YIDDISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Introduction

Yiddish-American literature in the Harris Collection, amounting to over 1,000 titles, is centered on the collection of Menache Vaxer, acquired by the Library in 1968. This description of its holdings is excerpted from an article by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld, who was instrumental in bringing the Collection to the Library. The article originally appeared in Books at Brown in 1968.

"Although Yiddish authors came to America less than a hundred years ago, Yiddish writing in this country has developed into a large and impressively diverse body of literature. The present collection of Yiddaica represents this literature at many of its high points, and, at least in terms of its poetry and drama, includes works by most of the major writers and a number of the more interesting minor ones. "

"The collection was acquired. . . from Mr. Menache Vaxer, a book seller specializing in Hebraica - Judaica. . . Mr. Vaxer collected for himself poetry and drama written in Yiddish. His collection included volumes in Yiddish published by A merican authors as well as earlier volumes published in Europe by writers who later settled and continued their writing careers in America."

Illustration: Mrs. Bessie Thomashefsky in the breeches part of The Green Boy in the musical of the same name by Louis Friedsel. Detail from the cover of the song Yidelach-Bruderlach

Yiddish Poetry

"The first Yiddish poets in America were primarily poets of social protest, and a generous collection of their works is to be found here. This group of writers, with strong roots in the Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe and a will to maintai n Yiddish as a literary language in America, with is the direct line of the great Yiddish fiction writer, [Isaac Leib] Peretz. It includes Abraham Reisen (1876-1953), David Edelstadt (1866-1892), Joseph Bovshover (1873-1915), and Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923). Of these Rosenfeld was by far the most important.

"The number of social poets, Bundists, Anarchists, poets of the picket line and labor movement was great - there were too many, in fact, who were not poets at all but verse pamphleteers - but no one of this stripe either contemporary with Rosenfeld or following him was as much a major writer. After Rosenfeld Yiddish poetry in America had to find new direction to advance, and it did so with the more personal poetry of Yehoash a nd the group of younger writers that succeeded him, 'Di Junge.'"

Illustration: Self-portrait of Moshe Leib Halpern, 1922.

"Perhaps no group of Yiddish writers in America attracted so much attention as 'Di Junge,' a loose organization of poets, playwrights, and novelists who flourished in the fifteen years or so after 1907. . . The poets of 'Di Junge' have be en compared to the writers of Sturm und Drang, German impressionism, Russian symbolism, the Imagists of America, Bohemianism - almost every coloration of poet, in fact, except the poets of social protest and sentimentality. They were in rebellion against both of these trends, which they thought dominated Yiddish poetry to too great an extent and which they set out to change."

"The writers who participated most importantly in the movement and who are represented in the Vaxer Collection include Zishe Landau (1889-1937), Moshe Leib Halpern (1886-1933), H. Leivick (Leivick Halpern, 1888-1962), I. J. Schwartz (1885-1971), Mani Leib (Mani Leib Brahinsky, 1883-1953), Reuben Iceland (Reuben Eisland, 1884-19 53), Joseph Opatoshu (1885-1953), A. M. Dillon (1883-1934), David Ignatoff (1885-1953), and Berl Lapin (1889-1952)."

"The writers in this list are interesting in various ways and published a considerable amount of provocative poetry. . . Like Yehoash, they were often more willing to be fascinated by America than were most of their predecessors, a fact t hat one often meets in their writings. . . Special if only brief mention must be made of H. Leivick, the one poet of truly great stature among 'Di Junge' and the one whose career most successfully transcends the group's limitations. . . He is a meditative poet and a deeply religious poet and one who consistently allowed himself to be challenged by the heaviest and most difficult themes. That he handled them successfully is reflected by the opinion, held by many, that Leivick is among the supreme poets wh o have given voice to human suffering, Jewish martyrdom, and messianic hope. As the author of the famous play The Golem, he is also one of the most acclaimed of Yiddish playwrights. "

Illustration: Portrait of H. Leivick; detail from the cover of his Ale Werk, volume 2.

"Reaction to 'Di Junge' and a turn towards post-impressionism were manifest in the works of three poets who established the Inzikhist, or Introspectivist, movement in Yiddish poetry. The three were Aaron Glanz Leyeles (1889-1966), Nahum Baruch Minkoff (1893-1958), and Jacob Glatstein (1896-1971)."

"The poets of the Introspectivist school were interested in writing a more disciplined and intellectual poetry and a poetry that would establish the Yiddish poet more squarely in the modern world. They looked away from the symbolist and impressionist poets of Germany, France, and Russia and instead took Pound, Eliot, and Joyce as their models. They were interested in exploiting the natural rhythms of Yiddish speech and found free verse, which they perfected, to be their best medium. . . [Of these writers,] Jacob Glatstein [is} the one poet of the Inzikhistn who most successfully grew beyond the movement and who, with H. Leivick, is generally considered to be the most important Yiddish poet of the century."

"There are some other interesting Yiddish writers who are not easily classified within any school of Yiddish poetry but whose works make worthy additions to the Harris Collection. . . Of these writers Chaim Grade and Itzik Manger are the most highly regarded. Grade's poetry, like much of the later poetry of Jacob Glatstein, is centered in the catastrophe that overtook Jewish life in Europe. It is a poetry of extinguished villages, of the concentration camps, of a martyred people. As such it is deeply elegiac and has been described by one critic as the recitation of one long Kaddish. . . Itzik Manger, a highly esteemed poet, has been called the foremost balladeer in the Yiddish language. His experiments with archaic Yiddish, his original poetic renderings of Biblical figures, and his special turn of humor characterize his work."

"Unlike the situation with Yiddish poetry, Yiddish drama in America is somewhat better known, even among people who may be only slightly familiar with Yiddish. For while it lasted Yiddish theater in New York City. . . enjoyed an enviable popularity. . . When the story [of that theater] is finally told it will stress the importance of a few ingenious producers, a few able and imaginative directors, several fabulously popular actors and actresses, and a dozen leading playwrights. It is th e playwrights that I wish to dwell on briefly here."

"First among them is Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908), whose earliest attempts at drama in the town of Jassy, Rumania, in the year 1876, are generally recognized as the start of professional Yiddish theater. . . He wrote a great many [plays] - comedies about Jewish ghetto life, historical and biblical melodramas, dramas of Jewish national aspiration, and operettas - and although their literary value is questionable, Gold faden's plays, immensely popular and among the first in the repertoire of Yiddish theater, are of certain historical value."

"Two playwrights who succeeded in carrying the Goldfaden tradition to America and winning for it in New York even more success than it enjoyed in Europe. . . were Moshe Hurwitz (1844-1910) and Jacob Lateiner (1853-1935), whose countless me lodramas were never in favor with the intelligentsia of the Lower East Side by were so popular with the less educated among the immigrant masses that they dominated Yiddish theater during the decade of the 1890's and after."

"It was Jacob Gordin (1853-1909), the most celebrated of New York's Yiddish playwrights, who turned Yiddish drama away from melodrama and who is generally credi ted with reforming it. Gordin came to America from his native Russia in 1891, and in the following year his most famous play, Der Yudisher Kenig Lir ("The Jewish King Lear") was staged in New York with Jacob Adler in the lead role. It was an im mediate success, and although [it] by no means chased the melodramas of Lateiner and Hurwitz off the boards, it did initiate a new era in American Yiddish theater."

"[Also in the Collection are] the plays of Leon Kobrin (1873-1946) and Z. Libin (1872-1955) , Gordin's two most distinguished allies and playwrights who wrote in the tradition of dramatic realism newly introduced into the Yiddish theater by him. Of the playwrights who came after Gordin, six stand out. They are David Pinski (1872-1959), Peretz Hirshbein (1880-1948), Sholem Asch (1 880-1957), H. Leivick (1888-1962), Ossip Dymow (1878-1959) and Fishl Bimko (1890-1965)."

Illustration: Title page of Jacob Gordin's Got, mensh un tayvel, with a portrait of the author.

"Among theater critics David Pinski vies with Hirshbein as the formost playwright of the Yiddish Art Theater movement in America. A disciple of Peretz, Pinski frequently found his subject matter in the lives of the poor and underprivilege d, but he was a good enough artist to transmute his material and raise the level of the proletarian drama, of which he is considered one of the masters. . . While [H. Leivick is] celebrated chiefly as a poet, he was also respected as a dramatist, and at l east one of his plays, The Golem, has won a lasting place in Yiddish drama."

"Special if only passing reference must be made to a grouping of fifty-three Yiddish plays and operettas in manuscript that [forms] a part of the Vaxer Collection. Written out in Yiddish script into bound notebooks or on separate pages, t hese may have been versions used by directors and actors in the Folksbiene, Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theater, or one of the other New York theater groups. Most are in fair condition and some carry marginal notes in Yiddish and Russian. Wh ether or not the authors of the manuscripts were in some cases the authors of the plays is unknown. In certain instances it is clear that they were not."

Illustration: Cast portrait from the play Too Late by M. Richter. Detail from the sheet music A Glezele Wine, composed by J. M. Rumshisky for the play.

The Vaxer Collection includes a sizeable collection of Jewish music, over 850 pieces of piano-vocal or instrumental music. It has been added to in recent years by collections of the publications of Metro Music, and other New York Yiddish- language music publishers from the 1880s through the 1940s; today the Collection contains nearly 2,000 items. Its focus is on the Yiddish-language musical stage of the period, and includes many photographs of performers (often in costume) and composers.

"Also to be noted are the Yiddish song books and song albums. . . these include collections by Michl Gelbart, Samuel Bugatch, D. Meyerowitz, and others. . . The songs of Eliakum Zunser (1840-1913), the most celebra ted of the badchonim and in his day a vastly popular Yiddish folksinger, have been obtained in various editions."

The public domain (pre-1923) portion of the Yiddish sheet music collection is currently being digitized. It is available on the web site of the Library's Center for Digital Initiatives. There is also an online exhibit that gives a brief introduction to Yiddish sheet music.

"Of particular importance. . . is a group of twenty-five musical scores to musical operettas by the Jewish composer, Peretz Sandler. These are all in manuscript form, i n pen or pencil notation, and have been well preserved. . . These are all well known pieces (some are classics of the Yiddish musical stage."

Source: Alvin Rosenfeld. Yiddish Poets and Playwrights of America: A Preliminary Report on a Recent Addition to the Harris Collection. Books at Brown, vol. 22, 1968. Copyright Alvin Rosenfeld. Excerpted by permission of the author.

See Also:

Music

The Library's Sheet Music Collection is the repository for the Yiddish-American sheet music from the original Vaxer Collection, and added since that time from other sources. There are finding aids to the Collection available in the Libra y. In addition to the Yiddish-language music, there are related small collections of Russian-language and other Slavic-language sheet music.

Many American popular composers of the first half of the twentieth century were familiar with Yiddish-language musical theatre, and grew up steeped in the culture. Their works are present in great numbers in the Sheet Music Collection, pa rticularly in the sections of the Collection devoted to the Broadway stage.

Brandeis University Library has a Yiddish Music Collection with a finding aid on its web site.