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.

Wolski’s version includes the original Yiddish verse alongside, for the first time, the translated English rhymes – a “painful but joyous process” that took roughly six months to complete.

Each of the 10 stories demonstrates Der Nister’s profound exploration of Yiddish modernism, weaving funny, bizarre, grotesque and sometimes scary imagery to create prolific lessons for children and adults alike.

Der Nister is widely considered as one of the most important Yiddish writers of the early twentieth century. Wolski believes he is as important to the children's storytelling landscape as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, with Der Nister even translating the latter into Yiddish while he penned his own stories.

“What the Brothers Grimm were trying to do to create a literature for a new German nation that was just coming into being, similarly, Der Nister was trying to create a literature for this new Yiddish nation, this new secular Jewish world that was coming into being during World War One. The similarities are very apparent,” Wolski explained.

“Der Nister probably draws more on Hans Christian Andersen than on the Brothers Grimm, but it’s the same world. The classics are the classics, and Der Nister’s stories really ought to be known as one of the classics of Jewish children's literature.”

Enter Marc Chagall

The original work, Mayselekh in ferzn, was published by Der Nister – the pseudonym of pre-eminent Yiddish writer, philosopher, translator and critic Pinhas Kahanovitch meaning ‘The Hidden One’ – in Kyiv almost a century ago, with illustrations provided by his friend, Marc Chagall.

It’s a legacy not taken lightly by Lester, who holds the famous Jewish-Russian-French artist in high regard.

“Chagall is who I inspire to be as a visual artist. He was not singular – he did children’s illustrations, paintings, set designs, textiles, murals, and it was all for his community,” said Lester, an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who works across music, visual art, film, poetry and literature.

“That was so profoundly part of his work, and I definitely align with that pursuit.”

In preparing to illustrate The Hidden Farmacopeia, Lester read the tales in full and started drafting sketches with the insight Chagall had designed the original illustrations, but without seeing them.

“As I was reading, I was picturing this Chagall landscape. Then I saw his original works after I had made my first few sketches, and it was striking that we were using very similar perspectives,” Lester explained.

“There was even one very eerily similar drawing. I felt like we were talking to the same ghosts. We were talking to the same story traditions.”

Lester created 55 unique black and white illustrations for the book’s 10 stories, which while different, intersect with one another to form a coherent universe.

While not the primary intention, the individuality of Lester’s artwork lends itself to exhibition, and will exclusively premiere in a showing at this year’s Sydney Jewish Writers Festival.

“I wanted to make sure that you could, much like Chagall, open up a page and tell a story from looking at one picture. I just went for it and allowed the characters to speak to me and build their own worlds.”

Beyond the Holocaust narrative

Both Lester and Wolski agree that the ability to contribute to the detachment of Jewish storytelling as solely belonging to experiences of the Holocaust has made The Hidden Farmacopeia a particularly meaningful project to work on.

“People do associate Yiddish with weakness and with the Holocaust,” Wolski concluded.

“To focus on these pieces of literature, which are well before the storm clouds of the Holocaust even gathered, is to connect with a world where possibilities still existed.

“As modern Jews, there are worlds of Judaism that we simply don’t draw on, and we ought to. Most of us Jews have a very impoverished Jewish worldview. If we can make some of the classics accessible and enlarge the Jewish imagination – the sense of mystery, of what it is to be a human being, of music and wonder and enchantment – then that is a triumph.”

The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival runs from 21 to 25 August 2024. Find out more information and book tickets online.