TALES FROM ODESSA
A Socalled Musical
Music & Lyrics by Josh Dolgin AKA Socalled
Book by Derek Goldman
Based on the stories of Isaak Babel
Translated by Miriam Hoffman
Directed by Audrey Finkelstein
A Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre Production
“Let’s talk about Benya Krik.
He was not always the King… How did he become the King, and why does it matter to us?”
A new tradition is born when the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre meets the vision of Klezmer-pop superstar Socalled in this new Yiddish musical based on the stories of renowned writer Isaak Babel. Step into the colourful underworld of Odessa in the last days of the Russian Empire, where mob boss Benya “The King” Krik reigns over the bustling Jewish neighborhood of Moldavanka. Chronicling the shady adventures of this anti-hero and his rise to power, this wholly original musical tale will take you back to a forgotten world of smugglers, peddlers and gangsters, where the dreams of one man reflect the emancipation of a whole population.
You should probably check this out if you’re in/around Montreal!
more info // BUY TICKETS
“Sometimes children were forced to perform antireligious actions in school that were organized in the form of a game. Many respondents reported that the idea of Passover was connected with various unconventional activities. Samuil G., who took part in these events in a shtetl in the Ukraine, remembers:
[W]e had many interesting activities taking place in [Yiddish] school. First, older children, the komyugistn [Komsomol members] would come to conduct some activities for us. They explained how religion oppressed the masses in other countries. We played many interesting games together. For example, on the first day of Passover, they would gather us together and give each of us ten pieces of bread. We were given the task of going to Jewish houses and throwing a piece into the window of ten different houses. The one who was the fastest would receive a prize. We enjoyed the game very much, especially when the old, angry women came out of their houses and ran after us screaming ‘Apikorsim!’ [‘Heretics!’]. We felt like heroes of the revolution and were very proud. But in the evening we would all go home and celebrate the traditional seder with all the necessary rituals.”
— Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 41.
More on Red Passover
Despite the antireligious content of the Red seders, they were distinctly Jewish events, organized for Jews, by Jews, and, equally important, they were conducted in Yiddish. Even the building in which the event took place was frequently a former synagogue. Most Jews did not perceive these activities as anti-Jewish. They saw them as Soviet Jewish events, created for their entertainment, and also as traditional holidays. Even after the most successful Red seders, which were attended by large audiences, the majority would go home and celebrate traditional Passover seders. Furthermore, those who conducted the Red seder often hurried to conclude the event since their families were waiting for them at home to celebrate the traditional seder.
Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 39.
More on Red Passover
Mi asapru, mi adabru,
Hey, hey, lomche dreydl,
Ver ken visn, ver ken tseyln
Vos dos eynts batayt, vos dos eynts batayt
Eyner iz Karl Marx, un Marx iz eyner,
Un mer nit keyner.
…
Vos dos tsvey batayt, vos dos tsvey batayt
Tsvey iz Lenin-Trotsky
Un eyner iz der Karl Marx,
Un Marx iz eyner, un mer nit keyner.
…
Vos dos dray batayt, vos dos dray batayt
Dray iz internatsional, tsvey iz Lenin Trotsky,
Eynts iz Karl Marx, un Marx iz keyner, un mer nit keyner.
Who will tell me, who will say
Hey, hey, turn the dreidel
Who can know, who can count
What does one mean, what does one mean?
One is Karl Marx, Marx is one
There is no one else.
…
What does two mean, what does two mean?
Two is Lenin-Trotsky
One is Karl Marx,
Marx is one, and there is no one else.
…
What does three mean, what does three mean?
Three means Internationals, two means Lenin-Trotsky,
One is Karl Marx, and there is not one more.
Efim G. remembers a song of the Red Seder conducted in his shtetl of Parichi. Oral testimony in Anna Shternshis’ Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 37-8.
“This song is a parody of a traditional Passover song. The original words say ‘One is God, two are two scrolls of Torah, given to the Jews on the mount of Zion, and three are the number of the Jewish fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob].’ Efim G. actually thought that this was a Soviet Jewish song. He did not know that this was an adaption of a much older Jewish song until he came to the United States in 1989, where he was invited to a traditional Passover dinner.”
More on Red Passover
Haggadah shel pesakh (Story of Passover), cover from the second edition. Drawing by Alexander Tyshler. Moscow, 1927.
Alternative Passover
In 1921 the Central Bureau of the Bolshevik Party’s Evsektsii sent instructions to all local branches to organize “Red Passovers.” Popular brochures that came to be known as “Red Haggadahs” were published, specifying how to conduct the alternative celebrations. Many were written by local activists following a series of centrally directed patterns. One of these was the Komsomolishe Haggadah (Komsomol Haggadah), published in Moscow in 1923 by Moyshe Altshuler. Traditionally the start of Passover (an eight-day holiday during which consumption of bread or leavened products and yeast is forbidden) is marked with the Bdikas khometz—a search for all remaining traces of leavened food, followed by its burning. In Altshuler’s Komsomolishe Haggadah, this ceremony was transformed as follows:
Ten years ago the working class of Russia with the help of peasants searched for khometz (leaven) in our land.[1] They cleaned away all the traces of landowners and bourgeois bosses in the country and took power in their own hands. They took the land from the landowners, plants and factories from the capitalists; they fought the enemies of the workers on all fronts. In the fire of the great socialist revolution, the workers and peasants burned Kochak, Yudenich, Vrangel, Denikin, Pilsudskii, Petlyura, Chernov, Khots, Dan, Martov, and Abramovich. They recited the blessing: “All landowners, bourgeois and their helpers—Mensheviks, Esers, Kadets, Bundists, Zionists, Esesovtses, Eesovtses, Poaley Zionists, Tsaarey-tsienikes, and all other counterrevolutionaries should be burned in the flame of revolution.[2] Those who are burned should not ever survive, and the rest should be given to us and we shall transfer them to the hands of the GPU.[3]
The Komsomol Haggadah combines all enemies of the Soviet regime as khometz, and recommends burning them. Equating antagonists who were notoriously anti-Jewish, such as the commander of the White Army Alexei Denikin, to Jewish Soviet opponents, such as Bundists or Zionists, was a popular method of Soviet propaganda.
Every seder ritual was transformed in the Soviet Haggadah. The traditional hand-washing and blessing before the meal became a political statement:
Wash off all the bourgeois mud, wash off the mold of generations, and do not say a blessing, say a curse. Devastation must come upon all the old rabbinical laws and customs, yeshivas and khaydorim, that becloud and enslave the people.
Some Soviet Haggadah texts … simply replace “God” with the “October Revolution”:
We were slaves of capital until October came and led us out of the land of exploitation with a strong hand, and if it were not for October, we and our children would still be slaves.
The Komsomol Haggadah argues that Passover is not a celebration of real freedom but rather of spiritual slavery, because the holiday comes only from heaven. In contrast, genuine freedom is in the hands of the proletariat, and therefore one must celebrate May Day.
Instead of the story of how the sea was divided, we speak about the brave heroes of the Red Army near Perekop. Instead of the groaning of the Jews in Egypt and God’s miracles, we speak about the real sufferings of the proletariat and peasants in their resistance against their exploiters and their heroic struggle.
In 1927 Altshuler’s Haggadah was reprinted with minor changes. The second edition featured a new illustrator—Alexander Tyshler (1898-1980), who worked for the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre. Although it still mocked traditional Judaism, the pictures were milder and included more positive images of Jewish workers and soldiers. Instead of ridiculing religious traditions alone, the second edition incorporated other “hostile” elements, such as Zionists, bourgeois Jews, and even Soviet bureaucrats. Judaism was now seen not just as a religion but rather as a banner under which all Soviet enemies were united. In other words, from an anti-Judaic piece of propaganda, the Red Haggadah eventually became anti-Jewish in general.
—————
[1] The phrase “ten years ago” refers to the October Revolution of 1917 and is taken from the second edition, which was published in 1927.
[2] The first edition Di komsomolishe adds that all other shlim-mazls (losers) and parasites should be burned in the flame of revolution.
[3] GPU is the acronym for Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, or State Political Administration (secret police). The entire sentence refers to a customary saying that is pronounced when one burns khometz before Passover: “Any khometz, or leaven, that is in my possession that I have not seen, have not removed, and do not know about should be annulled and become ownerless, like dust of the earth.” The particular expression rephrases the saying by identifying khometz with the representatives of ideologically hostile political parties.
— Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 27-34.
My parents did not speak Yiddish to me or my sister. They wanted us to speak Russian. But they spoke Yiddish between themselves, so we understood and learned it. Also, I spoke Yiddish with my grandmother, who did not speak Russian. When I was seven I was supposed to go to school and was very excited about it. My mother wanted me to go to a Russian school. One day she took me to the director of the school. Then she told me to say that I did not speak Yiddish. I was very surprised, because this was the first time my mother asked me to lie. I said: “Mother, you used to say it is not good to lie!” She answered then: “This time, it is better for you not to say the truth. Do not reveal to them that you know Yiddish.”
When we arrived there were three men in the room. I entered with my mother. They asked me in Russian my name, my age, and then they asked if I knew any Yiddish. I said I did not know Yiddish. Then one of the men told me [in Yiddish]: “Meydele, gey farmakh di dir!” [Girl, go close the door!] I went to close the door. That was how they enlisted me in a Jewish school.
Ida V. (b. 1923), on how she ended up in a Jewish school in Odessa in 1930. Oral testimony in Anna Shternshis’ Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 16-7.
“A great number of Soviet Jewish schools were established in the mid-1920s. In theory, these schools were designed for children who spoke Yiddish as their native language. Jewish parents often preferred Russian schools because they felt that such an education would give their children more opportunities in the future. But government officials insisted that Jewish children attend Soviet-run Yiddish-language schools, as many ideologues believed that children would learn Soviet values better if they were taught in their mother tongue. […] The specifically Jewish element in the curriculum was used simply as a tool to convert the Yiddish-speaking population into a Soviet-thinking one.”
1: Jewish colonists, residents of a collective farm in Stalindorf, a Jewish autonomous subdistrict of the Kherson region (now in Ukraine) reading Der emes, 1937. (YIVO)
2: Der apikoyres, special fall edition, Kiev, 1923. The text reads: “The Torah is the best merchandise.” (via joanerges)
“[A]nti-Judaist diatribes were found throughout all types of Soviet Yiddish publications, from newspapers to scholarly discourses. At least seventy-four titles of specifically antireligious Yiddish literature were issued between 1917 and 1941. The Yiddish Communist newspaper, Der emes (The truth), became a leading forum for antireligous writing. The most intensive period of publishing antireligious literature was from 1927 to 1935. A special Yiddish-language periodical, Der apikoyres (The godless) was published from 1931 to 1935 by the League of the Militant Godless.”
— Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 4.
It’s winter in Russia and the people are hungry. The town council announces that meat will be arriving so everyone gets in line to wait for the meat. After an hour of waiting in the snow and freezing cold, the town council announces that there will be less meat coming than expected, all Jews go home. So all the Jews leave the line. Another hour goes by and, again, the town council announces there will be less than expected food arriving, all non-communists go home. All the non-communists leave the line. Another hour, and the town council announces there will be no food arriving, everybody go home. As one man trudges home through the snow, he turns to his friend and says, “you see, the Jews always get to go home first!”
(via JRCC)
Thursday, February 28, 2013 // 6pm
Columbia/Barnard Kraft Center
606 West 115 Street, New York, NY
Speak Memory is an exhibition of four recipients of the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship: Katya Meykson, Irina Sheynfeld, Tanya Levina and Yuliya Levit. This show explores Russian-Jewish immigrant identity, artists ties to the historic past, and the connection to our roots that we feel in everyday lives.
(via Soviet Samovar)
![Haggadah shel pesakh (Story of Passover), cover from the second edition. Drawing by Alexander Tyshler. Moscow, 1927.
Alternative Passover
In 1921 the Central Bureau of the Bolshevik Party’s Evsektsii sent instructions to all local branches to organize “Red Passovers.” Popular brochures that came to be known as “Red Haggadahs” were published, specifying how to conduct the alternative celebrations. Many were written by local activists following a series of centrally directed patterns. One of these was the Komsomolishe Haggadah (Komsomol Haggadah), published in Moscow in 1923 by Moyshe Altshuler. Traditionally the start of Passover (an eight-day holiday during which consumption of bread or leavened products and yeast is forbidden) is marked with the Bdikas khometz—a search for all remaining traces of leavened food, followed by its burning. In Altshuler’s Komsomolishe Haggadah, this ceremony was transformed as follows:
Ten years ago the working class of Russia with the help of peasants searched for khometz (leaven) in our land.[1] They cleaned away all the traces of landowners and bourgeois bosses in the country and took power in their own hands. They took the land from the landowners, plants and factories from the capitalists; they fought the enemies of the workers on all fronts. In the fire of the great socialist revolution, the workers and peasants burned Kochak, Yudenich, Vrangel, Denikin, Pilsudskii, Petlyura, Chernov, Khots, Dan, Martov, and Abramovich. They recited the blessing: “All landowners, bourgeois and their helpers—Mensheviks, Esers, Kadets, Bundists, Zionists, Esesovtses, Eesovtses, Poaley Zionists, Tsaarey-tsienikes, and all other counterrevolutionaries should be burned in the flame of revolution.[2] Those who are burned should not ever survive, and the rest should be given to us and we shall transfer them to the hands of the GPU.[3]
The Komsomol Haggadah combines all enemies of the Soviet regime as khometz, and recommends burning them. Equating antagonists who were notoriously anti-Jewish, such as the commander of the White Army Alexei Denikin, to Jewish Soviet opponents, such as Bundists or Zionists, was a popular method of Soviet propaganda.
Every seder ritual was transformed in the Soviet Haggadah. The traditional hand-washing and blessing before the meal became a political statement:
Wash off all the bourgeois mud, wash off the mold of generations, and do not say a blessing, say a curse. Devastation must come upon all the old rabbinical laws and customs, yeshivas and khaydorim, that becloud and enslave the people.
Some Soviet Haggadah texts … simply replace “God” with the “October Revolution”:
We were slaves of capital until October came and led us out of the land of exploitation with a strong hand, and if it were not for October, we and our children would still be slaves.
The Komsomol Haggadah argues that Passover is not a celebration of real freedom but rather of spiritual slavery, because the holiday comes only from heaven. In contrast, genuine freedom is in the hands of the proletariat, and therefore one must celebrate May Day.
Instead of the story of how the sea was divided, we speak about the brave heroes of the Red Army near Perekop. Instead of the groaning of the Jews in Egypt and God’s miracles, we speak about the real sufferings of the proletariat and peasants in their resistance against their exploiters and their heroic struggle.
In 1927 Altshuler’s Haggadah was reprinted with minor changes. The second edition featured a new illustrator—Alexander Tyshler (1898-1980), who worked for the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre. Although it still mocked traditional Judaism, the pictures were milder and included more positive images of Jewish workers and soldiers. Instead of ridiculing religious traditions alone, the second edition incorporated other “hostile” elements, such as Zionists, bourgeois Jews, and even Soviet bureaucrats. Judaism was now seen not just as a religion but rather as a banner under which all Soviet enemies were united. In other words, from an anti-Judaic piece of propaganda, the Red Haggadah eventually became anti-Jewish in general.
—————
[1] The phrase “ten years ago” refers to the October Revolution of 1917 and is taken from the second edition, which was published in 1927.
[2] The first edition Di komsomolishe adds that all other shlim-mazls (losers) and parasites should be burned in the flame of revolution.
[3] GPU is the acronym for Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, or State Political Administration (secret police). The entire sentence refers to a customary saying that is pronounced when one burns khometz before Passover: “Any khometz, or leaven, that is in my possession that I have not seen, have not removed, and do not know about should be annulled and become ownerless, like dust of the earth.” The particular expression rephrases the saying by identifying khometz with the representatives of ideologically hostile political parties.
— Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (2006), p. 27-34.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/1b115e9201c330291f65c096a74d1a7a/tumblr_mk8bv1RwP91qg8pjwo1_500.png)
