An-sky Semen (Rappoport Semen)

An-sky Semen (Rappoport Semen) (1863–1920) – writer, folklorist, public figure, specialist in popular religion.

He studied in cheder. In the age of sixteen he was inspired with ideas of such cultural and social movement as Chaskal (enlightenment), shaped in the eighteenth century; its participants believed that Jews should escape their cultural and religious separation through laic education. In 1892, he had to emigrate.

He worked as a secretary of one of ideologists of the ‘Narodniki’ revolutionary movement Petr Lavrov. In the emigration A. took part in shaping the Agrarian Socialist Leagye later included into the Socialist Revolutionary Party (S.R.). Having returned to the Russian Empire in the course of the 1905 Revolution, he organized ethnographic expeditions studying the traditional culture of East European Jews, their folklore and legends – with the support of the Hebrew Historical and Ethnographic Society (created in 1908). A. did not stop his ethnographic research even in the time of the WWI, visiting the war zone with humanitarian missions. After the February Revolurion of 1917, he was elected to the Petrograd City Duma from the S.R. Party. He left Russia in 1918.

Compositions

The Collection of Works. Vol. 1-5. St. Petersburg, Prosveshchenie Publishing House, [1911]-[1913]. (in Rus.)
From the Legends on the Mstislavsky Case // ‘Perezhitoe’ Collection of Articles. St. Petersburg, 1910, vol. 2. (in Rus.)
From the Folk Legends on Golem // Novyi voskhod. 1912, No 3-4. (in Rus.)
An-sky S. Between Two Worlds (Dibbuk). Censored Version. Publ., introd. and glossary by V.V. Ivanov // Mnemosine. Docements and Facts from the History of Russian Theatre of the Twentieth Century. Iss. 3 / Edit.-comp. V.V. Ivanov. Moscow: ‘АRТ’ Publishing House, 2004. P.9-63; 517—518. (In Rus.)
Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions/ Ed. E.Avrutin. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2009. 212 pp., 170 plates.

About him

Lukin V. From ‘Narodniki’ to People (S. А. An-sky as ethnographer of East European Jews) // Jews in Russia: History and Culture. Collection of Articles / Ed. D. А. El’yashevich. St. Petersburg, 1995. (in Rus.)
Sergeeva I. Going to the Hebrew People: S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions in documents // Ab Imperio, No 4, 2003, pp. 395-428. (in Rus.)
Sergeeva I. Semen Akimovich An-sky’s Heritage in Libraries, Archives and Museums of Ukraine // Musei. Traditsii. Etnichnost’, 2013, No 2. (in Rus.)
Sergeeva I.A. The Archival Heritage of Semen An-sky in the collections of the National Library of Ukraine named after V. I. Vernadsky // Киiв: Дух i лiтера, 2006. (in Rus.)
Kantsedikas А. Writer, Revolutionary, Ethnographer // Evreiskoe slovo. No 43 (166). (in Rus.)
Dymshits V.A. S.А. An-sky and V.Ya. Propp, or What ‘Jewish’ is ‘Jewish Folktale’? // http://fairypot.narod.ru/story/Dymshits.html (in Rus.)
Safran G., Zipperstein S. J. The Worlds of S. An-sky. A Russian Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century. // Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 542 p.
Dymshits V.A. Returning of the Wandering Soul // The People of the Book in the Book World. 2013, No 106. (in Rus.)

T. Ch.