- S. Ansky
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863, Vitebsk –1920, Otwock), better known by the pseudonym S. Ansky (or An-ski), was a scholar who documented
Jew ish folklore and mystical beliefs.He was born in
Vitebsk , Belarus, then Russia, but travelled around much of the western part of theRussian Empire . Initially writing in Russian, from 1904 he also became known as a Yiddish author.Initially under heavy influence of the Russian
narodnik movement, Ansky was soon interested inethnography . Between 1911 and the outbreak of theGreat War in 1914 he headed ethnographical expeditions to various Jewish towns ofVolhynia andPodolia .He is best known for authoring the play "
The Dybbuk " or "Between Two Worlds", which was first staged in the Elyseum Theatre inWarsaw two months after the author's death inOtwock onNovember 8 ,1920 . Ansky was also the author of the song "Di Shvue" (The Oath), which became the anthem of the Bund party, and several other pieces of literature, both in Russian and Yiddish.His ethnological collections were locked away in Soviet vaults for years, but some material has come to light since the 1990s. The State Ethnographic Museum at St Petersburg holds a good deal of it. Tracing An-sky: Jewish Collections from the State Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg, Amsterdam 1992]
Some of his vast collection of cylinder recordings made on these expeditions have been transferred to CD as well. Materials of J. Engel Ethnographic Expedition 1912 (The Historic Collection of Jewish Music 1912-1947, vol. 1) (Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine; Institute for Information Recording, 2001)]
External links
* [http://www.jhom.com/personalities/ansky/index.htm Jewish Heritage Online article on Ansky]
ee also
*
Yiddish theatre References
Bibliography
Shmuel Werses.S. An-ski's "Between Two Worlds' (The Dybbuk): A Textual History." in Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1986
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
