My memoirs. Volume first. From the translator.

Kobrin → Outstanding persons

The first volume of memoirs of Ekhezkel of the Cat (1847-1921) offered nowadays in Russian translation left for the first time in Warsaw in 1912 and was met by criticism with big enthusiasm. The Jewish writers and publicists, among them Sholem Aleichem and Itskhok-Leybush Perets, did not regret for the 65-year-old "simple Jew" - the owner of a cheap coffee house on Nalevkakh, the famous intercessor on the Jewish affairs and the debutant on a literature field into Yiddish - the most flatter words. The first letter of Sholem Aleichem to the author written after reading of the book – before us: the author shaken by unexpected success placed it as the preface to the second edition which appeared in ten years from which the real translation is made.
The author turned out with a family in Warsaw after long wanderings across the Russian Empire that Jews call "Parnassus" - more capacious word, than Russian "earnings". These wanderings made the maintenance just of the 2nd volume which left for the first time in 1914. In the first Paradise Lost is described: the native town of the author, Kamenets-Litovsky, "where Jews lived in poverty, but is "quiet" and – if it is possible to be expressed so – with taste …", with all variety of its types and establishments, with its life and customs, with vzaimotnosheniye in the Jewish community and environment, with beliefs and representations, with a city top and clergy, melameda and tenants, misers and philanthropists, Hasidim and their opponents, authorities and the Polish landowners - in usual time and during crisis eras, - with everything, typical for the Jewish town throughout centuries, but consigning to the past: "nowadays it there is nothing, there is no poetry of former places also. America thinned out them, and life, heavy for Jews, in Russia, full of black lead of anti-Semitism, absolutely destroyed them". To a total disappearance of the Jewish Kaments there were only 30 years, but the author of it does not know, and his story about the past is deprived of an anguish.
History of a family of the author - one of the most dear in the town - is conducted with the great-grandfather. The main characters of the book – the beloved grandfather Aron-Leyzer and the unforgettable grandmother Bale Russia. The author tells about the childhood, years of the doctrine, about youth, about the relation to a hasidiz and the arising Jewish Education, about a marriage and attempts to find the place in life – in the habitual environment or out of it, to find a livelihood source for a family, without refusing requirements of spirit, about difficulties on this way - and much, many other.
It is necessary to tell about emergence of Russian translation of the book. In 1998 in the Center for history of the Polish Jewry of Institute for research of diaspora at Tel Aviv University there was its transfer on ivrit*. The review of this translation was published in the literary supplement to the daily newspaper "Ha-Arets" and caught sight to me. The book wanted to be read that on time coincided with occupations by language Yiddish with the teacher, the native of the same places, as the author. But it is better to read in the original, being verified with the ivritsky translation as my teacher of Russian did not know. Having plunged into reading and transfer, I could not come off any more and having finished the first volume, was engaged in the second. It was strange that, having caused, as a historical source at the emergence a great interest from the Jewish public, the book, having appeared once again in ten years in Berlin, appeared in the same place in fragments in translation into German in 1936 and did not appear any more, without having got, actually, to a scientific turn neither in Israel, nor in Russia. Still the author's position – such unlike ours – both in Russia, and in Israel struck. Having left the town in which it became close to spirit and it is inconvenient to a body as it was left by our parents, never there having returned, the Cat – without holding back anything bad - found words of deep love for the Kaments that to us should learn.
"What me fascinated in your book, - Sholem Aleichem wrote the Cat", is a sacred, naked truth, unartful simplicity". As well language which wrote the book – is simple and expressive, and the only task of the translator was – to keep this simplicity and expressiveness in Russian translation, without trying at the same time "to speak with the Jewish accent", not to resort to excessive vulgarisms. Speaking about itself as about "the simple Jew", the author, however, was – on concepts of the environment - the person educated, did not speak "market language". The abundance of slavyanizm in language of "Lithuanian Jews" which the Cat used was big help in translation.
Being the scientific publication, the translation into Hebrew which left in Tel Aviv is supplied with the extensive preface ** and the rich help device, than it was allowed to me to use beyond all bounds for what I express profound gratitude to David Asaph, the translator of the book into Hebrew and to her editor, the employee of Tel Aviv University. Unfortunately, concepts which should be explained to the Russian and Israeli readers not always coincide, and for definition of the accepted writing of names and the translation of names it was necessary to address the Russian reference books. Bible quotes are provided in new, Jerusalem transfer of Shamir publishing house as more exact in sense of Hebrew. Names of holidays, objects of a religious cult and spiritual concepts – if are need to give them "in sacred language", are given in a Sephardic pronunciation as it is accepted in Israel. Names – in ashkenaziysky, idishistsky.
Shortly before a publication of the book in Tel Aviv David Asaph exchanged letters with the granddaughter Kotika living in Moscow, Rakhilyyu Abramovna the Cat who told him that she translates the book into Russian. Without hoping to publish the translation, R. A. wrote that it tries "for grandsons". Soon after that she died, and all my attempts, being in Moscow, to learn about destiny of the translation, were vain. Nothing about it is known also by E.Kotik's descendants living in Israel. To memory R.A.Kotik and my teacher of language Yiddish, Dov Siskel treating my work with big sympathy I devote the translation.

* Paral. zagl. l. into English language: What I have seen … memoirs of Yechezkel Kotik: edited and translated into Hebrew with an introduction by David Asaf. Tel-Aviv: Center for the History of Polish Jewry, Diaspora Research Institute, Tel-Aviv University, 1998. 378 p.
** Having characterized on page 13 of reminiscence of the Cat as "really, from the finely and important in the Jewish memoirs literature", the translator gives a big bibliography of such editions in a footnote.



My memoirs. Volume I



My memoirs. Volume II





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