Wild Animals I Have Known

Apr 13, 2017

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

In the years between World War I and World War II, Yiddish children’s literature underwent a dramatic blossoming in areas which had formerly been part of the Russian Empire. No longer were Jewish publishers and writers in Poland and the Baltic countries subject to tsarist censorship. Secular Jewish education was now legal and new schools in which Yiddish was the language of instruction fostered a new generation of Yiddish readers. Even in the Soviet Union, there was a short period of creativity for Yiddish literature, theater, and education before the Stalinist regime began a campaign to suppress Jewish culture.

There were many original Yiddish works for children published in the 1920s and 30s. But one can imagine that writers and publishers might have had trouble keeping up with a voracious readership. So it was also an era in which Jewish children were increasingly exposed to Yiddish translations of children’s literature in other languages.

Among the books now being digitized by the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections project is this set of booklets from the YIVO Library in New York. Published in 1920 by Dos Bukh (The Book) in Bialystok, Poland, each is a translation of a chapter from British-American author Ernest Thompson Seton’s 1898 Wild Animals I Have Known, the most popular of his many books of animal fiction. Seton (1860-1946) was also one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. This translation, by S. Kantor, was part of a series sponsored by the Central Yiddish School Organization of Poland, Lithuania, and White Russia, a precursor to TSYSHO, the organization founded a year later which maintained a network of Yiddish schools in Poland.

Cover of Ernest Thompson Seton’s *Zilberflek (Silverspot): The Story of a Crow.*
Translated by S. Kantor. Bialystok: Dos Bukh, 1920. (YIVO Library)

Cover of Ernest Thompson Seton’s *Lobo, the King of Currumpaw.*
Translated by S. Kantor. Bialystok: Dos Bukh, 1920. (YIVO Library)

Cover of Ernest Thompson Seton’s *Bingo, the Story of a Dog.*
Translated by S. Kantor. Bialystok: Dos Bukh, 1920. (YIVO Library).
(In the original English, the title is *Bingo, the Story of My Dog*.)

Somewhat oddly, in the Yiddish translation the series has been redubbed Life of the Animals: no mention of the fact that they’re “wild” or that the author is on intimate terms with them. Did the publishers worry that vilde khayes (wild animals) would be too frightening a topic for Jewish children?

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.