Roe Green Gallery, Cleveland

An-sky/Iudovin Exhibit
Alanna E. Cooper, October 2014

WELCOME
S. An-sky would have been thrilled to welcome you to this exhibit. A
century has passed since he collected the photos that are on display
here. Yet, his motivations remain surprisingly relevant today.

Witnessing dramatic change in Eastern European community life, An-

sky worried that the educated, assimilated Jews of his day were losing
their sense of Jewish identity. He hoped that exhibitions such as this
one might re-connect his fellow Jews to their culture and their past.
Today, An-skys vision and tireless work continues to provide us with a
link to who we are and reminds us from whence weve come.

MEET AN-SKY
Born in 1863, Shloyme-Zanvl Rappaport (who later took the pen-name
An-sky) was raised in a traditional Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in
Belorussia. As a young man, he was captivated by the world that
existed beyond his small town and embarked upon several years of
wandering. He taught himself Russian, studied philosophy, lived in
Paris and Berlin, worked as a blacksmith, a bookbinder and a coal
miner, and contributed to Populist and Revolutionary causes.

Though he strayed far from the world into which he was born, An-skys
Jewish loyalties remained strong. He was engaged in Jewish issues of
the day, and he addressed them through his essays and many other
writings (including his play The Dybbuk, for which is he most well-
known).

PRESERVING A WORLD
As traditional Jewish life-ways in the Pale of Settlement began to erode,
An-sky wondered: How might the assimilated Jews in St. Petersburg
and other urban centers remain connected to their Jewish roots? And
how would future generations learn about the rich Jewish lives of their
forebears?

Vexed by these questions, An-sky embarked on an ambitious

preservation project. Leading a team of researchers he traveled to
remote regions of the Pale of Settlement to collect Jewish ritual objects,
tales, folk-practices, songs, proverbs, and photographs.

Upon completing two expeditions (supported by the Jewish Historical-

Ethnographic Society in St. Petersburg), An-sky organized several
exhibits of the artifacts he and his team had collected. He envisioned
these exhibits as inspirational spaces. They were to provide venues for
Jewish artists, leaders and intellectuals to visit their past, and to ignite
their creative passions towards forging a new, lively, viable secular
culture.

THE PHOTOS
With the outbreak of World War I and the Russian revolution, the
exhibits and archives An-sky had established to house his collections
were dismantled. The objects were scattered, and some were lost.
Serendipitously, some 350 of the photos were recovered in recent
years. Today, they are housed in the Institute for Judaic Studies,
affiliated with St. Petersburgs European University.

The exhibit here today draws on this collection, and has been made
possible by the Cleveland Federations partnership with the St.
Petersburg Jewish community. Study them carefully, and quietly. You
may hear An-sky whispering to us across time. This is how we once
looked and lived. This is our connection to the past and an inspiration
for the future.