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ABSTRACT
Modernist Yiddish literature was an important part of the Yiddish-cultural response to the existential turmoil caused by the First World War. This “small literature,” to use Kafka’s phrase, came into being without the support of a nation-state and in an alien environment. In a 1922 edition of Warsaw’s avant-garde magazine Albatros, Yiddish poets reflected on their “wandering through various centres of their Jewish extraterritoriality.” Five years later, in 1927, when stateless Yiddish literature became a member of the International PEN Club, this existential extraterritoriality underwent a bold reinterpretation with the new concept of “Yiddishland.” My paper reconstructs the discourse that led to the transformation of the existential concept of eksteritoryalishkayt along with the creation of the cosmopolitan cultural project originally called “dos land yidish,” and later “Yiddishland:” a republic of words that unified the Yiddish speakers globally via literature and arts.
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Notes
1 It was by way of the Yiddish actor Yizchok Löwy [Jacques Levy] that in 1911 Franz Kafka encountered “der gegenwärtigen jüdischen Litteratur in Warschau” [present-day Jewish (Yiddish) literature in Warsaw] (Kafka, Tagebücher, [312]). Thinking of both Yiddish and Czech literature, he reflected on the relations among culture, politics, and a nation of small literatures. Among their effects, for Kafka, were “der Stolz und der Rückhalt, den die Nation durch eine Literatur für sich und gegenüber der feindlichen Umwelt erhält” [the pride and the support that the nation gets from a literature, for itself and in relation to the hostile world around it] (Diary entry of 25th, 26th and 27th December 1911, ibid. [312]–[326], here [313]). The term appears in the title of the last passage of the entry of December 27th (ibid. [326]): “Schema zur Charakteristik kleiner Litteraturen” [Scheme for the characterization of small literatures]. In Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure [Kafka: on behalf of a minor literature] (1975, 29), Deleuze and Guattari render “klein” as “mineure”, by which they shift the meaning from a “small” literature to the tendentiously “minor” literature, possibly the literature of a minority, but also implying inferiority in relation to an established majority literature; this shift from “small” to “minor” is a shift from quantity to quality, and implies a pejorative judgment (cf. Casanova, Republic of Letters, 203–4. She points out that Deleuze and Guattari draw on Marthe Robert’s French translation of 1964, ibid., 383 n. 56; cf. also the translator’s note to the German version of Deleuze and Guattari’s essay, Kleine Literatur, 24). Moreover, the authors’ observation “Une littérature mineure n’est pas celle d’une langue mineure, plutôt celle qu’une minorité fait dans une langue majeure” [a minor literature is not the literature of a minor language, rather the literature that a minority creates in a major language] (ibid., 29), ignores Kafka’s explicit comment that his reflections refer to the Jewish, here Yiddish, literature in Warsaw, and to Czech literature, not to the German-language writing of the Jewish minority in Prague (cf. Casanova, Republic of Letters, 200–3, Thirouin, “Kafka als Schutzpatron”). On Kafka’s encounter with Yiddish theater and Yiddish literature cf. Lauer, “Die Erfindung.”
2 Grinberg, Albatros, 3.
3 ‘Eksteritorial’ is common in Yiddish both in this sense and as meaning “the status of persons living in a foreign country but not subject to its laws” (“extraterritoriality” in Oxford English Dictionary, https://oed.com/view/Entry/67138; accessed June 7, 2020).
4 Grinberg was not alone in this opinion. In 1924, for example, Moyshe Litvakov (1875/80–1939), the literary critic then editor-in-chief of the communist Yiddish daily Der emes [The Truth], lamented the fact that the “Jewish proletariat,” a “class of extraterritorial people,” was “like [an] island scattered among other national majorities,” making “the development of a national culture difficult” (Litvakov, “Di shprakh”).
5 Grinberg, Albatros, 3.
6 Cf. Asholt and Fähnders, “Einleitung”, xv–xxx; Hjartarson, Visionen des Neuen, 5.
7 Cf. Hjartarson, Visionen des Neuen, 64–8.
8 In 1922 the poets Uri Zvi Grinberg, Perets Markish and Melech Ravitsch founded the new poetry group Khalyastre [Band] in Warsaw. Each of its members published a journal in 1922: Markish Khalyastre, Grinberg Albatros and Ravitch Di vog [The Scale]. These short-lived publications with their manifesto-like texts constituted Yiddish modernism in Warsaw. See Wolitz, “Between Folk and Freedom”; Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve‘itton, 37–51; Vakhrushova, “To Hell with Futurism, Too!”; Modernist journals and anthologies began to appear immediately after the First World War, including Eygns [One’s Own], Kiev, 1918 and 1920; Der inzel [The Island], New York, 1918; Yung-idish [Young Yiddish], Lodz, 1919; Oyfgang [Ascent], Kiev, 1919; In zikh [Inside the Self or Introspection], New York, 1920–1940; Ringen [Rings], Warsaw, 1921–1922; Glokn [Bells], Warsaw, 1921. The Yiddish modern, as a territorially discontinuous cultural space, constituted a counter-model to the European, territorially continuous, unitary states. On the notion of “multiple modernities,” see Eisenstadt “Multiple Modernities.”
9 Cf. Fishman, Never Say Die, 16–23; Biemann, “Renaissance.” Cf. also Leo Kenig’s commentary on the Jewish Renaissance in his introductory article “Renesans-motivn” in the booklet Renesans, No. 1, 1920, edited by him; cf. also Melech Ravitch’s plea for a transnational association of Yiddish writers (Ravitch, “shriftshteler-velt-bund”). On the Russian-revolutionary strand of the Jewish Renaissance cf. Moss, Jewish Renaissance.
10 Niger, “gegent-frage,” 308, Emphasis in original. Shmuel Niger, born in 1883 in Dukora near Minsk and died in 1955 in New York, is considered the most important Yiddish literary critic. He was, in this essay, responding to Bal Makhshoves’s study, ”דאס דרום־יודענטהום און די אידישע ליטעראַטור אין 19 יארהונדערט„, [The Jewry of the South [Eastern Europe] and Yiddish Literature in the 19th century], Tsukunft, 1922, 1–3.
11 However, the cultural transfer was one-sided, as only a few Yiddish works were translated into other languages in the interwar period. Cf. Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 39.
12 Cf. my own “Jiddischland,” Niemandssprache, 44–55. By the fourth meeting of the Bund (May 24–27 1901), a program of “national-cultural autonomy,” not referring to a specific territory, had been officially adopted (Aronson et al. 1960, 184). Cf. also Hiden, “Europäischer Nationalitätenkongress” and Gechtman, “Nationalitätenfrage.”
13 Zhitlowsky, “Tsiyonizm oder sotsyalizm,” 72. The essay “Zionism or Socialism,” was first published in Idisher arbeiter 6, 1898.
14 In 1900, the total Jewish population amounted to 10.6 million (DellaPergola, “Demographie”). The approximate number of non-assimilated, Yiddish-speaking Jews was in 1900 some 7, in 1925 8.2 million (Ruppin, Soziologie der Juden, 130); in 1939, the total Jewish population was estimated at 16.6 million, of whom some 11 million spoke Yiddish (Weinreich, “Yiddish Language,” 332).
15 See Fishman, “Tshernovits Conference Revisited,” 326f.
16 YIVO, Yidishe shprakh-konferents, 75.
17 Ibid., 86; Peretz’ blueprint of the “Central Bureau,” ibid., 85–7.
18 Peretz, “yidishkayt,” 164, first published in 1911. On Peretz’s concept of Yiddish culture, see Vakhrushova, “Yiddish Modernism.”
19 Ravitch commented on this in his memoirs: „דאָס מאָדערנע, וועלטלעכע, ייִדישע וועלטפאָלק האָט אָנגעהויבן זיך צו געפינען אין די רעמען פון דער נייער וועלט וואָס ווערט איצט נײַ־געבוירן. די אידעאָלאָגיע איז דאָ, — יצחק לייבוש פּרץ איז איר אידעאָלאָג.” [The modern, secular Yiddish/Jewish people began to locate itself in the framework of the new world just coming to birth. The ideology is there, and Peretz is its ideologue.] (Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 10) and cf. also ibid., 290.
20 For example in the Kultur-Lige (“Culture League”), founded in April 1918 in Kiev, then the capital of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic. After the Soviet takeover in 1920, it could no longer pursue its Yiddishist program, but became the model for similarly named organization in other European cities, among them Kaunas, Warsaw, Bucharest, Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Cf. Estraikh, “The Yiddish Kultur-Lige.”
21 Zhitlowsky, using this same word spinen, refers even at the linguistic level to Peretz’s large conception.
22 First published 1920. Zhitlowsky, “Natsyonal-progresive badaytung,” 243, 264, 275.
23 Markish, “Refleksn.” On Markish’s claim regarding the importance of cultural contacts in the early 1920s, see Vakhrushova, “Soviet Yiddish Literati.”
24 S–K, “Tsvishn tsvey literarishe doyres.”
25 Ibid.
26 Markish, “Tsvey virklekhkaytn.”
27 Ibid.
28 Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 43.
29 Nachmen Meisel was born in 1887 on an estate near Kiev, and died in 1966, on Kibbutz Alonim in Israel. He was co-founder of the Polish kultur-lige and editor of the Warsaw weekly Literarishe bleter [Literary Pages]. In 1938 he became editor of the New York monthly Yidishe kultur [Yiddish Culture].
30 Meisel, “Varshe, nyu york, moskve,” 264. The debate heated up in 1926 (e.g. Zeitlin, “Tsentrale figurn”; Bergelson, “Dray tsentren”), but the issue had been addressed earlier (e.g. Ravitch, “Vu iz der tsenter”; Niger, “On a tsenter”) and was also addressed later (e.g. Hirschbein, “Vegn un sheydvegn”; Ravitch “Shtam un zvaygn”). On the dispute, see Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve-‘itton, 113–25; cf. Weiser “Capital of ‘Yiddishland’.”
31 Cf. Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve-‘itton, 70–3; Schachter, Diasporic Modernisms, 3–5.
32 Ravitch, “fenster tsu Eyrope,” 362, 363.
33 “[…] geistige und culturelle Gemeinschaft mit einer nennenswerten Nationalliteratur als Ausdruck dieser Culturgemeinschaft,” as quoted in Gechtman, “Nationalitätenfrage.”
34 Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 257.
35 Cf. Borekh Rivkin’s conception of modern Yiddish as kemoy-teritorye [quasi territory]: פוּן סאַמע אָנהייבּ — פוּן מענדעלען אָן — האָט די יידישע ליטעראַטור געוווּסט, אַז זי דאַרף כּמו־טעריטאָריש זיין. פון וואַנען האָט זי עס געוווּסט? די יידישע גרונט־סיטואַציע האָט איר אוּנטערזאָגט, ערשטעס. צוויטנס, האָט זי געהאַט אַ מוסטער פאַר אירע אויגן אין איר פאָרגייערין — דער יידישע רעליגיע, וואָס האָט אויף דער זעלבּיקער גרוּנט־סיטואַציע אָפּגעענפערט פּונקט אַזוי: זי האָט זיך אויפגעהויבּן ווי אַ כּמו־טעריטאָריע אין דער לופטן […]
[From the very beginning, from Mendele on, Yiddish literature has known that it has to be only quasi-territorial. How did it come to know this? The fundamental situation of Yiddish has given it its cue, for one thing. Second, it has had a pattern before its eyes in its predecessor, i.e. Jewish religion, which responded to the same fundamental situation in just the same way; it raised itself up as a quasi-territory in the air] (Rivkin, “Kmoy-teritoryalizm,” 430).
36 The concept of a res publica lit[t]eraria is attested to as early as the seventeenth century, e.g. in the magazine title Nouvelles de la République des Lettres [News from the Republic of Letters] (1684). Cf. Pascale Casanova’s definition of the “world republic of letters” as an “international literary space” in contrast to “world literature.” She argues that “what needs to be described is not a contemporary state of the world of letters, but a long historical process through which international literature – literary creation, freed from its political and national dependencies – has progressively invented itself” (Casanova, Republic of Letters, xii).
37 Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 273 f. Cf. also ibid., 324. Moyshe Knaphais in this context characterizes the “distinctive literature of Yiddishland” as “cosmopolitan” and “transnational” (alveltlekh) (Knaphais, Guf un neshome, 172). Ravitch writes elsewhere of the ”ייִדיש־ייִדישער ליטעראַטור„ [Yiddish-Jewish literature] as ”אַ וועלט־ליטעראַטור בזעיר־אנפּין„ [world literature en miniature] or as world literature (Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 13, 19, 111 and elsewhere).
38 Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928.”
39 Meisel, Geven amol a leben, 278; cf. also Rozhanski, “Z. Segalovitsh. Tlomatske 13,” 245.
40 E.g. Literarishe bleter (Warschau) 05.07.1929, 515; 25.08.1933, 550; 19.07.1935, 464; Folks blat (Kaunas) 06.10.1930, 4; 31.03.1931, 2. We find an exception in Arn Mark’s interview with Zalmen Reyzn on Jewish cultural life in America, in which Reyzn tells of ”גרויסן יידיש־לאַנד„ [the great Yiddishland], by which is meant the Yiddish cultural space in North America (Mark, “Shmues mit Zalmen Reyzn”). Since 1934, Nachmen Meisel, an eminent figure among the non-party-linked activists, had been an advocate of a transnational Yiddish organization which would coordinate Yiddish cultural activity in the face of growing anti-Jewish persecution. In this context the term “Yiddishland,” though there are no textual instances of it in the Yiddish press in the 1920s, occurs frequently in print and for the most part in quotation marks: Yidish 1, Januar 1935; Botoșanski “Hoyptshtot fun ‘yidishland.’” For earlier appearances, see, e.g. Leyeles, Poeme, 55.
41 At the International Writers’ Congress for the Defence of Culture, Paris 1935, Shmuel-Leyb Shnayderman introduced himself as a “citizen of the land Yiddish” and declared „דער בּירגער פוּנם לאַנד יידיש איז דער בּירגער פוּן דער וועלט.” [The citizen of the land Yiddish is the citizen of the world] (Shnayderman, 1935).
42 Min, “Der banket lekoved.”
43 E.g. Botoșanski, “Hoyptshtot fun ‘yidishland’”; Shulman “Nyu york – Vilne.”
44 In the Chicago journal יידיש (“Yiddish”) Khayim Zhitlowsky is characterized as “the President of Yiddishland” (Yidish 1, Januar 1935).
45 In Kaunas Shmuel Niger was called ”דער מיניסטער אין לאנד יידיש„ [Minister in the Land Yiddish] (Folks blat, 16.04.1931).
46 Lewi, “Berliner ambasador fun yidish.” Ravitch in 1951 was still calling the writer Joseph Leftwich ”פ.ע.ן־אַמבאַסאַדאָר פון ייִדיש־לאַנד אין לאָנדאָן„ [The PEN Ambassador of Yiddish] (Ravitch, Mayn leksikon 4.2, 57).
47 Ibid., cf. also Kitai, Unzere shrayber un kinstler, 159; Shalit, Daniel Tsharni-bukh, 139, 127, 140, 145.
48 This was in accord with the self-perception of these agents, as, for example, the description of the journalist and translator Moyshe Mikhl Kitai in the Folks-blat during his visit to Kaunas makes vividly clear: „קיטאי איז אַ הייסער, אַקטיווער פריינד פוּן דער מאָדערנער יידיש־וועלטלעכער קוּלטוּר. אינם לאַנד יידיש, וואָס ווייס ניט פוּן קיין גרענעצן, פילט ער זיך אַ תּושב אוּן דערפאַר איז אַזוי לייכט בּיי אים צוּ נעמען אין אַ מיטן מיטוואָך דעם רענצל אין האַנט אוּן זיך אַוועקלאָזן אויף אַ נסיעה.” [Kitay is a keen and active friend of secular modern Yiddish culture. A confident citizen of the land of Yiddish, which knows no boundaries, he can easily enough spontaneously pack his bag and go on a journey] (Mink “M. Kitay”).
49 For Daniel Charney the press marked the boundaries of the country: „מיר [מאָרעװסקי, שאַגאַל, שאַליט און טשאַרני] זענען געװען װעלט-בירגער פון דעם אַזױ גערופענעם „ייִדישלאַנד”, װו די זון גײט קײנמאָל נישט אונטער. אונדזערע „גרעניץ-סלופּעס” זענען געװען די הונדערטער צײטונגען, זשורנאַלן און ביכער, װאָס פלעגן אונדז טאָג אײן — טאָג אױס ברענגען גרוסן פון אמעריקע און אַרגענטינע, פון אַפריקע און אױסטראַליע, פון קובא און מעקסיקאָ, פון ארץ-ישראל און ביראָבידזשאַן, װי אױך אַפילו — פון דער װײטער-װײטער און ביז גאָר נאָענטער ליטע … ” [We [Morewsky, Chagall, Shalit, and Charney] were world citizens of ‘Yiddishland,’ as it is called, where the sun never sets. Our ‘boundary stakes’ were the hundreds of newspapers, journals, and books, bringing us greetings every day from [North] America and Argentina, from Africa and Australia, from Cuba and Mexico, from the land of Israel and Birobidzhan, and also from far and near Lithuania …] Charney, Vilne. (Memuarn), 241.
50 The writer Leyb Malekh calls Literarishe bleter a worldwide ”סיגנאַל־ווייזער„ [guidepost] and adds: „די לייענער פוּן די ’ליט. בלעטער’ אין די ווייטעסטע לענדער, אין די פאַרוואָרפנסטע ווינקלעך, זענען די אַמבּאַסאַדאָרן פוּן ’לאַנד יידיש’.” [The readers of Literarishe bleter in the furthest pleaces, the most remote corners are the ambassadors of the ‘land Yiddish’] (Malekh, “Di ‘Literarishe bleter’”). Not everyone shared this view (Riger, “Di imperye ‘Yidish’”).
51 Anonymous, “Literarishe nayes.”
52 Der tog, December 17. 24, and 31. 1928; Literarishe bleter, January 18 and 25, February 8, 15, and 22 February 1929.
53 Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928,” emphasis in the original.
54 Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1929.”
55 Ibid., 147. On Goethe’s ‘Weltliteratur’ cf. Lamping, Die Idee der Weltliteratur, 23, 62f.
56 Ibid., 148.
57 Ibid.
58 Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928.”
59 Meisel, “Mit velkhe verk,” 125.
60 Ibid.
61 The language quarrel within the Jewish community, between Hebrew and Yiddish, cannot be considered within the framework of this article. Cf. Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 328–30; Döblin, Reise in Polen, 84.
62 For example, Leyeles, Poeme, 57; Shnaper, Bloe verter, 81; Leivik, Ale verk. Lider, 258; Rivkin, Lider, 32; Feinberg, Yidish. Poeme. The phenomenon of identity discourse carried out by poetic means cannot be developed within the framework of this article.
63 This and the following chapter contain material from the subchapter “Yiddishland,” Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 44–55.
64 Literarishe bleter, August 23 1935, 578.
65 Meisel, “Kultur-kongres,” 496. The appeal is reprinted in ibid., 497–9.
66 Ibid., 501. On the YIVO congress, see YIVO, Der alveltlekher tsuzamenfor.
67 See Cultural Congress 1937 and the accounts in the worldwide Yiddish press.
68 On August 15 1937, the Paris newspaper Naye prese devoted page 5 to accounts of the first Yiddish Pavilion, among them “11 Million People Speak Yiddish (A Visit to the Yiddish Culture-Pavilion)” and “A Stroll in the Land called ‘Yiddish.’” See also Winogura, “Der jidisher kultur-pavilion.”
69 Cultural Congress, 1937: 15.
70 Cultural Congress, 1937: 26, 30. Cf. ”די מאַפּע פון יידיש־לאַנד„ [the map of Yiddishland] (Kahan, Yidish-meksikanish, 17–20); Charney, Vilne. (Memuarn), 241.
71 “A Belated Letter to Itzik Manger,” Idisher kemfer (New York), March 13, 1942. In 1947 the letter was reprinted in the Bukharester zamelbikher (161–4), and on June 1, 1961 in Der veker, 7f.
72 Cf. Howe, World of our Fathers, 417–551; Margolis, Yiddish Culture in Montreal; Michels, Yiddish Socialists in New York; Lederhendler, New York Jews, 12–35, 69–78. On transnational Ashkenaz and Yiddish literature in the United States after the khurbn cf. Schwarz, Survivers and Exiles.
73 Ravitch, Mayn leksikon 3, 176.
74 Ravitch, Di kroynung, v–vii.
75 Glatshteyn, Prost un poshet, 404.
76 Cf. Lederhendler, New York Jews, 69–78.
77 Bashevis, “Yidishe literatur in Poyln,” 471.
78 Cf. Silber, “Yidishland” and the new online dictionary Jiddisch-Nederlandse woordenboek (JNW), edited by Justus van de Kamp et al.: https://www.jiddischwoordenboek.nl/search/?q=יידישלאנד&type=woordenboekapp.Trefregel#detail. Abgerufen am 23. Juni 2020.
79 Silvain and Minczeles, Yiddishland, 36f. Cf. also the explanation of the concept in French Wikipedia, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddishland, accessed June 7, 2020.
80 Cf. the site “Yiddishland: Countries, Cities, Towns, Rivers” at YIVO, https://www.yivo.org/Yiddishland, accessed June 7, 2020.
81 Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland.
82 Ibid., 33.
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Notes on contributors
Efrat Gal-Ed
Efrat Gal-Ed is Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She holds a Ph.D in Yiddish Literature (2009). Recent Publications: Niemandssprache: Itzik Manger – ein europäischer Dichter. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2016. Das Buch der Jüdischen Jahresfeste. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 22021. Crossing the Border: An Anthology of Modern Yiddish Short Stories (in Yiddish), edited by Efrat Gal-Ed, Simon Neuberg and Daria Vakhrushova. Berlin: düsseldorf university press / De Gruyter, 2021 (forthcoming). In their Surroundings: Localizing Modern Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe, edited by Efrat Gal-Ed, Natasha Gordinsky, Sabine Koller and Yfaat Weiss. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021 (forthcoming).