Moyshe Kulbak - Biography

Moyshe Kulbak (1896, Smarhoń1937, near Minsk) was a Yiddish-language writer, born in Smarhon (present-day Belarus) to a Jewish family. He studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania.

Overview

In 1914 he moved to the Russian city of Minsk; in 1920, after the Soviet Revolution, to Berlin; and in 1923 to Wilna (then a city in Poland), a center of Yiddish literary culture. In 1927 he returned to Minsk.

Kulbak wrote poems, fantastical or "mystical" novels, and, after moving to the Soviet Union, what are described by one source as "Soviet" satires. But his novel, The Zelmenyaners, depicted with some realism the absurdities of Soviet life. In September 1937, during the Stalinist purges, Moyshe Kulbak was arrested and one month later executed.

His mystical novel, The Messiah of the House of Ephraim, draws together many strands of Jewish folklore and apocalyptic belief, presenting them from a perspective that owes much to German expressionist cinema. It principally concerns the poor man Benye, who may or may not be a Messiah, and whose destiny is intertwined with the Lamed-Vavniks. (In Jewish mysticism, the Lamed-Vavniks are a group of 36 holy Jews on whose goodness the whole of humanity depends.) Benye, and the many other characters, undergo experiences the strangeness of which approaches incomprehensibility, to themselves as well as the reader. Legendary figures such as Lilith and Simkhe Plakhte are characters in the novel.

Works

• Lider (Poems), 1922.

• The Messiah of the House of Ephraim. English translation in: Yenne Velt, ed. and trans. Joachim Neugroschel (1976; repr. New York: Wallaby, 1978).

• "The Wind Who Lost His Temper", in Yenne Velt (above).

• The Zelmenyaners. An English translation is in progress.

• Yenne Velt, ed. Neugroschel (see above)
• http://yiddishbookcenter.org/pdf/pt/43/PT43elmenyaners.pdf

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