Mendele Mocher Sforim

.. . Mendele Moicher Sforim ( born December 21, 1835jul / January 2 1836greg in Kopyl in Minsk; † 25 Novemberjul / December 8 1917greg in Odessa; Yiddish. מענדעלע מוכר ספרים; Hebrew. מנדלי מוכר ספרים; many name variants: Mendele Mojcher Sforim, Mendale Mocher Sforim, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, Mendele Mocher Sfarim, Mendale Moicher Sepharim, Mendale Mocher Spharim etc.; German literally " Mendele the bookseller ," actually Scholem Jankew Abramovich or Abramowicz or Abramowitz ) was a primarily Yiddish, but also of Hebrew writers, the real father and classical representatives of neujiddischen literature, has given her with his polished prose international reputation, the eldest of the three classics of Yiddish literature and whose greatest storyteller, portrayer of the ghetto, " Sejde " ( " grandfather ", " called Ahn " ) of Yiddish literature.

Life

Since early youth he learned Hebrew, Bible and Talmud. After the death of his father, the nearly 13 -year-old Mendele left his birthplace and went about as a wandering student and visited various yeshivot. In his travels through Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, he recorded numerous impressions of Jewish life, which in his works were reflected later. In Podolia he had with the then famous writer Abraham Bear God Lober found recording and there German, Russian and the latest Enlightenment literature studied, then taken a regular course, purchased the teacher's diploma and worked for several years at a state school as a teacher.

From 1853 to 1858 held on Mendele Kamenz, where he married the daughter of a trailer of the Haskalah. This turned out to be mentally unstable, and the marriage broke up. In Berdichev, where he lived from 1858 to 1869, he married a second time, and this time held the marriage. From then on he lived until 1881 in Zhytomyr ( where he acquired the rabbi diploma ) and for the rest of his life, apart from a two year stay in Geneva ( 1905-1907 ), in Odessa, where there was a large and prosperous Jewish community. Here, in a center of the Enlightenment, he worked as a teacher and was head of the Jewish community school Talmud Torah.

Mendele's work and his literary works move between opposite poles: on the one hand satirical description of the ghetto Jews, on the other hand, forgiving love and commitment to the Jewish people. Often both tendencies at the same plant can be found. In his youth he was a follower of the Jewish Enlightenment, where he faced the assimilation of Jews fundamentally critical, and then turned the age to Zionism. In a written in Hebrew narrative from 1894 /95 ( The heavenly and the earthly Academy ) he describes the split between advocates of assimilation, Orthodox Jews and supporters of the new Zionsbewegung ( Choveve Zion ). The author himself, who appears in the story under his name, even if it has to many arguments of the parties, but may choose to not have your own point of view.

Mendele is considered the founder of the new Yiddish literature. He drew humorous and realistic image of the Jews from the Pale of Settlement. The fictional place names (such as " Dümmingen " or " Schnorr Ingen " ) in his works indicate ignorance and lack of practical sense of the residents. Throughout his life he wrote both Yiddish and Hebrew. He often achieved surprising effects, by transferring sayings from the biblical context on issues of the day. The quality of his new Hebrew style, he describes as follows: "Let us create a Hebrew style, a living being, which speaks clearly, as do people here and now, and let his soul be Jewish. "

Works (selection)

• Mishpat Shalom. Vilnius 1860 ( collection of different fonts).
• Toledot hatewa. 1862-72.
• Dos klejne menschele. Odessa 1864.
• Dos wintschfingerl. ( The desire ring Yiddish. Warsaw 1865, Mendele's first Yiddish novel, hebrew, of Mendele himself translated: Be emek habacha, The Sorrows 1897/98; German edition: Jewish Verlag, Berlin 1925, most recently with Fischke the manifold with Walter, Olten 1961).
• Ha awot weha - Banim. ( Fathers and Sons, Hebrew, Roman). Zhitomir 1867.
• En Mishpat. Zhitomir 1867.
• Diwre hajamim liwne harussim. Odessa 1868.
• Fischke the manifold. ( The lame Fischke Yiddish. Zhitomir in 1869, German by Alexander Eliasberg, The Balloon, Zhitomir 1869; expanded Yiddish: Zhitomir in 1888, Hebrew 1901; further German edition: Loewit -Verlag, Vienna and Berlin 1918; Fischke the Lame: Beggar novel. Reclam, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-379-01496-6 ).
• Di Takse. Zhitomir in 1869 (Russian by J. M. Petrikowski ).
• The fish. Odessa 1870.
• Di kliatsche. ( The Last Horse, The nag, Yiddish: Vilna in 1873; Polish: Warsaw 1886, Hebrew 1901, German edition: Jewish Verlag, Berlin 1924; finally Goldmann, Munich 1988, ISBN 978-3-442-08909-3 ).
• The iber of Laws wojnski pawinost. Zhitomir 1874.
• Dus jidel. Warsaw 1875.
• Pirke Shirah. Zhitomir 1875.
• Luach hassocherim (calendar for merchants ). Zhitomir 1877.
• Majsses binjumin naschlischi. ( The journeys of Benjamin the Third, picaresque novel, in Yiddish in 1878; Polish translated by Clement Junosza. Donkiszot Zydowski / The Jewish Don Quixote Wilna 1878; hebrew 1896 Masaot Binyamin ha - Shlishi, also Czech, German edition: Schocken Verlag, Berlin 1937 and most recently at Walter, Olten 1983, ISBN 978-3-530-56410-5 ).
• Luach hassocherim (calendar for merchants ). Vilnius in 1879.
• The Prisiw ( drama in five acts ). Odessa in 1884.
• Shem we Japhet ba Agalah. In 1890.
• Bijeme haraasch (From the time of the pogroms ). In 1894.
• Bi yeshiva shel maalah ( Humoresque ). In 1895.

• Bejamim hahem (in those days ).
• Schlojmale ( autobiographical )

Expenditure ( selection):

• Factory output in 17 volumes in 1910 on the occasion of the 75th birthday of revered published in the publishing of his admirers Mendele (including a belt reviews )
• Ale factory. 22 volumes. Krakow, Warsaw, New York, Vilnius, 1911-1936.

Literature (selection )

• Salman Travel: Dus life fun Mendale Mocher Sforim. Vilnius 1918 ( 2nd edition 1923).
• Shemariah Gorelik: Mendele Moicher Sforim. , 1920.
• Samuel Niger: Mendele Moicher - Sforim. Original manuscript 1928 revision for Yiddish Culture Congress, New York 1970.
• Nachman Meisel (ed.): Dos Mendele book. New York 1959.
• The sejde Mendele. Warsaw 1964.
• Theodore L. Steinberg: Mendele Mocher Sforim. Twayne, Boston 1977, ISBN 0-8057-6308-2.
• Aberbach, David: Realism, caricature, and bias: the fiction of Mendele Mocher Sefarim, London, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993