YISROEL (ISRAEL) AKSENFELD (1787-1866)
Born in Nemirov, Podolia district, Ukraine, into a family of
the elite. As a child and youth, he
spent time in Hassidic surroundings, and he became an ardent Bratslav hassid,
an intimate of the rebbe, R. Nachman (of Bratslav), and a friend of R. Noson of
Nemirov. As was the practice in those
times, a marriage was arranged for Akselfeld when he was still quite
young. His and his bride were not a good
match, and later when he became a maskil, he was divorced from her. He learned Russian, Polish, and German, and
took up a career in business. Thanks to
his talents and his fine character, he made good business connections and
gained access to administrative contracts at the time of the Russo-French War
[1812]. He traveled with the army
through Poland and eastern Germany, and spent a considerable period of time in
Bratslav (Lower Silesia). His travels
over various regions and countries and his coming into contact with all sorts
of people broadened his horizons, enriched his life experiences, and deepened
his knowledge of people. He put all of
this to good use decades later when writing novels and dramas of Jewish
life. Biographical details for the time
period from after the war until the 1820s are not available. We know only that in this period he married a
second time to “Rekhele, the well-educated and pious daughter of Rabbi Abele
Hurvits from Brod.” We may thus presume
that he lived for a certain period of time in Brod, and that he would have
become acquainted there with representatives of the Jewish enlightenment in
Galicia. We may also imagine that no
later than 1824 he would have settled in Odessa, where he remained for the next
forty years of his life. In Odessa, as
earlier, he took up business and received the title of “Odessa merchant of the
third guild.” Later, though, he devoted
himself to the examination to become a notary, private attorney (1835), and sworn
court’s interpreter (straptshe, 1836).
He made a living honorably, and his “fine home” became a meeting house
for the sages, especially for the maskilim, among whom he was highly
esteemed. In an earlier era, he devoted
his time to writing the dozens of novels, stories, and stage plays of which,
regrettably, only a small number have come down to us.
In the 1830s, Aksenfeld began writing, and in the space of
some thirty years, he had written over 300 printer’s sheets. In 1862 he alone compiled a roster of all his
writings that he “put into ordinary Yiddish (they have not yet been
published).” The list included
twenty-six works, among them several novels quite long with numerous parts,
such as: Mikhl der ozerkes, a yudishe zhil blaz (Mikhl the servant, a
Jewish Gil Blas), six parts, 1504 pp.; Leyb fridland, oykh a yudisher zhil
blaz (Leyb Fridland, also a Jewish Gil Blas), 2112 pp.; and Di shpiges
(The Shpiges), four parts, 1162 pp., among others. The designation “a Jewish Gil Blas” (a
reference to the first realistic novel, by the French writer Alain-René Le Sage, who was very popular in the
eighteenth century) demonstrated that Aksenfeld had set for himself a certain
goal to be a writer with a realist bent.
Given the the social depths of his descriptions, Aksenfeld in truth
stood closer to the realism of his great contemporary, Honoré de Balzac, than
to the pattern of a Gil Blas from a century earlier. Gifted with a nature of enormous observational
energy, with a sense of humor, with a feel for language, and with a fighting
temperament, he became the first social novelist and the principal bearer of
realism in Yiddish literature for the pre-Mendele period, and in Mendele’s work
itself one can see traces of his impact.
His influence on the wider course of the art of Yiddish narrative would
without a doubt have become even stronger, if all of his writings had lived to
see print.
Unfortunately, only a few of his works have
seen the bright light of day, and only initially after several decades. The reason was that in the 1830s when
Aksenfeld wrote his first works, the government of Tsar Nicholas I closed
nearly all Yiddish publishing houses in Russia (statute of October 27, 1836),
and the two publishers (Romm in Vilna and Shapiro in Zhitomir) that were left
refused to publish his writings because of their harsh anti-Hassidic
proclivity. This was the issue earlier
with his first novel, Seyfer khsidim (The book of the Hassidim), a
satirical, maskilic, anti-Hassidic work of almost 1000 pages. This novel does not appear in Aksenfeld’s
“listing of all writings,” but in the request that he sent in October 1841 to
the education minister at that time, Sergey Uvarov, he characterized his novel
as a type of Don Quixote in which “satire, didacticism, and storytelling
all come together with respect to those called ‘good Jews’ [Hassidim].” The Vilna censor at the time, Jacob
Tugendhold, wrote in his recommendation letter to the minister that Aksenfeld
had in this work “elevated satire to an exquisite thoroughness.” The publishers in Vilna, however, argued in
their letter to the minister that Aksenfeld came out publicly in his book “with
obscene, lewd, clownish words aimed at the customs of the Hassidim,” and thus
they did not want to publish the book.
In 1842 Aksenfeld requested permission of the minister to lithograph the
work. This he was permitted, but he did
not make use of it; whether because of technical difficulties or because of a
dearth of monetary means is unknown. He
repeated his applications to the highest governmental authorities several times
over the course of fifty years, but all to no avail. In 1860 and 1861, he even requested of the
governor of Odessa permission to open his own publishing house in Odessa, but
this was also turned down. Thus, his
works remained in manuscript and were, as was the practice among Jews at the
time, distributed in handwritten copies made by other maskilim. Only two of his shorter works, the novel Dos
shterntikhl (The headband) and the drama Der ershter yidisher rekrut
(The first Jewish recruit), succeeded in seeing printed in Leipzig in
1861. He was then already nearly seventy-five
years of age. In 1862 the ban (or
“monopoly”) on Yiddish-language publishing in Russia was repealed, but
Aksenfeld was already, apparently, weary and possibly without money to
undertake on his own publication of his writings. In the same year of 1862, he wrote a letter to
Avrom Ber Gotlober with a request to find a publisher for his work (the letter,
together with the “list of all writings,” was later discovered by Yisroel
Tsinberg in Gotlober’s archive). In 1864
a group of Odessa Jewish community leaders and authors, among them such
important figures as Yoysef Rabinovitsh and Dr. Leo Pinsker, turned to the
Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment in St. Petersburg and asked if it
would publish Aksenfeld’s works, but—“because of the regulations”—its answer
was: “the Society has the right to publish writings only in Hebrew or Russian,
but not in zhargon [i.e., Yiddish].”
In that year of 1864, Aksenfeld and his wife departed from Odessa and
moved to Paris, where one of their three successful sons (of his second wife),
Avgust or Aleksander, was a well-known doctor, professor in the Sorbonne, and
author of many medical works (he also translated into French several of his
father’s works). Another son, Henrik,
was a painter. In the summer of 1866,
Aksenfeld passed away in Paris.
In 1869 someone with the name Sde announced in
the pages of Kol mevaser (The herald) that Moyshe Zhvif, Aba Feldman,
and Gedalye Eynemer were engaged in publishing Aksenfeld’s works. This very group in 1867 had actually
published his two-act play, Man un vayb, shvester un brider (Man and
wife, sisters and brothers)—and in 1870 his theatrical pieces, Di genarte
velt (The cheated public) and Kabtsn-oysher shpil (Pauper-rich man play). In 1872 Aleksander Tsederboym’s periodical, Vestnik
russkikh yevreyev (Messenger of Russian Jews), published in St. Petersburg an
Aksenfeld story in Russian translation under the title “Za dvumya zaitsami” ([Going]
after two rabbits). This is all that was
published of Aksenfeld’s writings. Barditshever
yarid (Bardichev fair) and Matses bakin (Baking matzoh)—the latter,
just as was the case with Seyfer khsidim, not listed in Aksenfeld’s
“Listing”—set in type in Odessa just when the pogrom of 1871 broke out; the
manuscripts of both works, typeset together, were lost. Only his Fraymar (235 pp.) in
manuscript reached Sholem-Aleykhem (see Sholem-Aleykhem’s letter to Gotlober in
1888). In the 1920s and 1930s, when
research into the Yiddish language and literature expanded and deepened,
Aksenfeld’s role in the development of modern Yiddish literature, especially
his impact on Mendele Moykher-Seforim, was powerfully emphasized, and interest
in his writings grew. New works of
scholarship concerning Aksenfeld’s writings were published in Soviet Russia and
Poland. Der ershte yidishe rekrut,
in the adaptation of Arn (Aaron) Kushnirov, was staged in the early 1930s in Yiddish
theaters in Soviet Russia, Poland, and the United States. The Institute of Yiddish Culture in the
All-Ukrainian Scientific Academy published in 1931 the first volume of an
incomplete edition of Aksenfeld’s under the editorship of Meir Viner (this
edition was planned to be in four volumes).
In that single volume are studies by Viner and A. Yuditski, reprintings
of Der ershte yidisher rekrut and Di genarte velt, and letters from
Aksenfeld to Yitskhok Ber Levenzon, A. B. Gotlober, and others. In 1938 the publisher “Emes” in Moscow, also
under the editorship of M. Viner, published another volume of Aksenfeld’s
writings, which included discourses by M. Viner and A. Margolis, a reprinting
of Aksenfeld’s novel Dos shterntikhl and his story Nokh tsvey hozn
(After two rabbits) which Lipe Reznik translated back into Yiddish from the
Russian translation and had published in Farmest (Challenge) in Kiev
(August 1937). In 1971 his two shorter works, Dos shterntikhl and Der ershter
yidisher rekrut, were published in Buenos Aires by the Y. Lifshits Fund
(283 pp.). The principal sources for
Aksenfeld’s biography may be found in the following: A. Tsederboym, obituary in
Kol mevaser 26 (1866) and the addition to it in Kol mevaser
(1869); A. B. Gotlober, Zikhroynes vegn yidishe shrayber (Memoirs of
Yiddish writers), published in Sholem-Aleykhem’s “Yidishe folks-biblyotek”
(Jewish people’s library), vol. 1 (Kiev, 1888); Gotlober’s archival materials
concerning Aksenfeld, explained and published by Yisroel Tsinberg in Perezhitoe,
sbornik posviashchennyi onshchestvennoi i kulturnoi istorii evreev v Rossii
(The past, a journal dedicated to the social and cultural history of the Jews
in Russia) 4 (1913); state archival documents, published and investigated in
Soviet Russia.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1 (with a bibliography through 1926);
Nokhum Shtif, Di alte yudishe literatur (Old Yiddish literature) (Kiev,
1929), pp. 72-99; Shoel Ginzburg, in Filologishe shriftn fun yivo
(Philological writings from YIVO), vol. 2 (Vilna, 1928), pp. 42-54; Shoel
Ginzburg, in Yivo-bleter 2 (1931), reprinted in Historishe verk
(Historical works), vol. 1 (New York, 1937); Shoel Borovoy, in Biblyologisher
zamlbukh (Bibliological anthology) (Kiev, 1930), pp. 93-103; Zalmen Reyzen,
in Algemayne entsiklopedye (General encyclopedia) (Paris, 1937), pp.
237-40 (with a bibliography); Meir Viner, Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher
literatur in 19tn yorhundert (Toward a history of Yiddish literature in the
19th century) (Kiev, 1940); Shoel Borovoy et al., Mendele un zayn
tsayt, materyaln tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur in XIX yorhundert
(Mendele and his times, materials toward a history of Yiddish literature in the
19th century) (Moscow, 1940), pp. 172-96; Dr. Yankev Shatski (Jacob
Shatsky), in Yivo-bleter 23 (New York) (1944), pp. 134-37; Shmuel Niger,
Dertseylers un romanistn (Storytellers and novelists), vol. 1 (New York,
1946), pp. 52-60; Shmuel Lastik (Salomon Łastik),
Di yidishe literatur biz di klasiker (Yiddish literature until the
classic writers) (Warsaw, 1950), pp. 160-75; Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk
(Collected writings) (New York, 1953), pp. 92-94.
Yitskhok
Kharlash
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