Literary Odessa




Jewish literature in Odessa developed gradually yet intensively and bore fruit from the beginning of the 19^th century. While only the names of the writer and dramatist Israel Aksenfeld, the poet Eikhenbaum and the translator M. Valtukh remain from the first half of the 19^th century, the literary fame of Osip Rabinovich, writer and publicist, grew in the 1860s, while at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries, Odessa became a large Jewish literary center. A number of prominent writers, poets, dramatists, publicists and historians, who wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian, lived and worked in the city, including Ahad Ha'Am, M. Ben-Ami, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Shimon Dubnov, Mendele Mocher Sfarim, Shimon Frug, Shaul Tchernikhovsky and many others. The range of Jewish publishing houses that existed in the city, including Moria, Turgeman and Omanut, contributed to the development of Jewish literature.

In the 1930s, Odessa lost its prominence as the center of Jewish literature, and it was only in 1994, after a long interval, that a collection of poems in Yiddish by a local poet A. Beyderman was published in Odessa, symbolically entitled "Meeting".

Osip Rabinovich (1, Dumskaya Square) Osip Rabinovich Osip Aronovich Rabinovich, the founder of Russian Jewish literature, was born in 1817 in the Ukrainian town of Kobelyaki and died in Merano, Italy. In 1845, he settled in Odessa where he became deeply involved in the activities of the community, took an active part in the development of the city's self-governing structures, served in the commercial court, was a deputy of the city's self-governing body on the Duma, and was elected to the office of notary. Rabinovich began his writing career in 1847, and in 1860 founded Rassvet ("Dawn"), the first Jewish periodical in Russia, in which he was to publish some 40 articles. His article "About Moshkas and Ioskas," published in Odessky Vestnik ("Odessa Herald), aroused widespread reaction. The article came out against the self-deprecation of Jews who would refer to themselves using diminutives. He declared, "No one is ashamed to belong to the Jewish people...; quite the contrary, it is a special honor". Rabinovich's literary works, in which he is an ironic, kind, perspicacious, wise and honest storyteller, were published by major publishing houses and won him nationwide popularity, attracting both Jewish and non-Jewish readers. In many of Rabinovich's novels there are clear Jewish motifs, events and figures. They are the only literary creations which offer the modern reader an ethnographically and historically accurate picture of the multi-cultural and varied life of Odessa in the middle of the last century. This, in addition to the novels' intrinsic literary merit, makes Rabinovich's work a valuable historical source. His novels became the first link in a chain of literary works that stretches over time and includes the writings of Semyon Yushkevich, Itzhak Babel and Arkady Lvov - who now lives in the USA - and that describes the life of the Jews of Odessa. The building of the former city Duma and the commercial court

Jewish Literature Society (28, Knyajeskaya St.) The end of the first decade of the 20th century saw the development in Odessa of Jewish cultural life and the emergence of several educational societies and scientific research organizations. In November 1909, soon after the founding of the Jewish Literary Society in the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, a branch was opened in Odessa, which was then the major center of Jewish literary life in the southern Russia. The poet Shimon Frug was elected head of the Odessa branch, while Chaim Nachman Bialik, who was one of the initiators of the revival of a Jewish national culture in Hebrew, and the literary critic and historian Yosef Klausner, took an active part in its meetings which discussed issues of the history, theory and development of Jewish literature. The Odessa branch of the Society was closed by the authorities in 1911, but a few months later it was revived as an independent public institution - the Jewish Historical Literary Society - and Bialik was elected chairman. 28, Knyajeskaya St.

Mendele Moiher Sforim (12, Degtiarnaya St.) Mendele Mocher Sforim (the nom-de-plume of Shalom Yakov Abramovich, 1835-1917) was born in Kopyl, a town in the Minsk province of Byelorussia, but lived and worked in Odessa from 1881 until his death. A multi-talented man with wide-ranging interests, he devoted much of his time to educational and social activities: he was the director of a Talmud Torah; a member of the Jewish Historical Literary Society and of the committee that reformed the Odessa yeshiva; translated Jules Verne's novel "Five Weeks in a Balloon" into Yiddish; adapted "Natural Science" by Professor Lenz from German into Hebrew; and created a "Useful Calendar for Russian Jews." He primarily owes his place in the history of European Jewish culture as the founder of a new form of Jewish literature. Indeed, Shalom Aleichem used to refer to him as the "Grandfather of Jewish literature". His novels, novellas and short stories are united by a common representation of the "classical" Jewish town, which is populated by craftsmen, actors, beggars, shop keepers and doctors. Whatever or whoever he describes, his works are accurate descriptions of human nature and are filled with an innocent, calm and unobtrusive love for his characters, a sad irony, sparkling humor and common wisdom. Mendele Moiher Sforim On this place there was a building where Mendele Moiher Sforim used to live, also Talmud-Torah was located here

Sholom Aleihem (28, Kanatnaya St.) The House of Sholom Aleihem Sholom Aleihem Shalom Aleichem, the nom-de-plume of Shalom Nahimovich Rabinovich, was a leading Jewish Yiddish writer. He was born in 1859 in Pereyaslav (now Pereyaslav-Chmelnitsky), Ukraine and died in 1916 in New York. His writings were first published in 1893. Summing up his literary activity twenty years later in a letter to the famous Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, he wrote that he had "the honor not only to belong... to a people who, though constantly and unjustifiably persecuted and humiliated, is nonetheless, in its own way, a great people, but also to be the modest voice of its feelings, thoughts and ideals". Much has changed in the world since then and the Jewish people have their own state and have become a full member of the world community. Yet the works of Shalom Aleichem continue to encapsulate a life of yesteryear, the life of the Jews in the towns and shtetls of the Russian Pale of Settlement. He describes the types that populated these towns and villages, and recounts the events, incidents, adventures and misadventures that filled their lives; their triumphs and tragedies, their loves, weddings, divorces and celebrations. He took his plots from real life and recounted them with sadness, sorrow, humor and wisdom. We have now come full circle and some expressions immortalized in Shalom Aleichem's works are used to this day, among them, "Let's speak about happier things; is there any news about the cholera in Odessa?" From 1891-1893, Shalom Aleichem lived in Odessa and his books bring the Jews of the city to life. They are happy, sad, fussy and wise; they work as craftsmen, small businessmen and traders. His writings also immortalize the famous cantor, Pinchas Minkovsky. During World War II, the houses on each side of Shalom Aleichem's house were destroyed, but as if by fate, the house where the people's writer lived, remained standing.

Chaim Nahman Bialik (9, Malaya Arnautskaya St.) The Jewish poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, who was to become known as the Hebrew National Poet, was born in 1873 in Rady in Ukraine's Volyn district, but lived in Odessa for more than two decades before leaving for Berlin in 1921. It was in Odessa that Bialik became "the poet of Jewish national renaissance," as he was to be called by the historian Yosef Klausner. Bialik's publishing debut took place in Odessa in 1892, when his poem El haZippor ("To The Bird") was published in the journal HaPardes ("Orchard"). He was one of the founders of the Jewish publishing house Moria, edited the literary section of the magazine HaShiloah, published by Ahad Ha'Am, taught Hebrew in the yeshiva and was active in various Jewish public organizations, including the Society of Experts in Ancient Hebrew, Beseda ("Conversation") and the Jewish Literary Society. In 1903, the committee of the Odessa community sent Bialik to Kishinev to collect material on the pogrom in that city. On his return to Odessa, moved by what he had seen there, Bialik wrote his poem "In the City of Slaughter", in which he openly blamed his people for calm acceptance of fate. He declared that the disaster which had befallen the Jews was great and terrible, but that the shame of submission to evil was even more terrible. There are few works of literature that played a role as important as Bialik's poem in restoring and strengthening Jewish national self-consciousness. His appeal to resistance inspired Jewish youth to fight and create self-defense groups - the first of which was formed in Odessa. The writer, editor and publisher, Yehoshua Ravnitsky, lived in the same building as Bialik and published the poet's first poem. Joshua Ravnitsky 9, Malaya Arnautskaya St. Chaim Nachman Bialik

Semyon Grigorevich Frug (4, Italian boulevard) Semyon Grigorevich Frug was born in 1860 into a family of Jewish farmers who lived in one of the Jewish farming colonies in southern Ukraine. From 1912 until his death in 1916, Frug lived in Odessa, where the sixth edition of his three-volume "Complete Works" was published in 1913. His talent as a writer, narrator and reader reached their full expression in Odessa, which was a center of Jewish literary activity. His contemporaries recalled the artistry with which he would read his works, or rather declaim them by heart, at literary evenings. Semyon Frug 4, Italian boulevard Frug's works were mainly written in Russian with only a few stories written in Yiddish, itself a reflection of the environment in which members of the Jewish intelligentsia moved at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In both his poems and prose he described with bitter humor and ruthless realism the life of the Jewish colonists, their relationships with their Ukrainian and Russian neighbors, the disagreements and occasional full-blown heated arguments about the relative merits or lack thereof of various Yiddish dialects spoken by Jews from Lithuania and Belorussia in contrast to those who had settled in the villages of Ukraine a long time before. Frug himself said in one of his poems, encapsulating his work maybe better than others, that the essence of his poetry is that "What I took from people with tears and grief, I give back with poetry". One of the unique features of Frug's poetry is the number of them that were set to music and performed on stage.

Semyon Solomonovich Yushkevich (9, Deribasovskaya St.) Semyon Yushkevich 9, Deribasovskaya St. Semyon Solomonovich Yushkevich was born in Odessa in 1868. Though a frequent visitor to Moscow and St. Petersburg, he lived for most of his life in his home city, which provided the inspiration for his work, until his emigration in 1919. A writer of prose and drama, Yushkevich's works were famous throughout the reading and theater-going public of Russia. Though he wrote in Russian, virtually all his work deals with the state of Russia's Jews at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. His works examine the life of the Jews under the autocracy of the Russian Empire, their relationship with other peoples living in that huge country, the evolution of Jewish self-awareness within the prevailing political, social and economic atmosphere of the time. The famous Jewish writer Shalom Ash noted that, "Yushkevich introduced a Jewish soul, a Jewish heart, Jewish feeling and Jewish intellect in his work". At the same time he achieved a position of some importance within the wider field of Russian literature, where he introduced Jewish topics, raising them to a level that brought credit to the entire community and stimulated interest among a wide audience. The typical Odessa Jew, formed over decades and preserved in the writings of Yushkevich has not entirely disappeared, holding out hope for their return to their native city.

Itzhak Immanuilovich Babel (17, Rishelyevskaya St.) 17, Rishelyevskaya St. Itzhak Immanuilovich Babel (1894-1940) was born in the lively Odessa suburb of Moldovanka, which had a mainly Jewish population. Before entering the Odessa Commercial College he studied Hebrew, Bible and Talmud at home; when he graduated, as prescribed in the college charter, he was awarded the title of honorary citizen of Odessa, and it is the city which forms the background of much of his best work. A brilliant master of the short story, Babel in many ways belongs to the so-called "South-west school of literature" which developed in Odessa. In his Konarmia cycle of stories, Babel used his mastery to show the particular tragedy that befell the Jewish villages during the years of the Civil War following the November 1917 revolution. In his Odessa Stories, Babel preserved for posterity the mythical world of old Odessa and of his native Moldovanka, and they are inhabited by jolly-spirited, clever, strong and fearless Jews, like his hero Benya Krik. A Jewish theme is more clearly developed in the series of autobiographical stories, "Story of my Dovecote", in "Karl-Yankl", and in his play "Sunset". He wrote the script for the film "Wandering Stars", based on Shalom Aleichem's novel, whose collected works he edited and wrote numerous short stories inspired by Jewish folklore. Babel perished during the years of Stalin's Terror; after he was posthumously rehabilitated, his works again became available, and were staged and adapted for screen in his native country. One of the streets in Moldovanka is named after him. Odessa Jews - personages of Babel's stories

The Museum of Jewish Culture (2, Evreyskaya St.) 2, Evreyskaya St. In 1927, through the efforts of the historian and literary critic Benzion Rubenstein, the Mendele Mocher Sfarim Museum of Jewish Culture was opened. The museum's collection consisted of artifacts transferred from other museums, from private collections and synagogues that were closed down. Among them were many items of value - pictures by such Jewish painters as Altman, Tishler, Chagall and others; Jewish ceremonial objects, synagogue records, charters of trade societies, household goods, congratulatory postcards for the festivals with Jewish texts and published works about the history of Jewish literature, particularly the archives of Mendele Mocher Sfarim, for whom the museum was named. The museum ceased to exist after World War II and its many invaluable artifacts were found in the storerooms of museums in others cities, mainly Kiev. At the initiative of Ishaya Gisser, the chief rabbi of Odessa, a Jewish history and local folklore society has been created. One of its tasks is to discover, collect, study and preserve material related to Jewish culture, literature and art with the aim of creating an exhibition in the future.

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