Israel Aksenfeld


Israel Aksenfeld (born 1787 in Niemirov, died in 1868 in Paris) is a Jewish writer and playwright. The author of dramas and novels, one of the first writers writing in Yiddish. His works have gone into the classics of creativity written in that language.

He was born in Niemirov in the central part of present-day Ukraine around 1787. He grew up in a rich family, in a Hasidic environment and studied under Rabbi Nachman of Braclav (founder of the so-called Braclavski Chassidys), and also became acquainted with Natan of Braclav (also known as Rabbi Noson). At an early age he had arranged an arranged marriage with the daughter of one Chassidic of Braclav, which soon ended with a divorce and the departure of Israel from that group. He went to the representatives of the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment - Haskali. He studied in the fields of law, science and literature. He also studied Russian and German. During the Napoleonic War of 1812, he collaborated with the Russians (supplying them), on which he made a fortune. He then traveled to the western Polish lands until he landed in eastern Germany. to Leipzig. A stay among German Jews strengthened his belief in masculinity. In 1824, after his second marriage, he settled in Odessa. He became a lawyer, notary and translator. His house soon became a center of urban, Jewish intelligentsia. Israel began writing Yiddish in the 1920s or 1930s (he was one of the few nineteenth-century writers in that language). He became interested in German, Russian and other European literature. He was particularly fascinated by the Pikarean novel, or Laotian (probably his favorite song was The Blinds of Alain-René Lesage) and the bourgeois drama (here the favorite is Hamburgische Dramaturgie Gotthold Ephraim Lessing).

Aksenfeld wrote many manuscripts at the time: dramas and novels, however, because of the ban on publishing Yiddish literature in Tsarist Russia (under Nicholas I - 1825-1855), he could not print them. Shortly before the abolition of the ban in 1861, he managed to publish a relatively short novel Dos shterntikhl (The Headband) in Leipzig, which is considered the first published novel in Yiddish. In 1862 he published the drama Der ershter yidisher recruit ("First Jewish Soldier"), also in Germany. In 1864 the intellectuals in Odessa decided to publish his work. But it was too late for the wrathful and old writer. He spent the last year of his life in Paris with a son who was a professor of medicine. After his death in 1868, a group of intellectuals from Odessa associated with his creative background decided to continue to publish his works. In 1869, someone named Sde announced in the pages of Kol mevaser ("Herold") that Moyshe Zhvif, Aba Feldman and Gedalye Eynemer had engaged in the publication of Aksenfeld's works. In 1867, Man un borrowed, shvester un brider ("Husband and Wife, Sisters and Brothers") was published. Two others: Di genarte velt and Kabtsn-oysher shpil in 1870. And in 1872, an additional poem Two Poems (in Russian translation). The rest of the manuscripts were probably destroyed during the pogrom in Odessa in 1871.

Aksenfeld's writing has at least three characteristics that make them the leading representative of Yiddish literary classics. The first of them is his great talent for playing idiomatic Yiddish speech. His greatest asset was his sensitivity to spoken language, which he portrayed in dialogues and monologues of heroes. The second characteristic was the rich knowledge of the life and folklore of Eastern European Jews (especially Ukrainian). The third was the ability to bravely express the economic and social conditions of the Jewish life. Blibliography

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