Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Manger’s Book of Paradise in New St. Petersburg Theater

A new Russian-language Jewish theater was founded in February 2025 in Saint Petersburg. Directed by Leonid Kolton under the umbrella of the charity organization Chesed Abraham and located at the Jewish cultural center Yesod, this new stage was named the Raznochinnaya Theater (named after the street where it is located, as typical for many other Russian theaters). On February 25 it performed The Book of Paradise premiered over a year ago by the collective Post-Traumatic Theater. The musical play is based on Itzik Manger’s Yiddish classic.

Sonia Dymshits

The collective’s director Sonia Dymshits shared with us photos of the new performance and told us that while her troupe is meant to be “vagabond, traveling from space to space”, it is resident to the Raznochinnaya Theater. The Book of Paradise is scheduled to be performed again on the same stage on March 19. Manger’s classic has been translated from Yiddish into Russian by Sonia Dymshits’s father, the renowned Yiddish researcher Valery Dymshits, and published in 2008. Written in 1939 and merging elements of Biblical apocrypha, 18th century philosophical satire and pre-WWII Polish cabaret, this book is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Yiddish literature.

Currently (as of February 27, 2025), the Raznochinnaya Theater’s repertoire features 11 very diverse performances. Like the Moscow theater Shalom, they are geared toward general audience and are not limited to Jewish themes.

Photo credit: Post-Traumatic Theater