Yiddish Voices – serie

In their English translation of the Yiddish play Mississippi, Ellen Perecman and Alyssa Quint have undertaken a work of cultural salvage. Penned in 1935 by Polish-Jewish playwright Leib Malach, the play was performed on the Warsaw stage by the experimental Yiddish theatre company “Young Theater” (Yung Teatr) led by legendary director and drama theoretician Mikhl Weichert. Malach and Weichert were keen to depict a dramatic episode from contemporary life that reflected their humanistic and leftist political ideas as well as avant-garde theatrical practices.Mississippi is a fictionalized retelling of the Scottsboro Affair, which began with the wrongful arrest of nine African American youths in Alabama in 1931. The play demonstrates how important it was to Yiddish writers of the 1920s and 1930s to grapple with the persecution of Black people in America. In her introductory essay, Quint treats the political aspirations that animated Malach and Weichert, and the vulnerability felt by European Jewry that it saw reflected in the experience of Black Americans.

In their English translation of the Yiddish play Mississippi, Ellen Perecman and Alyssa Quint have undertaken a work of cultural salvage. Penned in 1935 by Polish-Jewish playwright Leib Malach, the play was performed on the Warsaw stage by the experimental Yiddish theatre company “Young Theater” (Yung Teatr) led by legendary director and drama theoretician Mikhl Weichert. Malach and Weichert were keen to depict a dramatic episode from contemporary life that reflected their humanistic and leftist political ideas as well as avant-garde theatrical practices.Mississippi is a fictionalized retelling of the Scottsboro Affair, which began with the wrongful arrest of nine African American youths in Alabama in 1931. The play demonstrates how important it was to Yiddish writers of the 1920s and 1930s to grapple with the persecution of Black people in America. In her introductory essay, Quint treats the political aspirations that animated Malach and Weichert, and the vulnerability felt by European Jewry that it saw reflected in the experience of Black Americans.

This is an unprecedented collection of three newly translated Yiddish plays written by women in the period from 1880 to 1920. Taken together, these plays provide a fascinating insight into female Jewish perspectives on a range of women’s issues prevalent at the time and, in some cases, still prevalent today. The works explore topics such as the Jewish law of the ‘chained widow’, pregnancy out of wedlock, and birth control, amongst many others.Three Yiddish Plays by Women includes an incisive contextual introduction which provides historical context for each individual work, summaries and discussion of the texts and stage histories for two of the three that have them. The introduction offers biographical information about each playwright and looks at what ambit they were each active in, taking into consideration gender norms. It also engages an array of recent sources and angles on intersecting questions of theater and gender in a landmark volume of vital significance to students of women’s history, modern Jewish history, cultural history and theatre history.

This is an unprecedented collection of three newly translated Yiddish plays written by women in the period from 1880 to 1920. Taken together, these plays provide a fascinating insight into female Jewish perspectives on a range of women’s issues prevalent at the time and, in some cases, still prevalent today. The works explore topics such as the Jewish law of the ‘chained widow’, pregnancy out of wedlock, and birth control, amongst many others.Three Yiddish Plays by Women includes an incisive contextual introduction which provides historical context for each individual work, summaries and discussion of the texts and stage histories for two of the three that have them. The introduction offers biographical information about each playwright and looks at what ambit they were each active in, taking into consideration gender norms. It also engages an array of recent sources and angles on intersecting questions of theater and gender in a landmark volume of vital significance to students of women’s history, modern Jewish history, cultural history and theatre history.

Originally appearing in the Warsaw daily Der Moment (1926-7), this intimate self-portrait by pioneering Yiddish actress Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (1870–1925) appears here for the first time in English. As it moves through her life, we see this towering artist and her art form emerge, observing how Kaminska navigates the perilous move from shtetl to city, stages illegal performances in unlikely venues around the Russian Empire, and eventually earns the exultant acclaim of her public. The memoirs richly disclose the texture of everyday life for working Jewish women and all the grit and hard-won glamour of backstage (or in her case, back-barn/barrack/barroom) life. An extensive introduction and notes by Mikhl Yashinsky provide historical context and an appraisal of Kaminska’s epoch-making talent.

Originally appearing in the Warsaw daily Der Moment (1926-7), this intimate self-portrait by pioneering Yiddish actress Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (1870–1925) appears here for the first time in English. As it moves through her life, we see this towering artist and her art form emerge, observing how Kaminska navigates the perilous move from shtetl to city, stages illegal performances in unlikely venues around the Russian Empire, and eventually earns the exultant acclaim of her public. The memoirs richly disclose the texture of everyday life for working Jewish women and all the grit and hard-won glamour of backstage (or in her case, back-barn/barrack/barroom) life. An extensive introduction and notes by Mikhl Yashinsky provide historical context and an appraisal of Kaminska’s epoch-making talent.

Written by Yiddish writer Rokhl Faygnberg, The Destruction of the Dubova Shtetl is a powerful account of the elimination of the Jewish community of one shtetl during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. Based on her personal interviews with survivors, Faygnberg presents a detailed description of the evisceration of the vibrant Jewish community of Dubova, which, after enduring torture, killings, and destruction—was ultimately wiped off the map of Ukraine. In this unique memorial book, translated into English here for the first time, Faygnberg chronicles the demise of a typical shtetl, which like so many others at the time, was caught up in the genocidal violence of the civil war, a period that is largely forgotten, overshadowed by the Holocaust that took place in these same lands some twenty years later. The biographical details of the Jewish community members of Dubova provide a moving portrait of the familiar and neighborly relations, as well as of the pettiness of everyday life on the eve of destruction, made of conflict, class tension, and intermarriage. Faygnberg’s narrative also captures the extreme violence of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, by dwelling on the perpetrators’ actions and motivations, and on the intimacy of genocide made of neighbors killing neighbors, and by bringing to life the Jewish community’s desperate attempts to resist and survive the brutality.By building on the most recent historiography on the Russian Civil War and anti-Jewish violence, Elissa Bemporad expertly contextualizes the destruction of the shtetl of Dubova within the political and military events of 1918-1921 in the volume’s introduction. Bemporad explores both the perpetrators’ motivations and the victims’ responses to the pogroms, as well as examining the original writing produced by Rokhl Faygnberg, whose genre straddles between a historical chronicle based on witness accounts, and a work of literature. Lastly, the introduction discusses the fascinating history of Faygnberg’s text, uncovering the different political and cultural purposes it served at different times and what it can tell us about anti-Jewish violence today.

Written by Yiddish writer Rokhl Faygnberg, The Destruction of Dubova: Chronicle of a Dead City is a powerful account of the elimination of the Jewish community of one shtetl during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. Based on her personal interviews with survivors, Faygnberg presents a detailed description of the evisceration of the vibrant Jewish community of Dubova, which, after enduring torture, killings, and destruction—was ultimately wiped off the map of Ukraine. In this unique memorial book, translated into English here for the first time, Faygnberg chronicles the demise of a typical shtetl, which like so many others at the time, was caught up in the genocidal violence of the civil war, a period that is largely forgotten, overshadowed by the Holocaust that took place in these same lands some twenty years later. The biographical details of the Jewish community members of Dubova provide a moving portrait of the familiar and neighborly relations, as well as of the pettiness of everyday life on the eve of destruction, made of conflict, class tension, and intermarriage. Faygnberg’s narrative also captures the extreme violence of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, by dwelling on the perpetrators’ actions and motivations, and on the intimacy of genocide made of neighbors killing neighbors, and by bringing to life the Jewish community’s desperate attempts to resist and survive the brutality.By building on the most recent historiography on the Russian Civil War and anti-Jewish violence, Elissa Bemporad expertly contextualizes the destruction of the shtetl of Dubova within the political and military events of 1918-1921 in the volume’s introduction. Bemporad explores both the perpetrators’ motivations and the victims’ responses to the pogroms, as well as examining the original writing produced by Rokhl Faygnberg, whose genre straddles between a historical chronicle based on witness accounts, and a work of literature. Lastly, the introduction discusses the fascinating history of Faygnberg’s text, uncovering the different political and cultural purposes it served at different times and what it can tell us about anti-Jewish violence today.

This book provides the first English translation of Yechiel Hofer’s book, Reb Zalmen. Centering on a particular denizen of the Aleksander Hasidim’s shtibl (prayer house), it offers a unique and intimate portrait of the lives of those who went inside to pray, eat, study, and argue there in the early 20th century. It is hard to imagine that Reb Zalmen was not an actual figure - someone the young Yechiel Hofer actually knew and loved - although finding any trace of him today would be a daunting task. Reb Zalmen was that rare thing, a traditional Jew without a family. His last name is never given; all we are told is that he had originally come to Warsaw from the town of Siedlec.Regardless of Reb Zalmen’s historical existence, Hasidic Warsaw provides rich material for the ethnography of Polish Hasidism in the early 20th century. It reveals what it was like to experience ‘Gentile’ Warsaw for someone who spends all his time in the Jewish quarter; to confront the new waves of doubt and fashion that threatened the folkways followed there; the rivalries and alliances between different Hasidic courts and their followers; the bitterness of poverty and the struggle to transcend hunger.Jonathan Boyarin’s introduction orients the reader toward the changing demographic and political situation of Polish Hasidim in the early 20th century. It points to the distinct facets of Warsaw Hasidic life and law that structure the chapters of Hasidic Warsaw, guiding the reader towards their own contemplation of the interplay between fiction and memory.