A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard

Jewish writers, actors, rebels and bards upended the 19th c Old Country. Campaigning for education and freedom of expression, they fought the religious stranglehold. Velvel Zbarzher sang, argued and joked his way from Ukrainian shtetl to Constantinople. Culiner follows this extraordinary man to better know him, the Jewish Renaissance and herself.

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The Old Country, how did it smell? Sound? Was village life as cosy as popular myth would have us believe? Was there really a strong sense of community? Perhaps it was another place altogether.

In nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, Jewish life was ruled by Hasidic rebbes or the traditional Misnagedim, and religious law dictated every aspect of daily life. Secular books were forbidden; independent thinkers were threatened with moral rebuke, magical retribution and expulsion. But the Maskilim, proponents of the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, were determined to create a modern Jew, to found schools where children could learn science, geography, languages and history.

Velvel Zbarzher, rebel and glittering star of fusty inns, spent his life singing his poems to loyal audiences of poor workers and craftsmen, and his attacks condemning the religious stronghold resulted in banishment and itinerancy. By the time Velvel died in Constantinople in 1883, the Haskalah had triumphed and the modern Jew had been created. But modernisation and assimilation hadn’t brought an end to anti-Semitism.

Armed with a useless nineteenth-century map, a warm lumpy coat and an unhealthy dose of curiosity Jill Culiner trudged through the snow in former Galicia, the Russian Pale, and Romania searching for Velvel, the houses where he lived, and the bars where he sang. But she was also on the lookout for a vanished way of life in Austria, Turkey, and Canada.

This book chronicles a forgotten part of modern Jewish history by following the life of one extraordinary Jewish bard. Wryly told by award-winning Canadian writer Jill Culiner.