1923 Facsimile JEWISH YIDDISH Expressionist AVANT GARDE book KULTURE LIGE Segall

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Seller: judaica-bookstore ✉️ (2,805) 100%, Location: TEL AVIV, IL, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 285774700451 1923 Facsimile JEWISH YIDDISH Expressionist AVANT GARDE book KULTURE LIGE Segall. DESCRIPTION : Up for auction is a RARE publication. It's a LIMITED and NUMBERED ( Only 500 numbered copies ) Facsimile edition of the YIDDISH publication of two of the leading figures in modern YIDDISH LITERATURE and ART , Both from Russian and Lithuanian origin, DAVID BERGELSON , The legendary founder of the KULTURE LIGE , And the talented EXPRESIONIST and AVANT GARDE artist LASAR SEGALL . The RICHLY ILLUSTRATED Jewish YIDDISH BOOK namely "MA'ASE BICHL" was published in Berlin in 1923 in a very limited edition . Brgelson's stories are accompanied by NUMEROUS LITHOGRAPHS and WOODCUTS reproductions, Many of the are in full page size by LASAR SEGALL. - This facsimile edition of 500 numbered copies was published in 1982 on the occassion of 30 years to the Night of the Murdered Poets (Russian: Дело Еврейского антифашистского комитета, Delo Yevreyskogo antifashistskogo komiteta "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case"; Yiddish: הרוגי מלכות פונעם ראטנפארבאנד Harugey malkus funem Ratnfarband, "Soviet Union Martyrs") was an execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Soviet Union on August 12, 1952.All defendants were falsely accused of espionage and treason as well as many other crimes. After their arrests, they were tortured, beaten, and isolated for three years before being formally charged. There were five Yiddish writers among these defendants, all of whom were a part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. This extremely RARE and SOUGHT AFTER facsimile edition is a treasure of Jewish - Yiddish culture, literature and art. This copy is not numbered. Original illustrated wrappers. 10.5" x 8.5" . 45 pp + many plates printed on stock. Excellent pristine condition. Perfectly clean and tightly bound. Practicaly unused .  ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images )  Book will be sent inside a protective packaging.    PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards . SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $ 25  . Book will be sent inside a protective packaging . Will be sent around 5-10 days after payment .   The artist Lasar Segall (July 21, 1891 – August 2, 1957) was a Brazilian Jewish painter, engraver and sculptor born in Lithuania. Segall's work is derived from impressionism, expressionism and modernism. His most significant themes were depictions of human suffering, war, persecution and prostitution.Impressionist stagesSegall was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and was the son of a Torah scribe. Segall moved to Berlin at the age of 15 and studied first at Berlin Königliche Akademie der Künste from 1906 to 1910. At the end of 1910 he moved to Dresden to continue his studies at the Kunstakademie Dresden as a "Meisterschüler".Expressionist ForumSegall published a book of five etchings in Dresden, Sovenirs of Vilna in 1919, and two books illustrated with lithographs titled Bubu and die Sanfte.[1] He then began to express himself more freely and developed his own style, which incorporated aspects of Cubism, while exploring his own Jewish background. His earlier paintings throughout 1910 to the early 1920s depicted troubled figures surrounded in claustrophobic surroundings with exaggerated and bold features, influenced by African tribal figures.[2]In 1912 his first painted series of works were conducted in an elderly insane asylum.[3] Segall's work largely portrayed the masses of persecuted humanity in his Expressionist form. Later that year, he moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where three of his siblings were already living.He returned to Dresden in 1914 and was still quite active in the Expressionist style. In 1919 Segall founded the 'Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919' with Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Otto Lange and other artists. Segall's exhibition at the Galery Gurlitt received multiple awards. However successful Segall was in Europe, he had already been greatly influenced by his time spent in Brazil, which had already transformed both his style and his subject matter. The visit to Brazil gave Segall the opportunity to obtain a strong idea of South American art and, in turn, made Segall return to Brazil yet again.Beginnings in Brazil: Modernist trendsThough Segall was still a Russian[citation needed] citizen, he moved back to Brazil in 1923. Upon Segall's return to São Paulo he obtained Brazilian citizenship along with his first wife, Margarete.[4]While in Brazil, his paintings were influenced heavily by the Red Light District in Rio de Janeiro. Many Brazilian artists influenced Segall's subject matter and strengthened his Cubist form. He became acclimated within his newfound country and painted themes contributing to Brazil's countryside, mulattoes, favelas, prostitutes and plantations. Due to the harsh and extreme nature of Segall's portrayal of prostitutes and his depiction of human suffering, his artwork became controversial. This particular controversy in his artwork caused he and other well known artists to organize a pro Modernist event known as the Semana de Arte Moderna[dubious – discuss].[2]In the year 1923, the Semana de Arte Moderna was organized Segall included, being one of the mainstream forerunners in the art exhibition.[5] The week long event included Segall's work, as well as Anita Malfatti's largely controversial artwork. Not only were paintings included, but performances and other art forms were conducted at the event. Segall's avant garde innovations ranked him highly among other Brazilian outstanding modern artists during that time, like Candido Portinari and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti.[6]Though Segall had great intentions of residing only in Brazil, he continued to return and forth to Europe for his own personal exhibitions. In 1925, Segall became extremely close to his pupil Jenny Klabin and eventually married her.[6]Sociedade Pro-Arte Moderna (SPAM)In 1932, shortly after Segall's multiple visits to Paris and Germany he founded an organization along with other artists known as Sociedade Pro-Arte Moderna (SPAM).[2] The organization was short lived (November 1932 - December 1934). Similar to the Semana de Arte Moderna, the organization included members of São Paulo's earliest modernist forerunners. SPAM's central idea was to serve as a link between artists, intellectuals, collectors, patrons, and the public as a whole.[2] SPAM was also created to serve as a public environment for vanguard art in Brazil.SPAM consisted of two exhibitions. The first exhibition showed works from the artists of the School of Paris from multiple São Paulo collections which acknowledged Brazilian artists of the time. The controversial Modernist artist, Tarsila do Amaral, also held her artworks in the exhibition as well as works of local artists such as Anita Malfatti, Victor Brecheret, John Graz, Regina Graz and Rossi Osir. The second half of the exhibition consisted of solely Brazilian artists from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro- such as di Cavalcanti, Ismael Nery, Portinari and Alberto da Veiga Guignard.[2]Also similar to the Semana de Arte Moderna, two significant "balls" were held by the leaders of the organization. The rooms in which the balls were held were named "Cidade de SPAM" (City of SPAM). Though these balls seemed to be fund raising events, they were merely performances to make audiences think about the ever changing movement in Brazil. They consisted of live musical acts, dancers, built scenery and artwork and ornate costumes.[2] The sets were meant to portray "mini towns", and SPAM even had its own newspapers, anthem and multiple governing bodies.Segall's works included in the SPAM exhibition were two of his most important series of paintings in 1935; Campos do Jordao landscapes and the Portraits of Lucy. Lucy was an understudy pupil and Segall conducted a series of images dedicated to her. Campos do Jordao landscapes and the Portraits of Lucy depicted the world's outbreak of war, it portrayed genocides and indefinite tragedy.[7]The organization of SPAM fought for justice yet, disagreements arose between Integralists, known as Brazilian Fascists, that discriminated against foreigners in Brazil, especially Jews. With this large amount of controversy and intolerable strain on SPAM's membership, the group soon fell apart.[6] A defeated Segall meant that the driving force behind the organization, had discouragingly, come to an end.Controversy in EuropeSegall's work was still gaining much positive credit still in Brazil, despite the dissolution of SPAM. The positive feedback considers Segall one of Brazil's most influential modernist artists. Although, back in Europe, his work was considered degenerate and preposterous. Specifically in Germany, his artwork was no longer able to be shown in exhibits.[2] Fascism was rising quickly in Germany and many believed Segall's work to portray negatively on Europe's economic status due to the largely acknowledged outbreak of war.This particular negative impact on his artwork then forced Segall to create a series of images of his troubled Jewish childhood and to depict the large amount of emigration waves that he grew up with, as well.[2] These images also portrayed universal suffering of human existence.Later yearsStill haunted by Rio de Janeiro's Mangue, Segall created images that stayed throughout his late career. Much of his earlier impact of human suffering led Segall to create one of his most famous artworks in 1939 and 1940, known as Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants).[8] The image depicts a heavily condensed and large amount of people on the dock of a ship. Although this does not coincide with much of Segall's previous work of human suffering, this provides the audience with a deep depiction of (at the time) the contemporary and controversial waves of emigrants and human affliction and persecution.Later in the mid-1940s, Segall published his series of Mangue drawings that revealed poverty, specifically in the Rio de Janeiro slums. Becoming wholeheartedly closer to his Brazilian nationality, Segall portrays these images in a stark manner, yet the underprivileged and oppressed images provides a significant cultural identity for the Rio de Janeiro inhabitants.[2]In 1949 till his death in 1957, he continued to work on engraving and painting Mangue as well as producing a series entitled Wandering Women and Forests.[1]Subject matter and themesSegall's subject matter was portrayed more subtly and softer in his early career. He did not depict much of the African influence on his artwork until he moved to Brazil. It was not until Segall visited Brazil for the first few times, that he branched out towards the Expressionist style. He was able to express himself in a freer manner while he portrayed the lifelong theme of his Jewish culture depicting the tribulations of European Jews.[1] Although he was a humanist, he never forgot his Jewish roots.[9]Segall's initial paintings in Brazil reflect a strong national connection and passion for his newfound homeland. He portrayed the landscapes in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and portrayed the different races without tension or malintention.[10] However, Segall remained faithful towards his Cubist nature throughout the majority of his artworks. Specifically, one of his famous artworks, entitled Banana Plantation, shows a Brazilian banana plantation, thick in density.[7] Segall achieved balance in this painting by centering the worker's neck and head protruding from the bottom of the painting. This causes the audience to be fully focused towards the center space. This significant symmetrical balance emphasizes the human element involved in the Brazilian agricultural system.[7] The diminished amount of slavery in Brazil during this time period, the 1920s, abolished Brazilian-Negro slaves and replaced them with an overwhelming amount of European workers coming to Brazil. This particular image portrays the engulfment of the plantations by the Europeans.Other prominent theme in Segall's work is human suffering and emigration. In another famous artwork of Segall's, entitled Ship of Emigrants, a ship dock is overcrowded and engulfed with emigrant passengers. Not only does the image portray a dark and saddening emotion, but it significantly portrays the troubled figures aboard the ship.[2] The solemn faces and lack of expression on the passengers blatantly shows the harsh reality of emigrants and their depressing lifestyles of forced moves.Museu Lasar SegallLasar Segall's home in São Paulo is now a museum, furnished with his furniture, books and plants,[9] as well his most famous works. It is also a non-profit organization respected highly among the community of São Paulo.Museu Lasar Segall is also a center for the art community in São Paulo to participate in monitored cultural activities regularly. Art classes such as photography, engraving and the study of film are held in Segall's home. Also incorporated in the Museum is a large, highly acclaimed art library that holds specific books directed towards photography and the arts of spectacle.The Museu Lasar Segall is preserved to explore the stimulating experiences within multiple forms of art while still keeping a Brazilian cultural identity. The form of art conducted in Brazil is of one entirely different than other art forms. The Museum isintact today because of Brazil's concern to maintain their strong nationality and to preserve Lasar Segall's culturally influenced art dedicated for Brazil.List of Artworks tres jovens 1939, bronze sculpture, pinacoteca, Sao Paulo, Brazil Os eternos caminhantes (The Eternal Wanderers), 1919, oil on canvas, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Nude Female Bust, 1920, pencil sketch, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Banana Plantation, 1927, oil on canvas, State Picture Gallery, São Paulo Brazilian Landscape, 1927, watercolor, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo The Third Class, 1928, drypoint on paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Rua do Mangue (Street of Mangue), 1928, drypoint and etching on paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Primeira classe (First Class), 1929, drypoint and etching on paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Emigrantes (Emigrants), 1929, drypoint on paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Favela (Shantytown), 1930, drypoint on paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Figura feminina reclinada (Reclining Woman), 1930, oil on canvas, Private Collection, São Paulo Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants), 1939–1940, oil with sand on canvas, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo Woman from the 'Mangue' with Persiennes, 1942, woodcut on Japanese paper, Museu Lasar Segall, São PauloThere are artists whose lives are more compelling than their art, and the Brazilian painter Lasar Segall (1891-1957)–now the subject of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum–is certainly one of them. Segall, whose sensibility remained that of a northern European Expressionist even in sunny Brazil, was born to an Orthodox Jewish family, one of eight children of a Torah scribe, in Vilnius, Lithuania, which was then part of the Russian Empire. At the age of 14–and apparently with his parents’ approval–he left home to study art in Berlin. This was, alas, a period in which Germany loomed for many Russian Jews as a haven from the anti-Semitic oppressions of the Czarist regime.To travel from the Jewish ghetto of Vilnius to cosmopolitan Berlin was, of course, not only to enter a new social world but to effect what amounted to a leap in historical time–a leap into modernity. Yet the young Lasar Segall seems to have negotiated this radical change with remarkable facility. Four years after his arrival in the German capital, he was exhibiting his work with the Berlin Secession group. By 1910, when he was not yet 20, he had moved to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, where he was enrolled as a student teacher. That year, too, the Gurlitt Gallery in Dresden gave Segall his first solo exhibition.In 1912, Segall made his first journey to Brazil, where he had family connections, staying long enough to have two more solo exhibitions before returning to Dresden in 1913. He was actually lucky to be in Germany, rather than Lithuania, when the Great War came in 1914. For although he was expelled from the Dresden Academy as a Russian national when Russia entered the war, and interned for two years in the nearby city of Meissen, he was able to continue painting without interruption and–even more important–he did not have to experience the carnage of the war itself. When released from internment while the war was still raging, Segall even managed a last visit to his parents in Vilnius, which was soon thereafter destroyed.There can be no doubt that the formative artistic experience of Segall’s life was his immersion in the German Expressionist movement. For a young artist trained in the highly restrictive conventions of the Berlin and Dresden academies, an encounter with the emancipatory ethos of the Expressionist avant-garde was bound to be a heady experience. It promised liberation not only from the moribund conventions of academic art, but from the hierarchical traditions of a highly stratified society. In Segall’s case, moreover, Expressionism proved to be a way of coming to terms with his experience as an emancipated Jew. As was often the case with Jewish artists and writers of his generation who felt exiled from their religious upbringing, yet retained a sense of solidarity with the traditions that had nurtured them, Segall found in Expressionism the means of accommodating both his feelings of alienation and his troubled social conscience.Expressionism thus became for Segall something more than a pictorial style. It was a mindset that allowed him to channel all his sympathies for the lost world of his childhood into a facile depiction of destitution and suffering. Unfortunately, it was a mindset that, in Segall’s case, also encouraged a kind of morose sentimentality whenever he felt called upon to dwell on Jewish subjects or the lives of the poor. Satisfied that his heart was in the right place, he had a distressing tendency of turning every modernist innovation he favored into an instant caricature of the feeling that prompted it. There had always been an aspect of Expressionism that lent itself to caricature of this sort, and Segall was especially drawn to it.It is thus remarkable that in the same year that he produced the painting called Interior of Poor People II (1921), a kind of compendium of Expressionist clichés in the service of social pathos, he was meeting Vasily Kandinsky, El Lissitzki, Naum Gabo and other luminaries of the European avant-garde. Yet none of the artistic developments that followed his attachment to Expressionism seems to have made much of an impression on Segall. The use he sometimes made of Cubist structure in his painting tends to be academic–and so, for that matter, is his dabbling in the New Objectivity realism that enjoyed a vogue in Germany in the 1920′s.By the mid-1920′s, however, Segall was clearly preparing his departure from the European scene. In 1924, he had an exhibition in São Paulo and had decided to settle in Brazil, though he continued to divide his time between Europe and Brazil for a few more years. His first marriage collapsed, and in 1925 he remarried. His first son was born in Berlin in 1926, and another son was born in Paris in 1930. But by that time, Segall had become a Brazilian citizen–a wise move for a Jew residing in Germany in the late 1920′s, but not one, as it turned out, that did much to benefit Segall’s artistic development. His long residence in Brazil turned him into a thoroughly provincial artist, though it seems to have provided him with an otherwise happy life. In Brazil, he was treated as a modern master.The current exhibition has been organized by the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo in collaboration with the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. At the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, the show remains on view through May 10. SEGALL, LASAR (1891–1957), Brazilian painter and sculptor. Born in Vilna, Lithuania, to a religious family, Segall studied at the Design Academy of Vilna in 1905 and moved the next year to Berlin, where he studied at the Imperial Superior Academy of Arts until 1910. Segall rebelled against the strict academic discipline and presented his works in an exposition of the "Freie Sezession," one of the precursor movements of expressionism. In 1910 he moved to Dresden, where he joined the Fine Arts Academy as Meisterschueller (student-instructor) with his own atelier and freedom of creation. After being accepted in the German Expressionist movement at the end of 1912, he traveled for the first time to Brazil, and his exhibitions in Campinas and Saõ Paulo were among the first presentations of modern art in Brazil. After eight months he returned to Dresden. In 1919 Segall participated in the foundation of the "Dresdner Sezession, Grupe 1919," and in the next four years he participated in the German Expressionist movement, presenting exhibitions in The Hague, Frankfurt, and Leipzig and publishing two albums: Bubu (1921) and Remembrance from Vilna (1922).In 1923 Segall settled in Brazil. He joined the modernist group and held his first exhibition in Saõ Paulo. Afterwards he exhibited the first works of his Brazilian stage in Berlin and Dresden. In 1927 Segall adopted Brazilian citizenship and in 1928 traveled to Paris for three years, where he began to sculpt. Back in Saõ Paulo (1932) he founded and led the Society for Modern Art. In 1938 he represented Brazil in the International Congress of Independent Artists in Paris. In this period he started to work with socio-political themes and produced a collection related to the experience of immigrants and the war. In the 1940s and the 1950s he presented his works in exhibitions in Brazil and the United States.The Jewish perspective is present in some of Segall's works. In a number of paintings he included Hebrew letters and he signed a few in Hebrew. Other paintings were focused directly on Jewish themes: Rabino con alunos ("Rabbi with Students" – 1931), Rolo de Tora ("Torah Scroll" – 1922 and 1933), Pogrom (1937), Navio de Emigrantes ("Emigrants' Ship" –1939/1941), Campo de Concentração ("Concentration Camp" – 1945), Êxodo ("Exodus" – 1947), and others that were part of the collection Visões de Guerra 1940–1943 ("Visions from War 1940–1943").Born in Vilna, Lithuania, Lasar Segall lived in Berlin and Dresden, where he was associated with the German Expressionist movement. He later emigrated to Brazil, where he lived and worked until his death. Celebrated in South America, his work is still little known in the U. S. Documenting the Diaspora of the Jews and embodying modern notions of “exoticism” and “primitivism” in modern art, Segall’s work presented a range of issues significant to today’s world of global culture and politics. Following its closing in Chicago, the exhibition traveled to the Jewish Museum in New York. This exhibition was co-organized by the Smart Museum, the Lasar Segall Museum, Sao Paolo, Brazil, National Institute of the Historical and Artistic Patrimony, Brazilian Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the Sao Paulo/Illinois Partners of the Americas. Painter, engraver and Brazilian sculptor of Lithuanian origin, born on July 21, 1891 in the Jewish community of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, at that time under Russian rule; and died August 2, 1957, in São Paulo.He received the first guidelines in drawing of Markus Antokolski, who encouraged him to make continued his education in Germany, where he moved in 1906. He attended the school of fine arts in Berlin (1907-1910), from which participated in the shows of the Berliner Sezession ('Berlin secession') with his painting mother and child (1909). In 1910 he moved to the Academy of fine arts in Dresden, where he was influenced by impressionism of Liebermann, and won the prize "Max Liebermann", expressly dedicated to the avant-garde. At the end of his studies he managed to create a very personal style, a mixture of futurism, Cubism and Expressionism, always against the background of their Jewish origins. In 1912 he traveled to Brazil where he resided three of his brothers, and remained little more than one year. Expuo works in Germany, which are considered as precursors of modernism. Back in Germany, at the beginning of world war I was expelled from the Academy of fine arts and confined in Meissen. Back in Dresden, in 1919 he founded, together with Otto Dix, the 'Dresden secession"group. After years of intense activity in Europe, with solo and group exhibitions in various places, he returned to Brazil in 1923, this time to settle permanently there. It was soon identified with their new country, both in his style of painting, and his personality, acquiring the Brazilian nationality in 1927. Their baggage of German Expressionism, he joined the experience of the original purity of the land, giving new forms to his art, and became a central figure of Brazilian modernism, and co-founder and organizer of the modern ensembles society.In 1928 he returned to Europe and lived four years in Paris. Here he began to exploit her talent as a sculptor. In 1937, three of his paintings and seven engravings were included in the "exhibition of art degenerated", organized by the nazis in Munich, to disqualify the modern art. This year and the following, exhibited at the Salon de may de Sao Paulo. At the same time he alternated exhibitions in Europe and the United States.Segall is the painter of solidarity, reflected in his paintings the human suffering, migration, wars, poverty, prostitution and marginalization. Evidence of this concern are, among others, works as: wandering Eternals, visions of war (1940-1943), women of the Mangue, field of concentration, ships, emigrants, the damned.Other of his works are: Bubu album, with 8 lithographs (1921); the album remembrance of Vilnius in 1917 (1922); illustration of Maasse-Bichl ('little book of stories') (1922), David Bergelsohn, with 17 engravings; Bananal (1927), Paisagems of Campos do Jordão, portraits of Luci, Pogrom, ship of emigrants, farpado Arame, etc.After his death, his house and his workshop in Sao Paulo were converted into Museum, where you can see more of his works. David (or Dovid) Bergelson (דוד בערגעלסאָן) (August 12, 1884 – August 12, 1952) was a Yiddish language writer. Ukrainian-born, he lived for a time in Berlin, Germany. He moved back to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. He was ultimately executed during antisemitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans".Born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Okhrimovo (also known as Okhrimovka, and now as Sarny near Uman), he first became known as a writer in the wake of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. From a Hasidic background, but having received both religious and secular education, much of his writing is reminiscent of Anton Chekhov: stories of "largely secular, frustrated young people…, ineffectual intellectuals…",[1] frustrated by the provincial shtetl life. Writing at first in Hebrew and Russian, he only met success when he turned to his native Yiddish; his first successful book was Arum Vokzal (At the Depot) a novella, published at his own expense in 1909 in Warsaw.In 1917, he founded the avant garde Jidishe Kultur Lige (Yiddish Culture League) in Kiev. In spring 1921 he moved to Berlin, which would be his base throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, although he traveled extensively through Europe and also visited the United States in 1929-30, to cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York (as documented by video link.[1]) According to J. Hoberman, he was "the best-known (and certainly the best-paid) Russian Yiddish writer of the 1920s"[2]. Until the mid-1920s he wrote for the New York City-based Yiddish-language newspaper The Forward.His 1926 essay "Three Centers" expressed a belief that the Soviet Union (where Yiddish language and literature were then receiving official patronage) had eclipsed the assimilationist United States and backwards Poland as the great future locus of Yiddish literature. He began writing for the Communist Yiddish press in both New York (Morgen Freiheit) and Moscow (Emes), and moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, around the time the Nazis came to power in Germany.He was positively impressed with the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan, and participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. However, like many Jewish writers, he became a target of the antisemitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on August 12–13, 1952. After Stalin's death, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955, and his complete works were published in the Soviet Union in 1961.Bergelson's only child, Lev, was an eminent Soviet biochemist who also served as a Soviet Army captain during WWII. Lev and his family emigrated to Israel in the 1980s, where both he and his wife died in 2014. Lev's daughter, David's only grandchild, is Dr. Marina Bergelson Raskin, a Purdue University professor of English literature.WorksThe following is a partial list of Bergelson's works. Arum Vokzal (At the Depot, novella, 1909) Departing (novella, aka Descent as listed below, 1913) Nokh Alemen; title variously translated as When All Is Said and Done (1977 English-language title) or The End of Everything Divine Justice (novel, 1925) "Three Centers" (essay, 1926) Storm Days (short stories, 1928) Baym Dnieper (At the Dnieper, novel, 1932) Materialn (memoir, 1934)[2] The Jewish Autonomous Region (pamphlet published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow) Naye Dertseylungen (New Stories, war stories, 1947) -The Yiddish Book Collection of the Russian Avant-Garde contains books published between the years 1912-1928 by many of the movement’s best known artists. The items here represent only a portion of Yale's holdings in Yiddish literature. The Beinecke, in collaboration with the Yale University library Judaica Collection, continues to digitize and make Yiddish books available online. With the Russian Revolution of 1917, prohibitions on Yiddish printing imposed by the Czarist regime were lifted. Thus, the early post-revolutionary period saw a major flourishing of Yiddish books and journals. The new freedoms also enabled the development of a new and radically modern art by the Russian avant-garde. Artists such as Mark Chagall, Joseph Chaikov, Issachar Ber Ryback, El (Eliezer) Lisitzsky and others found in the freewheeling artistic climate of those years an opportunity Jews had never enjoyed before in Russia: an opportunity to express themselves as both Modernists and as Jews. Their art often focused on the small towns of Russia and Ukraine where most of them had originated. Their depiction of that milieu, however, was new and different. Jewish art in the early post-revolutionary years emerged with the creation of a secular, socialist culture and was especially cultivated by the Kultur-Lige, the Jewish social and cultural organizations of the 1920s and 1930s. One of the founders of the first Kultur-Lige in Kiev in 1918 was Joseph Chaikov, a painter and sculptor whose books are represented in the Beinecke’s collection. The Kultur-Lige supported education for children and adults in Jewish literature, the theater and the arts. The organization sponsored art exhibitions and art classes and also published books written by the Yiddish language’s most accomplished authors and poets and illustrated by artists who in time became trail blazers in modernist circles. This brief flowering of Yiddish secular culture in Russia came to an end in the 1920s. As the power of the Soviet state grew under Stalin, official culture became hostile to the experimental art that the revolution had at first facilitated and even encouraged. Many artists left for Berlin, Paris and other intellectual centers. Those that remained, like El Lisitzky, ceased creating art with Jewish themes and focused their work on furthering the aims of Communism. Tragically, many of them perished in Stalin’s murderous purges. The Artists Eliezer Lisitzky (1890–1941), better known as El Lisitzky, was a Russian Jewish artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. He was one of the most important figures of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop Suprematism with his friend and mentor, Kazimir Malevich. He began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture. In 1921, he became the Russian cultural ambassador in Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus movement. He brought significant innovation and change to the fields of typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim. However, as he grew more involved with creating art work for the Soviet state, he ceased creating art with Jewish themes. Among the best known Yiddish books illustrated by the artist is Sikhes Hulin by the writer and poet Moshe Broderzon and Yingel Tsingle Khvat, a children’s book of poetry by Mani Leyb. Both works have been completely digitized and can be found here. Joseph Chaikov (1888-1979) was a Russian sculptor, graphic artist, teacher, and art critic. Born in Kiev, Chaikov studied in Paris from 1910 to 1913. Returning to Russia in 1914, he became active in Jewish art circles and in 1918 was one of the founders of the Kultur-Lige in Kiev. Though primarily known as a sculptor, in his early career, he also illustrated Yiddish books, many of them children’s books. In 1921 his Yiddish book, Skulptur was published. In it, the artist formulated an avant-garde approach to sculpture and its place in a new Jewish art. It too is in the Beinecke collection. Another of the great artists from this remarkable period in Yiddish cultural history is Issachar Ber Ryback. Together with Lisistzky, he traveled as a young man in the Russian countryside studying Jewish folk life and art. Their findings made a deep impression on both men as artists and as Jews and folk art remained an abiding influence on their work. One of Ryback’s better known works is Shtetl, Mayn Khoyever heym; a gedenknish (Shtetl, My destroyed home; A Remembrance), Berlin, 1922. In this book, also in the Beinecke collection, the artist depicts scenes of Jewish life in his shtetl (village) in Ukraine before it was destroyed in the pogroms which followed the end of World War I. Indeed, Shtetl is an elegy to that world. David Hofstein’s book of poems, Troyer (Tears), illustrated by Mark Chagall also mourns the victims of the pogroms. It was published by the Kultur-Lige in Kiev in 1922. Chagall’s art in this book is stark and minimalist in keeping with the grim subject of the poetry. Chagall was a leading force in the new emerging Yiddish secular art and many of the young modernist artists of the time came to study and paint with him in Vitebsk, his hometown. Lisistzky and Ryback were among them. Chagall, however, parted ways with them when their artistic styles and goals diverged. Chagall moved to Moscow in 1920 where he became involved with the newly created and innovative Moscow Yiddish Theater. Cite as: General Modern Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University More than most artists, Henryk Berlewi resists easy categorisation. He was active for six decades as a painter, graphic designer and theorist of art and design, but above all he was a restless innovator, active in many fields, experimenting with radically different styles, and switching between Jewish and non-Jewish artistic circles with apparent ease. Today he is mostly remembered as an abstract artist, who paved the way for later trends like optical art. All but forgotten is his impressive contribution to Yiddish book design and Yiddish typography in the early 1920s. This work, although limited to a small number of items, is of outstanding quality and represents one of the high points of Polish Yiddish modernism.Berlewi was born in Warsaw in 1894 into an assimilated Polish Jewish family. As a teenager he studied art in Warsaw, Antwerp (1909 -10) and Paris (1911 - 12), then returned to Poland in 1913 and for a few years was mainly active in Polish art circles. However, in the period 1918 – 22 Berlewi returned to Jewish themes and was a well-known and popular figure in Yiddish literary, artistic and theatrical circles. (3) A fluent draughtsman, his sketchbooks from these years are filled with finely executed portraits of Jewish workers and the many Jewish writers, artists and folklorists who made Warsaw such a thriving centre of Jewish cultural life. At the same time he became the artistic standard-bearer of the group known as Di Khalyastre [The Gang], the group of Yiddish expressionist writers led by Uri-Tsvi Grinberg, Perets Markish and Meylekh Ravitsh. Berlewi’s brand of Jewish expressionist art and in particular his radical experiments with Yiddish typography are the perfect counterpart to the angry, elemental and fragmented language of the Khalyastre poets in this short-lived outburst of Yiddish ‘revolutionary excitement’. (4) His flowing draughtsmanship is evident in the cover drawing for Sh. Londinski’s poetry collection Flamen (Flames) of 1920. A buxom Venus rises naked from the waves, her full-length tresses falling in shimmering ripples behind her against an Art Deco sunburst. With its wholesome eroticism and fluent curves, the effect is reminiscent of another draughtsman-typographer, the English artist Eric Gill. But Berlewi reserved his most striking and avant-garde Yiddish graphics for his collaborations with the leading Khalyastre poets Markish and Grinberg in the early ‘20s. For the cover of Markish’s poem Di Kupe (The Heap), published in 1921, Berlewi devised a striking gold-on-black composition in which the massive stone-like blocks of the title letters rise organically and almost imperceptibly out of a stylised landscape of mountain peaks. Equally imaginative and even more abstract is Berlewi’s extraordinary design for the cover of Markish’s Radyo (Radio). Here the Yiddish letters of the title have mutated into radio waves, lightning flashes of jagged and fractured forms which are almost unrecognisable as individual letters. And in somewhat more figurative vein, for Grinberg’s Mefisto (Mephistopheles) Berlewi produced a cover illustration combining his trademark geometric Yiddish lettering and a portrait of Grinberg smoking a pipe. 1921 marked the beginning of Berlewi’s acquaintance with the pioneering avant-garde artist, illustrator and typographer El Lissitsky, a formative influence on the younger man. Berlewi moved to Berlin in 1922, and devoted much of his time to developing an all-encompassing theory of abstract art and design which he called ‘mechano-faktura’. However he made one final and highly influential contribution to Jewish expressionism in his graphic work for the Yiddish journal Albatros (Albatross) from 1922 - 23. Published in four issues in Warsaw and Berlin, under the editorship of Uri Tsvi Grinberg, the journal has been described by one historian as “a milestone in the integration of poetic, essayistic, graphic and typographic values”. (5)From 1928 until the late 1930s, Berlewi spent most of his time in Paris and Belgium. He returned to figurative art, was active in scenic design, and produced portraits of prominent political and literary figures. During the Second World War Berlewi joined the French resistance, and only returned to painting in 1947. A slow and deliberate painter, Berlewi now produced still lives in the painstaking, almost trompe l’oeil style of the Old Masters. He died in Paris in 1967. A number of important paintings and drawings by Berlewi came to light recently at the auction of the personal collection of a good friend of the artist, the Yiddish writer and painter Mendel Mann. Among the sketches several portraits of Yiddish cultural figures stood out - the singer, writer, photographer and folklorist Menakhem Kipnis (1878 – 1942), the painter Maurycy Minkovski (1881 - 1930), and the writer Yosef Opatoshu (1886 – 1954). Also included was a cartoon by Berlewi which provides an insider’s satirical view of perhaps the defining moment in the cultural life of post-WW1 Yiddish Warsaw, the sensational success enjoyed by the Vilna Troupe’s production of Ansky’s mystical drama Tsvishn tsvey veltn, oder der dibek (Between Two Worlds, or The Dybbuk. (6)Berlewi had been closely involved with the genesis of the Vilna Troupe’s production. He was among a small group of actors, writers and theatre folk who listened to Ansky giving one of his first readings of the play in Warsaw, in the hall of the Yiddish Writers Club. (7) It was more than likely that he was also among the large crowd who came to mourn Ansky following his death on 8 November 1920 and heard Mordecai Mazo, the director of the Vilna Troupe, make a public promise to stage the play by the end of the traditional thirty-day period of mourning. Berlewi was the artistic advisor to the company as it worked round the clock to make good on Mazo’s pledge, bringing up the curtain at Warsaw’s Elysium Theatre on the opening night of 9 December 1920. Indeed, Berlewi was also responsible for the production’s defining public image, a highly stylised black and white portrait of the ill-fated lovers Khonen and Leye, which was used both on the poster and the programme. In Berlewi’s cartoon, a large cow labelled Dybbuk stands with its legs wide apart. Underneath the cow are a group of actors in costume; four of them are drinking milk direct from the cow’s teats while the fifth directs a jet of milk into a bucket. Under the group is the caption Di vilner trupe (The Vilna Troupe), and several of the figures are clearly recognisable as characters from the play, particularly the young lovers Khonen and Leye. The cow has a crooked smile and a nasty glint in its eye and has turned its head to stare at the sixth figure in the picture. This downcast man sitting by himself in the corner is the only figure Berlewi identifies by name - the director of the Vilna Troupe’s 1920 premiere of Ansky’s play, Dovid Herman.Let us note at this point that Berlewi’s design parodies and pays homage to one of the great works of classical antiquity: the Etruscan bronze sculpture known as Lupa Capitolina, the she-wolf that protected and suckled Romulus and Remus, the twins who legend has it founded the city of Rome. The Vilna Troupe’s actors greedily crane their heads upwards to fill their mouths with milk in an almost identical pose to the chubby twins in the famous Roman landmark. (8) Berlewi’s original sketch is undated and lacks a caption; fortunately however both are included in a reproduction of the cartoon in an obscure volume of memoirs published several decades later by the Polish Yiddish journalist Ber Kutsher. This gives a date of 1921, a title - A melkndike ku (A Milking Cow) - and a caption, as spoken by Dovid Herman: “Tsugegreyt zey a ku….s’rint in di piskes…..nu, un ikh?” (“I got them a cow….the milk’s pouring into their mouths…but what about me?”) What is not yet clear is exactly what prompted Berlewi’s jaundiced reaction to the runaway success of the Dybbuk and also perhaps to the mania for mysticism and the Dybbuk craze which the production set off. That the production was a smash-hit is undeniable - according to one account, the company gave 390 performances of the play in its first year to an estimated 200,000 theatregoers and the play itself took Jewish Poland by storm. (9) Many observers believed that much of the premiere production’s extraordinary appeal was due to the conception of its director Dovid Herman, who was brought in to inject into the production some of the atmosphere of his own traditional Hasidic background. It is more than likely that Berlewi produced his cartoon in response to a particular episode or set of circumstances. Perhaps the original contract was drawn up in such a way that Herman failed to reap his share of the profits from the play’s unforeseen success? It is also possible that the cartoon was itself a commission from one of the many Yiddish newspapers, cultural journals or satirical magazines of the time. Romulus and Remus fell out and the Vilna Troupe was also to suffer inner discord and undergo several metamorphoses. But even without knowing all the circumstances behind its creation, we can enjoy the sense of mischief and the artistic skill manifest in Berlewi’s Dybbuk milkcow, and feel thankful that this most ephemeral of sketches has resurfaced after so many years. C. YIDDISH BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY BERLEWI -- A PRELIMINARY CHECKLIST This list is based on information from various sources, including library listings and booksellers’ catalogues. It is almost certainly far from being comprehensive. Further contributions to this and future bibliographic listings would be welcomed and acknowledged in any future published versions. Akerman, Rivke, Poemen un lider fun payn. Paris, 1957, 96 pp. Grinberg, Uri-Tsvi [Greenberg, Uri Zvi]. Mefisto, Warsaw: Literatur-fond baym fareyn fun yidishe literatn un zhurnalistn in varshe, 1922, 85 pp.Hagay, Berele, A bisl rekhiles: vegn shrayber, kinstler, un shimi-tentser, Warsaw: 1926, 15 pp. (not seen).Kope, Rivke, Toy fun shtilkeyt: lider, 1946-1950, Paris: Oyfsnay, 1951, 91 pp.Kutsher, B., Geven amol varshe, zikhrones, Paris: Kultur-opteylung fun der dzhoynt in frankraykh, 1955, 331pp. (In addition to the cover graphic, this includes reproductions of Berlewi’s portrait sketches of Kutsher, Boez Karlinski, Alter Katsizne, Hilel Tseytlin, Shloyme-Leyb Kave, Dovid Herman, Zusman Segalovitsh, Yoysef Tunkel, Berlewi himself, Itshe-Meyer Vaysnberg, Efroym Kaganovitsh, Maurycy Minkovski (wrongly attributed to Feliks Frydman), and Aleksander Farbo. Berlewi’s ‘Dibek’ [Dybbuk] cartoon is reproduced on page 143.) Londinski, Sh. Y., Flamen, Warsaw: Di tsayt, 1920, 115 pp.Markish, Perets, Di kupe, Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1921, 32 pp. Edition: 1500Markish, Perets, Radyo, Warsaw: Ambasador, 1922, 46 pp.Segalovitsh, Z, Kaprizen: lider, Warsaw: Literatur-fond baym fareyn fun yidishe literatn un zhurnalistn in varshe, 1921, 235 pp.Segalovitsh, Z, Tsaytike troybn, Warsaw: A. Gitlin, [1920?], 36 pp. (not seen). Zak, Avrom, In onheyb fun a friling: kapitlekh zikhroynes, Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun poylishe yidn in argentine, 1962, 329 pp. (not seen).Periodicals: Albatros, Warsaw + Berlin: 1922 – 23, nos 1-4.Khalyastre, vol 1, Warsaw: 1922Ringen, Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1921- 1922Publisher’s logo:The logo used by the Warsaw publisher Di tsayt, signed h.b., is almost certainly by Berlewi, but this requires further research. See F. Bimko, Fun krig un fun friden, Warsaw: Di Tsayt, 1921. Uri Zvi Grinberg (Hebrew: אורי צבי גרינברג‎, 22 September 1896 – 8 May 1981) was an acclaimed Israeli poet and journalist who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.[1]Uri Zvi Grinberg was born in Bialikamin, Galicia, then Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg (Lviv). Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published before he was 20.[2] In 1915 he was drafted into the army and fought in the First World War. After returning to Lemberg, he was witness to the pogroms of November 1918.[3] Grinberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the "Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation.[4]Grinberg moved to Warsaw, where he wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Moment. After a brief stay in Berlin,[5] he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine (the Land of Israel) in 1923. Grinberg was in Poland when the Second World War erupted in 1939, but managed to escape.In 1950, Grinberg married Aliza, with whom he had two daughters and three sons.[1] He added "Tur-Malka" to the family name, but continued to use "Grinberg" to honor family members who perished in the Holocaust.[6]Literary careerHis first works in Hebrew and Yiddish were published in 1912. His first book, in Yiddish, was published in Lwow while he was fighting on the Serbian front. In 1921, Grinberg moved to Warsaw, with its lively Jewish cultural scene. He was one of the founders of the Chaliastra (literally, the "gang"), a group of young Yiddish writers that included Melekh Ravitch. He also edited a Yiddish literary journal, Albatros.[7] In the wake of his iconoclastic depictions of Jesus in the second issue of Albatros, particularly his prose poem Royte epl fun veybeymer (Red Apples from the Trees of Pain), the journal was banned by the Polish censors and Grinberg fled to Berlin to escape prosecution in November 1922.[8] The magazine incorporated avant-garde elements both in content and typography, taking its cue from German periodicals like Die Aktion and Der Sturm.[9] Grinberg published the last two issues of Albatros in Berlin before renouncing European society and immigrating to Palestine in December 1923.[10]In his early days in Palestine, Grinberg wrote for Davar, one of the main newspapers of the Labour Zionist movement. In his poems and articles he warned of the fate in store for the Jews of the Diaspora. After the Holocaust, he mourned the fact that his terrible prophecies had come true. His works represent a synthesis of traditional Jewish values and an individualistic lyrical approach to life and its problems. They draw on Jewish sources such as the Bible, the Talmud and the prayer book, but are also influenced by European literature.[11]Literary motifsIn the second and third issues of Albatros, Grinberg invokes pain as a key marker of the modern era. This theme is illustrated in Royte epl fun vey beymer and Veytikn-heym af slavisher erd (Pain-Home on Slavic Ground).[12]Political activismIn 1930, Grinberg joined the Revisionist camp, representing the Revisionist movement at several Zionist congresses and in Poland. After the 1929 Hebron massacre he became more militant. With Abba Ahimeir and Joshua Yeivin, he founded Brit HaBirionim, a clandestine faction of the Revisionist movement which adopted an activist policy of violating British mandatory regulations. In the early 1930s, its members disrupted a British-sponsored census, sounded the shofar in prayer at the Western Wall despite a British prohibition, held a protest rally when a British colonial official visited Tel Aviv, and tore down Nazi flags from German offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.[13] When the British arrested hundreds of its members the organization effectively ceased to exist.He believed that the Holocaust was a 'tragic but almost inevitable outcome of Jewish indifference to their destiny.' As early as 1923, "Grinberg envisioned and warned of the destruction of European Jewry."[14]Following Israeli independence in 1948, he joined Menachem Begin's Herut movement. In 1949, he was elected to the first Knesset. He lost his seat in the 1951 elections. After the Six-Day War he joined the Movement for Greater Israel, which advocated Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.Awards In 1947, 1954 and 1977, Grinberg was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.[15] In 1957, Grinberg was awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to literature.[16] In 1976, the Knesset held a special session in honor of his eightieth birthday.[17] Published works (in Hebrew) A Great Fear and the Moon (poetry), Hedim, 1925 (Eymah Gedolah Ve-Yareah) Manhood on the Rise (poetry), Sadan, 1926 (Ha-Gavrut Ha-Olah) A Vision of One of the Legions (poetry), Sadan, 1928 (Hazon Ehad Ha-Legionot) Anacreon at the Pole of Sorrow (poetry), Davar, 1928 (Anacreon Al Kotev Ha-Itzavon) House Dog (poetry), Hedim, 1929 (Kelev Bayit) A Zone of Defense and Address of the Son-of-Blood (poetry), Sadan, 1929 (Ezor Magen Ve-Ne`um Ben Ha-Dam) The Book of Indictment and Faith (poetry), Sadan, 1937 (Sefer Ha-Kitrug Ve-Ha-Emunah) From the Ruddy and the Blue (poetry), Schocken, 1950 (Min Ha-Kahlil U-Min Ha-Kahol) Streets of the River (poetry), Schocken, 1951 (Rehovot Ha-Nahar) In the Middle of the World, In the Middle of Time (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1979 (Be-Emtza Ha-Olam, Be-Emtza Ha-Zmanim) Selected Poems (poetry), Schocken, 1979 (Mivhar Shirim) Complete Works of Uri Zvi Greenberg, Bialik Institute, 1991 (Col Kitvei) At the Hub, Bialik Institute, 2007 (Baavi Ha-Shir)(1884–1952), Yiddish novelist and dramatist. Born in Okhrimovo, Ukraine, to a wealthy family, Dovid Bergelson received a traditional Jewish education in heder and a general education through private tutors. His parents died while he was a teenager and he was raised under the supervision of his older brothers. He settled in Kiev in 1903, where he remained with some interruptions until 1921; and in that city he was both a witness and a central participant in its transformation into an important center of modern Yiddish culture. Bergelson began writing in Hebrew, but his early writings were never published. He switched to Yiddish around 1907. His first novella, Arum vokzal (At the Depot; English translation in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse [1986]) appeared in Warsaw in 1909 and received favorable notice from leading Yiddish critics such as A. Vayter and Shmuel Niger, the latter of whom gave his review the title “A nayer” (A Newcomer). Arum vokzal introduced a new thematic and stylistic norm to Yiddish prose: the loose story line includes no notable incidents, and the emphasis is placed on the atmosphere in which the protagonists live, one of resignation and making peace with the inevitability of leading a gray life undistinguished in all respects. The narrative depicts a mercantile culture far removed from engaged intellectual aspirations and interests, yet the portrayal of the central character and his companions strongly resembles the world of the tormented intelligentsia typical of Hebrew fiction at that time. The train station itself, around which the characters circle, becomes a symbol of estrangement, and the fact that the story takes place at the margin of the shtetl permits the narrator to move those figures and motifs of traditional Jewish life, which were typical of contemporaneous Yiddish fiction, to the background. Arum vokzal creates a virtuosic harmony between theme and style because the style parallels the static nature of its plot, the slow rhythm of its sentences, and the hypnotic repetition of words and phrases. For these reasons, Bergelson’s debut novella must be considered the first significant manifestation of impressionism in Yiddish prose. This style marks Bergelson’s greatest contribution to Yiddish literature in the first decade of his career and is also evident in such stories as “Der toyber” (The Deaf Man; 1910) and “In a fargrebter shtot” (In a Backwoods Town; 1914; English translation in A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg [1990]), which maintain a more realistic tone and with respect to their motifs are closer to the expected themes of contemporaneous Yiddish prose. The hero of “Der toyber” is a worker who becomes estranged from his surroundings because of his handicap, and is therefore unable to lead his social protest to its hoped-for resolution. The fact that the more pointed conflict in the story “In a fargrebter shtot,” between a group of modern intellectuals in a shtetl and the traditional Jews around them, has an overtly economic character is intended to emphasize the intellectual and emotional emptiness of the new generation, which has abandoned its youthful ideals and is engaged in a cynical pursuit of their monetary and erotic desires. Nokh alemen (When All Is Said and Done; 1913) is Bergelson’s most important contribution to the creation of the modern Yiddish novel, and in this sense was a great critical success. The central figure, Mirl, moves through the work propelled by her vague wish to discover the significance of her life, a goal that remains unrealized. Her heightened awareness distances her from her philistine surroundings, but her intellectual horizons limit the possibilities for her to create a rich internal world. Her erotic attractiveness, which distinguishes her from most characters in contemporary Yiddish and Hebrew literature, further emphasizes her failure to realize her emotional yearning. The novel’s symmetrical structure, which leads the heroine from the shtetl to the big city and back, underscores the fact that Mirl feels at home nowhere. She is estranged from the traditional Jewish life of the shtetl, but the fact that she is a woman diminishes the full extent of her uprootedness: not subject to the time-bound commandments that obligate men, she is able to avoid a dramatic break with Jewish conventions. Both traditional and modern Jewish family life are intolerable to her, but at the same time it is clear that she will not find a place in the company of modern intellectuals. Ultimately, she arrives at a point of total existential aloneness. One of the strongest stylistic features of the novel is the limited role of dialogue and the heroine’s speech, which is usually conveyed indirectly in third person. This contributes to creating a world of distance and alienation. In the years leading up to World War I, Bergelson was preoccupied primarily with his literary career, and the fact that he lived in Kiev placed him at the margins of the Yiddish literary scene. His most important contribution in this respect was his brief tenure in 1913 as literary editor of Di yudishe velt, the most important Yiddish journal of its time, published in Vilna. Bergelson’s social and cultural activism intensified after the Revolution of 1917, until 1920, when Kiev was briefly the center of a broadly expansive Yiddish cultural project. Bergelson was active in the Kultur-lige and served as an editor of the literary miscellany Eygns (1918, 1920), in which he published the two works that close the first period of his creativity: Yoysef Shur (first published as In fartunklte tsaytn [In Dark Times]; English translations in Ashes out of Hope, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg [1977], and The Shtetl, ed. Joachim Neugroschel [1989]) and Opgang (English translations in The Stories of David Bergelson, translated by Golda Werman [1996], and Descent, translated by Joseph Sherman [1999]). In a critical essay, he also expressed his opinion that in revolutionary circumstances literature could not articulate the dynamic and fluid in a suitably artistic manner. The extremely difficult circumstances of the first years in Bolshevik Russia drove Bergelson into exile, part of an emigrant wave that included other important writers and artists. In 1921, he settled in Berlin, where in 1922 he published the first edition of his collected works, in six volumes. He began contributing to the Forverts, based in New York, in which he published mostly stories but also journalistic reports, as well as a biting attack on the Evsektsiia, which he accused of spiritual narrow-mindedness. In comparison with his previous works, Bergelson’s stories from the 1920s are characterized by more diverse themes, a more realistic tone, simpler language, and often a lightly humorous tone. The fact that these stories were printed in a daily paper was undoubtedly the reason for these characteristics; Bergelson greatly reworked the stories when he published them in book form. A second edition of his collected works, assembled in eight volumes, appeared in Vilna between 1928 and 1930. Some of the stories from this period are set in the metropolis of Berlin. The spiritual and social isolation of their protagonists is even more pronounced than in Bergelson’s earlier prose; some of the stories attempt a close identification with the spiritual problems of the hero, while others create a delicate tension between an internal, often muted tragedy and an elegant and somewhat distant narrative style. (A selection of these stories appears in English in the volume The Shadows of Berlin, translated by Joachim Neugroschel [2005].) In 1926, a dramatic change occurred in Bergelson’s perspective on Jewish life in the Soviet Union, which came to overt expression in the journal In shpan, under his editorship (only two issues were produced). There Bergelson published a programmatic article titled “Dray tsentern” (Three Centers), analyzing the prospects for modern Yiddish culture and literature in its main centers (the United States, Poland, and the USSR), and concluding that only the Soviet Union offered the possibility for a wider development of Yiddish literature and culture. Bergelson had by then visited the Soviet Union to renew contacts with its cultural leaders. He resigned from the Forverts and moved to the Communist daily Frayhayt (later Morgn-frayhayt). Bergelson’s support of the Soviet Union provoked a powerful reaction in the Yiddish press. The most significant artistic embodiment of his new attitude was his novel Mides hadin (A Stern Judgment), set in a border town in Communist Russia during the civil war. The panoramic description of shtetl society plays a much greater role in this novel than in any work from Bergelson’s earlier period, but the central character is an outsider, a Russian commissar, a non-Jew, who has come to install the “new regime” in the shtetl and faces resistance from its residents. He is characterized by strong ideological convictions, marking a departure from Bergelson’s previous protagonists, although in light of the character’s isolation from his surroundings and his loneliness, he can be considered a dialectical incarnation of these earlier characters. Between 1929 and 1932, Bergelson wrote the first volume of his large-scale novel Bam Dnyeper (By the Dnieper), which represents a sharp reversal of his previous style. This work portrays on the widest canvas the traditional Jewish life of the Ukrainian shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century; the author focuses his attention on the life of the folk, and the style and language of the narrative are used to reflect spoken Yiddish. In contrast to Bergelson’s previous characters, who are estranged from their surroundings or distance themselves from them, the most important trait of the child Penek, the protagonist of Bam Dnyeper, is the openness of his senses, which are ready to absorb a wide range of impressions from the world around him. This world unfolds in two circles: Penek’s wealthy family, which he despises, and the world of ordinary Jews, which fascinates him. The vehemently negative attitude of the child to his immediate family suggests that the book was written with deliberate ideological biases. This tendency becomes even more overt in the second volume of the novel, written in the Soviet Union (published in 1940), in which Bergelson, in characterizing Penek’s adolescence, shows his conformity to the Communist Party line of socialist realism. Bergelson’s works written in the Soviet Union bear witness to a continuous process in which the general situation of the country and the particular circumstances of the Jewish community gradually narrowed his artistic horizons. Tendentious leanings dominate his work about Jewish colonists in Birobidzhan: Birobidzhaner (1934), and Tsvey veltn (Two Worlds; 1947–1948). His stories about World War II, which were published in book form in 1947, are characteristic of contemporaneous Soviet Yiddish literature. The distinctive scope and character of the Jewish catastrophe is neutralized because of received Soviet dictates, which mandated that the recovery of physical and spiritual equanimity would lead Jews to overcome the horror of the Holocaust. Bergelson was thus compelled to characterize the ways in which his characters readjust to normalcy. In several of these stories, the process by which previously alienated Jewish intellectuals awaken to Jewish identity takes center stage. During World War II, Bergelson wrote Prints Reuveyni, a work that is exceptional in his career: a historical drama in blank verse, in which the central characters are messianic figures. In accordance with accepted Soviet ideology, one would expect such a drama to give its blessing to an active character, a fighter, but this work places martyrdom at its center. The play was to be produced at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater under the direction of Solomon Mikhoels, but the production was canceled because of its putative Jewish nationalist theme. Bergelson was active in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and coedited the literary section of its organ, Eynikayt (Unity). He shared the fate of the committee’s members, some of the most renowned figures in Soviet Yiddish letters among them. Arrested at the beginning of 1949, he was charged with “anti-Soviet crimes.” After several years of torture in prison, and a monstrously orchestrated trial, Bergelson, along with the majority of his codefendants, was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out secretly on 12 August 1952, in Moscow. Details of the fate of the murdered Yiddish writers and intellectuals were gradually made known only years later, and the date 12 August became a day of remembrance for the destruction of Yiddish literature and culture in the Soviet Union. Suggested ReadingShlomo Brianski, D. Bergelson in shpigl fun der kritik, 1909–1932 (Kiev, 1934); Dafna Clifford, “Dovid Bergelson’s Bam Dnieper: A Passport to Moscow,” in Politics of Yiddish, ed. Dov-Ber Kerler, pp. 157–170 (Walnut Creek, Calif., 1998); Yekhezkel Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson (Moscow, 1947); Leo Kenig, Shrayber un verk: Etyudn un shtrikhn (Vilna, 1929), pp. 70–72, 172–185; Mikhail Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914 (Stanford, Calif., 2001); Nachman Mayzel, Forgeyer un mittsaytler (New York, 1946), pp. 304–341; M. Mizhiritskii, Dovid Bergelson (Kiev and Khar’kov, 1935); Samuel Niger, Shmuesn vegn bikher (New York, 1922), pp. 137–161; Samuel Niger, Yidishe shrayber in Sovet-Rusland (New York, 1958), pp. 282–341; Avraham Novershtern, “Hundert yor Dovid Bergelson: Materialn tsu zayn lebn un shafn,” Di goldene keyt 115 (1985): 44–58; Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom (New Haven, 2001), pp. 144–159, 451–455; Ruth Wisse, “Vegn Dovid Bergelsons dertseylung ‘Yoysef Shur,’” Di goldene keyt 77 (1972): 133–144. The Night of the Murdered Poets (Russian: Дело Еврейского антифашистского комитета, Delo Yevreyskogo antifashistskogo komiteta "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case"; Yiddish: הרוגי מלכות פונעם ראטנפארבאנד Harugey malkus funem Ratnfarband, "Soviet Union Martyrs") was an execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Soviet Union on August 12, 1952.[1] The arrests were first made in September 1948 and June 1949. All defendants were falsely accused of espionage and treason as well as many other crimes. After their arrests, they were tortured, beaten, and isolated for three years before being formally charged. There were five Yiddish writers among these defendants, all of whom were a part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.Jewish Anti-Fascist CommitteeMain article: Jewish Anti-Fascist CommitteeThe threat of an attack on Soviet Russia by Nazi Germany catalyzed the start of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee[2] (JAC), a committee reaching out to Jews worldwide to support the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany. Solomon Mikhoels, a Yiddish actor and director, headed the Committee. Other members of the committee were prominent Yiddish literary figures, actors, and doctors who wanted to help influence Jewish support for the Soviet Union through their writing and also using radio broadcasts from Russia to different countries. In 1943, Mikhoels and the vice chairman of the Anti-Fascist Committee, Itzik Fefer, traveled to the U.S. and England to help raise money.As Nazi Germany secured its stronghold in Soviet Russia, Jewish culture and identity was destroyed in the Holocaust. The last influence left in Russia were the Yiddish figures in the JAC, and soon the initial purpose for the committee was changed. The committee felt it had a duty to change priorities, and focus on the rebuilding of Jewish communities, farms, culture and identity. Not everyone agreed with the direction things were headed in and many thought the JAC was "intervening in matters in which it should not interfere."[3]At the onset of the Cold War, the newly created state of Israel was allied with the West. With antisemitism already extant in the Soviet Union, the rise of the Zionist state exacerbated official antipathy to any outward show of Jewish activism. As a result, official persecution was sanctioned, leading to the Soviet's elimination of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1948 and the launching of a campaign against Zionists and so-called "rootless cosmopolitans," the preferred euphemism for Jews.Interrogation and indictmentThe charges filed against the accused included mentions of "counterrevolutionary crimes" and organized action meant to "topple, undermine, or weaken the Soviet Union."[4] Additionally, the inculpation revealed that the investigation uncovered evidence that the accused had used the JAC as a means for spying and promoting anti-government sentiment. The indictment went on to assert that the accused had been enemies of the government prior to their involvement with the JAC, and that the JAC served as their international network for communicating anti-Soviet views.[4]Overemphasis on exchanges of relatively innocuous information between the JAC leadership and Jews in other countries, particularly American journalists, augmented accusations of espionage.[4] Another piece of evidence supporting the indictment was a letter that the leadership of the JAC wrote as a formal request for Crimea to become the new Jewish homeland.[5]All of the defendants endured incessant interrogations which, for everyone except Itzik Fefer, were coupled with beatings and torture. Eventually, these tactics led to forced, false confessions. One defendant, Joseph Yuzefovich told the court at the trial, "I was ready to confess that I was the pope's own nephew and that I was acting on his direct personal orders" after a beating. Another defendant, Boris Shimeliovich, said he had counted over two thousand blows to his buttocks and heels, but he was the only member of the accused who refused to confess to any crimes.[6]Defendants Peretz Markish[7] (1895–1952), Yiddish poet, co-founder the School of Writers, a Yiddish literary school in Soviet Russia David Hofstein (1889–1952), Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer (1900–1952), Yiddish poet, informer for the Ministry of Internal Affairs Leib Kvitko (1890–1952), Yiddish poet and children's writer David Bergelson (1884–1952), distinguished novelist Solomon Lozovsky (1878–1952), Director of Soviet Information Bureau, Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, vigorously denounced accusations against himself and others Boris Shimeliovich (1892–1952), Medical Director of the Botkin Clinical Hospital, Moscow Benjamin Zuskin (1899–1952), assistant to and successor of Solomon Mikhoels as director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater Joseph Yuzefovich (1890–1952), researcher at the Institute of History, Soviet Academy of Sciences, trade union leader Leon Talmy (1893–1952), translator, journalist, former member of the Communist Party USA Ilya Vatenberg (1887–1952), translator and editor of Eynikeyt, newspaper of the JAC; Labor Zionist leader in Austria and U.S. before returning to the USSR in 1933 Chaika Vatenburg-Ostrovskaya (1901–1952), wife of Ilya Vatenburg, translator at JAC. Emilia Teumin (1905–1952), deputy editor of the Diplomatic Dictionary; editor, International Division, Soviet Information Bureau Solomon Bregman (1895–1953), Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs. Fell into a coma after denouncing the trial and died in prison five months after the executions. Lina Stern (or Shtern) (1875–1968), the first female academician in the USSR and is best known for her pioneering work on blood–brain barrier. She was the only survivor out of the fifteen defendants. Some who were either directly or indirectly connected to the JAC at the time were also arrested in the years surrounding the trial. Although Solomon Mikhoels was not arrested, his death was ordered by Stalin in 1948. Der Nister, another Yiddish writer, was arrested in 1949, and died in a labor camp in 1950. Literary critic Yitzhak Nusinov died in prison and journalists Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznova were shot – all in 1950.[8] Trial The trial began on May 8, 1952 and lasted until the sentencing on July 18. The structure of the trial was peculiar due to the fact that there were no prosecutors or defense attorneys, simply three military judges. This was in accordance with Soviet law at the time, but is characterized by historians today as "nothing less than terror masquerading as law."[8] While some defendants admitted their guilt, others plead partially guilty and some maintained their innocence. Since the trial was not public, the defendants made expressive and often lengthy statements professing their innocence. The defendants also had the opportunity to cross-examine each other, furthering the trial's intense atmosphere. During the trial, defendants answered some questions from judges which were wholly unrelated to the trial and resulted merely from personal curiosities. For example, the judges often asked the defendants about kosher meat and synagogue services.[8] With extensive statements, arguments, and inconsistencies between the defendants, the trial lasted much longer than the government had desired. On June 26, experts were called to give testimony about the issues of treason, but they ultimately acknowledged that "their judgment was incomplete and insufficient."[9] It became clear that some pieces of evidence had been tremendously exaggerated. For example, a statement by Leon Talmy that a particular Russian village was "not as pretty" as a certain Korean village was used as evidence of his nationalist tendencies.[9] Alexander Cheptsov, the lead judge of the trial, confronted with such a great number of discrepancies and contradictions, twice made attempts to appeal to the Soviet leadership to reopen the investigation, and was denied both times.[10] Even after sentencing the defendants, Cheptsov attempted to lengthen the process by declining to immediately execute the defendants. Sentence The sentence stated that the defendants would receive "the severest measure of punishment for the crimes committed by them jointly: execution by firing squad, with all of their property to be confiscated."[11] The court also stripped the men of their medals and made petitions to remove military commendations such as the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. On August 12, 1952, thirteen of the defendants (excluding Lina Stern and Solomon Bregman) were executed. After the execution of the defendants, the trial and its results were kept secret. There was not a single reference to the trial or the execution in Soviet newspapers. Defendants' families were charged with "being relatives of traitors to the motherland" and exiled in December of 1952. They did not learn about the fates of their family members until November 1955, when the case was reopened.[10] The defendant Lina Stern was sentenced to three and a half years in a correctional labor camp and five years of exile, but after Stalin's death she was able to return to her home and continue her studies. During the trial, she was determined to be "no less guilty" than the other defendants but was considered important to the state because of her research; she therefore received a lesser sentence than the others. Officials counted her time spent in prison before the sentencing towards her labor camp term, so she went into exile immediately after the sentencing.[12] During his imprisonment, Solomon Bregman collapsed and was placed in the prison infirmary. He remained unconscious until his death on January 23, 1953.[13] Reactions and results Stalin continued his oppression of Jews with the Doctors' Plot, which began to gain publicity just as his health began to deteriorate. Weeks after Stalin's death, on March 5, 1953, the new Soviet leadership renounced the Doctors' Plot, which led to questions about the similar situation with the JAC defendants.[10] Upon the discovery that much of the testimony from the trial was the result of torture and coercion, the proceedings were reexamined. On November 22, 1955, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR determined that there was "no substance to the charges" against the defendants and closed the case.[1] Many of the surviving members of the JAC emigrated to Israel in the 1970s. A memorial for the JAC victims was dedicated in Jerusalem in 1977 on the 25th anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets.[14]     ebay2636
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