Contemporary Yiddish Poetry with Russian Translations

The Jewish publishing house Knizhniki in Moscow published a bilingual volume of original contemporary Yiddish poetry with Russian translations titled I Return (“איך קער זיך אום”.“Я возвращаюсь”). Realized under the auspices of the private publisher Boris Zaitschick, the book has been composed and edited by Yoel Matveyev, the editor-in-chief of our website.

A short anthology of contemporary Yiddish poetry with Russian translations (42 poems by 17 authors) had already been included in the 2023 issue of the almanac Birobidzhan, but the new poetry book from Moscow is a major new milestone dedicated to the same subject.

As explained in the preface and in the co-editor’s Dr. Valery Dymshitz’s introduction, the book focuses on generational, gender and stylistic diversity of today’s Yiddish poetry. By any means it’s not meant to be an exhaustive anthology. It contains 120 poems by 12 poets who live in 7 countries: Lev Berinsky, Felix Chaimovich, Mikhoel Felsenbaum, Velvl Chernin, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Yisroel Nekrasov, Beruriah Wiegand, Sholem Berger, Yoel Matveyev, Marek Tuszewicki, Katerina Kuznetsova and David Omar Cohen.

“Yiddish Sherlock Holmes” in English

The Yiddish literature has its own famous detective: Max Spitzkopf, the “Yiddish Sherlock Holmes”. For the first time his adventures, written by Jonas Kreppel (1874-1940), were published in English, translated by Mikhl Yashinsky, mainly known as an actor and theater researcher who recently has also published another important book, the English translation of the memoirs of the pioneering Yiddish actress Ester-Rokhl Kaminska.

According to Jonas Kreppel’s imagination, Max Spitzkopf lived in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire. The series of books about his adventures were originally published in Austro-Hungary and gained great popularity among local Jews, especially in Galicia. In 1938, after the Nazi occupation of Austria, Kreppel was sent the the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he died in 1940.

Interestingly, some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s world-famous stories about Sherlock Holmes have also been translated into Yiddish by David Hermalin in 1928. Quite a few Yiddish readers were familiar with both imagined detectives, the London-based Sherlock Holmes and the Vienna-based Jewish Max Spitzkopf.

Yiddish Poetry Evening in St. Petersburg

The art exhibition Shtetl on Fontanka. From Chagall to the Present in St. Petersburg, covered by our website’s news section in July, was concluded by a poetry evening. Several poets and poetry translators recited their Russian translations of Abraham Sutzkever, Moyshe Kulbak, Leib Kvitko, Aaron Glanz-Leyeles and other famous Yiddish poets. We offer our readers a video recording of one part of the event, in which Yoel Matveyev, the editor-in-chief of this site, himself a poet and translator, recited his poetry translations from Yiddish.

Yiddish WWII Poetry Book Presented in Moscow

Several presentations in Moscow were dedicated to the unique bilingual Yiddish-Russian poetry book “Продолжит петь его строка” (His Poem’s Line Will Continue to Sing), which contains poems of 23 Yiddish poets who died as Red Army soldiers fighting the Nazis during WWII.

Published in Birobidzhan, the book is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the WWII victory. The poems, previously published in their original in the 1985 Soviet volume Di Lire (The Lyre), were translated for the first time into Russian by the Birobidzhan-based poet Alla Akimenko. The new book is richly illustrated by Vladislav Tsap, the main illustrator for the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern and the author of numerous sculptures and other prominent art works in Birobidzhan.

The official presentation, led by Elena Sarashevskaya, the editor-in-chief of Birobidzhaner Shtern, the initiator of the book’s project and its sole curator, was held on September 30 at the Moscow’s National Center Russia. A few days earlier, on September 20 and 21, the book was also independently presented by two writers of Birobidzhaner Shtern, Yoel Matveyev and Lyubov Lavrova. Their presentations, also held in Moscow, were accompanied by readings of other wartime Yiddish poets, mainly Shmuel Halkin (1897-1960) whose 65th death anniversary was marked on September 21. Presentations and TV coverage of the book were held in Birobidzhan as well.

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

On May 22, 2025, New York’s Florence Gould Theater presented a concert dedicated to the 75th birthday of the award-winning Yiddish writer Boris Sandler, and to the 45-year anniversary of his writing career. The festive evening titled “Mit Yidish Ibern Lebn: A Lifetime of Yiddish” featured performances by the world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin with two soprano singers, Susanna Phillips and Ekaterina Kapchits, in the world premiere of the vocal cycle for children “Shterndlekh mit mandlen” (Stars with Almonds). Other participants included the violin virtuoso Efim Zubritsky with Zisl Slepovitch’s Klezmer Trio, the actors Yelena Shmulenson with Allen Lewis Rickman, and others. The evening of songs, poetry and dramatic readings was hosted by the actor and playwright Shane Baker, the executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture and one of the most prominent Yiddish activists in New York.

The founder of our project, Dr. Mark Zilberquit, also attended the concert. The anniversary’s star, Boris Sandler, wishes the best of luck in our activities of promoting Yiddish culture.

Sandler, who authored about two dozens of poetry and prose books, is himself no stranger to music. Born in 1950 in the Moldovan city of Bălți (known in Yiddish as Belts), he studied music at a conservatory and worked for a decade as a professional violinist. In 1981 he became one of the first Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature on a professional level at the Higher Literary Courses of the Gorky Institute in Moscow. Since 1998 he served as the head the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper based in New York. Since 2017, Sandler, who remains one of today’s most prolific Yiddish writers, has been running the online literary magazine Yiddish Branzhe.

2025 Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg

The annual Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg, Russia, held at the city’s Great Choral Synagogue on April 27, 2025, included a presentation of the recently published bilingual Russian-Yiddish book Moisey Beregovsky: Essays on the History of Yiddish Folk Music.

The book fair also included two lectures related to Hasidic Yiddish and its speakers. The poet and writer Yoel Matveyev spoke about the sacred status of the language among Hasidim; the renowned researcher Dr. Valery Dymshits presented a recent Russian academic book on Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz, the Rybnitser Rebbe, largely based on Yiddish materials gathered in American Hasidic communities.