The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch in Russian

The Moscow publishing house Knizhniki published Thomas Mayer’s novel known in English as “The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch”, translated into Russian by Alexandra Eliseyeva. Thomas Mayer is a Swiss author who writes in German. The meaning of the original title, “Wolkenbruch’s Wondrous Journey Into the Arms of a Shiksa”, is preserved in the new translation.

The book is notable for its frequent use of words and expressions in colloquial modern Yiddish. There are quite a few Jews in today’s Switzerland, primarily Ultra-Orthodox, who use this language on daily basis.

Shiksa in Yiddish refers colloquially to a non-Jewish woman, often a lover of a Jewish man. Mayer’s novel is about a family conflict and contradictions between tradition and the protagonist’s independent lifestyle. Mayer’s novel was made into a film in 2018. Despite the emphatically “non-serious” title, the book once again shows us something very profound: that Yiddish remains a living language among Orthodox Jews and attracts the attention of contemporary authors.