Shlomo Berger

'Interpreting Freud: The Yiddish Philosophical Journal Davke Investigates a Jewish Icon'

The Argentine-based Yiddish philosophical journal Davke functioned as a mediator between general European philosophy and Jewish philosophy. Its editor Shlomo Suskovich wished to introduce readers of Yiddish to the western tradition of philosophy and, at the same time, to show how Jewish thought contributed to abstract thinking. Through topical issues dedicated to central ideas or to giants among Jewish philosophers, particular knowledge could be successfully transmitted to the reading public. Sigmund Freud was honored with such a topical issue. In it the editor wished to show this Jews contribution to basic philosophical contemplation rather than limit the discussion to his contributions in the field of psychology. In the central article of the issue on Freud, the editor emphasizes that all the articles in the issue, including those which deal with psychoanalysis, focus on Freuds importance to the world of ideas rather than just the world of medicine.

A Note on the Opening Sentence of Pirqei Avot in Two Eighteenth-Century Yiddish Editions of the Tract

The opening sentence of Pirqei Avot evokes a history of Torah transmission which is also of particular importance in legitimizing the existence and roles of the Oral Torah as an integral section of Torah. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, Yiddish translators of the tract frequently expanded the original Hebrew text while following the strategy of Yiddish translations of the Bible known as Khumesh mit khiber , or ‘a Yiddish rendition with additions’: a Yiddish version of the Hebrew text aimed at providing its reading public a coherent text to understand in their Ashkenazi vernacular. As may be expected, the boundaries between translation and commentary were consequently blurred, but the Yiddish version was nevertheless considered as a translation of the original Hebrew text.