YASHE ZELDIN

YASHE ZELDIN (1902-1942)

            A poet and playwright, he was born in Vilna into the family of an office employee. He attended religious elementary school and a senior technical school, but he was compelled to cease his studies and go to work. At the start of WWI, he moved with his older brothers to Warsaw. His brothers made ends meet through unskilled labor, and Yashe helped out. He returned in 1915 to Vilna, worked there as newspaper delivery boy, while at the same time starting to study in evening school, and becoming involved in the revolutionary movement. He was writing poems, one of which was published in the children’s magazine Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees). When the Red Army entered Vilna, he joined up and left the city. In 1919 he became a member of the Communist Youth, and later (1923) he was a sailor in the Soviet navy. In 1924 he published in the journal Yungvald (Young forest) in Moscow his navy poems. This naval theme remained for a long time one of the most important of his poetry, but he acquired a distinctive reputation for his poem “Di boyne” (The slaughterhouse) of 1927-1928, published in Di royte velt (The red world) and in Prolit (Proletarian literature), in which he described slaughterhouse workers, former village peasants who at that time brought to the city their unrestrained zest and elemental, basic skills as men of nature. Also this poem is interesting for its Russian inflections in Yiddish and even the Russian “chastushkas” [short, rhymed ditties] in Yiddish. Zeldin introduced one of the first non-Jewish types, showing him off with great artistic skill. With the same mastery, he translated from Russian a poem, “The Song about Apanas” by the poet Eduard Bagritsky, finding color and flexible language for the various linguistic registers in the work. Zeldin’s plays, Tsemakhke di tekhnike (Tsemakhke the technician) and Dray fentster (Three windows), were popular in the 1930s, and especially his one-act dramas on actual topics of the day. The one-act play Di gelungene operatsye (The successful operation), which he wrote with the poet Arn Kushnirov, was staged in many Jewish clubs. His last work was Undzer mishpokhe (Our family), a drama written with Shmuel Gordiner, which was included in a volume entitled Farn heymland in shlakht! (For the homeland in battle!) (Moscow: Emes, 1941). The Moscow Yiddish writers assembled it in the first days of the invasion of fascist Germany into the Soviet Union, before they headed for the front. With the eruption of the Soviet-Nazi war in 1941, he reported voluntarily for duty in the army. He died in battle at the front in the summer of 1942.

In book form: Mit shloglerishe tempn (With shock-troop pace) (Moscow: Central People’s Press of the USSR, 1931), 64 pp.; Kolvirtishe bine (The collective farm stage) (Moscow: Emes, 1932), 24 pp., one-act plays written with Elye Gordon; Di klub-bine (The clubhouse stage), plays (Tsemakhke di tekhnike and Dray fentster) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1936), 119 pp.; Tsu undzere fraynt vegn undzere faynt, plakat tsu di valn (To our friends concerning our enemies, posters concerning the elections) (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 14 pp.; Mayn banayte fraye erd (My renovated, free land) (Moscow: Emes, 1940), 16 pp.; Zyamele matros (Zyamele the sailor) (Moscow: Emes, 1941), 38 pp.; Yam-lider (Songs of the sea) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1973), 92 pp. His work was also represented in the collections: Deklamater fun der sovetisher yidisher literatur (Reciter of Soviet Yiddish literature) (Moscow: Emes, 1934); Far der bine: dertseylungen, pyeses, lider (For the stage: stories, plays, poems), with musical notation (together with Yekhezkl Dobrushin and Elye Gordon) (Moscow: Central People’s Press of the USSR, 1929). He translated Eduard Bagritsky’s Oysgeveylte lider un poemes (Selected poetry [original: Izbrannye stikhi i poemy]) (Moscow: Emes, 1940), 98 pp.; and the majority of the poems in the collection of Lermontov’s poems Oysgeveylte verk (Selected works) (Moscow: Emes, 1946).

Sources: M. Natovitsh, in Eynikeyt (Moscow) (February 24, 1945); A. Kushnirov, in Naye prese (Paris) (July 27, 1945); Y. Dobrushin, in Loshn un lebn (London) (June 1946); N. Mayzil, Dos yidishe shafn un der yidisher arbeter in sovetn-farband (Jewish creation and the Jewish worker in the Soviet Union) (New York, 1959), see index.

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[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 266; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 153-54.]