Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Yiddish, with Jewish slaves
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Yiddish. Sounds crazy, no?
But across 19th-century Russia and eastern Europe, Jews eagerly devoured Russian Jewish writer Isaac Meir Dik’s Yiddish version of the antislavery classic. The online Yiddish studies journal In Geveb recently translated Dik’s introduction to his 1868 translation. But that fails to capture the full flavor of the book he renamed “Slavery or Serfdom.” It presents the antebellum South like something from an alternate universe: in it, the slaves (and the masters criticized for being too kind for their own good) are Jewish.
The translation made it to the New World, where it gained critical and popular attention. As a 1905 review in the respected American Jewish monthly New Era Illustrated Magazine made clear, Dik didn’t just translate the language. He transposed the whole tale. Now, Jewish customs and textual references pepper the story. Uncle Tom, a devout Jew, compares himself to the biblical Joseph, sold into bondage. Jewishness wasn’t just a gimmick to attract readers. It added to the novel’s treatment of slavery.
It’s the ending that makes “Slavery or Serfdom” one of the best things ever. The former slaves go to Canada, where the remaining non-Jews convert to Judaism, all of them establish a synagogue with Uncle Tom as president, and they all live happily ever after.
Jewniverse
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