Dr Seuss meets Kabbalah

It was a tempting proposal in the subject line of an email that first connected scholar Nathan Wolski with artist Anita Lester.

Wolski was interested in translating Aaron Zeitlin's mystical Yiddish poem, The Seven Palaces of Breath, into English and was looking for an illustrator to help him bring the tale alive.

“I wrote, ‘Think Dr. Seuss meets Kabbalah’ and that was enough to hook her in,” Wolski reflected.

Several collaborations later, and the latest project from the Melbourne-based creative duo still rings true to Wolski’s original pitch – a new illustrated edition of Der Nister’s classic Yiddish folktales, The Hidden Farmacopeia, created in honour of its almost 100-year anniversary.

“I had been familiar with Der Nister through his more hardcore symbolist works, which are quite complex,” said Wolski, who works at Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and is appearing at this year’s Sydney Jewish Writers Festival.

“I knew he had these children's stories. I read them, thinking maybe there’s something there, and I fell in love. The stories are just extraordinary. The way I describe them is to imagine if Rebbe Nachman and Franz Kafka collaborated in writing children's stories.”

A children’s literary giant

Drawing from Eastern European and Jewish folklore as well as French and Russian symbolist tradition, The Hidden Farmacopeia transports readers to a mysterious and enchanting world filled with animals, demons, goblins and golems.