DOCSLIB.ORG

Sholem Asch; Isaac Babel

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Sholem Asch; Isaac Babel Sholem Asch, Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, and the Yiddish Theater VERY DIFFERENT KINDS OF YIDDISH WRITERS OF THE 20TH CENTURY Sholem Asch Sholem Asch From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Born: Szalom Asz 1 November 1880 Kutno, Poland Died: 10 July 1957 (aged 76) London, England Asch was born Szalom Asz in Kutno, Poland, one of ten children of Moszek Asz (1825, Gąbin – 1905, Kutno), a cattle-dealer and innkeeper, and Frajda Malka, née Widawska (born 1850, Łęczyca), and received a traditional Jewish education. As a young man he followed that with a more liberal education obtained at Włocławek, where he supported himself as a letter writer for the illiterate Jewish townspeople. From there he moved to Warsaw, where he met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of the Polish-Jewish writer, M. M. Shapiro. Influenced by the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), initially Asch wrote in Hebrew, but I. L. Peretz convinced him to switch to Yiddish. He attended the Czernowitz Yiddish Language Conference of 1908, which declared Yiddish to be "a national language of the Jewish people". He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and the United States in 1910. He sat out World War I in the United States where he became a naturalized citizen in 1920. He returned to Poland and later moved to France. His great-grandson David Mazower is also a writer, as well as a BBC Journalist.[1][2] His Kiddush ha-Shem (1919) is one of the earliest historical novels in modern Yiddish literature, about the anti-Jewish and anti-Polish Chmielnicki Uprising in mid-17th century Ukraine and Poland. When his 1907 drama, God of Vengeance — which is set in a brothel and whose plot features a lesbian relationship — was performed on Broadway in 1923, the entire cast was arrested and successfully prosecuted on obscenity charges, despite the fact that the play was sufficiently highly esteemed in Europe to have already been translated into German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Czech and Norwegian. His 1929–31 trilogy, Farn Mabul (Before the Flood, translated as Three Cities) describes early 20th century Jewish life in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow. His Bayrn Opgrunt (1937, translated as The Precipice), is set in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. Dos Gezang fun Tol (The Song of the Valley) is about the halutzim (Jewish-Zionist pioneers in Palestine), and reflects his 1936 visit to that region. He visited Palestine again in 1936, and returned to settle in the United States in 1938. However, he later offended Jewish sensibilities with his 1939–1949 trilogy, The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary, which dealt with New Testament subjects. The Forward, New York's leading Yiddish-language newspaper, not only dropped him as a writer, but also openly attacked him for promoting Christianity. Death and legacy Asch spent most of his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel, although he died in London. His house in Bat Yam is now the Sholem Asch Museum. The bulk of his library, containing rare Yiddish books and manuscripts, including the manuscripts of some of his own works, is held at Yale University. His sons were Moszek Asz Moses "Moe" Asch (12 February 1905, Warsaw – 19 October 1986, United States), the founder and head of Folkways Records, and Natan Asz/Nathan Asch (1902, Warsaw – 1964, United States), also a writer. Short stories from “The Little Town” in Tales of My People, 1948 “Reb Yechezkiel’s Place” “The Dowry” With which other authors can you compare Sholem Asch’s style? Isaac Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (Russian: Исаа́к Эммануи́лович Ба́бель; July 13, 1894 – January 27, 1940) was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, “The Story of My Dovecote”, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature. Isaac Babel was born in the Moldavanka section of Odessa to Manus and Feyga Bobel. Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Mykolaiv. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odessa in 1906. Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for The Odessa Tales and the play Sunset. Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed", they were relatively well-off.[2] According to his autobiographical statements, Babel's father, Manus, was an impoverished shopkeeper. Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in farm implements and owned a large warehouse. In his teens, Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Nicolas I Odessa Commercial School. However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials.[citation needed] As a result, he was schooled at home by private tutors. In addition to regular school subjects, Babel studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick, "Though he was at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with the traditional texts and their demanding commentaries, he added to these a lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track."[3] In 1915, Babel graduated and moved to Petrograd, in defiance of laws restricting Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement. Babel was fluent in French, besides Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish, and his earliest works were written in French. However, none of his stories in that language have survived. In St. Petersburg, Babel met Maxim Gorky, who published some of Babel's stories in his literary magazine Letopis (Летопись, "Chronicle"). Gorky advised the aspiring writer to gain more life experience; Babel wrote in his autobiography, "... I owe everything to that meeting and still pronounce the name of Alexey Maksimovich Gorky with love and admiration." One of his most famous semi- autobiographical short stories, "The Story of My Dovecote" (История моей голубятни, Istoriya moey golubyatni), was dedicated to Gorky. There is very little information about Babel's whereabouts during and after the October Revolution. According to one of his stories, "The Road" ("Дорога", "Doroga"), he served on the Romanian front until early December 1917. He resurfaced in Petrograd in March 1918 as a reporter for Gorky's Menshevik newspaper, Novaya zhizn (Новая жизнь, "New Life"). Babel continued publishing there until Novaya zhizn was forcibly closed on Lenin's orders in July 1918. Babel later recalled, "My journalistic work gave me a lot, especially in the sense of material. I managed to amass an incredible number of facts, which proved to be an invaluable creative tool. I struck up friendships with morgue attendants, criminal investigators, and government clerks. Later, when I began writing fiction, I found myself always returning to these 'subjects', which were so close to me, in order to put character types, situations, and everyday life into perspective. Journalistic work is full of adventure."[4] Babel has also been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Loyal to, but not uncritical of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge as the result of his long-term affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of 15 May 1939. After confessing under interrogation to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, he was shot on 27 January 1940. From, Early Stories: “Old Shloyme” From Autobiographical Stories: “The Story of my Dovecot” From Red Cavalry: “My First Goose” “The King” read by Jeff Goldblum Franz Kafka Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class, German- speaking Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a huge ill-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger towards his son and was disrespectful towards his escape into literature. From 1889 to 1893, Franz attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys elementary school in Prague. He was sent to German schools, not Czech, which demonstrates his father's desire for social advancement. His Jewish upbringing was limited mostly to his bar mitzvah and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father, After secondary school he went on to Charles Ferdinand University, where at first he decided to study chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year. He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Yiddish Literature
    Syracuse University SURFACE Religion College of Arts and Sciences 1990 Yiddish Literature Ken Frieden Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/rel Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Frieden, Ken, "Yiddish Literature" (1990). Religion. 39. https://surface.syr.edu/rel/39 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religion by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i C'L , IS4 ed l'ftOv\ Yiddish Literature 1077 וt..c:JI' $-- 131"'1+-" "r.כ) C fv כ,;E Yiddish Literature iddiSh literature may 00 said to have been born the Jews of northern Europe during this time than among twice. The earliest evidence of Yiddish literary ac­ non-Jews living in the same area. Many works achieved Y tivity dates from the 13th century and is found such popularity that they were frequently reprinted over in southern Germany, where the language itself had origi­ a period of centuries and enjoyed an astonishingly wide nated as a specifically Jewish variant of Middle High Ger­ dissemination, with the result that their language devel­ man approximately a quarter of a millennium earlier. The oped into an increasingly ossified koine that was readily Haskalah, the Jewish equivalent of the Enlightenment, understood over a territory extending from Amsterdam to effectively doomed the Yiddish language and its literary Odessa and from Venice to Hamburg. During the 18th culture in Germany and in western Europe during the century the picture changed rapidly in western Europe, course of the 18th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Indecent by PAULA VOGEL Directed by WENDY C
    McGuire Proscenium Stage / Feb 17 – Mar 24, 2018 Indecent by PAULA VOGEL directed by WENDY C. GOLDBERG PLAY GUIDE Inside THE PLAY Synopsis • 3 Characters and Setting • 4 Inspiration for Indecent • 5 Responses to Indecent • 6 Responses to The God of Vengeance • 7 THE PLAYWRIGHT On Paula Vogel • 8 Paula Vogel on Indecent • 9 Paula Vogel on Sholem Asch • 10-11 Glossary: Concepts, Words, Ideas • 12-15 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 16 Play guides are made possible by Guthrie Theater Play Guide Copyright 2018 DRAMATURG Jo Holcomb GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves CONTRIBUTORS Jo Holcomb Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director writing from the publishers. Some materials published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted by permission of their publishers. The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National The Guthrie creates transformative theater experiences that ignite the imagination, stir Endowment for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation the heart, open the mind, and build community through the illumination of our common by the Minnesota State Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from humanity.
    [Show full text]
  • Wertheimer, Editor Imagining the Seth Farber an American Orthodox American Jewish Community Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B
    Imagining the American Jewish Community Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life Jonathan D. Sarna, Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor For a complete list of books in the series, visit www.upne.com and www.upne.com/series/BSAJ.html Jack Wertheimer, editor Imagining the Seth Farber An American Orthodox American Jewish Community Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Murray Zimiles Gilded Lions and Soloveitchik and Boston’s Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to Maimonides School the Carousel Ava F. Kahn and Marc Dollinger, Marianne R. Sanua Be of Good editors California Jews Courage: The American Jewish Amy L. Sales and Leonard Saxe “How Committee, 1945–2006 Goodly Are Thy Tents”: Summer Hollace Ava Weiner and Kenneth D. Camps as Jewish Socializing Roseman, editors Lone Stars of Experiences David: The Jews of Texas Ori Z. Soltes Fixing the World: Jewish Jack Wertheimer, editor Family American Painters in the Twentieth Matters: Jewish Education in an Century Age of Choice Gary P. Zola, editor The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Jacob Edward S. Shapiro Crown Heights: Rader Marcus’s Essays on American Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Jewry Riot David Zurawik The Jews of Prime Time Kirsten Fermaglich American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Ranen Omer-Sherman, 2002 Diaspora Early Holocaust Consciousness and and Zionism in Jewish American Liberal America, 1957–1965 Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff, and Roth Andrea Greenbaum, editor Jews of Ilana Abramovitch and Seán Galvin, South Florida editors, 2001 Jews of Brooklyn Sylvia Barack Fishman Double or Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Sarna, Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed editors Women and American Marriage Judaism: Historical Perspectives George M.
    [Show full text]
  • The Southwest in Sholem Asch's Yiddish Writing
    “Mexicans Are Just Like Every Oriental People”: The Southwest in Sholem Asch’s Yiddish Writing by Gil Ribak, University of Arizona Editor’s note: Gil Ribak presented the keynote address about Sholem Asch at the 2017 NMJHS Fall Conference in Las Vegas, New Mexico. n late 1909, a promising received a traditional education, from a a long battle, the con- young Yiddish author by very young age he was drawn to secu- viction was overturned the name of Sholem Asch lar topics and taught himself German. on appeal; these events I visited the United States Since his parents disapproved of his are told in a recent for the first time. He secular studies, he moved to another play titled Indecent that stayed in the country for shtetl with relatives and made a living premiered on Broadway about six months until the summer of as a Torah instructor. Later he made a in early 2017. 1910. Apart from writing scenes about living writing letters for illiterate Polish Gil Ribak New York City’s Jewish immigrant life, peasants, and scholars believe that was Asch was also an avid tenement houses, and sweatshops, Asch an experience which offered him insight traveler who wrote impressions of some also embarked upon coast-to-coast travel into human needs and longings. of those journeys. In 1908, he visited across the United States, from Niagara the Land of Israel for the first time and Falls to the Grand Canyon, and his travel When Asch was about 19 years old, he wrote a series of sketches based on that impressions were serialized in the popu- moved to Warsaw, where he became a visit.
    [Show full text]
  • Lesbian Representation and Impact in Late-20Th Century Theatre
    University of Central Florida STARS Honors Undergraduate Theses UCF Theses and Dissertations 2019 The WOW Factor: Lesbian Representation and Impact in Late-20th Century Theatre Brenna L. Maginness University of Central Florida Part of the Playwriting Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the UCF Theses and Dissertations at STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Undergraduate Theses by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Maginness, Brenna L., "The WOW Factor: Lesbian Representation and Impact in Late-20th Century Theatre" (2019). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 483. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses/483 THE WOW FACTOR: LESBIAN REPRESENTATION AND IMPACT IN LATE-20TH CENTURY THEATRE by BRENNA MAGINNESS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors in the Major Program in Theatre in the College of Arts and Humanities and in the Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2019 Thesis Chair: Vandy Wood ABSTRACT The intent of this thesis is to investigate the influence of 1980’s and 1990’s lesbian playwrights on modern queer representation in theatre. By analyzing the successful works of troupes and artists born out of the Women’s One World (WOW) Café, it became apparent that the greatest changes in lesbian portrayal on stage came from queer and feminist authorship. Additionally, WOW Café became the common denominator in the success of many lesbian playwrights due to the freedom it gave its writers and performers.
    [Show full text]
  • Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin
    Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Johnson, Kelly. 2012. Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9830349 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2012 Kelly Scott Johnson All rights reserved Professor Ruth R. Wisse Kelly Scott Johnson Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin Abstract The thesis represents the first complete academic biography of a Jewish clockmaker, warrior poet and Anarchist named Sholem Schwarzbard. Schwarzbard's experience was both typical and unique for a Jewish man of his era. It included four immigrations, two revolutions, numerous pogroms, a world war and, far less commonly, an assassination. The latter gained him fleeting international fame in 1926, when he killed the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura in Paris in retribution for pogroms perpetrated during the Russian Civil War (1917-20). After a contentious trial, a French jury was sufficiently convinced both of Schwarzbard's sincerity as an avenger, and of Petliura's responsibility for the actions of his armies, to acquit him on all counts. Mostly forgotten by the rest of the world, the assassin has remained a divisive figure in Jewish-Ukrainian relations, leading to distorted and reductive descriptions his life.
    [Show full text]
  • Yiddish Culture in the West
    Judah YIDDISH CULTURE Waten IN THE WEST The facts about the decline, often overlooked, of Yiddish culture in the West. Q FTEN when anti-Soviet propagandists assert that today Yiddish culture is in a serious plight in the Soviet Union and that soon the Soviet Jews will be without a literature and language, they appear to try to leave the impression that conversely in the West, the Yiddish language and literature are flourishing. Actually the reverse is true; Yiddish literature is at a very low ebb in the U.S.A. and is virtually extinct in Britain, but in the Soviet Union there is still considerable creative activity in the Yiddish language. As Dr. Nahum Goldmann said at the recent meeting of the World Jewish Congress, the Soviet Jewish community is “culturally one of the most creative” (Melbourne Herald, August 1, 1966). Yiddish, a younger language than Hebrew which goes back to antiquity, was derived from Middle High German between the 10th and 12th centuries, and after the Jewish migration eastward to Poland and Russia was mostly spoken in Eastern Europe where it was enriched by new words and word formations. Modern Yiddish literature was born in the mid-19th century in Czarist Russia in which lived nearly 50 per cent of the total Jewish population of the world at that time. Yiddish cultural expression grew up in the Pale of Settlement, the vast ghetto set up in 1835 by Nicholas I, in parts of white Russia and the Ukraine in which most of the Jews were compelled to live.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of the Apostle Paul‟S Approach to the Law in Galatians Chapters 2 and 3
    A STUDY OF THE APOSTLE PAUL‟S APPROACH TO THE LAW IN GALATIANS CHAPTERS 2 AND 3 D. J. Lowe Submitted to Trinity Saint David (University of Wales) in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Theology Trinity Saint David, University of Wales 2014 1 Master’s Degrees by Examination and Dissertation Declaration Form 1. This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Name : Dean Lowe……………….. Date …24.3.2014…………………... 2. This dissertation is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Theology Name: Dean Lowe………………… Date …24.3.2014…………………. 3. This dissertation is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Name…Dean Lowe………………… Date: …24.3.2014…………….…… 4. I hereby give consent for my dissertation, if accepted, to be available for photocopying, inter- library loan, and for deposit in the University‟s digital repository Name…Dean Lowe………………… Date…34.3.2014..………….………. Supervisor’s Declaration. I am satisfied that this work is the result of the student‟s own efforts. Signed: ……………………………... Date: ……………………………..….. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Kathy Ehrensperger of Trinity Saint David for her supervision during the writing of this dissertation and for the helpful guidance given to me. I would also like to thank my colleague and friend, Dr. Sam Gordon, who proofread this paper at extremely short notice.
    [Show full text]
  • Ucl Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies Newsletter
    H J S U C L D E P A R T M E N T O F H E B R E W & J E W I S H S T U D I E S N E W S L E T T E R D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 • H A N U K K A H Contents 03 Welcome 05 News 06 Hanukkah in Persian-Jewish Custom Daniel Sperber 08 Between 'Mate' & Jewish Gauchos Paola Khalili 10 Who Are The Keepers of the Past? Sima Beeri 12 Exploring The Origins of Jewish Feminism Ellery Weil 14 Luther & The Jews Richard Harvey 17 Interview: Dr. Lily Kahn on Shakespeare in Hebrew Sonti Ramirez & Joel Greenbaum Cover Photo 'Menorah #7' Hanukkah 22 "Dartmouth? It Is A Cult!" Lamp by Peter Shire, 1986. Made from steel: painted; François Guesnet aluminum: anodized; chromium. Part of the 'Masterpieces & 27 Announcements Curiosities: Memphis Does Hanukkah' Collection at the Jewish Museum, New York. Editorial Team: Sonti Ramirez, Joel Greenbaum UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies Newsletter 03 W E L C O M E D R L I L Y K A H N - H E A D O F D E P A R T M E N T ( I N T E R I M ) Welcome Back ! I’m delighted to be taking over this column while This year we also have the privilege of being joined serving as interim Head of Department. Professor by three new researchers - Dr Sonya Yampolskaya, Sacha Stern is on sabbatical this year, working on a who has arrived from St Petersburg and will be in book project before returning to begin another the Department for two years working on a term as Head of HJS.
    [Show full text]
  • THE ŁÓDZ GHETTO Gasp
    STUDY GUIDE HELPFUL HINTS FOR THEATER AUDIENCES As an audience member at the theater, YOU are part of the show! Just as you see and hear the actors onstage, they can see and hear you in the audience. To help the performers do their best, please remember the following: Arrive at least 15 minutes early. ARENA’S PAGE Visit the restroom before the show starts. Sit in the exact seat on your ticket. Ask the TIMELESS MASTERPIECE usher for help finding it. Before the show begins, turn off your phone, CONTENTS watch alarms and any other electronic devices. If anything rings by accident, turn it off The Play immediately. Meet the Playwright Do not use your phone for texts, calls, games or pictures. From the Director’s Notebook You cannot take pictures or make recordings in Meet the Theater Troupe the theater, even before or after the play. There is no food allowed in the theater. Yiddish: The Language of Indecent Do not talk, whisper, sing or hum, unless invited Obscenity Laws by the performers to do so. A Play with Music INDECENT Thousands of Jews are forcibly relocated to the ghetto, bringing only what they can carry. Keep your feet on the floor and off the seat in front of you. The Łódź Ghetto Avoid getting up during a show. If you must Three Big Questions leave, wait for a scene change and exit quietly and quickly. Resources Respond to the show; you can laugh, cry and THE ŁÓDZ GHETTO gasp. However, don’t repeat lines out loud or talk to the performers on stage.
    [Show full text]
  • SETH L. WOLITZ Curriculum Vitae
    August 2008 pub/ only SETH L. WOLITZ Curriculum Vitae Official Address: Department of French and Italian Rainey Hall 3.114A The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712 (512) 471-5531 Home Address: 4007 Edgerock Drive Austin, Texas 78731 (512) 346-5477 TEACHING EXPERIENCE 1980 - Present Gale Chair & Professor of Jewish Studies Professor of French and Slavic and Comparative Literature Member, American Studies Program Member, Humanities Program Member, Middle East Center Member, Theater Group The University of Texas at Austin 1978 - 1980 Professor of French and Comparative Literature The University of Texas at San Antonio 1975 - 1977 Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature The University of Texas at San Antonio 1971 - 1974 Assistant Professor of Romance Languages Hunter College, CUNY, New York City 1966 - 1970 Assistant Professor of French The University of California - Berkeley 1962 - 1964 Assistant in Instruction of French Yale University EDUCATION Seth L. Wolitz September, 1996 Page 2 1959 - 1965 Doctor of Philosophy in French and Romance Languages Yale University 1955 - 1958 Bachelor of Arts University of Chicago 1962 - 1963 Sorbonne, University of Paris, France PUBLICATIONS Books: The Hidden Isaac Bashevis Singer. Ed. And articles, Seth Wolitz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. The Proustian Community. New York: New York University Press, 1971. Songs of Bernart de Ventadorn. Co-author S. Nichols. A Critical Edition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962. Monograph The Renaissance in Kosher Cuisine: from ethnicity to universality. Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 1999. Policy Forum Series, #18. Articles and Reviews: “Yankl Adler,” I, 8-9; “Natan Altman,” I, 30-31; “Henryk Berlewi,” I, 163-165; “Avrom Goldfadn,” I, 610-612; “Di Khalyastre,” I, 884-885; “El Lissitzky,” I, 1048- 1049; “Yisakhar Rybak,” II,1640-1642.,[7 encyclopedic essays] in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Socialism in Yiddish Literature
    1 Advanced leyenkrayz: Socialism in Yiddish Literature This course will show the development of socialist ideas in Yiddish Literature. Yiddish has always been a language of poor masses and this is why those who wrote it were inevitably more or less involved in Socialist movements that flourished in Russian Empire of the beginning of the 20th Century and finally led to October Revolution of 1917 which engendered a literature of Social Realism, Yiddish literature included. Yiddish writers that emigrated to America often worked in sweatshops and portrayed the class differences in American Society. For the six lectures of the course, I've chosen different writers that represent different generations and different regions (Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Germany, America) of the flourishing of Yiddish Literature between the two wars and different literary styles, from realism and Social-realism to expressionism and modernism, in poetry, drama and in prose. Some of them were politically active in the socialistic movement, like Semen An-sky, one of the prominent figures of the Russian Populist Movement. Some shared a pronounced Socialist ideology (Avrom Reyzen, Izi Kharik), some were murdered by the Soviet Regime (Kharik, Dovid Bergelson) when Yiddish literature was no longer wanted. Some emigrated and lived a long life in America and Israel (Reyzen, Scholem Ash) We won't read the well-known works by Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer in this course, I deliberately chose less known authors and the works that are not translated into English. During the lecture I will give you a small introduction about each author and the work we are going to read and then we will read and discuss together an excerpt of the work.
    [Show full text]