Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863-1920), who is better known by his pseudonym, Shlomo An-sky, was a Russian playwright, poet, political activist, folklorist, and photographer. In 1911-1914, he headed an ethnographic expedition, sponsored by the Historical-Ethnographic Society of St. Petersburg, to the Jewish towns of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev provinces, in an attempt to document and preserve a record of the traditional Jewish way of life, which was already beginning to disappear in the early years of the 20th century. An-sky and his colleagues took thousands of photographs of synagogues and scenes from daily life and collected ritual utensils and sacred objects, manuscripts and old books, clothing, wedding decorations, and tableware. The members of the expedition also recorded wax cylinders of Jewish folk songs and melodies and wrote down stories, histories, remedies, legends, sayings, and spells that were told to them. Here is an article about the library-museum where An-skys letters and documents, and what remains of his collection, are preserved.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 23:25:31 +0000
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