The literary development of Yekhiel Shraybman

This article examines the literary career of the last Bessarabian Yiddish writer of his generation Yekhiel Shraybman (1913–2005). His loss is still deeply felt by the Moldovan Jewish community as his life and writings embraced the country’s historic Jewish past. As his literary career was launched and developed in the Soviet Union his work, aesthetics and politics were affected by “Sovietisation,” a requirement of the Communist Party’s standards in relation to literature. Yet behind the ambivalent glamour of the title “Soviet writer,” he managed to remain a Jewish writer and leave behind a printed memory of his home shtetl, Rashkov. Keywords: Yekhiel ShraybmanBessarabiaRashkovSovetish HeymlandJewsSoviet UnionYiddish language and literature Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Marina Shraybman for her long‐standing support in this project. Marina continues publishing and preparing for publication her husband’s works (see bibliography). She is planning to publish Shraybman’s Complete Works. Marina has also participated in organising the writer’s memorial place in Kishinev’s Jewish Community Centre. A number of Shraybman’s letters are now in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, USA. I was given much help by Gennady Estraikh, who has not only shared his personal recollections of Shraybman’s career, but also supplied me with his forthcoming book manuscript Yiddish in the Cold War (forthcoming at Legenda). I am also very grateful to Elena Nosenko for checking the Yiddish originals of Shraybman’s texts. Notes 1. Shraybman died on 9 December 2005 (some sources incorrectly put 12 December as the date of his death). 2. For critical evaluation of his works see, for example, Hazin and Lahman, “A yiddisher shrayber in hayntike Moldova,” 12, 19; Remenik, “Masterstvo,” 320–8; Chobanu, “Un scriitor indragostit de viatsa,” 155–7; Sandler, “Slovo ob uchitele.” For a bibliography of the literature about Shraybman see Şpitalnic, “Evreii în literature, arta şi ştiinţa Moldovei,” 40–1; this catalogue also lists Shraybman’s publications in Yiddish, Moldovan and Russian up to 1994, 37–40. 3. For the purposes of this article many quotations from Shraybman’s works are taken from his writings published in Russian. 4. Shraybman, “Eyn harts” [“The Heart”], in Vaiter, 426. 5. Shraybman, “Sholom Khanahes,” in Yorn un reges, 11. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past, 46. There exists a well‐developed body of literature devoted to the literary and cultural constructions of shtetl, including two studies by Miron, A Traveller Disguised and The Image of the shtetl; Estraikh and Krutikov, The Shtetl: Image and Reality. For an example of the ethnographic representation of the shtetl see an important, yet seriously flawed, classic by Zborowski and Herzog, Life is With the People. See also Katz, The Shtetl: New Evaluations, a scholarly anthology that addresses the “myth versus reality” paradigm of the shtetl through examining the mythology, history, culture, literature of the shtetl in different historical periods. 8. Shraybman, “Kantor i ego pevchie,” in Syemnadtsatiletnie, 116. 9. Shraybman, “A dertseylung vegn porets andronake un leyb dem zeygermakher,” in Yorn un reges, 61. 10. For the discussion of the position of Jews in Romania and Romanian antisemitism see Iancu, Evreii Din România and Jews in Romania; Fischer‐Galati, “Fascism, Communism and the Jewish Question in Romania;” Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. 11. Shraybman, Syemnadtsatiletnie, 85. See also a historic account by Kopansky, Internatsionalnaia solidarnost s borboi trudiashchikhsia Bessarabii za vossoedinenie s sovetskoi rodinoi. 12. Tartakovsky, “Conflicting Holocaust narratives in Moldovan nationalist historical discourse.” 13. Ibid., 213. 14. See Estraikh, In Harness: The Yiddish Writers’ Romance with Communism. He provides an insightful and comprehensive account of the lives and times of the Soviet Jewish literati’s enchantment with communism from after the 1905 revolution to its height in the mid‐1930s. Shraybman was much influenced by the writings of such Soviet Yiddish communist notables as David Bergelson, Der Nister and David Hodshtein, Leyb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, Itsik Fefer, Moshe Litvakov, Yekhezkel Dobrushin, and Nokhum Oislender. Estraikh considers in his study how party politics influenced literary developments and aesthetics through geographic location – provincial versus urban – and shaped these Soviet writers’ artistic and political flowering and decline. 15. Shraybman, Dalyee, 95–6. For a comprehensive account of revolutionary movement among Bessarabian Jews see Bruchis, “The Jews in the Revolutionary Underground of Bessarabia and Their Fate after Its Annexation by the Soviet Union.” 16. Shraybman, “Libe,” in Vaiter, 342. 17. Shraybman, Dalyee, 129. 18. See Shraybman’s Yitsire un libe/Tvorenie i liubov‘. This book contains the writer’s humesh noveln (biblical novellas). 19. This novel is currently being prepared for publication in Romanian in a book format (forthcoming with Kartiia Moldovei). Shraybman’s wife is also preparing for publication the writer’s reminiscences of Jewish‐Romanian and other writers in commemoration of the centenary of his birth, under the title The Literary Portraits. 20. Soviet Jewish writers eyed their American pro‐communist counterparts; Shraybman was also no exception in wanting to follow the “communist” lead. 21. His novel Zibn yor mit zibn khadoshim contains much material about his participation in Bucharest’s Jewish literary milieu. 22. International Organisation of Aid to Revolutionary Fighters, founded in 1922. See Bruchis, “The Jews in the Revolutionary Underground of Bessarabia and Their Fate after Its Annexation by the Soviet Union.” 23. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 24. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 25. There is a large body of literature on the position of Jews in the Soviet Union and their communist agenda. See for example Ro’i and Beker, Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union; Frankel and Diner, Dark Times, Dire Decisions; Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics; Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils; L. Kochan, ed., The Jews in Soviet Russia Since 1917 (this collection contains an important essay by Shmeruk, “Yiddish Literature in the USSR”). 26. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 27. Shraybman, “In dem tog ven Rashkov iz gevorn sovetish,” in Yorn un reges, 61. 28. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 29. Ibid. 30. Although at the time of the Soviet takeover of Bessarabia, the main population spoke Romanian, Bessarabian Jews spoke Yiddish. 31. Fefer was accused of Trotskyism in the 1930s but was not executed. During the war he went with the actor Mikhoels to the States and other countries on behalf of the Jewish Anti‐Fascist Committee. On 12 August 1952 he was murdered in Stalin’s post‐war ethnic purges. 32. Shraybman and Moishe Altman were among the first Bessarabian Jewish writers to be admitted into the Union. 33. Shraybman, “Di leytenantke,” in Dray zumers: Dertzeylungen, 80. 34. Ibid. 35. Nakhimovsky, Russian‐Jewish Literature and Identity, 28–9. See an important collection edited by Gitelman, Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. 36. Shraybman, “A dertseylung vegn Sholom‐Aleykhem gelekhter,” in Vaiter, 280. 37. For a detailed analysis of state antisemitism in the USSR see for example a collection of essays edited by Kostyrchenko, Gosudarstvennyi anti‐Semitism v SSSR ot nachala do kulminatsii, 1938–1943. 38. Shraybman, “Vent,” in Dray zumers, 92. 39. Shraybman, “Khavele,” in Vse dni nedeli, 145–9. 40. Shraybman, “Khleb,” in Vse dni nedeli, 150–7. 41. Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948–1967, 87. 42. Shraybman, “Smekh Sholoma Aleikhema” (“Laughter of Shalom Aleichem”), in Vse dni nedeli, 134. It is the second version of the same story. 43. Nakhimovsky, Russian‐Jewish Literature and Identity, 198. 44. See for example Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina: vlast i antisemitism. 45. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 46. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 47. Shraybman, “Shnei,” Sovetish Heymland 5 (1979): 80. 48. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 49. Sicher, Jews in Russian Literature after the October Revolution, 215. 50. Shraybman, Ulitsa noastra: Povestiri. 51. Shraybman, Povestiri. 52. See Krutikov’s analysis of the consequent epoch of Soviet Jewish literature in Russian translations, his “Soviet Yiddish Literature of the 1960s–80s and its Russian Translations.” 53. Shraybman, “Ulitsa mira,” in Vse dni nedeli, 272–5. 54. Shraybman, “Dos horbate meydl,” in Yorn un reges, 289. 55. For a detailed analysis of Sovetish Heymland see Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War; Shmeruk, “Twenty‐five Years of Sovetish Heymland.” 56. Interview with Yekhiel Shraybman, April, 1997. 57. Shraybman, Syemnadtsatiletnie, 204. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Shraybman, “Zvey yidn af keyver‐oves,” in Yorn un reges, 379. 61. Shraybman, “Novye zapisi v moikh tetradyakh,” Syemnadtsatiletnie, 181–213. 62. Ibid, 207. 63. Shraybman, “In yenem zumer ven ikh bin nokh akht un tertzik yor,” in Sovetish Heymland 6 (1978): 46. 64. Shraybman, “Iosif,” in Vse dni nedeli, 124. 65. Shraybman, “David der kaprizner un spiltshever,” Sovetish Heymland 4 (1987): 95. 66. Ibid. 67. Sovetish Heymland was replaced in 1991 by Di Yidishe Gas, a periodical with a much lower circulation. Shraybman became a member of its editorial board. See Estraikh, “The Era of Sovetish Heymland: Readership of the Yiddish Press in the Former Soviet Union;” “‘Jewish Street’ or Jewish Cul‐de‐Sac? From Sovetish Heymland to Di Yidishe Gas.” 68. Discussions with Gennady Eistrakh. 69. His two post‐perestroika bilingual books were Yitsire un libe/Tvorenie i liubov‘ [Creation and Love] and Zibn yor mit zibn khadoshim//Sem’ let I sem’ mesiatsev [Seven Years and Seven Months]. This was an autobiographical novel about his life in Bucharest from 1933 to 1940. Yitsire un libe includes his series of stories humesh noveln (biblical novellas), where he looked at the roots of Jewish history and traditions. This included a great many miniatures written throughout the nineties. 70. Shraybman, Yitsire un libe/Tvorenie i liubov‘, 151

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