A Package of Jewish Suffering: Hebrew Classic Reimagined for Yiddish-speakers

Sep 29, 2016

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

“Every chapter of Shevet Yehudah describes so many troubles, such a lump of suffering, such a big package of torments, that the reader will say, ‘Dayenu! Enough!’ A feeling of fear besets the reader…”

These are the words that Yehoshua Mezakh (1834-1917) chooses to introduce readers to his 1901 Yiddish translation of Solomon ibn Verga’s classic Hebrew work Shevet Yehudah (The Staff of Judah), first printed in Turkey in the mid-16th century and then reprinted many times and in many different places. The book, a chronicle of persecutions of Jews in different lands, but especially in Spain, is an example of proto-historical rabbinical writing, which included not only works that sought to record events in Jewish history, but also genealogies and biographies of important rabbis and rabbinical dynasties.

Mezakh published his Yiddish translation of Shevet Yehudah in installments. This volume, entitled Nidkhe Yisroel (The Scattered of Israel), was printed by the famed Romm printing house in Vilna, and also had an additional publisher or sponsor: Khaym Mirman of Dvinsk (Latvia). The book includes several illustrations by an unidentified artist.

“A tyrannical ship captain inveigled Jewish children aboard his ship and their mothers gathered on
the shore to save their children.”

Mezakh was a prolific Hebrew and Yiddish writer born in Lithuania, near Kaunas. His entry in the Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur un prese prese un filologye (Biographical Dictionary of Yiddish Literature, Press, and Philology) reports that he was a maskil and failed businessman who gave himself up to literature early on (at first, mainly Hebrew literature) and began traveling from town to town, city to city. He finally settled down in Vilna, where he published over 600 booklets, mostly Yiddish translations of classic Hebrew works. As the entry notes, “They poured from him as if from his sleeves.” He published many of his works anonymously and often resorted to selling his books on his own. In his old age, he even had to deliver newspapers to make a living. He died during World War I, in the German occupation of Vilna. “He dropped dead in the middle of the street, it is believed.”

This book from the YIVO Library is one of the many Yiddish books now being digitized for YIVO’s Vilna Collections project. It was once part of the famed Strashun Jewish public library in Vilna.

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.