Books by Alexander Frenkel
Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем: новые переводы, исследования, публикации. СПб., 2022. 3... more Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем: новые переводы, исследования, публикации. СПб., 2022. 356 с.: ил.
В сборник вошли переводы пяти рассказов классика еврейской литературы, незнакомых русской аудитории. Каждому из переводов предпослана вступительная статья, призванная ввести читателя в историко-литературный контекст соответствующего рассказа. Другие статьи сборника объединены темой «Шолом-Алейхем в пространстве русской культуры».
Frenkel, Alexander, Unknown Sholem Aleichem: new translations, research articles, publications, St. Petersburg, 2022, 356 pp., ill. (Russian)
The book includes translations of five short stories of the classic Yiddish writer, unfamiliar to the Russian audience. Each of the translations is preceded by an introductory article designed to acquaint the reader with the historical and literary context of the story. Other articles included in the book are devoted to the topic "Sholem Aleichem and Russian culture."
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Alexander Frenkel
Архив еврейской истории. М., 2024. Т. 14. С. 335–446.
“Your Translation is Intended for the Large Russian Public”: Correspondence between Sholem Aleich... more “Your Translation is Intended for the Large Russian Public”: Correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich. Edited and introduced by Alexander Frenkel
* Abstract: Sarah Ravich (1879–1957), a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and Vladimir Lenin’s closest ally, was among those who translated Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian during the writer's lifetime. The collaboration between the most popular early 20th century Yiddish author and this professional revolutionary lasted about a year and a half, from the autumn of 1912 to January 1914. Both of them then lived outside of Russia, mainly in Switzerland. The result of their collaboration was the appearance of the Russian version of the novel The Bloody Hoax, inspired by the infamous Beilis trial. The correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich, preserved in Russian and Israeli archives, contains rich historical, literary and philological material. This publication includes 62 letters from Sholem Aleichem written directly by him or by his daughter Emma Rabinovich, either under his dictation or on his behalf, as well as 36 reply letters written by Sarah Ravich.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем. СПб., 2022. С. 189–238.
Sholem Aleichem as a Russian Writer
* Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's att... more Sholem Aleichem as a Russian Writer
* Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's attempts to carve for himself a niche in Russian literature. Sholem Aleichem's Russian stories, published between 1883 and 1903 in St. Petersburg and Odessa Russian periodicals, remain largely forgotten. Although not devoid of artistic merit, the stories show that the writer, not withstanding his fluency in Russian, could not find the right register for portraying Jewish life and rendering the idiomatic speech of his characters. His attempts of self-translation from Yiddish into Russian were also unsuccessful. The article pays special attention to the early cycle of Sholom Aleichem's stories in Yiddish "A Bouquet of Flowers" and the author's Russian version of this cycle "Poems in Prose."
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем. СПб., 2022. С. 161–188.
Stories for the Children by Sholem Aleichem: A Cycle in Transition
* Abstract: The article ana... more Stories for the Children by Sholem Aleichem: A Cycle in Transition
* Abstract: The article analyzes the shaping of Sholem Aleichem’s cycle of “stories for the Jewish children,” as well as the cycle’s numerous transformations, both in the writer’s lifetime and after his death, in Yiddish and in Russian translations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем. СПб., 2022. С. 239–292.
Was The Bloody Hoax Ever Banned in the USSR?
* Abstract: Sholem Aleichem was writing his novel... more Was The Bloody Hoax Ever Banned in the USSR?
* Abstract: Sholem Aleichem was writing his novel Der blutiker shpas (The Bloody Hoax) in 1912, under the impact of the notorious Beilis case. Critics of various stripes and at various times wrote off the novel as the writer’s creative failure. In post-Soviet academic discourse, however, The Bloody Hoax has gained a reputation as a significant literary achievement, banned in the USSR because Soviet censorship ostensibly considered it ideologically unsuitable. With the view to dispelling the mythology built up around the novel, the author of this paper reconstructs the history of its creation and publication, as well as of its Russian translations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Yidishland. Yerushalaim-Malme, 2022. Num. 14. Z. 68–78.
Судьба "Десятого" (вариант статьи на идише)
The Fate of “The Tenth Man” (version of the article ... more Судьба "Десятого" (вариант статьи на идише)
The Fate of “The Tenth Man” (version of the article in Yiddish)
* Abstract: The cycle of twenty socially minded short stories by Sholem Aleichem known, alternately, as the “Railroad Stories” and “Tales of a Commercial Traveler” perfectly met the needs of Soviet ideologues who argued that the classic Yiddish writer was primarily a critic of capitalist exploitation and an exposer of the tsarist autocracy. Oddly enough, the cycle did not receive the same circulation in the Soviet Union as the other towering achievements in Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre—Tevye the Dairyman, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, and The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son. During the entire Soviet period, all twenty stories appeared together in print only once, and in the Yiddish original, not in Russian translation. Even in the most complete editions, one story was missing: “The Tenth Man.” The article claims that this was only partly due to the fact that “The Tenth Man” dealt with interethnic relations, a sensitive topic for the Soviet regime. The main reason was the “politically incorrect” vocabulary used abundantly by Sholem Aleichem in the original Yiddish text of the story. Such vocabulary was typical of vernacular speech in Jewish shtetls, but proved unacceptable to the masterminds of the new Soviet Yiddish culture.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Jews and Slavs. Jerusalem; Kyiv, 2020. Vol. 26. P. 227–248.
The Formation of the “Russian Soviet Canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s Works
* Abstract: The author ... more The Formation of the “Russian Soviet Canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s Works
* Abstract: The author refers under the term “the Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works to the corpus of Russian translations, which includes three editions of his collected works in six volumes (1st edn: 1959–1961; 2nd edn: 1971–1974; 3rd edn: 1988–1990). The appearance of these collections was the most important achievement of the long-term program of publishing the Yiddish classic writer’s works in the USSR – a program that has been unprecedented in its size in the history of translations from Yiddish.
The article traces the history of the formation of the “Russian Soviet canon,” analyzes the specific features of translations presented in six-volume collections and in other editions, examines some examples of translation errors and identifies the cases of omissions that were motivated by either ideological or aesthetic considerations.
The author emphasizes that in fact, the “Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works was not determined once and for all since all the three editions of his six-volume collections differed significantly from each other.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Judaic-Slavic Journal. М., 2018. № 1. С. 154–178.
Correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Judah Leib Gordon. Edited and annotated by Alexander F... more Correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Judah Leib Gordon. Edited and annotated by Alexander Frenkel.
* Abstract: The exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) and the Hebrew poet Judah Leib (Leon) Gordon (1830–1892) took place in 1888–1890 and deals with the challenging problems facing Jewish literature at the end of the nineteenth century. This correspondence is published here for the first time in its entirety, bringing together the original letters from the National Library of Israel (Jerusalem), Beth Shalom Aleichem (Tel-Aviv) and the private collection of Isaak Kofman (Santa Clara, CA). Two letters, originally written in Yiddish and Hebrew, are presented here in Russian translation. The other seven letters are presented in the original Russian with numerous insertions in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Френкель А. С. Неизвестный Шолом-Алейхем. СПб., 2022. С. 295–330.
“It may be that your grandchildren will read my works…”: Sholem Aleichem’s memoirs about Vasily B... more “It may be that your grandchildren will read my works…”: Sholem Aleichem’s memoirs about Vasily Berman; Sholem Aleichem’s letters to Vasily Berman and his son Lazare. Edited and introduced by Alexander Frenkel.
* Abstract: St. Petersburg lawyer Vasily Berman (1863–1896) was one of the most enthusiastic activists of the Hovevei Zion groups, which are now considered the forerunners of modern Zionism. In April 1890, in Odessa, at the founding congress of the first Hovevei Zion organization that was officially approved by the Russian government as “The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine,” he met and befriended Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), the future Yiddish classic writer. This publication includes three letters, written by Sholem Aleichem to Vasily Berman right after the Odessa congress, as well as the later exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer and Berman’s son, Russian poet Lazare Berman (1894–1980).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov, eds., Three Cities of Yiddish: St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Moscow (London: Legenda, 2017), 104–23.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Архив еврейской истории. М., 2016. Т. 8. С. 305–339.
“Freyd zol zayn!”—“Let There Be Joy!”, or The Roads of Sorrows of the Leningrad Jewish Estrada (M... more “Freyd zol zayn!”—“Let There Be Joy!”, or The Roads of Sorrows of the Leningrad Jewish Estrada (Musical Theater).
* Abstract: During the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet system gradually, as a part of the general de-Stalinization process, developed its new policy on “Jewish question.” As a result of it, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the USSR was eliminated and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different state agencies became an integral element of the country’s cultural life of the so called Thaw Era. Still the very conditions in which these groups existed—permanent wanderings, stage plays almost without decorations, censorship pressure, and hostile attitude of local officials—made the level of their work to be very distant from high-water marks of the golden age of Yiddish theater. The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival of the late 1950s and the 1960s in one of its major centers—Leningrad. Three documents from different archival collections that attached to the article testify the enormous efforts needed for Yiddish word and Jewish music to reach Soviet audiences in those years.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Из истории еврейской музыки в России. СПб., 2015. Вып. 3. С. 191–242.
“Sonim af tsulokhes”—“Enemies Be Damned”: Jewish Estrada (Musical Theater) in Leningrad during th... more “Sonim af tsulokhes”—“Enemies Be Damned”: Jewish Estrada (Musical Theater) in Leningrad during the Thaw Era.
* Abstract: After the Stalin’s death in 1953, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union gradually began to end and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. For many years, Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different Soviet state agencies became the most significant, widespread, and accessible form of Jewish culture in the country. In spite of ideological pressure, hard censorship, and difficult material conditions, Soviet Jewish performing arts in the 1950s and 1960s represented an important cultural and social phenomenon. Combining the features of Jewish theatrical and music cultures of the past with the forms of the postwar Soviet cultural mainstream, it came to constitute the unique voice of “the Jews of Silence.” The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival in this period in one of its major centers—Leningrad—through the prism of the tragic biographies of three former GULAG prisoners who returned back home in the middle of the 1950s: the singer Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the actor Faivish Arones (1897–1982), and the composer Zalmen Freidenberg (1901–1972).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Из истории еврейской музыки в России. Вып. 3. СПб., 2015. С. 173–190.
Sofia Magid: New Archival Materials for the Biography of a Scholar.
Abstract: The documents hous... more Sofia Magid: New Archival Materials for the Biography of a Scholar.
Abstract: The documents housed in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg offer to fill in the gaps in the biography of the outstanding Jewish folklorist and scholar Sofia Magid. The sources studied here are taken from the collections of two organizations with which Sofia Magid was affiliated during the different periods of her life: the Jewish Society for History and Ethnography and the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Soviet Composers. Among other things, these newly discovered documents provide an opportunity to update our knowledge about the actual dates of her life: 1893–1954.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Из истории еврейской музыки в России. Вып. 3. СПб., 2015. С. 284–335.
The Great Yiddish Folk Song Debate between Joel Engel, Sholem Aleichem, and Mark Warshavsky (1901... more The Great Yiddish Folk Song Debate between Joel Engel, Sholem Aleichem, and Mark Warshavsky (1901) / Translated and Edited by Alexander Frenkel.
Abstract: The full texts of the debate are presented here for the first time in Russian language with scholarly annotations. Besides the 1901 articles, this publication includes also two introductions written by Sholem Aleichem for the first (1901) and second (1914) editions of Mark Warshavsky’s Yiddish Folk Songs. The materials initially published in Yiddish are presented here in Russian translation. The articles from the Russian-Jewish weekly Voskhod (Dawn) are reprinted here preserving all the unique stylistic features of the original source.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Еврейские песни из репертуара Михаила Эпельбаума для голоса и фортепиано / сост. А. Френкель, Е. Хаздан. СПб., 2014. С. 5–16.
Mikhail Epelbaum, the pioneer of Jewish folk music.
Abstract: Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the ... more Mikhail Epelbaum, the pioneer of Jewish folk music.
Abstract: Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the world-famous performer of Yiddish songs, was extraordinarily popular among Jewish audiences. For a whole generation of Soviet Yiddish singers, Epelbaum was a pioneer and model. The beginnings of Epelbaum’s career lay in the Jewish operetta and drama troupes that wandered the Pale of Settlement and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Epelbaum began giving solo concerts in Yiddish, and in the early 1920s he made wildly successful concert tours in the cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. In 1926, he went on tour in the West, where audiences in Riga, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, and New York enthusiastically received him. It was in New York that he made his first record. In 1929, Epelbaum returned to the Soviet Union, settled in Leningrad, and gave performances all over the country. In 1937, the Soviet government awarded him the official title of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. In 1949, during Stalin’s infamous anti-Semitic campaign, the same government sentenced Epelbaum to ten years in labor camps and ordered his property confiscated. In 1954, Epelbaum was released from the Gulag: although he was a sick man, he had not been broken. Only two years after the dictator’s death, Epelbaum was among the first to begin touring the country again performing Yiddish songs, thus bringing joy and hope back to intimidated Soviet-Jewish audiences.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Русские евреи в Польше. Иерусалим, 2014. С. 67–86.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Gennady Estraikh [et al.], eds., Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics and Art (London: Legenda, 2012), 25–46.
Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's attempts to carve for himself a niche in Rus... more Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's attempts to carve for himself a niche in Russian literature. Sholem Aleichem's Russian stories, published between 1883 and 1903 in St. Petersburg and Odessa Russian periodicals, remain largely forgotten. Although not devoid of artistic merit, the stories show that the writer, not withstanding his fluency in Russian, could not find the right register for portraying Jewish life and rendering the idiomatic speech of his characters. Ultimately, Sholem Aleichem entered Russian literature only thanks to the talent of the Russian translators of his Yiddish writings.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Архив еврейской истории. М., 2011. Т. 6. С. 104–122.
The Uprise and Decline of Der fraynd, the First Yiddish Daily in Russia (1903–1914).
Abstract: T... more The Uprise and Decline of Der fraynd, the First Yiddish Daily in Russia (1903–1914).
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the dramatic history of Der fraynd (St. Petersburg, 1903–1909; Warsaw, 1909–1914). The appearance of this newspaper in January 1903 has broken the longstanding ban for Yiddish periodicals in the Russian Empire and opened the new era in the life of Russian Jewry—the era of the wanton growth of Yiddish press, the flowering of Yiddish secular culture, and the formation of Jewish political parties and mass movements. A special attention is given to the role that this newspaper has played in the appearance of the mass Jewish reading audience in Russia, and in the development of Yiddish language and culture. The article also analyses in detail the crisis of Der fraynd after the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Народ Книги в мире книг. 2009. № 81. С. 1–3.
An Unknown Letter by Sholem Aleichem. Edited and annotated by Alexander Frenkel.
Abstract: This... more An Unknown Letter by Sholem Aleichem. Edited and annotated by Alexander Frenkel.
Abstract: This publication includes a letter from Sholem Aleichem to the prominent Russian-Jewish historian and journalist Saul Ginsburg. This letter, dated January 11, 1903, was written in Russian. However, it was mostly concerned with discussing problems in the development of the Yiddish language, including its style and orthography, protecting Yiddish from inorganic influences, and overcoming differences in dialect.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Из истории еврейской музыки в России. Вып. 2. СПб., 2006. С. 55–82.
Yiddish Theater in 1930s Leningrad: Mursky, Kisselgof, Yudovin, Milner.
Abstract: The last Yid... more Yiddish Theater in 1930s Leningrad: Mursky, Kisselgof, Yudovin, Milner.
Abstract: The last Yiddish drama theater in St. Petersburg/Leningrad existed from 1933 through 1938 under the roof of a Soviet state institution called the Yakov Sverdlov Jewish House of Enlightenment. In spite of the efforts of its art director Lev Mursky (1897–1950), this theater did not achieve fully professional status and was closed by the authorities at the end of the 1930s—together with all the other Soviet Jewish institutions of the city. This article traces the history of the theatrical collective with special emphasis on the involvement in its artistic productions of the last representatives of the St. Petersburg “old Jewish intelligentsia” including folklorist Zinovy Kisselgof (1878–1939), artist Solomon Yudovin (1892–1954), and composer Moisei Milner (1882–1953).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books by Alexander Frenkel
В сборник вошли переводы пяти рассказов классика еврейской литературы, незнакомых русской аудитории. Каждому из переводов предпослана вступительная статья, призванная ввести читателя в историко-литературный контекст соответствующего рассказа. Другие статьи сборника объединены темой «Шолом-Алейхем в пространстве русской культуры».
Frenkel, Alexander, Unknown Sholem Aleichem: new translations, research articles, publications, St. Petersburg, 2022, 356 pp., ill. (Russian)
The book includes translations of five short stories of the classic Yiddish writer, unfamiliar to the Russian audience. Each of the translations is preceded by an introductory article designed to acquaint the reader with the historical and literary context of the story. Other articles included in the book are devoted to the topic "Sholem Aleichem and Russian culture."
Papers by Alexander Frenkel
* Abstract: Sarah Ravich (1879–1957), a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and Vladimir Lenin’s closest ally, was among those who translated Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian during the writer's lifetime. The collaboration between the most popular early 20th century Yiddish author and this professional revolutionary lasted about a year and a half, from the autumn of 1912 to January 1914. Both of them then lived outside of Russia, mainly in Switzerland. The result of their collaboration was the appearance of the Russian version of the novel The Bloody Hoax, inspired by the infamous Beilis trial. The correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich, preserved in Russian and Israeli archives, contains rich historical, literary and philological material. This publication includes 62 letters from Sholem Aleichem written directly by him or by his daughter Emma Rabinovich, either under his dictation or on his behalf, as well as 36 reply letters written by Sarah Ravich.
* Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's attempts to carve for himself a niche in Russian literature. Sholem Aleichem's Russian stories, published between 1883 and 1903 in St. Petersburg and Odessa Russian periodicals, remain largely forgotten. Although not devoid of artistic merit, the stories show that the writer, not withstanding his fluency in Russian, could not find the right register for portraying Jewish life and rendering the idiomatic speech of his characters. His attempts of self-translation from Yiddish into Russian were also unsuccessful. The article pays special attention to the early cycle of Sholom Aleichem's stories in Yiddish "A Bouquet of Flowers" and the author's Russian version of this cycle "Poems in Prose."
* Abstract: The article analyzes the shaping of Sholem Aleichem’s cycle of “stories for the Jewish children,” as well as the cycle’s numerous transformations, both in the writer’s lifetime and after his death, in Yiddish and in Russian translations.
* Abstract: Sholem Aleichem was writing his novel Der blutiker shpas (The Bloody Hoax) in 1912, under the impact of the notorious Beilis case. Critics of various stripes and at various times wrote off the novel as the writer’s creative failure. In post-Soviet academic discourse, however, The Bloody Hoax has gained a reputation as a significant literary achievement, banned in the USSR because Soviet censorship ostensibly considered it ideologically unsuitable. With the view to dispelling the mythology built up around the novel, the author of this paper reconstructs the history of its creation and publication, as well as of its Russian translations.
The Fate of “The Tenth Man” (version of the article in Yiddish)
* Abstract: The cycle of twenty socially minded short stories by Sholem Aleichem known, alternately, as the “Railroad Stories” and “Tales of a Commercial Traveler” perfectly met the needs of Soviet ideologues who argued that the classic Yiddish writer was primarily a critic of capitalist exploitation and an exposer of the tsarist autocracy. Oddly enough, the cycle did not receive the same circulation in the Soviet Union as the other towering achievements in Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre—Tevye the Dairyman, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, and The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son. During the entire Soviet period, all twenty stories appeared together in print only once, and in the Yiddish original, not in Russian translation. Even in the most complete editions, one story was missing: “The Tenth Man.” The article claims that this was only partly due to the fact that “The Tenth Man” dealt with interethnic relations, a sensitive topic for the Soviet regime. The main reason was the “politically incorrect” vocabulary used abundantly by Sholem Aleichem in the original Yiddish text of the story. Such vocabulary was typical of vernacular speech in Jewish shtetls, but proved unacceptable to the masterminds of the new Soviet Yiddish culture.
* Abstract: The author refers under the term “the Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works to the corpus of Russian translations, which includes three editions of his collected works in six volumes (1st edn: 1959–1961; 2nd edn: 1971–1974; 3rd edn: 1988–1990). The appearance of these collections was the most important achievement of the long-term program of publishing the Yiddish classic writer’s works in the USSR – a program that has been unprecedented in its size in the history of translations from Yiddish.
The article traces the history of the formation of the “Russian Soviet canon,” analyzes the specific features of translations presented in six-volume collections and in other editions, examines some examples of translation errors and identifies the cases of omissions that were motivated by either ideological or aesthetic considerations.
The author emphasizes that in fact, the “Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works was not determined once and for all since all the three editions of his six-volume collections differed significantly from each other.
* Abstract: The exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) and the Hebrew poet Judah Leib (Leon) Gordon (1830–1892) took place in 1888–1890 and deals with the challenging problems facing Jewish literature at the end of the nineteenth century. This correspondence is published here for the first time in its entirety, bringing together the original letters from the National Library of Israel (Jerusalem), Beth Shalom Aleichem (Tel-Aviv) and the private collection of Isaak Kofman (Santa Clara, CA). Two letters, originally written in Yiddish and Hebrew, are presented here in Russian translation. The other seven letters are presented in the original Russian with numerous insertions in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic.
* Abstract: St. Petersburg lawyer Vasily Berman (1863–1896) was one of the most enthusiastic activists of the Hovevei Zion groups, which are now considered the forerunners of modern Zionism. In April 1890, in Odessa, at the founding congress of the first Hovevei Zion organization that was officially approved by the Russian government as “The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine,” he met and befriended Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), the future Yiddish classic writer. This publication includes three letters, written by Sholem Aleichem to Vasily Berman right after the Odessa congress, as well as the later exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer and Berman’s son, Russian poet Lazare Berman (1894–1980).
* Abstract: During the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet system gradually, as a part of the general de-Stalinization process, developed its new policy on “Jewish question.” As a result of it, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the USSR was eliminated and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different state agencies became an integral element of the country’s cultural life of the so called Thaw Era. Still the very conditions in which these groups existed—permanent wanderings, stage plays almost without decorations, censorship pressure, and hostile attitude of local officials—made the level of their work to be very distant from high-water marks of the golden age of Yiddish theater. The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival of the late 1950s and the 1960s in one of its major centers—Leningrad. Three documents from different archival collections that attached to the article testify the enormous efforts needed for Yiddish word and Jewish music to reach Soviet audiences in those years.
* Abstract: After the Stalin’s death in 1953, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union gradually began to end and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. For many years, Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different Soviet state agencies became the most significant, widespread, and accessible form of Jewish culture in the country. In spite of ideological pressure, hard censorship, and difficult material conditions, Soviet Jewish performing arts in the 1950s and 1960s represented an important cultural and social phenomenon. Combining the features of Jewish theatrical and music cultures of the past with the forms of the postwar Soviet cultural mainstream, it came to constitute the unique voice of “the Jews of Silence.” The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival in this period in one of its major centers—Leningrad—through the prism of the tragic biographies of three former GULAG prisoners who returned back home in the middle of the 1950s: the singer Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the actor Faivish Arones (1897–1982), and the composer Zalmen Freidenberg (1901–1972).
Abstract: The documents housed in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg offer to fill in the gaps in the biography of the outstanding Jewish folklorist and scholar Sofia Magid. The sources studied here are taken from the collections of two organizations with which Sofia Magid was affiliated during the different periods of her life: the Jewish Society for History and Ethnography and the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Soviet Composers. Among other things, these newly discovered documents provide an opportunity to update our knowledge about the actual dates of her life: 1893–1954.
Abstract: The full texts of the debate are presented here for the first time in Russian language with scholarly annotations. Besides the 1901 articles, this publication includes also two introductions written by Sholem Aleichem for the first (1901) and second (1914) editions of Mark Warshavsky’s Yiddish Folk Songs. The materials initially published in Yiddish are presented here in Russian translation. The articles from the Russian-Jewish weekly Voskhod (Dawn) are reprinted here preserving all the unique stylistic features of the original source.
Abstract: Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the world-famous performer of Yiddish songs, was extraordinarily popular among Jewish audiences. For a whole generation of Soviet Yiddish singers, Epelbaum was a pioneer and model. The beginnings of Epelbaum’s career lay in the Jewish operetta and drama troupes that wandered the Pale of Settlement and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Epelbaum began giving solo concerts in Yiddish, and in the early 1920s he made wildly successful concert tours in the cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. In 1926, he went on tour in the West, where audiences in Riga, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, and New York enthusiastically received him. It was in New York that he made his first record. In 1929, Epelbaum returned to the Soviet Union, settled in Leningrad, and gave performances all over the country. In 1937, the Soviet government awarded him the official title of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. In 1949, during Stalin’s infamous anti-Semitic campaign, the same government sentenced Epelbaum to ten years in labor camps and ordered his property confiscated. In 1954, Epelbaum was released from the Gulag: although he was a sick man, he had not been broken. Only two years after the dictator’s death, Epelbaum was among the first to begin touring the country again performing Yiddish songs, thus bringing joy and hope back to intimidated Soviet-Jewish audiences.
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the dramatic history of Der fraynd (St. Petersburg, 1903–1909; Warsaw, 1909–1914). The appearance of this newspaper in January 1903 has broken the longstanding ban for Yiddish periodicals in the Russian Empire and opened the new era in the life of Russian Jewry—the era of the wanton growth of Yiddish press, the flowering of Yiddish secular culture, and the formation of Jewish political parties and mass movements. A special attention is given to the role that this newspaper has played in the appearance of the mass Jewish reading audience in Russia, and in the development of Yiddish language and culture. The article also analyses in detail the crisis of Der fraynd after the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Abstract: This publication includes a letter from Sholem Aleichem to the prominent Russian-Jewish historian and journalist Saul Ginsburg. This letter, dated January 11, 1903, was written in Russian. However, it was mostly concerned with discussing problems in the development of the Yiddish language, including its style and orthography, protecting Yiddish from inorganic influences, and overcoming differences in dialect.
Abstract: The last Yiddish drama theater in St. Petersburg/Leningrad existed from 1933 through 1938 under the roof of a Soviet state institution called the Yakov Sverdlov Jewish House of Enlightenment. In spite of the efforts of its art director Lev Mursky (1897–1950), this theater did not achieve fully professional status and was closed by the authorities at the end of the 1930s—together with all the other Soviet Jewish institutions of the city. This article traces the history of the theatrical collective with special emphasis on the involvement in its artistic productions of the last representatives of the St. Petersburg “old Jewish intelligentsia” including folklorist Zinovy Kisselgof (1878–1939), artist Solomon Yudovin (1892–1954), and composer Moisei Milner (1882–1953).
В сборник вошли переводы пяти рассказов классика еврейской литературы, незнакомых русской аудитории. Каждому из переводов предпослана вступительная статья, призванная ввести читателя в историко-литературный контекст соответствующего рассказа. Другие статьи сборника объединены темой «Шолом-Алейхем в пространстве русской культуры».
Frenkel, Alexander, Unknown Sholem Aleichem: new translations, research articles, publications, St. Petersburg, 2022, 356 pp., ill. (Russian)
The book includes translations of five short stories of the classic Yiddish writer, unfamiliar to the Russian audience. Each of the translations is preceded by an introductory article designed to acquaint the reader with the historical and literary context of the story. Other articles included in the book are devoted to the topic "Sholem Aleichem and Russian culture."
* Abstract: Sarah Ravich (1879–1957), a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and Vladimir Lenin’s closest ally, was among those who translated Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian during the writer's lifetime. The collaboration between the most popular early 20th century Yiddish author and this professional revolutionary lasted about a year and a half, from the autumn of 1912 to January 1914. Both of them then lived outside of Russia, mainly in Switzerland. The result of their collaboration was the appearance of the Russian version of the novel The Bloody Hoax, inspired by the infamous Beilis trial. The correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich, preserved in Russian and Israeli archives, contains rich historical, literary and philological material. This publication includes 62 letters from Sholem Aleichem written directly by him or by his daughter Emma Rabinovich, either under his dictation or on his behalf, as well as 36 reply letters written by Sarah Ravich.
* Abstract: The article reconstructs Sholem Aleichem's attempts to carve for himself a niche in Russian literature. Sholem Aleichem's Russian stories, published between 1883 and 1903 in St. Petersburg and Odessa Russian periodicals, remain largely forgotten. Although not devoid of artistic merit, the stories show that the writer, not withstanding his fluency in Russian, could not find the right register for portraying Jewish life and rendering the idiomatic speech of his characters. His attempts of self-translation from Yiddish into Russian were also unsuccessful. The article pays special attention to the early cycle of Sholom Aleichem's stories in Yiddish "A Bouquet of Flowers" and the author's Russian version of this cycle "Poems in Prose."
* Abstract: The article analyzes the shaping of Sholem Aleichem’s cycle of “stories for the Jewish children,” as well as the cycle’s numerous transformations, both in the writer’s lifetime and after his death, in Yiddish and in Russian translations.
* Abstract: Sholem Aleichem was writing his novel Der blutiker shpas (The Bloody Hoax) in 1912, under the impact of the notorious Beilis case. Critics of various stripes and at various times wrote off the novel as the writer’s creative failure. In post-Soviet academic discourse, however, The Bloody Hoax has gained a reputation as a significant literary achievement, banned in the USSR because Soviet censorship ostensibly considered it ideologically unsuitable. With the view to dispelling the mythology built up around the novel, the author of this paper reconstructs the history of its creation and publication, as well as of its Russian translations.
The Fate of “The Tenth Man” (version of the article in Yiddish)
* Abstract: The cycle of twenty socially minded short stories by Sholem Aleichem known, alternately, as the “Railroad Stories” and “Tales of a Commercial Traveler” perfectly met the needs of Soviet ideologues who argued that the classic Yiddish writer was primarily a critic of capitalist exploitation and an exposer of the tsarist autocracy. Oddly enough, the cycle did not receive the same circulation in the Soviet Union as the other towering achievements in Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre—Tevye the Dairyman, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, and The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son. During the entire Soviet period, all twenty stories appeared together in print only once, and in the Yiddish original, not in Russian translation. Even in the most complete editions, one story was missing: “The Tenth Man.” The article claims that this was only partly due to the fact that “The Tenth Man” dealt with interethnic relations, a sensitive topic for the Soviet regime. The main reason was the “politically incorrect” vocabulary used abundantly by Sholem Aleichem in the original Yiddish text of the story. Such vocabulary was typical of vernacular speech in Jewish shtetls, but proved unacceptable to the masterminds of the new Soviet Yiddish culture.
* Abstract: The author refers under the term “the Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works to the corpus of Russian translations, which includes three editions of his collected works in six volumes (1st edn: 1959–1961; 2nd edn: 1971–1974; 3rd edn: 1988–1990). The appearance of these collections was the most important achievement of the long-term program of publishing the Yiddish classic writer’s works in the USSR – a program that has been unprecedented in its size in the history of translations from Yiddish.
The article traces the history of the formation of the “Russian Soviet canon,” analyzes the specific features of translations presented in six-volume collections and in other editions, examines some examples of translation errors and identifies the cases of omissions that were motivated by either ideological or aesthetic considerations.
The author emphasizes that in fact, the “Russian Soviet canon” of Sholem Aleichem’s works was not determined once and for all since all the three editions of his six-volume collections differed significantly from each other.
* Abstract: The exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) and the Hebrew poet Judah Leib (Leon) Gordon (1830–1892) took place in 1888–1890 and deals with the challenging problems facing Jewish literature at the end of the nineteenth century. This correspondence is published here for the first time in its entirety, bringing together the original letters from the National Library of Israel (Jerusalem), Beth Shalom Aleichem (Tel-Aviv) and the private collection of Isaak Kofman (Santa Clara, CA). Two letters, originally written in Yiddish and Hebrew, are presented here in Russian translation. The other seven letters are presented in the original Russian with numerous insertions in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic.
* Abstract: St. Petersburg lawyer Vasily Berman (1863–1896) was one of the most enthusiastic activists of the Hovevei Zion groups, which are now considered the forerunners of modern Zionism. In April 1890, in Odessa, at the founding congress of the first Hovevei Zion organization that was officially approved by the Russian government as “The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine,” he met and befriended Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), the future Yiddish classic writer. This publication includes three letters, written by Sholem Aleichem to Vasily Berman right after the Odessa congress, as well as the later exchange of letters between the Yiddish writer and Berman’s son, Russian poet Lazare Berman (1894–1980).
* Abstract: During the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet system gradually, as a part of the general de-Stalinization process, developed its new policy on “Jewish question.” As a result of it, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the USSR was eliminated and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different state agencies became an integral element of the country’s cultural life of the so called Thaw Era. Still the very conditions in which these groups existed—permanent wanderings, stage plays almost without decorations, censorship pressure, and hostile attitude of local officials—made the level of their work to be very distant from high-water marks of the golden age of Yiddish theater. The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival of the late 1950s and the 1960s in one of its major centers—Leningrad. Three documents from different archival collections that attached to the article testify the enormous efforts needed for Yiddish word and Jewish music to reach Soviet audiences in those years.
* Abstract: After the Stalin’s death in 1953, the total ban on all public expressions of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union gradually began to end and Yiddish songs slowly returned to the Soviet stage. For many years, Yiddish concerts of small performing groups formed under the roof of different Soviet state agencies became the most significant, widespread, and accessible form of Jewish culture in the country. In spite of ideological pressure, hard censorship, and difficult material conditions, Soviet Jewish performing arts in the 1950s and 1960s represented an important cultural and social phenomenon. Combining the features of Jewish theatrical and music cultures of the past with the forms of the postwar Soviet cultural mainstream, it came to constitute the unique voice of “the Jews of Silence.” The author investigates the history of Jewish cultural revival in this period in one of its major centers—Leningrad—through the prism of the tragic biographies of three former GULAG prisoners who returned back home in the middle of the 1950s: the singer Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the actor Faivish Arones (1897–1982), and the composer Zalmen Freidenberg (1901–1972).
Abstract: The documents housed in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg offer to fill in the gaps in the biography of the outstanding Jewish folklorist and scholar Sofia Magid. The sources studied here are taken from the collections of two organizations with which Sofia Magid was affiliated during the different periods of her life: the Jewish Society for History and Ethnography and the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Soviet Composers. Among other things, these newly discovered documents provide an opportunity to update our knowledge about the actual dates of her life: 1893–1954.
Abstract: The full texts of the debate are presented here for the first time in Russian language with scholarly annotations. Besides the 1901 articles, this publication includes also two introductions written by Sholem Aleichem for the first (1901) and second (1914) editions of Mark Warshavsky’s Yiddish Folk Songs. The materials initially published in Yiddish are presented here in Russian translation. The articles from the Russian-Jewish weekly Voskhod (Dawn) are reprinted here preserving all the unique stylistic features of the original source.
Abstract: Mikhail Epelbaum (1894–1957), the world-famous performer of Yiddish songs, was extraordinarily popular among Jewish audiences. For a whole generation of Soviet Yiddish singers, Epelbaum was a pioneer and model. The beginnings of Epelbaum’s career lay in the Jewish operetta and drama troupes that wandered the Pale of Settlement and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Epelbaum began giving solo concerts in Yiddish, and in the early 1920s he made wildly successful concert tours in the cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. In 1926, he went on tour in the West, where audiences in Riga, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, and New York enthusiastically received him. It was in New York that he made his first record. In 1929, Epelbaum returned to the Soviet Union, settled in Leningrad, and gave performances all over the country. In 1937, the Soviet government awarded him the official title of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. In 1949, during Stalin’s infamous anti-Semitic campaign, the same government sentenced Epelbaum to ten years in labor camps and ordered his property confiscated. In 1954, Epelbaum was released from the Gulag: although he was a sick man, he had not been broken. Only two years after the dictator’s death, Epelbaum was among the first to begin touring the country again performing Yiddish songs, thus bringing joy and hope back to intimidated Soviet-Jewish audiences.
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the dramatic history of Der fraynd (St. Petersburg, 1903–1909; Warsaw, 1909–1914). The appearance of this newspaper in January 1903 has broken the longstanding ban for Yiddish periodicals in the Russian Empire and opened the new era in the life of Russian Jewry—the era of the wanton growth of Yiddish press, the flowering of Yiddish secular culture, and the formation of Jewish political parties and mass movements. A special attention is given to the role that this newspaper has played in the appearance of the mass Jewish reading audience in Russia, and in the development of Yiddish language and culture. The article also analyses in detail the crisis of Der fraynd after the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Abstract: This publication includes a letter from Sholem Aleichem to the prominent Russian-Jewish historian and journalist Saul Ginsburg. This letter, dated January 11, 1903, was written in Russian. However, it was mostly concerned with discussing problems in the development of the Yiddish language, including its style and orthography, protecting Yiddish from inorganic influences, and overcoming differences in dialect.
Abstract: The last Yiddish drama theater in St. Petersburg/Leningrad existed from 1933 through 1938 under the roof of a Soviet state institution called the Yakov Sverdlov Jewish House of Enlightenment. In spite of the efforts of its art director Lev Mursky (1897–1950), this theater did not achieve fully professional status and was closed by the authorities at the end of the 1930s—together with all the other Soviet Jewish institutions of the city. This article traces the history of the theatrical collective with special emphasis on the involvement in its artistic productions of the last representatives of the St. Petersburg “old Jewish intelligentsia” including folklorist Zinovy Kisselgof (1878–1939), artist Solomon Yudovin (1892–1954), and composer Moisei Milner (1882–1953).
Abstract: Born in Poltava province and having lived for many years in Kiev, Sholem Aleichem would be perceived by independent Ukraine as part of its national cultural pantheon, and after a long break, this classic Yiddish writer’s books were again published in the official language of the country. Almost simultaneously, two new translations of his short story series Tevye the Dairyman appeared in Ukrainian. The reviewer has harsh words about the quality of these translations. He writes: “There is a demand in Ukrainian society for new translations from Yiddish, but no qualified translators. Even for Sholem Aleichem’s greatest work, no one could be found, except for two irresponsible translators whose knowledge of the Yiddish language and general philological training was entirely inadequate for this complex task.”
Abstract: The first ever Russian translation of Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Vakhlaklakes.” The translator entitled his work as follows: “Slippery be their way!” The author published the Yiddish original in 1916, four months before his death. The question of whether the story is an integral part of the famous cycle of Tevye the Dairyman stories remains controversial. Probably for this reason, and not because of censorship restrictions, “Vakhlaklakes” was never published in the USSR, neither in Yiddish nor in Russian.
Abstract: Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Kidalto ve-kidashto” was written in 1916, a month before the writer’s death. In his concluding remarks, the translator points out that the story is a strange one. The events described (riding in a wagon, visiting a bathhouse, etc.) could not have taken place on the Sabbath, and yet it was most certainly the Sabbath the writer had in mind. Gravely ill, Sholem Aleichem was, perhaps, in a hurry to send his Passover story to the newspaper before the deadline and made a mistake. Curt Leviant, an American novelist and professor of Jewish studies who translated the story into English, found a solution to the problem. In his translation, “The Holiday Kiddush,” he unceremoniously altered the original plot, purged certain passages, and improvised at length. This approach to Sholem Aleichem’s work was, obviously, unacceptable to Soviet Yiddish literary scholars, editors, and translators, yet they were unable to mention something with Sholem Aleichem’s story was wrong in their discussion of the great writer’s work. Consequently, the problematic story was never published in the Soviet Union either in Yiddish or Russian.
Abstract: Written in 1900, Sholem Aleichem’s feuilleton “Arbe-koyses” (“Four Goblets”) has never been published in Russian before. The text is an experiment on the writer’s part, vital for understanding the way Sholem Aleichem’s art evolved. In the brief piece, he melds the motifs of very different works, those he had already written and those he would go on to write. We see here the sentiments of his Zionist brochures, the sarcasm of his anti-assimilationist feuilletons, the irony of his Kasrilevke tales, and the lyricism of his children’s stories.
Abstract: Sholem Aleichem's attitude toward Zionism can be described as ambivalent, a mixture of sympathy and skepticism. While in some periods of his life skepticism prevailed, his keen interest in the movement never abated. The example of it is his little-known satirical article, Doctors in Consultation, about the imbroglio in the Zionist movement in 1903.