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Dr. Binyamin Hunyadi | Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

Dr. Binyamin Hunyadi

Department of Yiddish

Subject: Yiddish Anarchist Press and Literature, 1890-1918

Supervisor: Avraham Novershtern, David Roskies

Abstract: The history of the anarchist movement in Yiddish is one of the uncharted chapters in Jewish historiography. At the end of the 19th century, Jewish anarchist groups were formed out of the masses of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in the East and settling in Western Europe and in the Americas. Living the migrant life, constantly shifting from country to country, the Jewish anarchists were forced to organize into extremely mobile cells. They established centers in major European cities, especially London and Paris and, across the Atlantic, major anarchist groups were formed in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Buenos Aires. These centers persisted for decades, their ‘rosters’ constantly renewed with the unending flux of immigration. With time a network emerged, connecting the disparate groups in a tightly-knit web, marking out central and peripheral communities. My project focuses on the literary production of these groups, i.e. on the main ideological patterns within the anarchist press, on anarchist fiction and poetry written and published in Yiddish, and on Yiddish translations of literary works from European languages, carried out by ideologically-motivated Yiddish anarchists.

Bio: Binyamin Hunyadi is a research student in the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. His dissertation, The Emergence of Anarchist Literature and Press in Yiddish, 1890-1918, proposes to delineate thehistory of the Yiddish anarchist movement and its literary production in a trans-national context, tracingits development from the movement's inception in England and the United States to its temporary collapse by the end of the First World War. In 2015 he completed his Master's degree in the joint Yiddish program of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. His final thesis was a study of the first known rhymed adaptation of Yeven Metsula into Yiddish, published in 1686 in Amsterdam, which shaped,to a large extant, Ashkenazi Jewish consciousness and the patterns of historical remembrance in Jewish culture.Previously, he completed a second M.A. thesis during his studies in the University of Budapest, in which he tackled questions pertaining to the first ultra-orthodox Yiddish journal, Amud ha-Yira edited by R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger.His field of interests covers a wide array of subjects ranging from the history and culture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to topics in Yiddish culture and literature.

Publications:

  • 2012 - A nőbűvölő. Ayzik-Meyer Dik és a haszkala nézeteinek terjesztése a 19. századi Kelet-Európában. [The womanizer. Ayzik-Meyer Dik and the Propagation of the Views of Haskala in 19th Century Eastern Europe], in Múlt és Jövő, 2012/3 [Past and Future], Budapest, pp. 108-116.
  • 2013 - Isaac Bashevis Singer elbeszélése a Forvertsben [Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Short Story in the Forverts], Múlt és Jövő, 2013/4 [Past and Future], Budapest, pp. 116-118.
  • 2015 - Isten szolgái - R. Joszef Akiva Schlesinger ultra-ortodox újságja az 1860-as években Magyarországon: a jiddis Amud ha-Jira [Servants of God: Amud ha-Yira - R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger’s Ultra-Orthodox journal in the 1860’s in Hungary], in Régió [Region], 2015, 23/1. pp. 50-71.
  • 2017 - Zalmen Gradowski és az Auschwitz-tekercs [Zalmen Gradowski and the Scroll of Auschwitz], in Zalmen Gradowski, Auschwitz-tekercs − A pokol szívében (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2017), pp. 7−35.
  • 2018 - Ha-Kadosh Shomer: Ha-Teatron ve-Kefulo −Gilgul Sipura shel Alilat ha-Dam shel Tisa-Eslar be-Tarbut Yidish ha-Popularit [The Holy Shomer: Theater and its Double − The Story of the Blood Libel of Tiszaeszlár in Yiddish Popular Culture], in Ho!, 2018, 16, 317-321.
  • 2018 - Farshklaft tsu Got - R. Akive Yoysef Shlezingers gor Frume Tsaytung af Yidish ‘Amed ha-Yire in Ungern in di 1860er Yorn [Enslaved by God. R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger’s Ultra-Orthodox Yiddish Journal in the 1860s in Hungary], in Yerushalmer Almanakh (forthcoming).
  • 2018 - Morose News for a Mundane World: Rabbinic Discourse in the Yiddish Amud ha-Yira in Hungary, 1866−1867, in Proceedings of the Ladino-Yiddish Rabbinic Writings International Workshop Held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (submitted for publication).

 

Presidential Stipend 2016/17