title: Kovner, Abba

abstract: (1918–1987), partisan and poet, leader and intellectual, and a central figure in twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history and cultural life. Born in Sebastopol, Abba Kovner moved to Vilna as a child; the Jewish community of the city at that time was a thriving, vibrant cultural center, characterized by political, ideological, and religious diversity. He studied in the Tarbut Hebrew gymnasium and became a member, guide, and admired leader of the 1,000-member local branch of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir youth movement.

imgDesc: Poet and partisan Abba Kovner after the fall of Vilna to the Red Army, 1944. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Vitka Kempner Kovner)

text: Vilna

text: Tarbut

text: Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir

text: ghetto

text: youth movement

text: YIVO

text: Holocaust

text: Beriḥah

text: Lublin

text: Bucharest

text: Land of Israel

text: Zionism

glossary: Diaspora Yishuv


title: Russian Empire (Russia)

abstract: To understand the complex history of Jews in Russia, one must begin with a fundamental distinction, often effaced in the historiography and popular memory, between Russia as a state—the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and since 1991, the Russian Federation—and the geographically much smaller entity of ethnic Russia. Until the 1720s, there were essentially no Jews in the Russian Empire except for travelers and migrant merchants, and the Russian state forbade Jews from settling in its interior, out of traditional Christian hostility.

imgDesc: Russian Empire, ca. 1914.

text: historiography

text: memory

text: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

text: World War I

text: Kingdom of Poland

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Moscow

text: Simon Dubnow

text: Pale of Settlement

text: pogroms

text: Ukraine

text: Odessa

text: military service

text: kahal

text: Passover

text: Kishinev

text: Bessarabia

text: Revolution of 1905

text: Kiev

text: Mendel Beilis

text: population

text: Litvaks

text: Zionist

text: Hasidism

text: Lithuania

text: Belorussia

text: Karlin Hasidim

text: Pinsk

text: Lubavitch

text: Misnagdim

text: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin

text: Volozhin yeshiva

text: Haskalah

text: Yisra’el Salanter

text: Musar Movement

text: Orthodox

text: gender

text: Perets Smolenskin

text: Mosheh Leib Lilienblum

text: Lev Pinsker

text: Land of Israel

text: Ḥibat Tsiyon

text: Ahad Ha-Am

text: Bund

text: Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Sholem Aleichem

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Russian Revolution

glossary:
Pale of Settlement
kahal
Congress Poland
Ḥabad
Misnagdim
yeshiva
Haskalah
Musar


title: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich

abstract: (1893–1991), Communist Party and Soviet government official. The son of a struggling artisan, Lazar’ Kaganovich was born in the Chernobyl district, Kiev province. An autodidact, from the age of 14 he worked in Kiev as a tanner and shoemaker. Kaganovich joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party) in 1911.

text: Communist Party

text: Soviet

text: Kiev

text: Ukraine

text: Ekaterinoslav

text: Donets’k

text: Homel’

text: Moscow

text: Trotsky

text: Zinov’ev

text: Kamenev

text: Bund

text: Po‘ale Tsiyon

text: Evsektsiia

text: State Yiddish Theater


title: About this Article (Theater)

abstract: This entry surveys the history of East European Jewish theater, including the emergence of a Jewish theater audience; the rise of professional Jewish theater in Yiddish, Hebrew, and non-Jewish languages; Jewish theater’s social context; and amateur productions by schools, youth groups, and theater societies. It begins with an overview, which treats the historical development of Jewish theater, followed by articles on theater in Hebrew and Yiddish and continuing with articles on Jewish participation in the theater in Poland, Russia, Romania, and Hungary, respectively. The entry concludes with an article on criticism and scholarship, which focuses on the Yiddish theater.

imgDesc: Members of the Vilner Trupe in Protsentnik (The Loan Shark), Poland, 1920. Photograph by Dager. (YIVO)

text: Poland

text: Russia

text: Romania

text: Hungary


title: Zingman, Kalmen

abstract: (1889–1929), Yiddish author and publisher. Kalmen Zingman (last name also rendered Singman) was born in Slobodka, near Kovno. He received a traditional Jewish education, but difficult family circumstances forced him to start working at an early age. In 1909, his poem “Baym Nyeman” (At the Nieman) appeared in the miscellany Shtraln (Rays), edited by A. Litvin (Shmuel Hurvits; 1862–1943). During World War I, Zingman found himself among refugees from the theater of operations. He wound up in Kharkov, where he worked as a small businessman, continuing to dream about a literary career.

text: Kharkov

text: censorship

text: Ukraine

text: Folkist

text: Kaunas

text: Lithuania

text: Dovid Bergelson

text: Soviet Union

text: Crimea


title: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

abstract: (1883–1936), revolutionary and Soviet political figure. Grigorii Zinov’ev, known earlier as Ovsei-Gersh Aronovich Apfel’baum or Radomysl’skii, was born in Elisavetgrad, Kherson province, to the assimilated family of an owner of a small dairy farm. Zinov’ev joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party; RSDWP) in 1901. While studying at Bern University, he continued his involvement in revolutionary activities.

text: Soviet

text: 1905 Revolution

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Russia

text: Kamenev

text: Trotsky


title: Population since World War I (Population and Migration)

abstract: After World War I, the two countries with the largest numbers of Jews were Poland (2.8 million in 1921) and the Soviet Union (2.7 million in 1926). (See Table 1: Jewish Population by Country, 1920s-1930s) For this period numerical data are based mostly on religious affiliation as recorded in national censuses, except for the Baltic States and the Soviet Union, where they are based on ethnicity data from the censuses. Conceptually, these numbers correspond to what has been defined in Jewish demography as the “core” Jewish population. The “core” Jewish population is the aggregate of all those who, when asked, identify themselves as Jews or, in the case of children, are identified as such by their parents; it does not include persons of Jewish origin who report another ethnicity and/or religion in the census.

text: Poland

text: Soviet Union

text: Romania

text: Lithuania

text: Latvia

text: Estonia

text: Slovakia

text: Czech

text: Hungary

text: Belorussia

text: Ukraine

text: Russia

text: Bessarabia

text: Bucovina

text: Holocaust

text: Russian Federation

text: Moldova

text: assimilation


title: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)

abstract: The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was the name of the largest member state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), exceeding all the other states in both size (occupying three-quarters of the territory) and population (hosting more than half the citizens). The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was, in fact, the name of the successor state to the Russian Empire from January 1918 until December 1922 when the name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted for the entire state.

imgDesc: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922–1991 (European regions).

text: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

text: World War I

text: Russian Civil War

text: Pale of Jewish Settlement

text: shtetl

text: Ukraine

text: Belorussia

text: Moscow

text: Leningrad

text: Rostov-on-Don

text: agriculture

text: Crimea

text: Yiddish-language Jewish schools

text: Birobidzhan

text: Yiddish literature

text: Dovid Bergelson

text: Der Nister

text: Perets Markish

text: Yiddish theaters

text: Moscow State Yiddish Theater

text: Solomon Mikhoels

text: Theater

text: Habimah

text: yeshiva

text: Committee of Rabbis in the USSR

text: Lubavitch

text: Evsektsiia

text: Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Medal’e

text: ghettos

text: antisemitic

text: anticosmopolitan campaign

text: samizdat

text: Refusenik

text: assimilation

glossary: yeshiva rebbe Talmud Torah


title: Yiddish (Language)

abstract: Yiddish is the historic language of Ashkenazic (Central and East European) Jewry, and is the third principal literary language in Jewish history, after classical Hebrew and (Jewish) Aramaic. The language is characterized by a synthesis of Germanic (the majority component, derived from medieval German city dialects, themselves recombined) with Hebrew and Aramaic. The word for the sun (zun) comes from Germanic, the word for the moon (levóne) from Hebrew, and the word for “probably” is from Aramaic (mistáme). The most basic fusion formula entails the insertion of a Semitic root into Germanic grammatical machinery, evident in such verbs as khásmen(en) (to sign) and táynen (to claim, express the view). Frequently words whose previous incarnations in the donor languages are dictionary synonyms become nuanced variants within Yiddish with a capacity for fine-tuned expression, particularly in things Jewish. Hence gest (from German) are any kind of guests, órkhim (from Hebrew) are usually poor visitors who need to be given Sabbath or holiday hospitality, and ushpízn (from Aramaic) are the seven biblical figures, from Abraham to David, who are believed, in Jewish mysticism, to visit the Sukkah during the holiday Súkes (Sukkot, Feast of Tabernacles). During the second half of the history of the language, a Slavic element (largely from neighboring Polish, Belarusian, and Ukrainian dialects in Eastern Europe) was acquired, providing a new layer. Famously, Yiddish words for god include the universal deity, got; the more personal deity interested in human fate, der éybershter (from Germanic); one called out to in second person (or in third, as an exclamation), rebóyne-shel-óylem (from Hebrew); the more philosophical rebóyne deálme (Aramaic); and the emotional, homespun god invoked by Slavic-derived endings in tátenyu zísinker and gótenyu. The process of recombination among the three core components of modern Yiddish has continued apace. There is a smattering of Romance from early times, including the verbs bentshn (to bless) and léyenen (to read), where Romance-derived roots fuse with Germanic endings.

imgDesc: Dialects of Eastern Yiddish and the North–South Divide.

text: Holocaust

text: Soviet Union

text: assimilation

text: Khazars

text: Ashkenaz

text: Hungary

text: mysticism

text: Yiddish literature

text: Yiddish literature

text: humor

text: satire

text: Ya‘akov Pollak

text: Prague

text: Kraków

text: Ashkenaz

text: Prague

text: Passover

text: publishing

text: Yiddish literature

text: poetry

text: tkhines

text: Tsene-rene

text: Haskalah

text: pogroms

text: Hasidism

text: Ba‘al Shem Tov

text: Naḥman (Nakhmen) of Bratslav

text: Ukraine

text: Menakhem Mendl (Menaḥem Mendel) Lefin

text: Tarnopol

text: Tuviah Feder

text: Haskalah

text: Yisroel Aksenfeld

text: Shloyme Ettinger

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Odessa

text: Kol mevaser

text: Sholem Aleichem

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Bund

text: Zionists

text: Natan (Nosn) Birnbaum

text: conference at Czernowitz

text: Chernivtsi

text: Matthias (Matisyohu) Mieses

text: Ester

text: Boris Kletskin

text: Vilna

text: Ber Borokhov

text: Max Weinreich

text: YIVO

text: Zalmen Reyzen

text: Warsaw

text: Literarishe bleter

text: Lithuania

text: Latvia

text: Romania

text: Poland

text: Brest

text: Grodno

text: Pinsk

text: Soviet Union

text: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools

text: prose

text: poetry

text: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Litvaks

text: Lithuania

text: Belarus

text: Latvia

text: Poland

text: Ukraine

text: Russia

text: Galicia

text: Hungarian lands

glossary: Ḥaredi Talmud Rashi Haskalah tsadik rebbe Torah