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Klitenik, Sh. 1904-1940. (Shmuel) , : MENDELE MOYKHER-SFORIM: TSU ZAYN HUNDERTSTN GEBURTSTOG (1836-1936)

Moskve: Farlag emes, 1936

Half cloth, 8vo. , 110 pages. 1st edition. With portraits and facsimiles. In Yiddish. Title in Russian on back cover. A biography of Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh) , known as the grandfather of Yiddish Literature, in honor of his 100th Birhthday. Mendele Moykher-Sforim; 1835–1917 was a “ Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh is acknowledged, almost universally, as the founder of modern artistic prose in Hebrew and Yiddish...As a writer, Abramovitsh launched his career quite ambitiously in four different directions. His presence in Hebrew literature was felt as early as 1860 when he created a scandal by attacking a literary miscellany edited by an older fellow maskil (Eli‘ezer Zweifel) . At the same time, he became known as a journalist and essayist. He dedicated much time to what he regarded then as his central project: preparation of scientific textbooks in Hebrew, of which the earliest was the first volume of Toldot ha-teva‘ (Natural History; 1862) ... Abramovitsh soon saw that another element had to be integrated into this synthesis: the Yiddish language. Spoken and understood by virtually all Jews in Eastern Europe, its use was dictated logically by the reality principle. Putting aside all other projects, Abramovitsh published his first Yiddish story in 1864, the novella Dos kleyne mentshele (lit. , both The Little Man and The Pupil [of the eye]) . A year later, he published “Dos vintshfingerl” (The Magic Ring) . Such projects as the launching in 1862 of the first Yiddish weekly magazine, Kol mevaser, undoubtedly encouraged his switch from Hebrew to Yiddish; nevertheless, the decision to do so was difficult for Abramovitsh. He knew that by adopting Yiddish he was crossing a cultural boundary, for as far as the proponents of the Haskalah were concerned, Yiddish was regarded as a language devoid of normative grammar, without cultural status, and unworthy of serious intellectual and literary use. Therefore, in publishing both stories, the author took every precaution to hide his identity. His first story was published anonymously in Kol mevaser, and presented as an authentic testament that had been entrusted to a real local book peddler, known by the name of Senderl, changed by the editor to Mendele, who was charged with the task of making the document public. The second story, published as a pamphlet, was signed with the acronym alef, yod, shin (ish, Hebrew for man) . It was offered to the public (whether seriously or not is unclear) by the same itinerant book peddler, Mendele, as an introduction to and advertisement for a forthcoming Yiddish text on the natural sciences...The veneration and celebration that attached itself to Abramovitsh was captured by the young Sholem Aleichem who, in 1888, dubbed him “the grandfather” of Yiddish literature. Furthermore, with many readers wrongly assuming that Abramovitsh’s chief fictional character, Mendele Moykher-Sforim, was a pen name, Mendele became a household intimate. The author’s heroic status was a consequence first and foremost of his artistic accomplishments. It was also facilitated by the rise of Jewish nationalism and the cultural function that Jewish literature appropriated for itself at the time. The perception of Yiddish was transformed from a mere jargon into a national language on a par with Hebrew. Abramovitsh, now the paragon of Yiddish–Hebrew bilingualism, maintained that for a Jewish writer, expression in both languages was like breathing through both nostrils. Thus, two “jubilee editions” of his life work were published, in Hebrew (1909–1912) and in Yiddish (1911–1913) ” (Miron, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe) . SUBJECT(S) Named Person: Mendele Mokher Sefarim, 1835-1917. OCLC lists only 4 copies worldwide (Library of Congress, Harvard, Univ. Penn, Indiana Univ. ) Light wear to spine and some pieces missing to edge of back cover. Good condition. (YID-17-16)

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