחום כמה היבטים חשובים בהחלט: שדה הפולקלור הנרחב, פועלם של יחידי סגולה ללא חסות ארגונית כלשהי (מלבד אנשי הספרות העברית), התרבות היהודית באוקראינה העצמאית (1917 – 1919), ברפובליקה הליטאית-בלורוסית (פברואר-אוגוסט 1919) וברפובליקה של המזרח הרחוק (1917 - 1922), כמו כן באזורים שנמצאו בתקופה הנדונה תחת שלטון אחר (לא-סובייטי) כלשהו ומאוחר יותר הפכו לחלק מברה"מ; פעילות "גולי רוסיה" היהודים מחוץ לגבולות ברה"מ; וחיי היצירה של היהדות המסורתית בתחום הדת. בד בבד, נותרה מחוץ לתחום גם השתתפותם רחבת ההיקף של היהודים בחיי התרבות הכלל-ארצית, בהנחה שהיות היוצר יהודי לאו דווקא משייך את יצירתו לתרבות היהודית. כמובן, בתנאי ברה"מ סוגיה זו אינה רלוונטית, כשמדובר במפעלי תרבות ביידיש, בעברית או בכל שפה יהודית אחרת, אך היא מובלטת שבעתיים בהתייחס לנעשה בשפה הרוסית או בשפות אחרות של העמים הסובייטיים. סוגיית "התרבות היהודית מה היא" כשלעצמה דורשת דיון נפרד ומעמיק, אך לצורך העניין החלטנו ליישם את המושג בעיקר בנוגע לכל פעילות תרבותית שיזמו יהודים, שכוונה במיוחד כלפי היהודים ושבוצעה בעיקר ע"י יהודים.
הלחץ הפוליטי והאידיאולוגי שהופעל על היהודים הסובייטיים בשנים הנדונות יצר בעיני רוב החוקרים דימוי מסוים שעל-פיו היוו חיי התרבות של היהודים בעיקר מאבק על הישרדות תרבותית ונסיגה מתמדת מערכי היהדות. תפיסה זו, שקשרה קשר חזק בין החיים התרבותיים לבין מצבם החברתי-פוליטי של היהודים בברה"מ, לרוב בהינתק מחיי התרבות הכלליים, תרמה להתייחסות לתרבות היהודית הסובייטית כאל תרבות של קרבן מחד או כאל תרבות של משתפי פעולה מאידך. רק גילויי תרבות אחדים, כגון יצירתו של האמן אליעזר ליסיצקי או פעילותו של השחקן והבמאי שלמה מיכואלס, הצליחו לחדור את מחסום התפיסה הזו, גם הם לרוב בזכות הערכת גורמים מערביים לא יהודיים. כתוצאה מכך, תרומתם התרבותית של יהודי ברה"מ, העשירה, המקורית והמרתקת כשלעצמה, נאלמה ונעלמה כמעט לחלוטין מדפי ההיסטוריה היהודית.
Research Interests:
The second volume of Mizrekh continues with a series dedicated to Jewish research in the Far East - Russia, Japan, China, and other countries of the region. The monographs in English, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish focus here on the... more
The second volume of Mizrekh continues with a series dedicated to Jewish research in the Far East - Russia, Japan, China, and other countries of the region. The monographs in English, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish focus here on the religious-philosophical aspects of the dealings of Jews with the reality in the Far East, as well as issues relating to their identity in out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.
Research Interests:
In the mid-1930s, when the Soviet regime established Birobidzhan as the "Soviet Jewish state" with Yiddish as its official language, the local Yiddish theater assumed new prominence. "In Search of Milk and Honey" focuses on the theater's... more
In the mid-1930s, when the Soviet regime established Birobidzhan as the "Soviet Jewish state" with Yiddish as its official language, the local Yiddish theater assumed new prominence. "In Search of Milk and Honey" focuses on the theater's role as the standard bearer and guiding spirit of this controversial exercise in nation building. The reconstruction of the ideological and cultural impulses underlying the theater's repertoire not only reveals the circumstances of the social experiment conceived in Birobidzhan, but also presents Jewish culture in the USSR from another perspective.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
From the stabilization of the new Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia, Western modernist architects – mostly Germans, but also Americans and others – looked to the first socialist state in the world. They saw in it endless possibilities... more
From the stabilization of the new Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia, Western modernist architects – mostly Germans, but also Americans and others – looked to the first socialist state in the world. They saw in it endless possibilities for modern architecture. In addition to the revolutionary momentum in all areas of life, private land ownership was revoked. In theory, it was possible to build and plan entire cities without limitation. In 1928, Le Corbusier came to the USSR to plan Moscow's Centrosoyuz, headquarters of all Soviet workers councils. Many architects followed Le Corbusier to the USSR as individuals and in groups. The best-known were the groups of Ernst May and Hannes Meyer, head of the Bauhaus design school (then located in Dessau, Germany).
In the summer of 1930, Meyer was fired by Bauhaus as the result of a dispute with Dessau city hall. He traveled to Moscow. In early 1931, Meyer was joined by a number of his former Bauhaus students, including Béla Scheffler, Konrad Püschel, Anton Urban and Philip Tolziner. They called themselves the "Left Column", declined perks granted foreign experts and began to work as Soviet architects. Apparently, in light of his leftist worldview, Meyer could adapt easily to the Soviet regime compared to other foreign experts. He implemented a number of projects in Moscow, Magnitogorsk, Nizhne-Kurinsk and Molotov.
In 1933, Meyer sharply criticized Le Corbusier in the Soviet press, writing "I have recently revisited the classical construction methods and older methods in general, as I am interested in the problem of national expression in socialist architecture." It is likely the interest in classical architecture heralded the advent of "Stalinist Classicism", a common construction style in the Soviet Union from the mid-1930s. The problem of "national expression" concealed Meyer's newest project: planning the "first Jewish socialist city in the world", Birobidzhan.
In the summer of 1930, Meyer was fired by Bauhaus as the result of a dispute with Dessau city hall. He traveled to Moscow. In early 1931, Meyer was joined by a number of his former Bauhaus students, including Béla Scheffler, Konrad Püschel, Anton Urban and Philip Tolziner. They called themselves the "Left Column", declined perks granted foreign experts and began to work as Soviet architects. Apparently, in light of his leftist worldview, Meyer could adapt easily to the Soviet regime compared to other foreign experts. He implemented a number of projects in Moscow, Magnitogorsk, Nizhne-Kurinsk and Molotov.
In 1933, Meyer sharply criticized Le Corbusier in the Soviet press, writing "I have recently revisited the classical construction methods and older methods in general, as I am interested in the problem of national expression in socialist architecture." It is likely the interest in classical architecture heralded the advent of "Stalinist Classicism", a common construction style in the Soviet Union from the mid-1930s. The problem of "national expression" concealed Meyer's newest project: planning the "first Jewish socialist city in the world", Birobidzhan.
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This collection of articles in three languages, English, Yiddish and Russian, covers in a comprehensive manner the history and culture of the Jewish societies in the Far East. It also analyses the mechanisms they developed for... more
This collection of articles in three languages, English, Yiddish and Russian, covers in a comprehensive manner the history and culture of the Jewish societies in the Far East. It also analyses the mechanisms they developed for self-preservation, as well as the "Jewish question" in the Far-Eastern perspective, which, during the 20th century, linked together the history of Russia, China, Japan, Poland, Germany, and other countries.
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This article deals with the topic of the Balkan Wars (1911-1913) from a unique perspective: addressing the issue in the humor sections of the major Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw, Haynt and Der moment, which were the most popular Yiddish... more
This article deals with the topic of the Balkan Wars (1911-1913) from a unique perspective: addressing the issue in the humor sections of the major Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw, Haynt and Der moment, which were the most popular Yiddish newspapers of the period in the Russian Empire. This unconventional perspective was chosen not at random: although Yiddish newspapers often relied on general media coverage, their handling of humorous tools made it possible to analyze the unique vision of Polish and Russian Jewry that lies behind the dry reports from the fronts. The humorous references examined can be seen in the following patterns: emphasizing the Jewish aspect of events, a clear humanist stance, lack of automatic support for the interests of the mother country (Russian Empire), lack of confidence in the conduct of European countries and their ability to achieve peace, empathy with the suffering of the Jews in the territories in which the fighting took place in particular and with the sorrow that accompanies the war in general.
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A Hebrew language essay on Puccini's (actually John Luther Long's) "Madame Butterfly", Pierre Loti's "Madame Chrysantheme", and Peretz Hirshbein's Yiddish "Shotoku"
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More than twenty letters of European Jews to the President of the Philippines Manuel Quezon, sent to apply for entry visas for over four dozen people, were recently found in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the National... more
More than twenty letters of European Jews to the President of the Philippines Manuel Quezon, sent to apply for entry visas for over four dozen people, were recently found in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the National Library of the Philippines in Manila. The letters written in English, German, and Spanish are dated Spring-Summer 1939, when escape from Europe was still possible. Though several hundreds of Jewish refugees came to Manila via various ways during 1937-1941, the letters in question remained unanswered. All of them provide the exact time of the short-lived Mindanao plan, which proposed to establish an agricultural colony of European Jews in the Philippines, but got stuck in the very beginning. The databases of the Yad Vashem Centre for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington reveal the tragedy, which many Jews anticipated: all of the Philippine visa-seekers, except for one person, found their death in var...
The article reviews the philosophic-religious heritage of R. Nathan-Neta Olevski, Irkutsk chief rabbi in 1919-30, who became later one of the most prominent Jewish religious figures in the USSR. His collection of responsa, Haye Olam Nata... more
The article reviews the philosophic-religious heritage of R. Nathan-Neta Olevski, Irkutsk chief rabbi in 1919-30, who became later one of the most prominent Jewish religious figures in the USSR. His collection of responsa, Haye Olam Nata (Who Has Implanted Eternal Life, 1930/1), his only book published in his lifetime, can be considered as the most substantial Halachic work ever written in Siberia that preserved its value for the Orthodox Judaism until today (it was republished three times from 1992-2012, in the United States and Israel). The article is focused on unique information mentioned within R. Olevski’s responsa about “internal life” of various Jewish communities in Siberia during WW1, The Russian Civil War, and the first decade of the Soviet regime.
Recently discovered archival documents show the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s (1859–1916) significant interest in the field of silent cinema. Living in Switzerland, he wrote a number of film scripts and established numerous... more
Recently discovered archival documents show the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s (1859–1916) significant interest in the field of silent cinema. Living in Switzerland, he wrote a number of film scripts and established numerous contacts with various cinema figures in Berlin, Moscow, Riga, Odessa, Warsaw, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1913–14. World War I interrupted his creative ties and led him to abandon his cinema projects. However, when he immigrated to America in December 1914, his motion picture ambitions revived and he tried to establish contacts with a whole range of film companies: ‘Vitagraph,’ ‘Fox,’ ‘Universal,’ etc. The paper is dedicated to Sholem Aleichem’s quest to find a place for himself in the American cinematograph.
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The article is dedicated to the not so well researched Far East episode in the life of Joseph Trumpeldor, including the year he spent in Japanese captivity (1905). A defender of the fortress Port-Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War... more
The article is dedicated to the not so well researched Far East episode in the life of Joseph Trumpeldor, including the year he spent in Japanese captivity (1905). A defender of the fortress Port-Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, a member of the Jewish pioneer movement in Palestine, a British officer against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, an activist in the time of the Russian revolution, and a defender of the Galilean settlement of Tel Hai where he found his tragic death in 1920, Trumpeldor has become widely recognized as one of the contemporary national symbols of the State of Israel. In the author's opinion, it was the Japanese period when Trumpeldor underwent a significant change in attitude that determined his life and activity thereafter. It seems that his national self-consciousness as a Jew, which was awakened and sharpened during the Japanese captivity, forced him to change his civilian position from a Russian patriot to an active participa...
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Morris Hoffman (1885-1940), who was born in a Latvian township and emigrated to South Africa in 1906, was a brilliant example of the Eastern European Jewish maskil writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and Hebrew. He published poetry... more
Morris Hoffman (1885-1940), who was born in a Latvian township and emigrated to South Africa in 1906, was a brilliant example of the Eastern European Jewish maskil writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and Hebrew. He published poetry and prose in South African Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals. His long Yiddish poem under the title Afrikaner epopeyen (African epics) was considered to be the best Yiddish poetry written in South Africa. In 1939, a selection of his Yiddish stories under the title Unter afrikaner zun (Under the African sun) was prepared for publishing in De Aar, Cape Province (which is now in the Northern Cape Province), and published after his death in 1951 in Johannesburg. The Hebrew version of the stories was published in Israel in 1949 under the title Taḥat shmey afrikah (Under the skies of Africa). The article deals with certain differences between the versions using the example of one of the bilingual stories. The comparison between the versions illuminates Ho...
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Research Interests: Psychology and Pleasure
From the summer of 1913 to the spring of 1914 Sholem Aleichem wrote several film scripts, basically in Russian, that were never published and some of them were lost. The article deals with a short, English-language cinema synopsis... more
From the summer of 1913 to the spring of 1914 Sholem Aleichem wrote several film scripts, basically in Russian, that were never published and some of them were lost. The article deals with a short, English-language cinema synopsis discovered among the writer’s papers in the archives of the Tel Aviv Sholem Aleichem House, Little Motl Goes to America, which Sholem Aleichem prepared based on one of the missing screenplays, The Adventures of Lucky Motl. The synopsis was translated into English in 1915 by Ben-Zion Goldberg (who was to become a prominent American Jewish journalist and Sholem Aleichem’s son-in-law) at the request of a certain motion picture studio. This contact with the American movie-making industry was broken off and developed no further, but the writer was very active in promoting Motl in the American cinema until the last days of his life. The synopsis provides scholars with a missing link in the genesis of Sholem Aleichem’s well-known work, The Adventures of Motl, the Cantor’s Son.
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The 1908 Yiddish story “Toytntants” was the last creation of the young Galician author Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes before his transformation into S. Y. Agnon of the Land of Israel. The story, which can be understood as a farewell to the... more
The 1908 Yiddish story “Toytntants” was the last creation of the young Galician author Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes before his transformation into S. Y. Agnon of the Land of Israel. The story, which can be understood as a farewell to the romantic-sentimental style identified by Agnon with his writing in Yiddish, was also his longest and most elaborate creation in either Yiddish or Hebrew up to the time of its writing. It stands in sharp contrast to the “single-storied” structure of Agnon’s previous tales, some of which were even integrated into “Toytntants.” This article analyzes Agnon’s use of “musicalization” in the text, a phenomenon that scholars have also identified in James Joyce’s writings. When read in historical context, “Toytntants” reveals new aspects of the cultural atmosphere in which Agnon lived while he resided in Galicia.
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The Birobidzhan Jewish religious community, officially registered on 15 December 1946, was the only one recognised by the Soviet authorities in the USSR's Far East. During the first years of its activity the community represented a... more
The Birobidzhan Jewish religious community, officially registered on 15 December 1946, was the only one recognised by the Soviet authorities in the USSR's Far East. During the first years of its activity the community represented a unique case – perhaps the only case in the country – of linkage between a synagogue and the Soviet party and economic establishment on the local level. However, the persecutions of the early 1950s and several anti-religious campaigns later resulted in the Birobidzhan religious community falling into to a very sorry condition. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Regional Executive Committee even decided to cancel the registration of the community and remove it from the books. At the same time, after the 1984 large-scale celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR), the central Soviet authorities found that Birobidzhan “clericals” could serve the purposes of the Soviet agitation and propaganda apparatus, as confirmation of the absence of any oppression of Judaism in the JAR. As a result, the chairman of the Regional Executive Committee of Russian origin was removed from his position and a new chairman of Jewish origin was appointed. Furthermore, for the first time in decades, not counting the construction of the temporary synagogue at the Olympic village in Moscow in 1980, Soviet municipal authorities took an active part in the establishment of a Jewish house of worship.
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Abstract: In den Jahren 1936 bis 1938 förderte die sowjetische Regierung den Aufbau des Birobidshaner Staatlichen Jüdischen Theaters (BirGOSET) im kurz zuvor gegründeten Jüdischen Autonomen Gebiet (Evrejskaja Avtonomičeskaja Oblast’). Die... more
Abstract: In den Jahren 1936 bis 1938 förderte die sowjetische Regierung den Aufbau des Birobidshaner Staatlichen Jüdischen Theaters (BirGOSET) im kurz zuvor gegründeten Jüdischen Autonomen Gebiet (Evrejskaja Avtonomičeskaja Oblast’). Die sowjetischen Funktionäre erwarteten von diesem Theater die Übernahme einer Führungsrolle innerhalb der sowjetisch-jiddischen Kultur, und insbesondere im Aufbau Birobidshans. Vor diesem Hintergrund konnte Moyshe Goldblat (1896–1974), der zu jener Zeit neu ernannte Intendant des BirGOSET, seine persönlichen Vorstellung von einer modernen jiddischen Theaterkunst im Rahmen der herrschenden ideologischen Doktrin und mit staatlicher Förderung verwirklichen. Der vorliegende Artikel rekonstruiert die Geschichte der außergewöhnlich erfolgreichen Aufführung des (nach seinem Protagonisten benannten) Dramas »Boytre« des sowjetisch-jiddischen Schriftstellers Moyshe Kulbak (1896–1937) durch das Birobidshaner Ensemble. Goldblats Inszenierung feierte das neue Bild eines gesunden, starken jüdischen Volkshelden, das nach dem Vorbild der vom Geist der Rebellion erfüllten Gesetzlosen aus Friedrich Schillers »Die Räuber« gestaltet wurde. Zudem wird die von Goldblat geschaffene Ästhetik einer positivistischen Romantik analysiert, die bei den Aufführungen zum Einsatz kam.
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From the time he began publishing regularly in Jewish periodicals in Galicia, Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Czaczkes, –) wrote in both the Jewish languages, Yiddish and Hebrew.1 His first poem to be published, ‘Rabi yoysef dela reyna’... more
From the time he began publishing regularly in Jewish periodicals in Galicia, Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Czaczkes, –) wrote in both the Jewish languages, Yiddish and Hebrew.1 His first poem to be published, ‘Rabi yoysef dela reyna’ (‘Rabbi Joseph de la Reina’), appeared in the Yiddish-language weeklyYudishes vokhenblat in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in the summer of , when Agnon was not yet years old. In he decided to say goodbye for good to his mother tongue, Yiddish, for he was travelling to the Land of Israel, and this language of galut, the Exile, he now associated with h. utsah la’arets (‘lands abroad’), as he called them. But the cultural atmosphere in which the author lived and breathed during these formative years also included intensive contact with the European literature being produced at the dawn of the twentieth century, literature that Agnon was beginning to read, or perhaps more precisely to ‘swallow’. As his biographer Dan Laor stated, he began wit...
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The paper is dedicated to the architect Hannes Meyer of Bauhaus and his 1933-35 plans for the "First Jewish Socialist City" in Birobidzhan
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Ber Kotlerman and Alexandra Polyan putting a marker on the Yiddish writer Der Nister's grave, Abez, Komi Republic, RF, August 2017
The article examines Der Nister’s writings from the final years of his life in which he challenged the notion of Jewish homelessness. It begins with an analysis of the short essay “Hate”, published in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s... more
The article examines Der Nister’s writings from the final years of his life in which he challenged the notion of Jewish homelessness. It begins with an analysis of the short essay “Hate”, published in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s newspaper, Eynikayt, in the summer of 1944. The essay was inspired by the author’s Moscow meeting with a Polish Jewish teenage partisan who had miraculously survived the massacre of the Jewish population of Volhynia. Moved by this tragic and passionate story, Der Nister constructed his narrative around the theme of Tisha B’Av, the traditional Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. However, the essay also expresses hope for a national renaissance. Der Nister urged his readers to rise up from the ruins and play an active part in the reconstruction of Soviet Jews as a nation.
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The blood libel against the Jews in Trent in 1475, the first of this kind in the Early Modern Times, which led to execution of all Jewish men of the city, caused an investigation initiated by Pope Sixtus IV. The court proceedings of the... more
The blood libel against the Jews in Trent in 1475, the first of this kind in the Early Modern Times, which led to execution of all Jewish men of the city, caused an investigation initiated by Pope Sixtus IV. The court proceedings of the case, stored in the city archive of Trent for more than half a thousand years, include
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"The Japanese Captivity as a Significant Station in Shaping Joseph Trumpeldor's Way," in Yael Zerubavel & Amir Goldstein (eds.), Tel Hai 1920-2020: Between History and Memory (Jerusalem-Tel Aviv: Yad Ben Zvi / Chaim Weizmann Zionist Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 2020), 64-75 (in Hebrew)more
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The incredibly inspiring, and in the end unbearably crushing, experience of the great, symbolist Soviet Yiddish writer "Der Nister" after taking up the case for Soviet Jewish National Autonomy in the forsaken, far-eastern, region of... more
The incredibly inspiring, and in the end unbearably crushing, experience of the great, symbolist Soviet Yiddish writer "Der Nister" after taking up the case for Soviet Jewish National Autonomy in the forsaken, far-eastern, region of Birobidzhan.
Research Interests: Yiddish Literature, Stalin and Stalinism, Yiddish Studies, Soviet Yiddish, Jewish Nationalism, and 13 moreYiddish Culture and Language, Soviet Jewry, Jewish Folklore and Ethnography, Yiddish Folklore, Folk Medicine, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, History of Russian Jews, Jews of the Ukraine, Soviet Yiddish Writers, Der Nister, Dovid Bergelson, Stalin's Jews, Stalin and the Jews, Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, and Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
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The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI) holds a collection under the name “P. M. Kaganovich.” It is a rather modest set of materials— letters, manuscripts, documents, and photos—related to the Yiddish writer... more
The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI) holds a collection under the name “P. M. Kaganovich.” It is a rather modest set of materials— letters, manuscripts, documents, and photos—related to the Yiddish writer Pinkhas Kahanovitsh (1884–1950), better known by the mystical pseudonym Der Nister, “The Hidden One”. Among these mostly well researched materials, there are several rough drafts that numerous scholars of Der Nister's writings have surprisingly overlooked.
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Recently discovered archival documents show the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s (1859–1916) significant interest in the field of silent cinema. Living in Switzerland, he wrote a number of film scripts and established numerous... more
Recently discovered archival documents show the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s (1859–1916) significant interest in the field of silent cinema. Living in Switzerland, he wrote a number of film scripts and established numerous contacts with various cinema figures in Berlin, Moscow, Riga, Odessa, Warsaw, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1913–14. World War I interrupted his creative ties and led him to abandon his cinema projects. However, when he immigrated to America in December 1914, his motion picture ambitions revived and he tried to establish contacts with a whole range of film companies: ‘Vitagraph,’ ‘Fox,’ ‘Universal,’ etc. The paper is dedicated to Sholem Aleichem’s quest to find a place for himself in the American cinematograph.
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More than twenty letters of European Jews to the President of the Philippines Manuel Quezon, sent to apply for entry visas for over four dozen people, were recently found in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the National... more
More than twenty letters of European Jews to the President of the Philippines Manuel Quezon, sent to apply for entry visas for over four dozen people, were recently found in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the National Library of the Philippines in Manila. The letters written in English, German, and Spanish are dated Spring-Summer 1939, when escape from Europe was still possible. Though several hundreds of Jewish refugees came to Manila via various ways during 1937–1941, the letters in question remained unanswered. All of them provide the exact time of the short-lived Mindanao plan, which proposed to establish an agricultural colony of European Jews in the Philippines, but got stuck in the very beginning. The databases of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington reveal the tragedy, which many Jews anticipated: all of the Philippine visa-seekers, except for one person, found their death in various concentration camps, ghettos, and labour battalions. The article is dedicated to the memory of Jewish refugees, who were seeking in vain an asylum from the Nazis and their collaborators in the Philippines and other parts of the world. K EY WO R D S: Holocaust, Yad Vashem, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Euro
Research Interests: Southeast Asian Studies, Refugee Studies, Japanese History, Jewish History, Holocaust Studies, and 13 moreOccupation and Resistance in WW2, Emigration Research, Philippine History, World War II Pacific Theatre, Holocaust, Nazism, Shoah, Shanghai, The Holocaust, Holocaust Shoah, Mindanao, Refugee memory, and History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II
From the summer of 1913 to the spring of 1914 Sholem Aleichem wrote several film scripts, basically in Russian, that were never published and some of them were lost. The article deals with a short, English-language cinema synopsis... more
From the summer of 1913 to the spring of 1914 Sholem Aleichem wrote several film scripts, basically in Russian, that were never published and some of them were lost. The article deals with a short, English-language cinema synopsis discovered among the writer’s papers in the archives of the Tel Aviv Sholem Aleichem House, Little Motl Goes to America, which Sholem Aleichem prepared based on one of the missing screenplays, The Adventures of Lucky Motl. The synopsis was translated into English in 1915 by Ben-Zion Goldberg at the request of a certain motion picture studio. This contact with the American movie-making industry was broken off and developed no further, but the writer was very active in promoting Motl in the American cinema until the last days of his life. The synopsis provides scholars with a missing link in the genesis of Sholem Aleichem’s well-known work, The Adventures of Motl, the Cantor’s Son.
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Research Interests:
In den Jahren 1936 bis 1938 förderte die sowjetische Regierung den Aufbau des Birobidshaner Staatlichen Jüdischen Theaters (BirGOSET) im kurz zuvor gegründeten Jüdischen Autonomen Gebiet (Evrejskaja Avtonomnaja... more
In den Jahren 1936 bis 1938 förderte die sowjetische Regierung den Aufbau des Birobidshaner Staatlichen Jüdischen Theaters (BirGOSET) im kurz zuvor gegründeten Jüdischen Autonomen Gebiet (Evrejskaja Avtonomnaja Oblast‹). Die sowjetischen Funktionäre erwarteten von diesem Theater die Übernahme einer Führungsrolle innerhalb der sowjetisch-jiddischen Kultur, und insbesondere im Aufbau Birobidshans. Vor diesem Hintergrund konnte Moyshe Goldblat (1896–1974), der zu jener Zeit neu ernannte Intendant des BirGOSET,
seine persönlichen Vorstellung von einer modernen jiddischen Theaterkunst im Rahmen der herrschenden ideologischen Doktrin und mit staatlicher Förderung verwirklichen. Der vorliegende Artikel rekonstruiert die Geschichte der außergewöhnlich erfolgreichen Aufführung des (nach seinem Protagonisten benannten) Dramas »Boytre« des sowjetisch-jiddischen Schriftstellers Moyshe Kulbak (1896–1937) durch das Birobidshaner Ensemble. Goldblats Inszenierung feierte das neue Bild eines gesunden, starken jüdischen Volkshelden, das nach dem Vorbild der vom Geist der Rebellion erfüllten Gesetzlosen aus Friedrich Schillers »Die Räuber« gestaltet wurde. Zudem wird die von Goldblat geschaffene Ästhetik einer positivis-tischen Romantik analysiert, die bei den Aufführungen zum Einsatz kam.
seine persönlichen Vorstellung von einer modernen jiddischen Theaterkunst im Rahmen der herrschenden ideologischen Doktrin und mit staatlicher Förderung verwirklichen. Der vorliegende Artikel rekonstruiert die Geschichte der außergewöhnlich erfolgreichen Aufführung des (nach seinem Protagonisten benannten) Dramas »Boytre« des sowjetisch-jiddischen Schriftstellers Moyshe Kulbak (1896–1937) durch das Birobidshaner Ensemble. Goldblats Inszenierung feierte das neue Bild eines gesunden, starken jüdischen Volkshelden, das nach dem Vorbild der vom Geist der Rebellion erfüllten Gesetzlosen aus Friedrich Schillers »Die Räuber« gestaltet wurde. Zudem wird die von Goldblat geschaffene Ästhetik einer positivis-tischen Romantik analysiert, die bei den Aufführungen zum Einsatz kam.
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Morris Hoffman (1885-1940), who was born in a Latvian township and emigrated to South Africa in 1906, was a brilliant example of the Eastern European Jewish maskil writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and... more
Morris Hoffman (1885-1940), who was born in a Latvian township and emigrated to South Africa in 1906, was a brilliant example of the Eastern European Jewish maskil writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and Hebrew. He published poetry and prose in South African Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals. His long Yiddish poem under the title Afrikaner epopeyen (African epics) was considered to be the best Yiddish poetry written in South Africa. In 1939, a selection of his Yiddish stories under the title Unter afrikaner zun (Under the African sun) was prepared for publishing in De Aar, Cape Province, and published after his death in 1951 in Johannesburg. The Hebrew version of the stories was published in Israel in 1949 under the title Taḥat shmey afrikah (Under the skies of Africa). The article deals with certain differences between the versions using the example of one of the bilingual stories. The comparison between the versions illuminates Hoffman’s reflections on the relations between Jews and Afrikaners with a rather new perspective which underlines their religious background.
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The article is dedicated to the not so well researched Far East episode in the life of Joseph Trumpeldor, including the year he spent in Japanese captivity (1905). A defender of the fortress Port-Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War... more
The article is dedicated to the not so well researched Far East episode in the life of Joseph Trumpeldor, including the year he spent in Japanese captivity (1905). A defender of the fortress Port-Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, a member of the Jewish pioneer movement in Palestine, a British officer against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, an activist in the time of the Russian revolution, and a defender of the Galilean settlement of Tel Hai where he found his tragic death in 1920, Trumpeldor has become widely recognized as one of the contemporary national symbols of the State of Israel. In the author's opinion, it was the Japanese period when Trumpeldor underwent a significant change in attitude that determined his life and activity thereafter. It seems that his national self-consciousness as a Jew, which was awakened and sharpened during the Japanese captivity, forced him to change his civilian position from a Russian patriot to an active participant of the Jewish national movement.
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The article is dedicated to the historical novel Galgal hahoyzer (The Wheel That Turns) by Soviet Yiddish prose writer Natan Zabare (1908-1975), first published in the Moscow Yiddish journal Sovetish heymland in 1972-75. It tells the... more
The article is dedicated to the historical novel Galgal hahoyzer (The Wheel That Turns) by Soviet Yiddish prose writer Natan Zabare (1908-1975), first published in the Moscow Yiddish journal Sovetish heymland in 1972-75. It tells the story of the Jews of Provence at the end of the 12th century - beginning of the 13th century, and among them a putative ancestor of the author - Rabbi Yosef ben Meir Zabara, author of Sefer sha'ashuim (The Book of Delight). The novel is an exception in relation to the literary canon which was customary in Yiddish literature in the Soviet Union. Intensive use of Hebrew Aramaic words, multiple quotes from the Bible and the Talmud (both original and translated), descriptions of Jewish customs and ceremonies have caused confusion and consternation in the Soviet Union and great enthusiasm abroad. Thorough analysis of this work, particularly the paradoxical language and the editing graphic, reveals the author's guiding idea: one (Jewish) people - one (Jewish) language.
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The most extensive collection of its time of tales presented in late medieval (Western) Yiddish, Mayse Bukh (Basel, 1602), apparently contains the earliest published detailed account of a Safed dybbuk , but the character of the story... more
The most extensive collection of its time of tales presented in late medieval (Western) Yiddish, Mayse Bukh (Basel, 1602), apparently contains the earliest published detailed account of a Safed dybbuk , but the character of the story indicates that its presenters had no interest in the Safed circle of Kabbalists. Exploiting the context in which it presents the story, the Mayse Bukh does not use the tale about the expulsion of an evil spirit in order to glorify the mystical powers of the Ari (Rabbi Isaak Luria) and his colleagues. It is also hard to accept the ‘pedagogical’ approach, which claims that the tale’s aim was to discuss contemporary moral problems. The moralistic side, indeed, is presented here, but rather as an audacious ‘decoding’ illustration of the Talmudic ideas in circumstances much closer to the readers of the Mayse Bukh . The rather abstract yetser har̓a , or evil inclination, is here replaced by the much more tangible beyz ruekh/ruah ra'a (Yiddish/Hebrew), or evil spirit. The parallel between the two phenomena, evil spirit and evil inclination, transformed the Talmud’s theoretical discussion into a presentation of concrete sins. In this way the Mayse Bukh , written in the language of the common people lacking any sacred status, offers a quite distinctive view of the dybbuk phenomenon.
Right after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the popular Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem published stinging anti-Russian satire; but he was more explicit in his letter calling on wealthy U.S. Jews not to loan money to his homeland
מגילת שיר השירים מתוך 'צאינה וראינה: חמשה חומשי תורה בלשון אשכנז' ליעקב בן יצחק אשכנזי מיאנוב, על-פי מהדורת באזל [האנאו] 1622, כרך חמש מגילות
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אוסף איורים לספר בראשית מתוך 'צאינה וראינה בנות ציון: חמשה חומשי תורה בלשון אשכנז' ליעקב בן יצחק אשכנזי מיאנוב, על-פי מהדורת אמסטרדם 1792. מתפרסם במסגרת מפעל שיטנוביצר-שמידט-הכט לחקר הספרות הדתית ביידיש, המרכז ללימודי יידיש, אוניברסיטת... more
אוסף איורים לספר בראשית מתוך 'צאינה וראינה בנות ציון: חמשה חומשי תורה בלשון אשכנז' ליעקב בן יצחק אשכנזי מיאנוב, על-פי מהדורת אמסטרדם 1792. מתפרסם במסגרת מפעל שיטנוביצר-שמידט-הכט לחקר הספרות הדתית ביידיש, המרכז ללימודי יידיש, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן
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Yiddish writings related to Montenegro and surrounding territories (Albania, Bosnia, Croatia)
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Reading Workshop
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In May 1905, a short humoristic story named “Rasel” by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem was published in the Vilna Hebrew newspaper, “Ha-Zman”. A half year later, in December 1905, its Yiddish original version named “Di naygeboyrene –... more
In May 1905, a short humoristic story named “Rasel” by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem was published in the Vilna Hebrew newspaper, “Ha-Zman”. A half year later, in December 1905, its Yiddish original version named “Di naygeboyrene – The Newborn” was published in the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper, “Der Veg”. The editors of “Der Veg” found it necessary to explain that the story waited to be published for months because of the Tsar’s censorship. The official censor in Warsaw discerned in the name of the story’s protagonist, the young woman in labor Rasl, a hint at the Tsar’s Russia, in the name of the midwife Rivkah-Leah (spelled in Yiddish Rive-Leytse) – the failed 1905 Russian revolution, in the names of the two aunts Anzy and Franzy – England and France, and finally in the name of the newborn baby "K" - Constitution. The story was just a part of Sholem Aleichem’s old pattern in choosing meaningful names for his protagonists, including the famous stockbroker Yaknehoz who’s name incorporates the order of the traditional Havdalah ceremony or Yaakov David, spelled in Yiddish Yankev-Duvidl, alluding to the American Yankee Doodle. A certain number of Yiddish names were used by Sholem Aleichem in attempt to mirror the domestic and world politics of the beginning of the 20th century. The paper examined several such cases.
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Invited Talk, The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University
May 6, 2021
May 6, 2021
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Public talk organized by Stichting Jiddische Lexicografie Amsterdam
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Invited paper at the international conference "Tel-Hai 1920-2020: History and Memory"
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Invited talk at the international seminar "S. An-sky, 'Dybbuk', and Everything Else"
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Invited talk at the international conference "The Holocaust as Reflected in Public Discourse in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist Period, 1941-1953"
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Public lecture at the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova
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Mini course for MA students in Jewish studies at the University of Kiev-Mohila (KMA), under the aegis of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Israeli Cultural Center by Embassy of the State of Israel to Ukraine, Sept 16-20, 2019
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It had become almost common knowledge, that between 1939 and 1941, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of Philippine visas were issued to Jews fleeing Europe. The Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ended his 2018 visit to Israel in... more
It had become almost common knowledge, that between 1939 and 1941, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of Philippine visas were issued to Jews fleeing Europe. The Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ended his 2018 visit to Israel in Rishon-Lezion, commemorating "his country saving 1,300 Jews in WWII". Duterte laid a wreath at the “Open Doors” monument in Rishon Lezion’s Holocaust Memorial Park. As Duterte’s office said in a statement, the monument “symbolizes the humanitarian deeds and the courage of Filipinos in welcoming the Jews under the open door policy in 1939.” As The Times of Israel explained, "In 1939, when most of the world closed its doors to European Jews, the Philippines’ then-president Manuel L. Quezon allowed the issuance of 10,000 visas to persecuted Jews. Due to the outbreak of World War II and the Japanese invasion, only some 1,300 Jews actually reached safety in the Philippines…"
What kind of open door policy was it? How many Jewish refugees reached successfully the Philippine shores? Was it the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 that really stop the rescue of European Jews? The talk will tried to give answers to these and other questions.
What kind of open door policy was it? How many Jewish refugees reached successfully the Philippine shores? Was it the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 that really stop the rescue of European Jews? The talk will tried to give answers to these and other questions.
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Recently found in the archives of Manila letters of European Jews to the Philippine President applying for an entry visa, dated Spring-Summer 1939, indicate the timing of the short-lived Mindanao plan, which proposed to establish a Jewish... more
Recently found in the archives of Manila letters of European Jews to the Philippine President applying for an entry visa, dated Spring-Summer 1939, indicate the timing of the short-lived Mindanao plan, which proposed to establish a Jewish agricultural colony in the Philippines, but got stuck in the very beginning. The databases of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington reveal the expected tragedy of the Philippine visa-seekers.
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In April 1908, on his way to the Land of Israel, a young man named Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes, later to be known as Shmuel Yosef Agnon, writer of Hebrew literature and Noble Prize laureate, visited the city of Lemberg. While there he... more
In April 1908, on his way to the Land of Israel, a young man named Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes, later to be known as Shmuel Yosef Agnon, writer of Hebrew literature and Noble Prize laureate, visited the city of Lemberg. While there he met with the multilingual publicist Gershom Bader and handed him a Yiddish story, entitled “Toytntants”. This story turned out to be the last one Agnon ever wrote in Yiddish. In this story, Agnon employs a well-developed sound- and music-oriented semantic field that, upon consideration, exposes his intention of performing a feat opposite that of Saint-Saëns's symphonic poem “Danse macabre”. While the French composer exemplified brilliantly the “verbalization” of music, Agnon’s aim was the “vocalization” of the textual flow, which can be described rather easily in phonological and musical terms. Virtually every movement in the story is conveyed using a phonological expression of one kind or another: the tumult of the town, sounds of a polka (as an expression of Slavic celebration), Macabre laughter (as in the known Yiddish expression, “the laughter of lizards”), ring of a telephone, etc. These sound effects, it would seem, were a kind of a farewell to the romantic-sentimental style, which Agnon identified with his writing in the “Exile language” of Yiddish.
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International Conference “Satires in Jewish languages (Judeo-Spanish, Yiddish) in Contemporary Times: Confronting the Crises of the Modern Jewish World through Laughter”
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Mini course focused on selected Yiddish writings of Sholem Aleichem with a unique perspective on two dramatic events in the life of Jews of the Russian “Pale of Settlement” before World War One: the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the... more
Mini course focused on selected Yiddish writings of Sholem Aleichem with a unique perspective on two dramatic events in the life of Jews of the Russian “Pale of Settlement” before World War One: the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the Beilis Affair (1911-1913). Through the writer’s eyes the questions of patriotism, loyalty, and citizenship are examined, as well as the Jews’ relations with their Christian neighbors and compatriots.
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Sholem Aleichem's protagonist Menakhem-Mendel and Reality of the Pale of Settlement
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More than 1,700 Russian soldiers of Jewish origin were imprisoned in the POW camps in Japan during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905). Since the camp administrations separated them from other POWs, a number of homogeneous Jewish... more
More than 1,700 Russian soldiers of Jewish origin were imprisoned in the POW camps in Japan during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905). Since the camp administrations separated them from other POWs, a number of homogeneous Jewish communities were organized. Being treated by their captors on egalitarian basis, the Jewish POWs enjoyed much more religious freedom than within the Russian army. Such a paradoxical situation, which included celebrations of religious festivals and even theological debates, has led to the growth of their national consciousness, as well as to a critical attitude towards Russia.
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International Conference "Der Nister: Discovering the Hidden World of Pinkhes Kaganovitsh"
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The Hebrew translation of Peretz Hirshbein's Yiddish Japanese essay "Shotoku"
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Letter of Geilen, wife of Mordechai Gumprecht,
to her mother Ellan of Novara (Old Yiddish, May 1476)
Translated from Old Yiddish into English by Ber Kotlerman
to her mother Ellan of Novara (Old Yiddish, May 1476)
Translated from Old Yiddish into English by Ber Kotlerman
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Der Nister, "Drunk"
Translated into Ukrainian by Efroim Raitsin
Published in 1929 in a Kharkiv based literary magazine Literaturnyi Yarmarok (1928-1930)
Translated into Ukrainian by Efroim Raitsin
Published in 1929 in a Kharkiv based literary magazine Literaturnyi Yarmarok (1928-1930)
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THE DANGEROUS JEST
SHOLEM ALEICHEM
From the novel of the same name by SHOLEM ALEICHEM
Translated into English by Ben-Zion Goldberg
[New York, 1915]
SHOLEM ALEICHEM
From the novel of the same name by SHOLEM ALEICHEM
Translated into English by Ben-Zion Goldberg
[New York, 1915]
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The cross-border experience of the Jewish population of the Far East (Siberia, China, and Mongolia) was not considered in the perspective of an important source on border history. The conference aims to fill this gap by addressing Jewish... more
The cross-border experience of the Jewish population of the Far East (Siberia, China, and Mongolia) was not considered in the perspective of an important source on border history. The conference aims to fill this gap by addressing Jewish voices and texts that incorporate cross-border experiences into the transnational perspective of Jewish culture. In this perspective, the conference offers a comprehensive approach to Eastern European Jewish culture and its heritage in the border region, avoiding divisions into traditional and modern, religious and secular, global and local.