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.