_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 03.012 31 July 1999 1) Yiddish Matters: From the Editor (Leonard Prager) 2) South African literature in Yiddish and Hebrew (Joseph Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 July 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Yiddish Matters: Joseph Sherman on South African Yiddish Literature In this mid-summer issue of _The Mendele Review_ we turn to a far corner of Ashkenaz Three (to employ Max Weinreich's term for the Yiddish world transplanted from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century), to South Africa, a land whose Yiddish-speaking immigrants were overwhelmingly Litvak in origin. In a comprehensive review of South African Jewry's contribution to Yiddish and Hebrew letters, Joseph Sherman sketches the creative ferment that characterized a small but vibrant community, one that many of us know little about. Joseph Sherman, Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, has been researching and writing on Yiddish literature for the past 20 years. He has published critical essays on Sholem Aleykhem, Dovid Bergelson, Lamed Shapiro and I.J. Singer [Y.-Y. Zinger]. His major research interest, however, has been the works, in Yiddish and English, of Isaac Bashevis Singer [Yitskhok Bashevis], on whom he has published widely in the academic press, including _Prooftexts_, _Judaism_ and _The Journal of Narrative Technique_. He has published a number of South African Yiddish stories in English translation, and his translation of I.B. Singer's novel _Shadows on the Hudson_ was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux at the beginning of 1997. Recently Professor Sherman spent six months as Dorot Fellow at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, when he sorted the large Yiddish archive of I. B. Singer's papers. He is currently preparing a volume of hitherto untranslated and unpublished short stories and essays culled from the Singer Yiddish archive, to be published by the University of Texas Press. He has also translated into English and redacted the Yiddish text of Dovid Bergelson's 1923 novella _Opgang_ (Descent), which will appear in two volumes as part of the MLA's ongoing Texts and Translation series. The text and its translation will be launched at a special session of the annual MLA Convention in Chicago in December this year. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of the _Complete Sholem Aleykhem in English Project_. The South African Yiddish writer, Jacob Mordechai Sherman, was his uncle. **** A Note on the Text of the Essay In the _Encyclopaedia Judaica_, vol. 15 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971, cols. 207-210) the entry on South Africa: Literature includes the rubrics Biblical Influences, The Figure of the Jew, The Jewish Contribution, Writers in English, Writers in Afrikaans -- but no mention of Yiddish. In the 1986/7 Year Book (on p. 416) and in the 1983-1992 Decennial Book (1994) (on p. 392), Sol Liptzin devotes a few lines to South African Yiddish literature in his periodic reviews of Yiddish literature generally. It was not until the 1990/91 Year Book, that South African Yiddish and Hebrew literature were given respectful attention by the _Encyclopaedia Judaica_. The author of this redemptive entry, four and a half folio columns long, was Joseph Sherman. The text given here is a revised, corrected and expanded version of both the Introduction (pp. 1-15) to his volume of South African Yiddish stories in English translation entitled _From a Land Far Off_ (Foreword by Dan Jacobson. Selection and translation [with notes and glossary] by Joseph Sherman. Cape Town: Jewish Publications South Africa, 1987, xiii + 210pp.) and his 1990/91 Year Book entry. The extremely useful CD version of the _Encyclopaedia Judaica_ includes the Sherman additions on Yiddish and Hebrew in the South Africa: Literature entry. It will be noted that not all author birth and death dates have been given in the essay. It will be appreciated if some reader can supply this missing information. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 July 1999 From: Joseph Sherman Subject: South African literature in Yiddish and Hebrew South African Literature in Yiddish and Hebrew by Joseph Sherman From 1881 onwards the steady influx of Yiddish-speaking immigrants escaping to South Africa from poverty and discrimination in Tsarist Eastern Europe enormously increased the size and composition of South Africa's existing Jewish population, until then mainly comprised of British and German Jews. Many of these new immigrants, most of whom came from Lithuania, worked towards establishing an active Yiddish press and laid the foundations for the subsequent development of an indigenous South African Yiddish literature. 1. Yiddish Newspapers and Journals The pioneer of Yiddish journalism in South Africa was the professional belletrist, Nehemiah Dov Ber Hoffmann [Nekhemye Dov-Ber Hofman] (1860-1928), who arrived in Cape Town in 1889 amazingly enough carrying in his luggage a complete set of Hebrew-Yiddish typeface, the first in the land. Moving up to the Transvaal in 1890, he founded South Africa's first Yiddish weekly, _Der Afrikaner Izraelit_ (The African Israelite), which unfortunately lasted only six months. Returning to the Cape, Hoffmann started a second weekly entitled _Ha-Or_ (The Light), which survived from April 1895 to July 1897. Over a period of some seventeen years, Hoffmann published various short-lived Yiddish newspapers with the assistance of several partners, the most important of whom was David Goldblatt [Dovid Goldblat] (1866-1945), who had arrived in Cape Town in 1898. Goldblatt independently founded South Africa's most successful Yiddish weekly, _Der Yidisher Advokat_ (The Jewish Advocate), which appeared regularly from the end of September 1904 until 5 June 1924 and was recognised by the government as an official newspaper. N. D. Hoffmann remained one of its regular contributors until Goldblatt emigrated to the United States. Hoffmann's major contribution to the development of Yiddish literature in South Africa was his volume of memoirs, _Seyfer Hazikhroynes_ (Book of Memoirs), the first full-length Yiddish book to be printed in South Africa, published in 1916. Divided into three parts, it described the author's experiences in Europe, America (in Hebrew), and Africa. Hoffmann's account of the hardships experienced in the interior by the travelling Jewish peddler (smous) was the first appearance in South African Yiddish literature of what was to become one of its major themes. His first-hand impressions of the relationship between the Jewish smous and the Afrikaner farmers with whom he traded have often been quoted in historical analyses of early South African Jewish history, although recent research has revealed the degree to which they are heavily romanticized. Yiddish weekly newspapers before World War 2 were generally short-lived because the poor who desired to read them could not afford to sponsor them, while the wealthy, who could, were firmly committed to rapid acculturation. The legitimacy of Yiddish as a European language had moreover been repeatedly called in question by successive governments anxious to restrict Jewish immigration to South Africa, and many Yiddish-speaking Jews already established in the country were only too willing to abandon their mother tongue in favour of English. Added to this was the technical difficulty of acquiring linotype machines and trained compositors. In the 1920s two Jewish firms in Johannesburg undertook piecework Yiddish printing, but handsetting from loose type on old machines proved hopelessly uneconomical. Despite such difficulties, however, between 1920 and 1948 six books of short stories and essays and four volumes of poetry were published locally. In addition the Yiddish press in South Africa steadily increased in both quality and quantity from the end of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, so that when a new Yiddish weekly, _Der Afrikaner_ (The African), was founded in Johannesburg in 1911 by Solomon [Shloyme] Fogelson (d. 1920), there were at least three flourishing Yiddish periodicals being published at the same time. Fogelson's newspaper survived for over twenty years, developing the Yiddish sketch and short story beyond anything previously achieved in Yiddish in South Africa. In 1932, _Der Afrikaner_ was taken over by and incorporated into a new weekly, the _Afrikaner Yidishe Tsaytung_ (The African Jewish Newspaper), under the direction of Boris Gershman. When Gershman died in 1953, the newspaper was bought by Levi Shalit (1916-1994) in partnership with Shmarya Levin (d. 1965), steadily building up its own press and maintaining a permanent qualified staff. At its peak, the paper had a weekly readership of 3000, attracted extensive advertising, and carried regular contributions from distinguished overseas writers. Although declining readership eventually forced its closure in 1983, during the thirty years in which Shalit was its editor the Afrikaner Yidishe Tsaytung stimulated Yiddish writing throughout the country. Apart from newspapers, a steady supply of short-lived but robust Yiddish journals were produced by various Jewish socialist groups. Between 1912 and 1939 organizations such as the Gezerd, acronym for the Gezelshaft far Erdarbet (Society for Agricultural Labour), Po'alei Zion (Workers of Zion), and the Yidisher Arbeter Klub (Jewish Workers' Club) all produced their own Yiddish-language periodicals. The literary journal which did most to stimulate local creative writing at this time, however, was _Dorem Afrike_ (South Africa), the organ of the Yidisher Literarisher Farayn (Jewish Literary Union), which appeared first in nine issues between 1922-1923 and then reappeared as a monthly from July 1928 to January 1931. Hitler's destruction of Eastern European Jewry understandably awakened a fresh determination in South African Yiddish speakers to preserve their cultural heritage by uniting old pre-war political factions in a common cause. A national conference of all Yiddish clubs in Southern Africa met in Johannesburg in May 1947 and established Di Dorem Afrikaner Yidishe Kultur Federatsye (The South African Yiddish Cultural Federation) with a monthly organ, a new _Dorem Afrike_, the first issue of which appeared in September 1948 under the editorship of Melekh Bakalczuk [Meylekh Bakaltshuk] (d.1953). This journal appeared monthly for over ten years, with 90 per cent of its original short stories and poems, as well as essays on a wide range of literary, historical, and sociological subjects, originating in South Africa. In 1954, after Bakalczuk's death, the journal's editorship passed to David Wolpe [Dovid Volpe] (b.1908) who held it until 1970, when he was succeeded by Zalman Levy [Zalmen Levi] (b.1910) who continued to run it until _Dorem Afrike_ finally ceased publication in 1992. By the end of the 1950s increasing costs and declining readership compelled the journal to appear bi-monthly; with the financial support of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies it survived for nearly forty years longer. At the time of its closure, _Dorem Afrike_ still commanded an international circulation of 800 copies per issue. This valuable series is now internationally much sought after. In 1949 Pacific Press and its ancillary, Kayor Publishers, were founded by Nathan Berger [Nosn Berger] (1910-1989) and Joseph Borwein [Yoysef Borvayn] (d. 1971). Between them, Kayor and the Kultur Federatsye inaugurated the most productive era in South African Yiddish publishing. The Kultur Federatsye vigorously pursued a multi-faceted Yiddish cultural programme, to serve the expression of which Kayor acquired a wide range of Yiddish and Hebrew type-fonts, the services of a first-class compositor, and up-to-date technical expertise. Between them, cultural federation and publisher established South Africa as a significant centre of Yiddish creativity, a remarkable achievement given the steadily declining numbers of native speakers of Yiddish in South Africa. Between 1949 and 1962, Kayor, in association with the Kultur Federatsye, published six collections of essays and short stories, six volumes of poetry, and one novel. 2. Authors and Themes in South African Yiddish Fiction In a complete break with the Jewish religious and cultural tradition of Eastern Europe, economic necessity and the disproportionate ratio between immigrant men and women made the old bachelor a normative figure in early South African Jewish life. For some single men, marriages were arranged in Lithuania and brides were sent out to alien Africa to spend their lives with men they had neither met nor seen before. Men who had married in Eastern Europe before they immigrated often could not afford to bring out their wives and children to join them in Africa. Given the endemic scarcity of eligible Jewish women, there was considerable intermarriage both with Afrikaans and black women in country districts. Sensitively treated, all these matrimonial complications, common in the immigrant experience, became recurring subject matter in the emerging Yiddish literature of South Africa. Many Yiddish-speaking immigrant Jews went to work in the exploitative store-cum-eating houses which the mining companies granted by concession to entrepreneurs, mostly Jewish themselves, who were wealthy enough to run them. There they lived solitary lives, working long hours in unhygienic conditions. To describe these places and those who worked in them, Yiddish speakers created two neologisms which entered the language as unique South Africanisms: _kaffireater_, the place, from the pejorative racist English title `kaffir eating-house'; and _kaffireatnik_, a noun of agency formed by adding the -nik Slavic agency ending. The kaffireatnik became one of the stock figures of South African Yiddish literature, because his role and plight were so commonplace. The problem of adaptation, and the ensuing conflict between traditional ways of Jewish life and the demands of social accommodation, are another chief focus of the writing. The complexities of interracial and intercultural conflict are often portrayed with insight. The ambivalent relationship between Afrikaners and Jews recurs in different forms, but inevitably it is the alienating and bitter gulf between black and white which most profoundly touches sensitive observers. The most important early writers in South African Yiddish literature were Hyman Polsky [Haymen Polski] (1871-1944), Morris Hoffman [Moris Hofman] (1885-1940), and Jacob Mordecai Sherman [Yankev-Mortkhe Sherman] (1885-1958). Polsky, a photographer by profession, became a journalist on Fogelson's Yiddish weekly in 1912, and took over the paper as both publisher and editor when Fogelson died eight years later. He maintained it virtually single-handedly until it was bought by Gershman in 1933, after which he remained its chief contributor until his own death. So prolific an output was inevitably uneven in quality, but in 1936 Polsky made a selection of his best stories. Published in Warsaw under the title _In Afrike_ (In Africa) in the summer of 1939, virtually the entire print run was destroyed with the outbreak of war; the volume was subsequently republished in South Africa in 1952. Its pieces follow the moralising tradition of the earliest Yiddish literature, comprising monologues in which struggling artisans speak out their hearts, sketches in which an irresolvable moral dilemma is posed as a challenge to the reader's sensibilities, and linear stories in which socio-political and economic crises disrupt or destroy the difficult lives of small people. The best of Polsky's work is direct and poignant without lapsing into sentimentality. Morris Hoffman, a man of wide culture and learning, spent most of his life as a shopkeeper in the Little Karoo, writing with equal fluency in both Yiddish and Hebrew. He published a major anthology of poetry in Yiddish, _Voglungsklangen_ (Songs of a Wanderer), in Warsaw in 1935. After his death, his widow published a selection of his best Yiddish stories under the title _Unter Afrikaner Zun_ (Under the African Sun) in 1951. Although he repeatedly expressed strong dislike for the arid wastes of the Karoo, Hoffman acquired there that realistic, unsentimental view of immigrant Jewish life in South Africa which pervades his fiction. Although often melodramatic in plotting and stereotyped in characterization, Hoffman's tales vividly capture the difficulties of living as a Jew in rural districts dominated by poor Afrikaners whom the Depression and Nazi ideology turned increasingly antisemitic in the decade preceding World War 2. Apart from contributing extensively to all the country's Yiddish publications and editing several periodicals himself, J.M. Sherman worked in almost all literature genres. He developed a keen interest in the history and literature of Afrikaans, the first language he learnt after his emigration to South Africa in 1903, seeing in its struggle for recognition and literary maturity a kinship with the vicissitudes of Yiddish. In 1936 he published a full-length study in Yiddish entitled _Di Afrikaans Shprakh un Literatur_ (The Afrikaans Language and Literature). In his own writing, he produced a wide range of poems and short stories, the best of which were selected for a volume entitled _Oyf Transvaler Erd_ (On Transvaal Soil) and published in 1949. Sherman went on to write South Africa's first Yiddish novel, _In Land fun Gold un Zunshayn_ (In the Land of Land of Gold and Sunshine), a fictionalised autobiography, which appeared in Johannesburg in 1956. Pervaded with both irony and compassion, Sherman's fiction depicted the ambivalent relationships between Afrikaner and Jew in farming communities, the tense sensitivities at play between black and white in an increasingly racist society, and the intensifying isolation of immigrant Jews attempting to resist acculturation. Black-White relations, and the bitter humiliations endured by black people in the face of institutionalised racial discrimination, were powerfully drawn by Richard [Rakhmiel] Feldman (1897-1968), whose passionate social concern made him prominent in Transvaal labour movements. He sat as a member of the South African Labour Party in the Transvaal Provincial Council from 1943-1954. Feldman's volume of short stories, _Shvarts un Vays_ (Black and White), first published in South Africa in 1934, was republished in New York twenty years later. The intensity of the protest articulated in these stories has justly earned them recognition and appreciation as among the most scathing indictments of racism in South African Yiddish literature. Their purpose is overtly polemical, aiming to awaken the outrage of Jewish readers by recalling for them their own history of racial victimisation. Although Nehemiah Levinsky [Nekhemye Levinski] (1901-1957) left only one volume of stories, _Der Regn hot Farshpetikt_ (The Rains Came Late), posthumously published in 1959, he proved himself a writer of insight and compassion. He too observed the ironic interplay between immigrant Jews and South African people of colour, showing sensitive appreciation of the centrality of their traditional culture to both Jews and Africans, and pained awareness of the spiritual price exacted on both by the inexorable processes of urbanisation. Outraged by the steady intensification of the apartheid laws and profoundly shocked by the extent to which a racist society poisoned equally both its victims and its beneficiaries, Levinsky's feelings found expression in tales which were, by his own description "race stories", typified by multivalent characterisation and an avoidance of glib solutions. Yiddish writing in South Africa did not lack wit. The most prolific of its humorists was Hersh Shisler (1903-1978), whose amusing, often flippant weekly newspaper sketches were keenly enjoyed. During his lifetime, Shisler selected and published seven volumes of these between 1937 and 1974, as well as editing a quarterly newspaper, _Yontev Bleter_ (Holiday Pages), which appeared regularly for over twenty years between 1955-1978. A keener South African Yiddish satirist was Hyman Ehrlich [Haymen Erlikh] (1888-1981), a selection of whose biting sketches appeared in 1950 under the title _Ot Azoy_ (That's the Way). In 1956 he published a book of childhood reminiscences entitled _Dankere_, the name of the small village in Russia in which he had grown up. A gifted short-story writer was Samuel Leibowitz [Shmuel Leybovits] (1912-1976). Although a regular contributor to most of the leading South African Yiddish periodicals, Leibowitz did not live to publish a selection from his considerable output in book form, and his work must be sought in a variety of Yiddish journals and a small selection of anthologies. Other talented writers, with more limited outputs, were Leibl Yudaiken [Leybl Yudayken] (1904-1989), Wolf Rybko [Volf Ribko] (1896-1955), and Chaim Sacks [Khayem Zaks] (1891-1981). Although all three published their stories in _Dorem Afrike_, only Rybko and Sacks had their work collected in a volume each. Rybko, a schoolteacher, was equally at home in Hebrew and divided his literary activity between both languages; after his death, a committee of his friends published a selection of his stories in a bilingual volume entitled _Oyf di Pleynen fun Afrike_ (On the Plains of Africa) which appeared in 1961. In 1969 Sacks, a successful businessman, published a series of vignettes of life in his father's rabbinical household in Poland under the title _S'iz Geven a Mol_ (Once Upon a Time). One of the most versatile and prolific of South African Yiddish writers was Mendel Tabatznik [Mendl Tabatshnik] (1894-1975). Teacher, singer, actor, theatre director, and finally businessman, Tabatznik produced South Africa's second Yiddish novel, _Kalman Bulan_, a sprawling family saga which, over three volumes published between 1968 and 1971, looks realistically, although often sentimentally, at the disrupting processes of assimilation into white South African society. A variety of Tabatznik's stories and essays, published in _Dorem Afrike_, examine various aspects of Jewish life in South Africa, while his two volumes of memoirs and two volumes of poems have the charm of simplicity without pretentiousness. 3. Memoirs and History Memoirs have always been a chief feature of all Yiddish literature, and fifteen volumes of this genre have appeared in South Africa. The motivation to produce these varied: some writers never really adjusted to life in the harsh environment of Africa, and looked back with nostalgia to that world they had left behind in Eastern Europe, so savagely obliterated by the Holocaust. The horrors of the Holocaust itself were movingly chronicled in two Yisker-bikher (Books of Remembrance) edited by South Africans and published in Johannesburg: _Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok un Umgegnt_ (Remembrance Book of Rakishok and Environs) edited by Mendel Tabatznik (1952), and _Yisker-bukh Khelm_ (Chelm Remembrance Book), edited by Hersh Shisler (1954). Personal Holocaust experiences were movingly chronicled by two survivors who emigrated to South Africa after World War 2: Levi Shalit in two volumes of essays, _A Yid in der Velt_ (A Jew in the World) (1972) and _Tsaytn Dertseylen_ (Time's Tales) (1974) and David Wolpe, in several stories which have appeared in South Africa, Israel and the United States. Foremost among South African Yiddish writers of non-fiction was the polemicist, researcher, and historian Leibl Feldman (1896-1975). Not content with vigorously describing his own early adventures as a diamond digger, Feldman, a passionately committed Yiddishist with strong Marxist leanings, became the earliest chronicler of South African Jewish life. He published five books of history, providing indispensable documentation of early Jewish settlement in South Africa, particularly in the ostrich boom town of Oudtshoorn (Cape) and the gold rush city of Johannesburg (Transvaal) at the turn of the century. He also investigated the history of the Indians in South Africa, and published a controversial essay of generally unfavourable impressions after several visits to the newly-founded State of Israel. 4. South African Yiddish Poetry Yiddish literature in South Africa expressed itself most profoundly in poetry, a genre in which women particularly excelled. Impressive anthologies came from Chaya [Khaye] Fedler (d. 1953), Rachiel Levin-Brainin (d. 1980), and Leah [Leye] Benson-Rink (ca. 1892-1974). Sarah Eisen [Sore Ayzen] (1910-1981) [Kagan, LYS:d. 1982]*, equally at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, wrote sensitive lyrics in both languages. Although her subjects ranged freely from nostalgic memories of Eastern Europe to impressions of Israel and vivid pictures of life in Africa, her most memorable poems are simple statements of a woman's grief; a comprehensive selection of her verse appeared in 1965 in the volume _Geklibene Lider un Poemes_ (Selected Lyrics and Poems). Hyman Ehrlich turned to charming children's verses in his 1964 anthology _Vaksn, Vaksn, Blimelekh_ (Grow, Little Flowers, Grow); his tones grew more sombre in the lyrics of two later volumes, _In Shpigl fun Umru_ (In the Mirror of Disquiet) (1976) and _Shtile Vegn_ (Quiet Paths) (1979). In 1966 Nathan Berger published an epic poem in rhyming couplets entitled _Baym Rand fun Gold_ (On the Gold Reef), to celebrate Johannesburg's seventieth anniversary. South Africa's two finest Yiddish lyricists were Michael Ben Moshe [ne Greysman] (1911-1983) and David Fram (1903-1988). Through verse characterised by terseness and vivid, telling metaphor, Ben Moshe explored the anguish of loneliness in three major anthologies, _Opris_ (Fragments) (1949), _In Tog Vos Fargeyt_ (In the Dwindling Day) (1952), and _In Likht fun Ovnt_ (In the Gleam of Night) (1971). His poetic gift and deep learning made Ben Moshe one of South Africa's finest literary critics and researchers. When Fram emigrated to South Africa in 1927, he had already established a reputation in Lithuania as a young poet of exceptional promise, having published widely in the leading Yiddish literary journals of Vilna, Warsaw and New York. The earliest verse he wrote in South Africa sharply contrasted the gentle landscapes of the Eastern Europe he had left behind with the harsh extremes of the African climate and landscape, physical features which seemed to him paralleled in the rival ambitions of English- and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans, united only by a common determination to maintain white hegemony over the country's indigenous blacks. Inevitably Fram's poetic concerns underwent profound changes in Africa, and his first major anthology, Lider un Poemes (Lyrics and Poems), published in Vilna in 1931 under the sponsorship of a Johannesburg committee, reflected the growing unease he felt at the injustice and cruelty he saw all around him. By far the most cosmopolitan of South African Yiddish writers, Fram numbered among his closest friends some of the country's leading painters and sculptors as well as poets and writers in both English and Afrikaans. He steadily determined to reflect the pulsating vibrancy of tribal Africa in his verse, to enrich Yiddish literature, as he himself remarked, "with an entire continent", an undertaking which led him from the lyric to the epic mode. His experience of Africa was inevitably subordinated to the terrifying events of the Holocaust, however. In London between 1947 and 1948 Fram published two epic poems, _Efsher_ (Perhaps) and _Dos Letste Kapitl_ (The Last Chapter), both in different ways expressing his utter desolation. _Efsher_ is an autobiographical charting of Fram's pervasive spiritual disquiet; _Dos Letste Kapitl_, probably his masterpiece, is a unique sanctification of the martyrs of the Holocaust. Later Fram returned to African themes in the long poems "Matabela", "Matatulu", and "Matumba", all published in _Dorem Afrike_ during the 1950s. To commemorate his eightieth birthday in 1983, two of these long African poems and all the lyrics he had written since the war were published in a jubilee anthology entitled _A Shvalb Oyfn Dakh_ (A Swallow on the Roof). South African Yiddish verse continued to achieve international distinction in the work of David Wolpe (b. 1908) whose substantial modernist anthology, _A Volkn un a Veg_ (A Cloud and a Way), published in 1978, was awarded the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish Literature in Jerusalem in 1983. Wolpe's themes range widely, from his experiences as a survivor of Dachau to his revulsion at South African racial discrimination, and from surrealistic visions of the mine-dumps of Johannesburg to tender expressions of parental love. Wolpe's verse is allusive and evocative, employing a rich vocabulary and experimental versification. In the last decade, Wolpe has turned to prose, producing two volumes of insightful literary criticism and a substantial book of short stories. 5. Yiddish Drama in South Africa Yiddish plays were staged in South Africa from 1895, but were mainly written by overseas playwrights. Most of the local work produced between 1916 and 1954 was light entertainment, written for the moment and lacking serious purpose; it was performed from typescript and if published at all appeared in ephemeral local journals. Only Hirsch Brill (1891-1925) attempted to deal with serious dramatic themes and published two collections which regrettably survive only as catalogue entries in major libraries. Richard Feldman wrote a short play entitled "Tryers", dramatising the difficulties encountered by immigrant Eastern European Jews in eking out a livelihood through trade in the earliest days of Johannesburg's gold rush. Although this play was published in a volume together with three short stories in 1954, there is no evidence that it was ever performed. Steadily declining communal interest and commercial competition from the English theatre slowly forced all Yiddish drama from South Africa's boards. 6. Hebrew Writing in South Africa Despite the fact that South Africa's Jewish educational leaders firmly committed themselves to the Zionist ideal of privileging Hebrew over Yiddish, and were consistently hostile to Yiddish both before and after World War 2, over a period of almost a century (1895-1990), Hebrew writers in South Africa produced only three volumes of poetry, one novelette, one volume of memoirs, a biography, six volumes of rabbinical sermons and essays, and one translation from Yiddish. The reason is obvious -- where Yiddish was the mother-tongue of Eastern European immigrants, alive in their mouths and in their homes, modern Hebrew was an artificial import into South Africa: opportunities to use it were extremely limited, and all endeavours to do so were of necessity lifeless and contrived in a community striving to acculturate itself in an English and Afrikaans-speaking country. Not surprisingly, the most remarkable South African achievement in Hebrew came from Judah Leib Landau [Yude-Leyb Landoy] (1866-1942), who arrived from Galicia via Vienna and Manchester to assume a rabbinical and teaching position in South Africa in 1903. Between 1884, when he was only eighteen years old, and 1923, he published eight five-act epic dramas on mainly historical themes. These plays, two of which were subsequently staged in Johannesburg, were all published overseas. Only one of them dealt with the life and problems of Africa; the rest were concerned with the problems of Westernization and assimilation which troubled Landau all his life and which he directly confronted in the many essays he contributed on the life of South African Jews during the thirty years in which he served as Chief Rabbi of Johannesburg, an office he assumed in 1912 and held until his death. The first Hebrew journal published in South Africa was the literary- cultural periodical _Basad_** which appeared monthly between 1932 and 1934 when it was absorbed into a new Hebrew journal called _Barkai_ (Morning Star). This lively journal, containing essays and vigorous polemical material about the Hebrew language and the politics associated with the emergent State of Israel appeared on a regular monthly basis for twenty-seven years, until April 1962, when it became a bi-weekly, introducing essays and correspondence in both English and Afrikaans alongside its Hebrew contributions in a desperate attempt to maintain a viable readership. This periodical lasted for over forty years, until 1977, a remarkable achievement owing solely to the dedicated and virtually single-handed efforts of its founder-editor Jack Rubik who, in the face of indifference and pressing financial needs, continued to produce it regularly until his death in 1978. The journal died with him, as the South African Histadrut Ivrit (Hebrew Union) declined to take it over. No better proof can be found of the failure to make Hebrew a living language in South Africa, since the South African Histadrut Ivrit had close links with its parent body in Israel, and was theoretically committed to the propagation and advancement of Hebrew education in South Africa. Instead, during the 1960s, after an absence of nearly thirty years, a monthly Hebrew supplement, the _Musaf Ivrit_, was reintroduced into one of the Jewish community's English-language newspapers, the _Zionist Record_. This supplement existed more or less in competition with _Barkai_, and continued fitfully until 1987 when the financially bankrupt _Zionist Record_ ceased to exist. 7. South African Yiddish Literature in Translation Although with the passing of the generation for whom Yiddish was a mother tongue Yiddish literature is no longer produced in South Africa, the wide-ranging significance for historians, sociologists and literary critics of the considerable body of Yiddish writing in various genres they left behind is steadily being recognised. There has consequently been an increasing demand for the best of this material to be made available in English translation. The first representative selection of South African Yiddish stories in English translation was published in 1987 under the title _From a Land Far Off_. Edited and translated by Joseph Sherman with a foreword by Dan Jacobson, the volume attracted the attention of both the general and the scholarly reader, and has been quoted as original source material in several academic research projects. In 1989, an English translation of Leibl Feldman's _Oudtshoorn: Jerusalem of Africa_ was published in a lavishly illustrated, carefully annotated limited edition; this volume has become a much sought-after piece of Africana. A translation of sections of Nehemiah Dov Ber Hoffmann's _Memoirs_ is scheduled to appear, and further translations are planned of Leibl Feldman's history, _Jews in Johannesburg_, and Jacob Mordecai Sherman's pioneering Yiddish novel, _Land of Gold and Sunshine_. From the time it was first established in June 1941, South Africa's only Jewish cultural and academic journal, _Jewish Affairs_, has regularly carried translations of South African Yiddish poetry and short stories; some of these have appeared in Britain and the United States as well. Through the medium of translation, South African Yiddish scholars are happy to meet the enthusiastic international demand to make accessible its productive vein of Yiddish literature. This hitherto neglected body of material will undoubtedly contribute much to enlarging the perspective in which South Africa's multicultural and multi-lingual literature is viewed and understood. ---------- Notes -- L.P. *Kagan, LYS=Berl Kagan, _Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers_, New York, 1986. **The text reads _Basad_ which means 'in the stocks', an unlikely title for a journal. Could it be _bes"d_ ('With God's Help') or basade 'in the field' or _boser_ 'young grapes'? The journal is apparently rare. ______________________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ 03.012 Leonard Prager, editor Subscribers to _Mendele_ (see below) automatically receive _The Mendele Review_. Send "to subscribe" or change-of-status messages to: listproc@lists.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele mail postpone b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail ack c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele ****Getting back issues**** _The Mendele Review_ archives can be reached at: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele/tmrarc.htm