Free for Friends of Streicker
Mikhl Yashinsky is a Harvard-trained writer, singer/actor and teacher. Author of The Gospel According to Chaim, the first new full-length Yiddish-language drama produced professionally in the US in many decades, he performed in the Yiddish-language Fiddler on the Roof, Amid Falling Walls and The Sorceress and made his Carnegie Hall début singing in the Holocaust memorial concert “We Are Here.” He has also taught Yiddish at Columbia, University of Michigan, and Tel Aviv University and coauthored an award-winning textbook.
Taught by the translator, Mikhl Yashinsky, this lively course will delve into the recently published, first-ever English rendering of the Yiddish detective stories from 1908 Poland. Written by author Jonas Kreppel, who later perished in the Holocaust, these crime-solving capers of Viennese master detective Max Spitzkopf captivated the Yiddish-reading public of their day. One early fan of this Yiddish Sherlock Holmes was Isaac Bashevis Singer, who would later remember the stories’ thrillingly pulpy language as himlshe muzik (heavenly music).
Yashinsky will lead participants along the master sleuth’s shpurn (tracks) as he pursues the culprits and saves innocent Jews routinely bedeviled by antisemitic plots (pogroms, blood libels, forced conversions, the trafficking of shtetl girls). Throughout the course, we will read five of the stories in English; discuss their colorful characters, style, plots and mixture of high suspense and absurd humor; at times look at short excerpts of the Yiddish and learn from it (though no Yiddish knowledge is required); puzzle out some translation quandaries; and learn about the author and the genre of shund (Yiddish pulp fiction). Appropriate for all. Class to be conducted in English.
Required text: Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes by Jonas Kreppel, translated by Mikhl Yashinsky (White Goat Press, 2025) – found here.