Zehavit Stern is a researcher of Yiddish theatre and film, and Hebrew and Yiddish literature and folklore. She is currently teaching at the Tisch School of Film and Television and the Jona Goldrich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture at Tel Aviv University, as well as at the Department of Theater Studies at the Hebrew University. In the years 2011–2015 she was the Idel and Isaac Haase Fellow in Eastern European Jewish Civilization at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. She holds an MA in Yiddish literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2005) and a PhD in Jewish Studies, with a designated emphasis in Film Studies, from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union (2011). She has published and lectured extensively on Eastern European Jewish culture. Her forthcoming book, titled "The Birth of Theatre from the Spirit of Folk Performance: Eastern European Jewish Culture and the Invention of a National Dramatic Heritage" examines the interwar wave of fascination with Yiddish folk performance, and especially the Purim-shpil and the badkhn (wedding jester), and the emergence of the narrative that views these formerly rejected folkish expressions as the origins of Jewish theatre.
How can one construct a dignified theatrical heritage in a culture with no dramatic canon, on-goi... more How can one construct a dignified theatrical heritage in a culture with no dramatic canon, on-going theatrical institution or government support? Is it possible to create modernist theatre in a social environment eager for cheap entertainment? In this article I strive to address these questions through a close look at two multi-layered performances staged at the Warsaw Tsentral Teater (Central Theatre) in the 1923-1924 season: Serkele and Der priziv (The Military Conscription). The theatrical events discussed in this paper, I argue, complicate and challenge Diana Taylor’s influential theory of "The Archive and the Repertoire," and the common binaries on which she draws, such as “The West” vs. the “subaltern” or the colonizer vs. the colonized.
Can one bring an 80-year-old film to life? Can one resurrect a dead culture? Der Dybbuk 1937–2017... more Can one bring an 80-year-old film to life? Can one resurrect a dead culture? Der Dybbuk 1937–2017, a live performance based on the 1937 Yiddish film Der dibuk raises these questions, juxtaposing past and present through live Yiddish dubbing, live music, and contemporary editing.
במאמר זה אני מציעה לקרוא את סיפורו של שלום-עליכם ‘האתרוג’ כסיפור על אודות בריתות, סמויות וגלויות,... more במאמר זה אני מציעה לקרוא את סיפורו של שלום-עליכם ‘האתרוג’ כסיפור על אודות בריתות, סמויות וגלויות, נרקמות ונפרמות, בין אלו המצויים בתחתית ההיררכיה החברתית של העיירה היהודית: עניים, בעלי מלאכה, ילדים ונשים. לאורך הסיפור מנסים הללו בדרכיהם השונות, לחרוג מן הסדר הקיים ובזה אחר זה הם נכשלים. באופן ספציפי יותר, אני טוענת לכינונה של ברית סמויה בין המודרים ממצוות האתרוג - נשים וילדים. תחינה קדומה המשולבת ב’צאנה וראנה’, הטקסט המזוהה ביותר עם האישה בתרבות אשכנז, מגלה את אוצר האמונות והמנהגים העממיים הכרוכים באתרוג, ומשמשים כעדות תומכת לברית הנרקמת בסיפור בין הילד לאמו.
גרסא מקוצרת במקצת של המאמר התפרסמה בכתב העת דווקא, גיליון 6 (2009), עמ׳ 32-35.
Focusing on S.Y. Agnon’s novel The Bridal Canopy (Hachansat Kala), this article investigates an u... more Focusing on S.Y. Agnon’s novel The Bridal Canopy (Hachansat Kala), this article investigates an under-explored sideway in modern Jewish literature, where folklore and popular culture serve as "a barbaric" disruption to European literary norms. Whereas modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures typically strived for what Dan Miron called "cultural normalcy," struggling to mold Jewish materials (including language, modes and genres of writing, and ways of life) into European literary standards, Agnon’s first novel, published in 1931, proudly flaunts "Jewish otherness." Agnon orchestrates a polyphony of Jewish performers, including the storyteller, the badkhn (jester and master of ceremonies in the traditional Jewish wedding), the purim-shpiler (actor in the traditional Purim skit), and the popular Yiddish cabaret of the Singers of Brod. Introducing the sensibilities of the Yiddish vernacular into the Hebrew book, this wild polyphony of folk and popular sources serves as a "slap in the face of public taste," to use the Russian futurist slogan, or, following, Theodor W. Adorno's term, a “barbaric” interference. The intrusion of folksy elements into highbrow literature, improvised performance into the written text, simple rhyming into Agnon's rich prose – all these disturbances add up to a radical intervention in the esteemed European genre.
This article brings together melodrama studies, film studies and the critique of gender to re-exa... more This article brings together melodrama studies, film studies and the critique of gender to re-examine the mythical Jewish Mother as she appears in Yiddish film melodrama of the 1930s and 1940s, as a cultural icon that helped negotiate the challenged of immigration, urbanisation and acculturation. I show how the ideal of the self-less, martyrlike mother can be read against the grain. I argue that moments of "masquerade" or "performing maternity" enable us to read certain Yiddish film melodramas as subversive, expressing resistance to hegemonic culture.
Source: “The Idealized Mother and Her Discontents: Performing Maternity in Yiddish Film Melodrama” in Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, Shiri Goren, Hannah Pressman, and Lara Rabinovitch, eds. (Wayne State University Press, 2012), 163-178.
Source: “The Purim-shpiler and the Melancholy Clown: Folk Performance Between Tradition and Moder... more Source: “The Purim-shpiler and the Melancholy Clown: Folk Performance Between Tradition and Modernism in the Work of Avraham Shlonsky and Moyshe Broderzon,” The Journal of Jewish Identities, vol. 7, no. 1; Special Edition in Honor of Chana Kronfeld: The Berkeley School of Jewish Literature and Culture (January 2014), 49-78.
The Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk) functions in today's culture as a symbol of collective m... more The Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk) functions in today's culture as a symbol of collective memory, a status that entails tendencies of reification and flattening which I strive to counter in this article, exposing the many "geological" layers in it.
Source: “Cinema as Site of Memory: The Dybbuk 1937 and the Burden of Holocaust Commemoration” in The Wandering View: Modern Jewish Experiences in World Cinema, Lawrence Baron, ed. (Brandeis University Press, 2011), 82-88.
This is the English version of the much lengthier and more fully annotated Hebrew original.
This article examines the Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk). Comparing the film to the play on ... more This article examines the Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk). Comparing the film to the play on which it is based, and examining its many contributors (director, playwrights, choreograph, composer, etc.) and sources of inspiration, I strive to reveal the many historical layers of which the film is made, and the various mechanisms of re-constructing the past and commemorating it. The film, I argue, functions in today's culture as a site of memory, a position that often entails collapsing the film's many historical dimensions into one flat image of a world on the brink of annihilation.
Source: “Rukhot Refa'im Al Masakh Ha-kesef: Li-she'elat Ha-Zikaron Ba-Seret Hadibuk 1937” (Ghosts on the Silver Screen: The Film The Dybbuk 1937 and the Question of Memory), in Do Not Chase Me Away: New Studies on The Dybbuk, Shimon Levy and Dorit Yerusalmi, eds. (Tel-Aviv: Safra Press and Assaf Press at the Tel Aviv University, 2009), 212–236.
While much ink has been spilt to corroborate or refute the so-called Spielmann, or Shpliman, theo... more While much ink has been spilt to corroborate or refute the so-called Spielmann, or Shpliman, theory, i.e. the hypothesis that Yiddish medieval bards wrote and propagated Old Yiddish epics, much less scholarly attention has been dedicated to the historiographical and political incentives behind the theory that dominated the field of Old Yiddish for many decades. In this chapter I aim to fill this gap and investigate the Shpilman theory in its historical context through a close examination of the theory's main founders and propagators, and a discourse analysis of the scholarly works in which the Yiddish Shpilman was constructed, and even invented. Ultimately, I argue that the hypothesis should be understood in light of the rise of interest in Jewish folklore, and especially Jewish folk performance between the two world wars. More specifically, the Spielmann theory constitutes part of a much wider endeavour, undertaken by artists and historians alike, to reinterpret and reimagine Yiddish folklore as art heritage.
How can one construct a dignified theatrical heritage in a culture with no dramatic canon, on-goi... more How can one construct a dignified theatrical heritage in a culture with no dramatic canon, on-going theatrical institution or government support? Is it possible to create modernist theatre in a social environment eager for cheap entertainment? In this article I strive to address these questions through a close look at two multi-layered performances staged at the Warsaw Tsentral Teater (Central Theatre) in the 1923-1924 season: Serkele and Der priziv (The Military Conscription). The theatrical events discussed in this paper, I argue, complicate and challenge Diana Taylor’s influential theory of "The Archive and the Repertoire," and the common binaries on which she draws, such as “The West” vs. the “subaltern” or the colonizer vs. the colonized.
Can one bring an 80-year-old film to life? Can one resurrect a dead culture? Der Dybbuk 1937–2017... more Can one bring an 80-year-old film to life? Can one resurrect a dead culture? Der Dybbuk 1937–2017, a live performance based on the 1937 Yiddish film Der dibuk raises these questions, juxtaposing past and present through live Yiddish dubbing, live music, and contemporary editing.
במאמר זה אני מציעה לקרוא את סיפורו של שלום-עליכם ‘האתרוג’ כסיפור על אודות בריתות, סמויות וגלויות,... more במאמר זה אני מציעה לקרוא את סיפורו של שלום-עליכם ‘האתרוג’ כסיפור על אודות בריתות, סמויות וגלויות, נרקמות ונפרמות, בין אלו המצויים בתחתית ההיררכיה החברתית של העיירה היהודית: עניים, בעלי מלאכה, ילדים ונשים. לאורך הסיפור מנסים הללו בדרכיהם השונות, לחרוג מן הסדר הקיים ובזה אחר זה הם נכשלים. באופן ספציפי יותר, אני טוענת לכינונה של ברית סמויה בין המודרים ממצוות האתרוג - נשים וילדים. תחינה קדומה המשולבת ב’צאנה וראנה’, הטקסט המזוהה ביותר עם האישה בתרבות אשכנז, מגלה את אוצר האמונות והמנהגים העממיים הכרוכים באתרוג, ומשמשים כעדות תומכת לברית הנרקמת בסיפור בין הילד לאמו.
גרסא מקוצרת במקצת של המאמר התפרסמה בכתב העת דווקא, גיליון 6 (2009), עמ׳ 32-35.
Focusing on S.Y. Agnon’s novel The Bridal Canopy (Hachansat Kala), this article investigates an u... more Focusing on S.Y. Agnon’s novel The Bridal Canopy (Hachansat Kala), this article investigates an under-explored sideway in modern Jewish literature, where folklore and popular culture serve as "a barbaric" disruption to European literary norms. Whereas modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures typically strived for what Dan Miron called "cultural normalcy," struggling to mold Jewish materials (including language, modes and genres of writing, and ways of life) into European literary standards, Agnon’s first novel, published in 1931, proudly flaunts "Jewish otherness." Agnon orchestrates a polyphony of Jewish performers, including the storyteller, the badkhn (jester and master of ceremonies in the traditional Jewish wedding), the purim-shpiler (actor in the traditional Purim skit), and the popular Yiddish cabaret of the Singers of Brod. Introducing the sensibilities of the Yiddish vernacular into the Hebrew book, this wild polyphony of folk and popular sources serves as a "slap in the face of public taste," to use the Russian futurist slogan, or, following, Theodor W. Adorno's term, a “barbaric” interference. The intrusion of folksy elements into highbrow literature, improvised performance into the written text, simple rhyming into Agnon's rich prose – all these disturbances add up to a radical intervention in the esteemed European genre.
This article brings together melodrama studies, film studies and the critique of gender to re-exa... more This article brings together melodrama studies, film studies and the critique of gender to re-examine the mythical Jewish Mother as she appears in Yiddish film melodrama of the 1930s and 1940s, as a cultural icon that helped negotiate the challenged of immigration, urbanisation and acculturation. I show how the ideal of the self-less, martyrlike mother can be read against the grain. I argue that moments of "masquerade" or "performing maternity" enable us to read certain Yiddish film melodramas as subversive, expressing resistance to hegemonic culture.
Source: “The Idealized Mother and Her Discontents: Performing Maternity in Yiddish Film Melodrama” in Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, Shiri Goren, Hannah Pressman, and Lara Rabinovitch, eds. (Wayne State University Press, 2012), 163-178.
Source: “The Purim-shpiler and the Melancholy Clown: Folk Performance Between Tradition and Moder... more Source: “The Purim-shpiler and the Melancholy Clown: Folk Performance Between Tradition and Modernism in the Work of Avraham Shlonsky and Moyshe Broderzon,” The Journal of Jewish Identities, vol. 7, no. 1; Special Edition in Honor of Chana Kronfeld: The Berkeley School of Jewish Literature and Culture (January 2014), 49-78.
The Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk) functions in today's culture as a symbol of collective m... more The Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk) functions in today's culture as a symbol of collective memory, a status that entails tendencies of reification and flattening which I strive to counter in this article, exposing the many "geological" layers in it.
Source: “Cinema as Site of Memory: The Dybbuk 1937 and the Burden of Holocaust Commemoration” in The Wandering View: Modern Jewish Experiences in World Cinema, Lawrence Baron, ed. (Brandeis University Press, 2011), 82-88.
This is the English version of the much lengthier and more fully annotated Hebrew original.
This article examines the Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk). Comparing the film to the play on ... more This article examines the Yiddish film The Dybbuk (Der dibuk). Comparing the film to the play on which it is based, and examining its many contributors (director, playwrights, choreograph, composer, etc.) and sources of inspiration, I strive to reveal the many historical layers of which the film is made, and the various mechanisms of re-constructing the past and commemorating it. The film, I argue, functions in today's culture as a site of memory, a position that often entails collapsing the film's many historical dimensions into one flat image of a world on the brink of annihilation.
Source: “Rukhot Refa'im Al Masakh Ha-kesef: Li-she'elat Ha-Zikaron Ba-Seret Hadibuk 1937” (Ghosts on the Silver Screen: The Film The Dybbuk 1937 and the Question of Memory), in Do Not Chase Me Away: New Studies on The Dybbuk, Shimon Levy and Dorit Yerusalmi, eds. (Tel-Aviv: Safra Press and Assaf Press at the Tel Aviv University, 2009), 212–236.
While much ink has been spilt to corroborate or refute the so-called Spielmann, or Shpliman, theo... more While much ink has been spilt to corroborate or refute the so-called Spielmann, or Shpliman, theory, i.e. the hypothesis that Yiddish medieval bards wrote and propagated Old Yiddish epics, much less scholarly attention has been dedicated to the historiographical and political incentives behind the theory that dominated the field of Old Yiddish for many decades. In this chapter I aim to fill this gap and investigate the Shpilman theory in its historical context through a close examination of the theory's main founders and propagators, and a discourse analysis of the scholarly works in which the Yiddish Shpilman was constructed, and even invented. Ultimately, I argue that the hypothesis should be understood in light of the rise of interest in Jewish folklore, and especially Jewish folk performance between the two world wars. More specifically, the Spielmann theory constitutes part of a much wider endeavour, undertaken by artists and historians alike, to reinterpret and reimagine Yiddish folklore as art heritage.
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Papers by Zehavit Stern
גרסא מקוצרת במקצת של המאמר התפרסמה בכתב העת דווקא, גיליון 6 (2009), עמ׳ 32-35.
Source:
“The Idealized Mother and Her Discontents: Performing Maternity in Yiddish Film Melodrama” in Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, Shiri Goren, Hannah Pressman, and Lara Rabinovitch, eds. (Wayne State University Press, 2012), 163-178.
Source:
“Cinema as Site of Memory: The Dybbuk 1937 and the Burden of Holocaust Commemoration” in The Wandering View: Modern Jewish Experiences in World Cinema, Lawrence Baron, ed. (Brandeis University Press, 2011), 82-88.
This is the English version of the much lengthier and more fully annotated Hebrew original.
Source:
“Rukhot Refa'im Al Masakh Ha-kesef: Li-she'elat Ha-Zikaron Ba-Seret Hadibuk 1937” (Ghosts on the Silver Screen: The Film The Dybbuk 1937 and the Question of Memory), in Do Not Chase Me Away: New Studies on The Dybbuk, Shimon Levy and Dorit Yerusalmi, eds. (Tel-Aviv: Safra Press and Assaf Press at the Tel Aviv University, 2009), 212–236.
Drafts by Zehavit Stern
The DYBBUK ERC Project by Zehavit Stern
גרסא מקוצרת במקצת של המאמר התפרסמה בכתב העת דווקא, גיליון 6 (2009), עמ׳ 32-35.
Source:
“The Idealized Mother and Her Discontents: Performing Maternity in Yiddish Film Melodrama” in Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, Shiri Goren, Hannah Pressman, and Lara Rabinovitch, eds. (Wayne State University Press, 2012), 163-178.
Source:
“Cinema as Site of Memory: The Dybbuk 1937 and the Burden of Holocaust Commemoration” in The Wandering View: Modern Jewish Experiences in World Cinema, Lawrence Baron, ed. (Brandeis University Press, 2011), 82-88.
This is the English version of the much lengthier and more fully annotated Hebrew original.
Source:
“Rukhot Refa'im Al Masakh Ha-kesef: Li-she'elat Ha-Zikaron Ba-Seret Hadibuk 1937” (Ghosts on the Silver Screen: The Film The Dybbuk 1937 and the Question of Memory), in Do Not Chase Me Away: New Studies on The Dybbuk, Shimon Levy and Dorit Yerusalmi, eds. (Tel-Aviv: Safra Press and Assaf Press at the Tel Aviv University, 2009), 212–236.