JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Although you may never have heard the name Lin Shu, it should be featured in every book on literature history. Shu, a self-taught scholar, originated from the region of Fujian in southwest China. An heir to the Qing Dynasty — the last to have reigned over the…
April 22 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish novelist and playwright Miguel de Cervantes, who was likely born into a family of conversos, Spanish Jews forced in 1492 to convert to Christianity or leave their homeland. Jewish themes have been discerned by some readers in Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” In time to…
Was Don Quixote’s impossible dream a Yiddisher one? The French author Dominique Aubier, whose study “Don Quixote: Prophet of Israel” has just been reprinted, apparently thinks so. Aubier’s book, which originally appeared in 1966, is based on the thesis now generally accepted by literary historians that the author of “Don Quixote,” Miguel de Cervantes, likely…
The great poet Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) also produced translations that helped re-energize Modern Hebrew. Bialik’s renditions of Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 drama “Wilhelm Tell” and Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” are examples, as detailed in “The Russian Jewish Diaspora and European Culture, 1917-1937.” Yet Bialik’s “Quixote” was unfaithful to the original, according to an essay by Marianna…
Crossposted from Haaretz The Eifman Ballet is practically a regular guest in Israel; this time it brought two splendid works, “Onegin,” which played the Opera a year ago, and “Don Quixote,” performed here for the first time. Don Quixote to the music of Ludwig Minkus deals with the escape from reality toward a dream: a…
At 76, Rabbi Josy Eisenberg is a longtime representative of Judaism for the French public. He is the genial host of the half-hour religious program “La Source de Vie,” broadcast in various formats since 1962, and he helped write the 1973 hit comedy film “The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob,” starring comedian Louis de Funès….
