MENAKHEM KIPNIS (1878-May 15, 1942)
A
musicologist, folklorist, feuilletonist, and theater reviewer, he was born in
Ushomyr, Volhynia. His father was a cantor. He was orphaned at age eight. Until age fourteen he studied in a Talmud
Torah, later also secular subject matter.
Because of his beautiful tenor voice, he entered the Zhitomir choral
school as a singer, later working as a soloist with the famed cantors Berl
Mulyer, Nisn Belzer, and Zaydele Rovner.
With Rovner he gave cantorial concerts in Volhynia, Ukraine, Bessarabia,
Lithuania, and Poland. Around 1900 he
entered the Warsaw Conservatory. Over
the years 1902-1918, he was the first Jewish tenor in the choir of the Warsaw Opera. From 1913 he began collecting Jewish
folksongs and appearing—with his wife Zimre Zeligfeld—in concerts throughout
Poland as well as in the large cities of Western Europe. With the outbreak of WWII, he was interned in
the Warsaw Ghetto. Kipnis’s diary of the
ghetto was lost, and his large collections of Jewish folk music and melodies
were destroyed in fires there. He began
writing on Jewish music in Hamelits (The
advocate) and Hatsofe (The spectator). His first music-related articles in Yiddish
were published in 1907 in Krinski’s Roman-tsaytung
(Fiction newspaper). There he published biographies
of well-known Jewish composers and musicians and offered evaluations of
them. He also contributed to Teater-velt (Theater world) in 1917 and Shtral (Beam [of light]) in Warsaw in
1921. His most important written work
appeared in Haynt (Today) in Warsaw, in
which for many years he was a regular contributor. Kipnis published there not only articles on
music, theater, and the cantorial art, but also feuilletons, humorous sketches,
travel impressions, and the like. Especially
popular were his series: “Yankev nar” (Jacob the fool), “Teater-mayses”
(Theater stories), “Berd” (Beards [at a time when people were cutting off
Jewish beards]), “Khelmer mayses” (Tales of Chełm),
and “Pan metsenas” (Mr. Patrinizer [a fictional Polish lawyer who blames the
Jews for everything]). Many of Kipnis’s
humorous stories were republished in Tog (Day)
in New York. From the late 1920s, he was
publishing in Forverts (Forward) in New York numerous impressions of Jewish characters in
Poland. Together with B. Yushzon, he
wrote a parody of An-ski’s “Dibek” (Dybbuk) under the title: Mitn koyekh fun dibek (With the strength
of a dybbuk); it was staged in April 1921 in Warsaw’s Central Theater. His writings included: Di velt-berihmte yidishe muziker (The world-famous Jewish musicians)
(Warsaw: Bikher-far-ale, 1910), 81 pp. (maybe also 1912); 60 folkslider (Sixty folksongs) (Warsaw: A. Gitlin, 1918); 80 folkslider (Eighty folksongs)
(Warsaw: A. Gitlin, 1925), 179 pp., new edition (1929); Khelemer mayses (Warsaw: Sh. Tsuker, 1930), 156 pp.; Nisim venifloes, kuryozen un bilder
(Miracles and prodigies, curiosities and impressions)—part 1: (a) “Yekum purkan”
(May deliverance arise); b. “Fosh hot mikh geratevet” (Fosh saved me); c. “Der dzedzits
mitn kudlevaten hund” (The heir with the shaggy dog)[1]—(Warsaw:
J. Ledenbaum, 1930), 29 pp.; 100 folkslider
(One hundred folksongs) (Buenos Aires: Central Association of Polish Jews in Argentina,
1949), 269 pp. Among his pen names: Mefistofel,
Metronom, Itsikl Spirt, Sfinks, Nakht-Vanderer, and in Hebrew periodicals:
Bat-Kol. Kipnis “made great gains…in
collecting and spreading the Jewish folksong,” wrote Henekh Kon, and “it was in
this field that he may have done more than the St. Petersburg ethnographical
society.” As for Kipnis’s literary work,
Nakhmen Mayzil noted: “The plot was the main thing for Kipnis. More than anything else he was a portrayer or
painter…. He was not the storyteller who
creates something from nothing…. He
animated and clothed in real clothing lives and figures of the past who lived
and exerted an impact on life.” He died
in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook
of the Yiddish theater), vol. 5 (Mexico City, 1966); Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 1 (Montreal, 1945); F. Sherman, in Di khazonim velt (Warsaw) (January
1934); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern
(Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 49-50; Y. Y.
Trunk, Poyln (Poland), vol. 7 (New
York, 1953); Froym Kaganovski, Yidishe
shrayber in der heym (Paris: Oyfsnay, 1956), pp. 423-31; Henekh Kon, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (August 25,
1967); Khayim Finkelshteyn, in Haynt, a
tsaytung bay yidn, 1908-1939 (Haynt
[Today], a newspaper for Jews, 1908-1939) (Tel Aviv, 1978), see index.
Berl Cohen
[1] Translator’s note. I am not at all sure about my translations
of the second and third sections of this booklet. (JAF)
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