What do a pulp-fiction detective, a 20th-century Austrian civil servant, and a Yiddish-loving Detroiter all have in common? The audience gathered in the Goethe Institut is buzzing to find out. Older Jews, students, and curious Montrealers alike hush as we are greeted in Yiddish, and then in English. A collaboration between the Jewish Public Library, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Montreal Holocaust Museum, this event celebrates the first English translation of The Adventures of Max Spitzkopf, a 1908 Yiddish detective series by Jonas Kreppel. Referred to as “The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes,” these fifteen stories were thought to be lost for decades. Now, they are brought to an English audience thanks to translator Mikhl Yashinsky, and published by the Yiddish Book Centre’s imprint White Goat Press. Yashinsky’s talk emphasized literary translation’s ability to give long-forgotten Yiddish books a modern life.
Jonas (Yoyne) Kreppel might never have expected his detective series to reach new audiences a century after they were first published. A Hasidic Jew born in Galicia, Kreppel published the books in 1908 and then went on to higher-brow pursuits. He served as a civil servant in the Austrian foreign ministry and an editor for Jüdische Korrespondenz, the journal of the Aguda, the world organization of Orthodox Jews. Kreppel was a true polymath who also authored a Jewish encyclopedia, political articles, and Hasidic folk tales. However, due to his reputation as a respected intellectual, Kreppel was quickly targeted by the Nazis after Austria was annexed in 1938. He was killed in Buchenwald just two years later, in 1940.
Kreppel never attached his name to the Max Spitzkopf series, likely because works of popular fiction like Max Spitzkopf were regarded as shund – low-level literary trash – by higher-brow Yiddish scholars of the time. Crime, romance, and mystery books, including Max Spitzkopf, were cheaply printed and sold in 32-page pamphlets. The stories are full of cliffhanger chapter endings and cookie-cutter plots, and their appeal lies in their entertainment and ludicrous comedic value. Although intellectuals may have dismissed Max Spitzkopf as garbage, the tales fascinated readers. Nobel prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who fondly recalls reading the stories growing up in Poland, said that “they seemed like masterpieces to me.”
A pistol-baring super-sleuth, our hero Max Spitzkopf also comforted Jewish readers of the time. Stories like “The Blood Libel” and “Kidnapped for Conversion” echo real fears of Jews in early 20th-century Europe. Every Spitzkopf booklet proudly advertised that “Max Spitzkopf IS A JEW — and he has always taken every opportunity to stand up FOR JEWS.” In a time when anti-semitism was running rampant, Jonas Kreppel gifted European Jews an armed superhero of their own.
Mikhl Yashinsky, actor, playwright, stage director, lyricist, and translator, recently translated Max Spitzkopf into English. Yashinsky proudly identifies as a Yiddishist – in his words, someone who is “committed to Yiddish as a living language worthy of attention, study and involvement.” Ideally, everyone might read Yiddish works like Max Spitzkopf in their original language, but translation is the next best thing. By rendering Yiddish literary works into veltshprach (a world language like English), Yashinsky hopes to reveal “what treasures there are in [Yiddish] literature and culture” to broader audiences.
Translation initiatives like Yashinsky’s give modern-day English readers access to the richness of Yiddish culture. As Yashinsky reminds us, “shund literature was thrown away after being consumed, the language of Yiddish has been consigned [by some] to the dustbin of history, people like Kreppel were seen as worthless and done away with.” Although this erasure extends to all genres of Yiddish literature, these pulp fiction stories were at greater of being lost. By engaging with all kinds of Yiddish literature, from The Brothers Ashkenazi to Max Spitzkopf, people today can celebrate the diversity of Yiddish culture while simultaneously being inspired by the books’ protagonists. This revival is attributed to translators like Mikhl Yashinsky, who bring back discarded Jewish voices into the modern day.
Quotes from Mikhl Yashinsky have been edited for clarity.
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