WEEKEND PROGRAM | An-sky: Jewish Writer, Russian Revolutionary

Start Date:
End Date:
Location:
Yiddish Book Center
1021 West Street
Amherst, MA 01002
United States


With Professor Gabriella Safran

Registration for this program is closed.

An-sky
Painting of An-sky by Leonid Pasternak ©Pasternak Trust
www.pasternak-trust.org 

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.

COURSE READING:

Professor Safran recommends that participants read several works by An-sky before the start of the program:

  • For lecture 1, An-sky’s stories “Mendl Turk,”  “Hunger,” and “Go Talk to a Goy”
  • For lecture 2, excerpts from his novel Pioneers: A Tale of Russian-Jewish Life in the 1880s
  • For lecture 3, An-sky’s play The Dybbuk (at least Act 1)
  • For lecture 4, excerpts from his non-fiction account, The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I

The short stories and play can all be found in The Dybbuk and Other Writings, which can be purchased at the Yiddish Book Center's online store. The excerpts from The Enemy at His Pleasure and Pioneers will be sent to registered participants as PDFs.

COST:

$300 for Yiddish Book Center members; $375 for nonmembers. Join or renew your membership now to take advantage of the member discount. Then return here to continue the registration process. Registration closes October 16.

Cancellation Policy: Cancellations by October 20, 2017, will be refunded, minus a $30 administration fee per registered participant. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide a refund for cancellations after October 20.

HOTEL INFORMATION:

Due to various university events happening in the Amherst area, hotels tend to fill up quickly, so we encourage you to make arrangements for accommodations as soon as possible. The local Holiday Inn Express (413-582-0002) and Econo Lodge (413-582-7077) are offering our participants discounted rates, pending availability at the time you call.

Please contact these hotels directly and mention that you are part of our event and would like the "Yiddish Book Center rate." If they have availability, they will give you the discounted rate.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE:

Friday, October 27

5:30 p.m. — Check in

6:00 p.m. — Shabbos dinner

7:30 p.m. — Lecture 1: "Finding a Voice in Russian and Yiddish"

Saturday, October 28

10:00 a.m. — Coffee and nosh

10:30 a.m. — Lecture 2: "From Moses to Marx: Adapting Talmudic Study for Radical Purposes"

12:00 p.m. — Lunch and free time

2:00 p.m. — Lecture 3: "The Dybbuk, the Golem, and the Ethnographer"

3:30 p.m. — Tour the Yiddish Book Center's exhibits and book repositories

4:30 p.m. — Film: The Dybbuk (Poland, 1937, 123 minutes, Yiddish with English subtitles)

6:30 p.m. — Dinner

Sunday, October 29

10:00 a.m. — Coffee and nosh

10:30 a.m. — Lecture 4: "Broken Tablets: Documenting War and Revolution"

12:00 p.m. — End of program

Optional: 2:00 p.m. — Talk with Rose Waldman about her translation of An-sky's Pioneers: The First Breach (book one of the Pioneers series). This event is free and open to the public. To learn more, click here.

The lectures in this weekend program will be filmed and presented in future online courses offered by the Yiddish Book Center. 

FACULTY BIO:

Gabriella Safran, the Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies at Stanford University, teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her biography, Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk’s Creator, S. An-sky, was published by Harvard University Press in 2010. She is also the author and editor of prize-winning books on how Russian novels describe Jewish assimilation and on the relationship between Jewish literature and anthropology. Safran is now finishing a book on listening, transcription, and verbal imitation across class lines in the mid-nineteenth-century Russian Empire and beginning another book about the international pre-history of the Jewish joke.  

Questions? Contact Education Coordinator Sylvia Peterson at education@yiddishbookcenter.org or 413-256-4900, ext. 143.

We're sorry, the deadline for buying tickets for this event has passed.