Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky, From a Distant Relation, Edited and Translated from the Yiddish by James Adam Redfield, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, ©2021, ISBN 978-0-8156-1136-3, p. 387, including notes, glossary, and concordance, $34.95.
By Fred Reisss, Ed.D
WINCHESTER, California – Journalist, scholar and author M. Y. Berdichevsky (1865 – 1921) wrote for two different audiences. For the intelligentsia he wrote in Hebrew and German; for unsophisticated Eastern European Jews, he chose Yiddish, the language of the shtetl, small towns comprised mostly of Jews. Raised in Medzhibozh, western Ukraine, by his Hasidic father, the town’s rabbi, he spent his youth immersed in Judaism, but also began reading books produced in the Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment, whose goals included preservation of Jewish heritage, revival of Hebrew, and integrating Jews into the ambient secular culture.
In his young adulthood, Berdichevsky studied at Volozhin Yeshiva (Volozhin, Lithuania) and later at universities in Germany and Switzerland, eventually obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy degree. In 1900, he returned to Ukraine, encountering the severity of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, the only area in western Russia, including Ukraine, in which the government permitted permanent Jewish settlements, but whose presence their non-Jewish neighbors only tolerated, at best. He witnessed the waning Jewish traditions of his childhood, both of which became subjects of his Yiddish stories.
James A. Redfield, assistant professor of Biblical and Talmudic literatures in the Department of Theological Studies at St. Louis University, produced From a Distant Relation as part of his 2016 Yiddish Book Center translation fellowship. He organizes Berdichevsky’s short stories into fifteen sections, each revealing some aspect of Jewish survival in the Pale through many eyes, from businessmen to illiterates, rabbis and cantors to shochets and matchmakers, do-gooders to grifters, while exposing their fears, desires and beliefs.
In some stories, Berdichevsky allows his characters to uncritically philosophize about life, demonstrating his certainty that strict adherence to the rituals and practices of rabbinic Judaism, usually in the form of some Hasidic school of thought, is no shield against misfortune. Indeed, other stories show shtetl Jews believing in the biblical truism of “measure for measure” – sin begets punishment. Sometimes redemption demanding long-distant travel under severe conditions; sometimes being acquired only in death.
Shtetl Jews struggled with starvation and poverty, deep contrasts between rich and poor, and an ever-present threat of government intrusion and pogroms. Capturing the strains in the Pale of Settlement, Berdichevsky’s stories oscillate between amusing with pathetic characters and dark tales and unsympathetic people. Perhaps Berdichevsky reveals his negative opinion of shtetls and their inhabitants in the section Redfield calls “Visitors,” Eight short stories portray various members of a shtetl showing up at Berdichevsky’s house, rambling on at great length about their problems: lack of a proper house, stuck with living with the wife’s family, I hate it here—take me with you when you return to Germany, maybe I can get Rothchild to send me to Argentina, will you buy my wares, do you have any old clothes you can give me, who cares if you have a doctorate, you’re still Yosl. Berdichevsky replies to none.
Many of Berdichevsky’s stories hold biblical phrases, metaphors, symbolisms, and persona familiar to shtetl Jews. Redfield appends notes to the stories, helping readers understand their contextual meanings. He also provides a glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms. His translations capture Berdichevsky’s unusual narrative story-telling style, a style minimizing dialogue, fashioning long-winded monologues, setting the narrator to be someone other than the author, or even beginning in the middle of the story. Berdichevsky’s tales carry a moral, a twist, or even some irony, and Redfield’s translations make those plot-endings recognizable. From a Distant Relation presents the English-speaking community with wonderful renditions of Jewish short stories by a conflicted writer telling tales of a long-forgotten world.
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Fred Reiss, Ed.D. is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator, and author of a number of books, including The Jewish Calendar: History and Inner Workings and The Comprehensive Jewish and Civil Calendars, 2001 to 2240. He may be contacted via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.