The Russian and Yiddish writer, ethnographer, and revolutionary S. An-sky (born Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) wrote The Dybbuk, which became the cornerstone of the Jewish theater in both Hebrew and Yiddish, during a time of devastating war and violent revolutions. Why has this disturbing, mystical play spoken so compellingly to twentieth- and twenty-first-century Jews and non-Jews? How is it connected to the troubling history An-sky witnessed? Spend the weekend exploring this writer’s life and work and thinking about the connections between political crisis and modern Jewish creativity.
Gabriella Safran,
Professor in Jewish Studies at Stanford University, will lead this weekend program, which includes four lectures, a film screening, kosher meals, and plenty of great conversation. See the full program schedule below.
LECTURES:
Lecture 1: "Finding a Voice in Russian and Yiddish"
Scrappy, self-educated, and the child of a poor single mother, An-sky, like many others in his generation of late-nineteenth-century shtetl Jews, learned how to take advantage of whatever opportunities came his way to make his voice heard. In the process, he adopted his strange, hyphenated pseudonym, and he became an effective listener, someone to whom everyone wanted to confess.
Lecture 2: "From Moses to Marx: Adapting Talmudic Study for Radical Purposes"
Written while he lived in Switzerland among radical students from the Russian Empire (including Lenin), An-sky’s novel Pioneers tells the story of runaway yeshiva students who bear a strong resemblance to the real-life radicals the author knew–living away from home, trying on new selves, and playfully drawing on kabbalah and rabbinic word games to justify their ideologies.
Lecture 3: "The Dybbuk, the Golem, and the Ethnographer"
The Dybbuk came out of An-sky’s experience as an ethnographer recording Jewish traditions in the Russian Pale of Settlement, as well as his time as a journalist covering the Beilis blood libel trial in Kiev, in which a Jewish worker, falsely accused of murdering a Christian child to use his blood in matzo, was barely acquitted at the end of notorious legal proceedings. It’s a dark play, because this was a dark time for Jews and others.
Lecture 4: "Broken Tablets: Documenting War and Revolution"
As an aid worker to the embattled Jewish communities of Austria-Hungary at the start of World War I, An-sky saw tremendous violence; as an official in the Provisional Government established after the Russian revolution of February 1917, he tasted power. He watched his enemies and some of his own friends justify brutal action in the name of their political ideals. His war memoir and his final writings show that he continued to believe that he could listen and speak effectively to both his revolutionary comrades and his opponents.