Yiddish literature Yiddish authors Digital documents
National Digital Library POLONA presents a selection of most outstanding representatives of Yiddish literature written before World War II: poets, novelists, playwrights and pioneers in writing in that language, such as Salomon Ettinger, Mendele Mojcher Sforim, and those who came later, Abraham Goldfaden, Icchok Lejb Perec, and others.
Our intention is to show them as individuals and present their work and writings. We enclose their short biographies. The collection was prepared in cooperation with Shalom Foundation.
To display the list of digital documents from this collection click "Publications list" in the menu on the left side of the screen
Presentation of collection and authors' biographies: Aleksandra Król. English translation: Katarzyna Diehl
Yiddish literature
Yiddish, often referred to as the "Jewish language", has a long and complicated history. Many people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have scorned it and refused to accept its status as a true language, instead, branding it as just a slang. Whether Yiddish was or was not a real language, it was a true means of communication, a tongue spoken by some 12 million Jews world-over, of which 3 million lived in Poland and spoke Yiddish on a daily basis, unlike Hebrew which was used only for prayer and for studying religious texts. It was a language of written literature, songs, theatre plays, and movies.
The modern Yiddish literature began to crystallise around the middle of the 19th century but its rapid ascent was stopped by the outbreak of World War II. An abundant and diversified literary legacy is what has survived to our times of the pre-war Yiddish world. Yiddish literature is a part of the pre-war Poland’s multinational culture, it was written on Polish soil and was read by people who lived in this country and who usually spoke both: Polish and Yiddish.
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Yiddish authors
1. An-Ski (i.e. Salomon Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920)
2. Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934)
3. Jakub Dinezon (1856-1919)
4. Salomon (Solomon, Shloyme) Ettinger (1803?-1856)
5. Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908)
6. Jakub Gordin (1853-1909)
7. Mojsze Lejb Halpern (1886-1932)
8. Józef Latajner (1853-1935)
9. Mendele Mojcher Sforim (i.e. Szalom Jaakow Abramowicz) (1835-1917)
10. Lejb Najdus (1890-1918)
11. Hirsz Dawid Nomberg (1876-1927)
12. Icchok Lejb Perec (1852-1915)
13. Nachum Meir Szajkiewicz (1849-1905) also known by his pen-name Szomer (Shomer)
14. Szolem-Alejchem (i.e. Szolem Rabinowicz) (1859-1916)
15. Isaac Meir Weissenberg (1881-1938)
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An-Ski (actual name: Salomon Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920)
Born in Vitebsk. After having left his home town, he took various jobs such as a teacher or a miner. He was harassed by the Tsar’s police because of his political engagement (he joined the Narodniks party). His debut as a writer came in 1883 when he first published a text written in Russian in a Woschod magazine. He spent the years 1892-1905 in Paris, where he worked as a secretary of a Russian philosopher and revolutionist Piotr Lavrov. There An-Ski moved closer to a Jewish socialist party Bund and wrote the text of Bund’s anthem Di shvue. Still in Paris, he got inspired by the writings of Icchok Lejb Perec and decided to write in Yiddish. In 1911-1914 he took to study of the Jewish folklore and he organised a folklore exploring mission to Podolia and Volhynia. After World War I, he was active in social work helping Jewish communes which suffered from hostilities. After the revolution of 1917, he lived in Vilnius and Warsaw. He was the founder of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society in Vilnius.
An-Ski’s most famous work is Cwiszn cwej weltn (Dybuk). This play was staged in Warsaw’s theatre „Eliseum” as the Dybuk, two months after An-Ski’s death in 1920. The play became very popular among Jewish and Polish spectators. His works include different types of writing: poetry, short stories, theatre plays, and scientific papers on Jewish folklore. Shortly after his death in 1920-1925, his works were published in a 15-volume collection.
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Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934)
He came from Volhynia, the village of Rada, from an Orthodox family. Following the will of his family he went to a yeshiva in Volozyn to become a rabbi. However, after three years he left the yeshiva and moved to Odessa where he lived, on and off, from 1899 to 1917. To earn his living he worked, among others, as a teacher of Hebrew. He made his debut in 1901 with a volume of poetry in Hebrew, and 5 years later he published a collection of Yiddish poems. The Odessa years came to be known as the best period in Bialik’s literary work. At that time he wrote poetry both in Hebrew and in Yiddish. His poems in Yiddish, published in numerous journals, rank among the top achievements of poetry in this language.
Apart from literary work, he widely engaged in publishing. He was a co-founder of the “Moriah” publishing house in Odessa established to bring out works in Hebrew. For that publishing house he translated into Hebrew the works of the classics of world literature, including William Shakespeare, Heinrich Heine, Miguel de Cervantes. He edited a three-volume collection of Jewish stories and legends Sefer ha-agadah, and published “Reshumot” and “Ha-Shiloah” journals in Warsaw.
After the revolution of 1917 he lived in Moscow, and when the Bolshevik authorities closed down the “Moriah” publishing house, he moved in 1921 to Berlin, and then to Hamburg. In 1924 he left for Palestine. He was a cofounder of the “Dvir” publishing house, and a president of the Hebrew Language Committee and the Hebrew Writers’ Association.
Bialik became the national poet of Israel, the “restorer of Hebrew poetry”. He contributed to the development of the modern Hebrew language, however his magnificent Yiddish poetry also needs to be remembered.
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Jakub Dinezon (1856-1919)
Born in Nowe Zagory, near Kaunas. Than he moved to Vilnius where he joined a milieu of local writers, and published his first writings. He wrote for Hebrew newspapers and published in Hebrew a novel Ba-avon avot which was confiscated by the censorship. At that time, Dinezon started to write in Yiddish to reach more readers. His first Yiddish novel, Der shvartse yungermantshik was a real success. Dinezon moved to Warszawa and became a friend of Icchok Lejb Perec. Apart from writing, Dinezon was also active in public life and education.
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Salomon (Solomon, Shloyme) Ettinger (1803?-1856)
Born in Zamość. He grew up in an atmosphere of the Enlightenment. He is said to have written small pieces of literature as a very young man which did not survive to our times. He graduated from the medical department of the Lvov University (1825-1830). Since his Austrian diploma was not recognised in the Russian Empire he could not legally work as a doctor. So he tried to work as a farmer but did not achieve a great success. He eventually settled in Odessa and decided to make his living as a writer. He wrote tales, poems, and small stories in Yiddish but few of his works survived to our time, except parts of two plays Der feter fun Amreika and Freylekhe yungelayt and a play titled Serkele, which can be seen on stages of Jewish theatres until today
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Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908)
Born in Starokonstantynów. He went to a traditional school and he learned German and Russian as additional subjects. Then he went to a rabbinical school in Zhytomir. Like most Jewish writers, Goldfaden wrote his first works in Hebrew (1862) but later switched to Yiddish. He published a book of couplets and songs titled Dos Yudele in 1866. He started the first permanent Jewish theatre in Romania where he worked as manager, director, composer, and stage decoration artist. At first, the theatre gave musical programmes and later on, as Goldfaden wrote his own plays, they were shown on stage. The troupe achieved success in Russia and Poland but a tour of the United States was a failure. Back in Europe, Goldfaden lived in Lvov (1890-1898), Paris, and London (1898-1903). Then he moved to New York where he died.
Goldfaden wrote more than 50 plays: comedies, variety shows, operettas, such as, Di tzvey Kuni-lemels, 
Di bobe mitn eynikl, and Di kishufmakherin. These were usually Jewish folk-inspired pieces but biblical subjects can be found in Shulamis, and Jewish historical motives in Doktor Almasado Goldfaden is considered to be the „father of Jewish theatre”.
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Jakub Gordin (1853-1909)
Born in Mirgorod in the Poltava province in Russia. His first texts published in Russian newspapers date from 1870s. He took to various jobs; among others he worked as a harbour worker in Odessa, and as a farmer. In 1879 he established a Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood and actively promoted the idea of setting up a Jewish farming colony in Russia. In the wake of the 1881 pogroms many members of his brotherhood opted for emigration to USA. Gordin finally gave up his efforts only in 1890 when the authorities prohibited the activity of the brotherhood, and he left for America that same year.
In New York he made attempts to publish a newspaper in Russian and started to write for a socialist „Arbayter tsaytung”. He got interested in the Jewish theatre and decided to write plays in Yiddish. His first play Siberia was staged in 1891 and was a big success. Since that moment Gordin dedicated himself to the Jewish theatre. He turned the Yiddish theatre plays from being mere shows and "Singspiel" entertainment into fully-fledged dramas. He wrote about 80 plays in all. They include both original works such as Hashe di yesoyme, Di shkhite, or the most famous Mirele Efros, and adaptations of the world classics, including King Lear by William Shakespeare (Der yudisher kenig Lir) or Faust by Wolfgang Goethe (Got, mentsh un tayvel). Gordin’s pieces have become classics of the Jewish stage.
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Mojsze Lejb Halpern (1886-1932)
Born in Złoczów (Austrian Galicia) to a religious family. At the age of 12, he moved to Vienna to be trained as an artisan. In the meantime he tried to write poems in German. He came back to Galicia in 1907 and started to write in Yiddish. At the same year he had his debut in the Lvov-based daily Togblat. A year later he emigrated to the United States in order to avoid military service. In America, Halpern was close to a group of poets known as Di Yunge and in 1919 he published his first collection of poems titled In Nyu York. Five years afterwards, another collection Di goldene pave came out in print. He would also write for satirical magazines and a paper with communist sympathies Frayhayt. Apart from that, he took various jobs to earn his living.
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Józef Latajner (1853-1935)
Born in Jassy, in today’s Romania. In 1876, after he met Abraham Goldfaden, he started to write in Yiddish. Initally his plays were staged by Izrael Grodner’s theatre troupe. In 1883 Latajner went to London, and then to New York. In America Latajner continued writing and soon became one of the founders of the popular shund theatre. He also worked as an actor and manager of theatre ensembles. Altogether he penned about 80 plays. Those were chiefly light performances, such as operettas, vaudevilles, burlesques. The topics of those pieces were uncomplicated, mostly based on the Bible and ancient history (Hurn Yerushalayim, Al naharot Bavel), and small town reality (Sore Sheyndel).
Latajner was often criticized for the low literary standards of his pieces, however his plays entered the canon of the Yiddish theatre repertoire.
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Mendele Mojcher Sforim (actual name: Szalom Jaakow Abramowicz) (1835-1917)
One of the pioneers of modern Yiddish literature, often called the „Yiddish literature Grandfather”.
He was born to a poor family living in Kopyle, near Słuck. He went to nearby yeshiva schools and, when the school was over, he wandered about often suffering from hunger. Finally in Kamieniec Podolski a poet Abraham Ber Gotlober took care of him, and encouraged him to writing. Then, Mendele Mojcher Sforim went to live in Berdyczów and Zhitomir, where he was trained to become a rabbi, and afterwards he moved to Odessa to work as head of the local Talmud-Tora. He wrote his first works in Hebrew and published them in the Ha-Maggid magazine in 1856. He began to write in Yiddish about 1864. In the 60s and 70s of the 19th century his fiction as Dos kleyne mensthele, Fishke der krumer, Di klyatshe, Masoes Benyamin ha-Shlishi was written, alongside such plays as Di takse, Der Prizyv. Sforim also wrote Yudel, a poem on the history of the Jewish nation titled. Later on, in the years 1875-1885 he was the editor of Der nitslekher kalendar, a calendar with popular essays on history and nature. He also translated his own books into Yiddish or Hebrew. Shortly before his death, Sforim wrote his autobiography Shloyme reb Chayms. He died in Odessa in 1917.
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Lejb Najdus (1890-1918)
Born in Grodno. He had leftist world outlooks as a young boy and he was politically active which cost him several relegations from school.
He wrote his first poems in Polish and Russian. His Yiddish debut came in 1907 when he wrote for the Warsaw-based weekly Roman-tsaytung. From 1911 on, Najdus worked for the Lebn un Visnshaft monthly. He also published his works in magazines coming out in Warsaw, Grodno, and Vilnius and published two collections of works titled Lider and Di fleyt fun Pan.
L. Najdus translated works by such big names as Charles Baudelaire, Heinrich Heine, Alfred Musset, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandr Pushkin and others into Yiddish. He lived only 28 years killed by a heart attack when recovering from diphtheria in Grodno. He was buried at a local cemetery. After his death Intime nigunim, Poemes, Litvishe arabesken , and Di erd erwakht were published.
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Hirsz Dawid Nomberg (1876-1927)
Born in Mszczonów. He wrote his first works in Hebrew and published them in Ha-tsofe, Ha-dor and Ha-zman. Encouraged by Icchok Lejb Perec, he started to write in Yiddish. His works were published by such Warsaw papers as Haynt, and Der moment, but to make a living, Nomberg had to work as a teacher of Hebrew. He was also active in public life. He was a co-founder of a folkist movement; he also sat in the Polish Sejm (Parliament) for some time. He helped to establish the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Poland and kept on working hard for this organisation.
D. Nomberg was a short-story writer but he also authored one theatre play Di mishpokhe. His works show fascination with Jewish life, its younger generation, and people lost or excluded from community life. He also wrote reports from his trip to Palestine, America, Western Europe and to the Soviet Union and stories for children.
Nomberg translated into Yiddish the works of Shakespeare, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Tagore.
Died of tuberculosis in Otwock in 1927.
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Icchok Lejb Perec (1852-1915)
I. L. Perec was born in Zamość to a Jewish orthodox family of Sephardi descent. He received traditional education and then studied law. He worked as an attorney in Zamość and after that moved to Warsaw where he took a clerical job at the Jewish Commune. He had his debut as a writer in the early 1870s when he wrote small and larger poems in Polish. He wrote in Hebrew in the period 1875-1888 and published his first Yiddish poem in the Monish magazine in 1888. The work of I. L. Perec was not confined to poetry, he became famous mostly as a story writer who authored such pieces as: Folkstimlikhe geshikhten, Hsidish, and plays: Di goldene keyt, Bay nakht oyfn alten mark. Apart from that he was a columnist, literary reviewer, and publisher for Peretsbletlekh, Yomtev bletlekh, and Yidishe Bibliotek. He tried to support young talented writers and his Warsaw apartment developed into a rare centre of Yiddish literature and culture.
Perec belongs to the Big Three among Jewish writers, the other two being Mendele Mojcher Sforim and Szolem Alejchem. Between World Wars I and II, the Jewish Section of the Pen Club in Poland used to award prizes named after him.
I. L. Perec died in Warsaw and was buried at a Jewish Cemetery in Okopowa Street. An Ski and Jakup Dinezon are also buried in his tomb also called „ohel”.
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Nachum Meir Szajkiewicz (1849-1905) also known by his pen-name Szomer (Shomer)
A very popular fiction writer, author of theatre plays in Yiddish and Hebrew. His first Hebrew-language novel Sziwchej Inkwizicja written in 1875 was immediately confiscated by the censorship. At that time, he switched into Yiddish to reach a broader group of readers. His stories are written in a smooth style and often have a thrilling plot. He was often described as the father of Jewish lurid or yellow literature. Apart from writing, Szajkiewicz was also a man of theatre. He had his own troupe and often converted his own texts to be staged under his direction. From time to time he also took roles as an actor. In 1889, Szajkiewicz emigrated to New York and continued writing there. All in all, he wrote over 150 novels.
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Szolem-Alejchem (actual name: Szolem Rabinowicz) (1859-1916)
Born in Perejaslaw, he received traditional religious education and went to a Russian primary school. He wrote his first works in Hebrew and published them in Ha-Tsefira and Ha-Melic magazines. He worked as a private tutor and as a government rabbi. After marriage, he was responsible for managing the property of his father-in-law. At that time (1888-1889) he edited the famous Jidysze Folks Bibliotek, which promoted modern Yiddish literature but bankruptcy put an end to his work as a publisher.
After pogroms and the 1905 revolution he left Russia for Western Europe and the United States. Back to Russia in 1908 he suffered from tuberculosis. There was a big fund raising campaign to finance his treatment but the procedure was not very successful. Szolem Alejchem left for the United States again and he died there in 1916.
He was excellent as a short story writer who authored Stempenyu Yosele Solovey, stories for children Dos meserl, and Motl Peysie dem hazns. He also wrote a series of stories about Tevye the Milkman and the village of Kasrylewka.
Alejchem was writing an autobiography Funem yarid but died before finishing it.
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Isaac Meir Weissenberg (1881-1938)
Isaac Meir Weissenberg was born to a worker family and got primary education only. He worked as an artisan but also tried his talents as a writer. This brought him close to Icchok Lejb Perec who oversaw his work on his first published title which came out in 1904. He became well-known in 1906 when he published his novel A shtetl which is today considered his most outstanding work. Weissenberg also wrote theatre plays and novels but short stories was definitely what he could do best. He wrote in a naturalist style and focused on conflicts between generations or between tradition and progress. After Perec’s death in 1915, Weissenberg continued his role as a promoter and mentor of young writers, as well as publisher of the Yidishe Zamlbikher magazine and various books. He was an advocate of promoting the Yiddish spelling based on the Polish language and was opposed to the domination of the Litwaks (Lithuanian Jews).
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