Katerina Kuznetzova
Katerina Kuznetzova, a young Berlin-based poetess, sent a number of her poems especially for our website. We are publishing them for the first time. We also offer our readers translations of these poems from Yiddish into Russian, made by the poet Yoel Matveyev.
This publication is the first of numerous examples of Yiddish literary works already sent to us by our readers. We will choose the best of these works and publish them here, comment on them, and then discuss them on social media. We encourage our readers to share their Yiddish creativity, be it poems, short stories, memoirs, or translations into Yiddish from any other language. Please send your works to info@yiddish-culture.com. Stay tuned for our future publications on the website!
Katerina Kuznetzova was born in 1989 in Moscow. She started learning Yiddish at the age of 20 and further studied the language in Jerusalem. Since 2016 she has been living in Berlin where she teaches Yiddish and actively participates in the cultural life of local Yiddishists, whose number keeps on growing. She began writing Yiddish poetry in 2018.
Kuznetzova made her debut July 2023 in the literary magazine Yidishland (19th issue). Almost simultaneously with this very publication on our website, some of her other poems were also published in the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern along with Russian translations.
Kuznetzova’s poems are refreshing, talented and versatile, reflecting her deep acquaintance with Jewish and world poetry. Lyrical themes of love and nature are organically combined with her philosophical meditations on life and death, cosmic forces and the magic of human relationships.
אַ פֿאַרבעטונג אױף אַ װיגליד
נעם מיך אַרום און טרײַב זשע אַװעק
מײַנע סטראַשנע חלומות, צער און שרעק.
נעם מיך אַרום און װײַז מיר דעם װעג
צום סוף רעגנבױגן, צום קאָסמאָס־ברעג.
און מיר װעלן פֿליען,
אַזױ אָן שום צװעק,
איבער ליכטיקן הימל
אױף אַ קאָמעטע־עק.
ס’איז דער שענסטער טרױם מײַנער,
ס’איז אַ פֿרײד אָן קײן פֿלעק.
נעם מיך גיכער אַרום
און לאָז מיך נישט אַװעק.
***
מיר זענען דער שטורעם
דער וויכער וואָס טראָגט זיך
צווישן פּלאַנעטן
אין קאָסמישער פּוסטקייט.
מיר ווערן געשאַפֿן
פֿון שטערן־שטויב
און טיילכלעך ליכט.
אויסער דער צײַט
אויסערן רוים
אויסערן מענטשלעכן גוף.
מיר זענען דער שטורעם.
זומערדיקער זונשטאַנד
איך בין דער יצר־הרע פֿונעם װאַלד
לפּחות הײסט מען מיך אַזױ
און לױפֿט אַװעק
און שעפּטשעט תּפֿילות
װען באמת בענקט נאָך מיר
און האָפֿט שטאַרק אױף מײַן גמילות
כאָטש האָט צו מיר נישט קײן צוטרױ.
איך בין די מלכּה פֿונעם גרינעם קיניגרײַך.
הײַנט פּראַװע איך מײַן חתונה
איך גײ פּאַװאָליע
צו דעם מזבח אינעם בײמער־קאַטעדראַל
איך טראָג אַ קרױן פֿון פֿעדערגראָז
אַ בלומען־קלײד ,אַ פּאָװעטינע־שאַל,
און שמײכל צו מײַן דאָליע.
מײַן חתן שטײט, באַדעקט מיט זונען־שײַן
איך ציטער און איך ברען פֿון גלוסט
איך אײַל אים זיך אינגאַנצן אָפּצוגעבן
ער איז אַלײן דער זומער
און די לוסט,
ער הײסט די ליבע
און ער הײסט דאָס לעבן.
19/06/2023
The publishing house of the Philipps University of Marburg in Germany published Dr. Lea Schäfer’s study “Syntax and Morphology of Yiddish Dialects: Findings from the Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry”. The archive mentioned in the subtitle of this monograph was created at Columbia University, has been digitized and is now publicly available online to all researchers.
The Moscow publishing house Muzyka has published Evgeniya Khazdan’s book Moisey Beregovsky: Biobibliographic Index. The author and compiler, who lives in Saint Petersburg, is a musicologist, music critic and a Candidate of Sciences specializing in art criticism. The publishing house would like to thank Academic Grigory Roytberg for his help in publishing this book.
Moisey Beregovsky was an outstanding musicologist and researcher of Jewish folklore, whose collection of Yiddish songs, klezmer melodies, Hasidic nigunim and musical theatrical performances comprise a gigantic layer of Yiddish culture. Khazdan accomplished a great task by compiling the first biobibliographic index of his works.
As the author writes in the preface, the book “includes Beregovsky’s published works, as well as his manuscripts, information on archive materials, currently known articles about him and his work, and publications addressing the materials from his collection.”
The Index is bilingual (English-Russian). The electronic version of this book is available on our website. Muzyka is the oldest Russian music publishing house, where the first volume of Beregovsky’s famous five-volume collection was published in 1934. This book is also available electronically on our website.
On August 6, a screening of the documentary Song Searcher: The Times and Toils of Moyshe Beregovsky took place at the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage. The documentary was created by the Russian director Elena Yakovich. During the discussion after the screening, Julia Zilberquit, the executive director of the Heritage Projects Foundation, told the audience about the new Beregovsky Index.
On August 6, 2023, the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted a screening and presentation of the film Song Searcher: The Times and Toils of Moyshe Beregovsky, dedicated to Moisey Beregovsky, an outstanding musicologist and researcher of Jewish folklore. The film was created by the Russian director Elena Yakovich and first shown in 2021 in Moscow under the title Moisey Beregovsky’s Motives.
Among the participants of the film were the Toronto professor Anna Shternshis and the singer Psoy Korolenko, the creators of Yiddish Glory, a musical project nominated for the 2019 Grammy Awards. The project is based on WWII texts from Beregovsky’s collection.
Lyudmila Sholokhova and Yevgeniya Khazdan, leading experts on the legacy of this great musicologist, talk in the film about Beregovsky’s biography and the discovery of 1,200 phonograph cylinders with sound recordings, which Sholokhova managed to find during the 1990s in the collections of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.
The history of this remarkable discovery is a real detective story. Thanks to this great treasure, the voices of Sholem Aleichem and Mikhoels came back to life along with the whole world of people who spoke Yiddish and who tragically died in the Holocaust… The film features digitized songs from the ghettos and camps recorded by Beregovsky among survivors in the first years following WWII.
The film creators kindly shared with our website photos from the documentary and its filming, which took place over the course of three years, mainly in Ukraine. The vast geography of the documentary also includes the former territory of Ozerlag, the Gulag camp where Beregovsky was sent in 1950. Some scenes were also filmed in the US, Canada, Italy and Israel.
After the screening, a detailed conversation was held with the film’s participants. Julia Zilberquit, the executive director of the Heritage Projects Foundation, informed the audience about the new biobibliographic index of Moisey Beregovsky, compiled by Evgeniya Khazdan and published by the Muzyka publishing house in Moscow. The electronic version of this book is available on our website.
The renowned musician Psoy Korolenko and the New York Yiddishist organization Workers Circle (Arbeter-Ring) shared exclusively with us two videos, published now for the first time on the video channel of our website. In one of the videos, Korolenko performs the song “O, ir kleyne likhtelekh” (“Oh, you little candles”), written by the composer Herman-Zvi Ehrlich to the lyrics of Morris Rosenfeld. In the second clip the musucian recites Leib Naidus’ Yiddish translation of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Winter Evening”.
Rosenfeld (1862-1923) and Naidus (1890-1918) were major Yiddish poets. Psoy Korolenko is a well-known contemporary performer of Jewish songs and promoter of the Yiddish language. In 2019, together with the Canadian researcher Anna Shternshis, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for the project Yiddish Glory based on Yiddish songs composed during WWII.