Shabbat Gathering: New Yiddish Worlds Await.

Brian D. Johnson

26 Dec 2025 • 5 min read

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

(To unsubscribe from the newsletter, click the link at the very bottom of this email.)

Here we go.

Something is going on in the world of Yiddish literature that is nothing short of amazing. Thousands and thousands of Yiddish texts — books, newspapers, letters, etc. — rescued during and after World War II are being rediscovered and translated. The effort to rescue those books has been extensively documented in “Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books.” These rescued books, and so many more documents, are still being cataloged and now being translated into, among other languages, English. Entire new worlds of Yiddish literature are becoming both accessible and appreciated.

Among those who are being appreciated, is Abraham Sutzkever, a poet who was part of what’s become known as “The Paper Brigade” who saved so many Yiddish texts. Deborah Kades, in her bat mitzvah drash, she gave the congregation a brief biography of the Sutzkever.

From Deborah’s drash:

Sutzkever was born in current-day Belarus. When he was young, the Jews in his birthplace were expelled, and his family ended up in Siberia. After his father had a heart attack there, his mother moved the family to Vilna, a thriving center of Yiddish culture, where he became part of Vilna’s elite literary scene, The literary life did not last long. The Final Solution took place at warp speed in Vilna. When the Germans invaded Lithuania in June of 1941, there were 70,000 Jews in the city. By the end of 1941, only 2,000 remained.

The dreamy poet sprung into action in the ghetto. As he wrote poetry, he also organized cultural events and smuggled weapons into the ghetto. He was part of the Paper Brigade, a group of Jewish intellectuals ordered by the Nazis to choose the most important documents for display in the German’s planned Museum of the Extinct Race. The team hid and smuggled out as many documents as they could.

I wish I could tell you what exactly is in the poem “Kol Nidre;” however it has never been translated into English. But it was moving enough to prompt the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow to petition for his rescue. His reputation clearly went beyond Yiddish literary circles because he was the only Jew allowed to testify at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He spoke in Russian after being denied the right to use Yiddish, but he insisted on standing as he delivered his testimony because, he said, it was a Kaddish.

Sutzkever and his wife left Moscow in 1946 and ended up in Tel Aviv, where they raised two daughters. Determined to keep the Yiddish voice alive, Sutzkever published a Yiddish quarterly from 1949 to 1995. He died at age 96 in 2010.

Vast programs are underway to continue cataloging and translating as much of this literature as possible. For more than a generation to come, the literature that’s been saved will, book by book, become accessible to us. Our libraries will be stacked with new literature that was so very nearly lost.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.
See you tonight!

Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

Pre-PS

I received this book from A Room of One's Own bookshop. It's a gift and I don't know who it's from. (The bookstore can't tell me.) I want to thank whoever sent it to me. If it's you, please let me know so I can send you a note.

PS

From the story: Haim’s [character], with her glittering Magen David, is a reminder that Jews have a role to play in the revolution — and that just existing is enough to make all the right people mad.

DuoYid

-30-

Here we go.

Pre-PS

PS

DuoYid

Sign up for more like this.