“The Bloody Hoax” Online

The American Yiddishist Raphael (Refoel) Finkel has published on the Internet the original Yiddish text of Sholom Aleichem’s novel The Bloody Hoax, typed in using the standart YIVO spelling and provided with explanations of Russian, English and Latin words found in this work.

Finkel, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, is known as a pioneer in the computerization of Yiddish literature, as the author of the first Yiddish spell checker computer program and the creator of a major online resource dedicated to this language. From 1997 to 2006, together with the poet Sholom Berger, he directed the online magazine Der bavebter yid.

Yiddish at Winter Translation School

On January 26, a series of video lectures dedicated to Yiddish was held within the framework of the Winter School of Translation at St. Petersburg State University. Three well known Yiddish translators made presentations: Alexandra Glebovskaya, Yoel Matveyev and Lyubov Lavrova.

Glebovskaya’s report was dedicted to the intrinsic peculiarities of literary translation from Yiddish into Russian. Matveyev spoke about the history and methods of developing scientific and technical terminology in Yiddish. Lavrova’s lecture touched upon various aspects of translating Holocaust texts into English.

The other sections of the three-day conference were devoted to a broad range of other languages, including Hebrew. The St. Petersburg State University’s Winter School of Translation was founded in 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been now held online for the fourth time.

Goldfaden’s Bar Kokhba in Hebrew

On January 25, the premiere of Avrom Goldfaden’s musical play Bar Kokhba translated into Hebrew took place at the Malenkiy Theater in Tel Aviv. Goldfaden, nicknamed “the father of Jewish theater”, staged this play for the first time in 1883 in Odessa (originally in Yiddish, of course). It immediately received great applause. This work, now celebrating 140 years since its debut, is long known to be an extremely important milestone in the history of Jewish theatrical art.

The rhymed translation of the play into Hebrew was made by Vicki Shifris. The new production was directed by the actress Esti Nissim who acts primarily in Yiddish.

Anatoli Kaplan Exhibit in Jerusalem

On January 19, a retrospective exhibition of the prominent Soviet Jewish artist Anatoli (Tankhum) Kaplan opened at the Beit Avi Chai Cultural Center in Jerusalem. The exhibit, entitled “The Enchanted Artist” presents over a hundred of Kaplan’s works, created using various techniques: engravings, ceramics, gouache and oil paintings, as well as books with his illustrations.

It is not a coincidence that this exposition alludes to Sholom Aleichem’s famous story “The Enchanted Tailor”. Among other things, Anatoli Kaplan, born in 1902 in the Belarusian town of Rogachov, illustrated this story, as well as other works written by the great Jewish classic. A special mention should be made of Kaplan’s lithographic series “Tevye the Dairyman” and “Stempenyu” based on Sholom Aleichem’s books with the same names. Kaplan lived most of his life in Leningrad, where he died and was buried in 1980. His grave is marked by a tombstone with a Yiddish inscription.

Yidishland: Issue 17

The new 17th issue of the literary quarterly almanac Yidishland was recently published parallelly in Israel and Sweden.

The magazine turned out to be unusually diverse. Its prose part includes a funny erotic story by Mikhoel Felzenbaum, Elena Marundik’s memoirs about the wild nature of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Clara Bell’s fairy tale about robbers and cannibals, Sholom Berger’s miniatures. The first two of these authors are from the former USSR, while the other two are from the US.

The issue also includes prose translations: Isaac Babel’s Russian story “The Son of a Rabbi” translated by Velvl Chernin and a Quechua folktale translated by Liza Domnikova who teaches Yiddish in St. Petersburg. Most likely, this is the first ever direct translation from Quechua into Yiddish.

The poetic part is represented by Velvl Chernin, Yoel Matveyev, Eli Sharfstein, David Omar Cohen, Boris Karloff, Felix Khaimovich and Anna Wishau, a poet from Austria who made her Yiddish debut in this current issue of the almanac.

As always, the issue includes scientific materials: Hillel Kazovsky’s article on the Jewish artist Tankhum (Anatoli) Kaplan who was a well-known illustrator of Yiddish books, and Velvl Chernin’s study of Vladimir (Zeev) Zhabotinsky’s attitude toward this language.