ZEITLIN, Aaron

Nationality: American (originally Russian: immigrated to the United States from Warsaw, Poland, 1939). Born: Gomel, Ukraine, 1898; son of the writer Hillel Zeitlin. Career: Moved to Warsaw with family, 1907; lived in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Zichron Yaakov, 1920-21. Professor of Hebrew literature, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, beginning in 1939. Also worked as a journalist. Literary editor, Unzer Ekspres newspaper, 1926; editor, Globus journal, 1932-34. Died: 1974.

Publications

Poetry

Metatron: Apokoliptishe poeme. 1922.

Shotns oyfn shney [Shadows on Snow]. 1922.

Gezamlte lider [Collected Poems]. 1947.

Shirim u-fo'emot. 1949.

Lieder fun churban 'on lieder fun gloybin [Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith]. 1967.

Ruah mi-metsulah: Shirim u-fo'emot. 1975.

Darko ha-aharonah shel Yanush Korts'ak: Po'emah bi-ferozah [Last Journey of Janusz Korczak]. 1989.

Plays

Brenner. 1929.

Yakob Frank: Drame in Zeks Bilder. 1929.

Esterke [Esther]. 1939.

Ben ha-esh veha-yesha': Po'emah dramatit. 1957.

Min ha-adam va-ma'lah: Shete po'emot dramatit. 1964.

Gezamlte drames [Collected Dramas]. 1974.

Drames. 1980.

Brener, Esterke, Vaitsman ha-sheni: Sheloshah mahazot. 1993.

Novel

Brenendike erd [Burning Earth]. 1979.

Other

In keynems land [In No Man's Land]. 1938.

In kamf far a Idisher melukheh. 1943.

Medinah va-hazon medinah. 1965.

'Al yahase ha-gomlin ben ha-medinah la-golah: (Hartsa'at oreah ba-hug li-fe'ile ha-tefutsot). 1966.

Ha-Metsi'ut ha-aheret: Ha-parapsikhologyah … 'uvdot veeru'im mi-tehum ha-mufla … 1967.

Ben emunah le-'omanut: Kerekh rishon Mi-dor le-dor: Kerekh sheni Be-'ohole sifrut … (each of the three titles also published separately in 1980). 1980.

Literarishe un filosofishe eseyen [Literary and Philosophical Essays]. 1980.

Bi-reshut ha-rabim uvi-reshut ha-yahid: Aharon Tseytlin vesifrut Yidish: Pirke mavo ve-igrot mu'arot be-livui te'udot le-toldot tarbut Yidish be-Polin ben shete milhamot ha-'olam (correspondence). 2000.

Translator, Shirav ha-idiyim, by Hayim Nahman Byalik. 1956.

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Critical Studies:

"Singer on Aaron Zeitlin" by Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Joseph C. Landis), in Yiddish, 6(2-3), Summer/Fall 1985, pp. 117-19; "The Holocaust Poetry of Aaron Zeitlin in Yiddish and Hebrew" by Emanuel S. Goldsmith, in Reflections of the Holocaust in Art and Literature, edited by Randolph L. Braham, 1990.

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Aaron Zeitlin, son of the noted Yiddish writer and thinker Hillel Zeitlin, was born in Gomel, Ukraine, in 1898 and raised in Vilna and Warsaw, where his family moved in 1907. Together with his brother, Elchanan, he sojourned for nine months in 1920-21 in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Zichron Yaakov. The experiences of this period are reflected in Zeitlin's literary works in Hebrew and Yiddish, including the drama Brenner (1929), about the gifted Hebrew writer of the "uprooted" generation who was murdered on 2 May 1921 in Jaffa during the Arab riots; the novel Brenendike erd (1979; "Burning Earth"), on the World War I Jewish espionage network Nili and the nature of a future Jewish state; and poetry. In 1939 he was invited to New York by director Maurice Schwartz for the production of his play Esterke ("Esther"). The start of World War II on 1 September 1939 prevented his return to his family, all of whom were murdered in the Shoah. He settled in New York City where he worked as a journalist and a professor of Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Zeitlin died in New York in 1974.

Zeitlin's literary writings include bilingual (Hebrew and Yiddish) poems, narratives, dramas, essays, and criticism. Noteworthy is his contribution from the Warsaw period. In the 1920s and '30s he was totally immersed in the Yiddish cultural life of Warsaw. He was a moving force in the inclusion of Yiddish literature and Yiddish writers as members of the World PEN Organization (late 1920s), whose branch in Warsaw he chaired in the 1930s. In 1926 he became literary editor of the Warsaw Yiddish daily Unzer Ekspres, and he founded and edited the Yiddish literary monthly journal Globus (1932-1934). His extant collections of interwar Yiddish poetry and drama include Shotns oyfn shney (1922; "Shadows on Snow"), Metatron (1922), Yakob Frank (1929), and In keynems land (1938; "In No Man's Land"), a premeditation of the German horrors on the horizon. Tragically, German militarism destroyed a number of his unpublished manuscripts and works in progress, including five volumes of poetry ready for publication; unpublished plays; a novel co-written with Isaac Bashevis Singer on the Austrian Jewish psychologist and philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1923), whose brand of Jewish self-hate influenced Nazi ideology; and personal correspondence.

Zeitlin's works represent a reflective reservoir that is fed by a wide range of sources, classic and contemporary. Feeding the depths are tributaries of sacred and secular semantics as well as old new currents, such as mysticism, philosophy, Shoah, and Zionism. What unites his writings is his cosmopolitan traditional way of thinking. This talent, which he honed as a literary critic and editor and perfected in his journalistic work and polemics, sustained the "kultural-kampf" between traditional and antitraditional yiddishists in pre-war Poland and beyond. He was a devoted loyalist who left an indelible mark on the development and advancement of Yiddish culture and literature. Singer, at his Nobel lecture, said of his friend Aaron Zeitlin, "He left a spiritual inheritance of high quality." Few critics would disagree.

—Zev Garber

See the essay on Lieder fun churban 'on lieder fun gloybin.