Guide to the Papers of Nokhem Shtif (1879-1933)
1910-1933

RG 57

Processed by Ezekiel Lipschutz, Chava Lapin and Rivka Schiller. Additional processing by Rachel S. Harrison.

With the assistance of a grant from the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. Described and encoded as part of the CJH Holocaust Resource Initiative, made possible by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street

New York, NY 10011

Phone: (212) 246-6080

Fax: (212) 292-1892

Email: archives@yivo.cjh.org

URL: http://www.yivoinstitute.org

©2012 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. All rights reserved.

Center for Jewish History, Publisher.

Electronic finding aid was encoded in EAD 2002 by Rachel S. Harrison in January 2012. Description is in English.

Biographical Note

Nokhem Shtif was born in Rovno, Volhynia (today Rivne, Ukraine) on September 29, 1879 to a prosperous family. Until the age of his bar mitzvah he learned with various melamdim (Jewish Studies teachers). He later attended a real-gymnasium (university preparatory secondary school) and the Kiev Polytechnic University, where he was enrolled between 1899 and 1903, while still continuing to study religious and modern Hebrew literature. Following the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, he became an ardent Zionist and helped establish the radical student Zionist organization, Molodoy Izrail (Young Israel), and also participated in the 1902 Minsk Zionist Conference.

In his first, unpublished, article Shtif pioneered an ideological concept later employed by the Zionist Socialist Party: emigration and colonization as a means of creating a Jewish proletariat, which, according to Shtif, could not exist in the repressive environment of Russia. In autumn 1903, he cofounded the Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance) Jewish socialist group in Kiev with A. Ben-Adir and W. Fabrikant. Shortly thereafter, Shtif was arrested for his political activities and was expelled from the Kiev Polytechnic University. From late 1904 until early 1906, he lived in Bern, Switzerland, where he organized a local Vozrozhdenie group and agitated against the Bund. In April 1906, with other activists from Vozrozhdenie, he founded the Jewish Socialist Labor Party in Kiev. Its members, also known as Sejmists, sought Jewish national autonomy in Russia and became committed Yiddishists.

Between 1906 and 1910, Shtif spent time in Kiev, Vilna, Vitebsk, and Saint Petersburg. He was a party agitator, an editor for modern Yiddish literature at the Kletskin publishing house in Vilna, and an employee of the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA). He also published several articles on literary criticism and politics in Russian and Yiddish periodicals. In 1910, he moved back to Rovno, where he worked at a Jewish bank and contributed to various periodicals, usually under the pseudonym Bal-Dimyen (Dreamer). He completed his dissertation and graduated from the Jaroslavl (Galicia) Law School in 1913.

In 1914 Shtif moved to Vilna, where he became the editor of the publication, Di Vokh (The Week). While living in St. Petersburg during the years 1915-1918, he worked for the Jewish aid organization, YEKOPO (Evreiskii Komitet Pomoshchi Zhertvam Voiny, Jewish Committee to Aid Victims of the War), editing its journal, and was active in Hevrah Mefitsei Haskalah (Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia) and with instituting Yiddish as the language of instruction in Jewish schools. In 1917, after the February Revolution, Shtif became one of the founders of the revived Folkspartey (People’s Party), whose newspaper, Folksblat, he co-published with Israel Efroikin. In 1918, Shtif moved to Kiev, where he was active in YEKOPO and also devoted himself to journalism. His writings, including the pamphlet Yidn un yidish, oder ver zaynen “yidishistn” un vos viln zey? (Jews and Yiddish, or Who Are the “Yiddishists” and What Do They Want?), 1919, concerned the Jewish future in the post-war world, which Shtif envisioned as a brotherhood of nations that included Jews as an autonomous national collective with a highly developed Yiddish culture.

After the Bolsheviks overtook Kiev in October 1920, Shtif left Russia, spending a short time in Minsk, where he and Zelig Kalmanovitch gave lectures for Yiddish teachers, and then moved to Kovno (Kaunas), a stronghold of the Folkspartey, where he again taught Yiddish at Yiddish teachers’ courses. In March 1922 he moved to Berlin, where he immersed himself in researching Yiddish language and literature. His book on pogroms in Ukraine was published in Berlin in Russian (Pogromy na Ukraine) in 1922 and in Yiddish (Pogromen in Ukraine) in 1923.

Starting in 1908, Shtif published a number of articles and reviews on Yiddish philology. While living in Kiev and Berlin, he returned to his studies of philology and old Yiddish literature. A propagandist, pro-Yiddishist and anti-Hebraist quality characterized all of his publications, such as his pamphlet Humanizm in der elterer yidisher literatur (Humanism in Old Yiddish Literature), published in Kiev in 1920 and reprinted in Berlin in 1922.

By October 1924, Shtif, who was influenced by the New York-based activist and writer, A. S. Sachs, drafted a memorandum entitled, Vegn a yidishn akademishn institut (About a Yiddish Academic Institute). The article outlined Shtif’s proposed plan for the academic Yiddish institute that would later be founded as the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO, in Vilna in 1925. Shtif proposed an institute containing four scholarly sections: one for Yiddish philology; one for Jewish history; one to deal with social and economic issues; and a pedagogical section, a library, and a bibliographic center, for collecting and recording publications in Yiddish. Shtif’s memorandum argued that the creation of an academic institute would help win respect for the language and was the next logical step in the growth of Yiddish culture. On March 24, 1925, the Central Education Committee (Tsentrale Bildungs Komitet or TSBK), the Vilna branch of the Central Yiddish School Organization (Tsentrale Yidishe Shul Organizatsye or TSYSHO) and the Vilna Education Society (Vilner Bildungs Gezelshaft or VILBIG) met to discuss Shtif’s memorandum, which they approved in a brochure entitled, Di organizatsye fun der yidisher visnshaft (The Organization of Yiddish Scholarship, Vilna, April 1925). Shtif, while involved in organizing the YIVO, was lured by the unprecedented scale of state-sponsored Jewish cultural development in the Soviet Union, particularly in Ukraine. Even while still in Berlin, he, along with Bal-Makhshoves and Dovid Bergelson, had argued that Ukraine was the real cradle of Yiddish literary talent and apparently believed that Kiev could become the cultural and academic capital of the Yiddishist movement, rather than Vilna.

In 1926, Shtif was invited to oversee the Kiev Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (previously known as the Chair or Division for Jewish Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences). At the same time, he launched a professional philological journal, Di yidishe shprakh (The Yiddish Language; 1926-1930), later called Afn shprakhfront (On the Language Front; 1931-1933), which he also edited. He also continued to publish articles on the history of Yiddish literature and language, on language planning, on the development of Yiddish spelling, and on issues of stylistics. For a short time, he directed the Kiev Institute, but later headed only its philological section. Yoysef Liberberg, a Communist Party member, replaced Shtif as director of the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture. In 1928, both men were severely criticized for attempting to bring Simon Dubnow to Kiev as a guest of honor for a ceremonial opening.

Shtif died at his desk in Kiev on April 7, 1933, while attempting to vindicate himself of the charge made against him in Soviet Russia for his bourgeois and “provincial Yiddishist approach.”

References

Berenbaum, Michael and Fred Skolnik, eds. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007.

Congress for Jewish Culture, ed. Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur. (Lexicon of the New Jewish Literature). New York: 1981.

Estraikh, Gennady. "Shtif, Nokhem." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New York: Yale University Press and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Inc., 2008.

Estraikh, Gennady. Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999.

Flinker, David, et al., ed. Di yidishe prese vos iz geven. (The Yiddish Press that Was). Tel-Aviv: Veltfarband fun di yidishe zhurnalistn (World Union for Yiddish Journalists), 1975.

Gottesman, Itzik Nakhmen. Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2003.

Kuznitz, Cecile Esther. The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. PhD diss. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 2000.

Kuznitz, Cecile Esther. “YIVO.” The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New York: Yale University Press and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Inc., 2008.

Scope and Content Note

The collection consists of correspondence of a personal and professional nature, research papers, typed and handwritten manuscripts, transcripts of articles, memoirs of writers, newspaper clippings, research works by other scholars, Sifrei Musar (religious morality books), bibliographic and autobiographic notes that were later used for Zalman Reisen’s Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur prese un filologye (Lexicon of Yiddish Literature, Press, and Linguistics), Vilna, and materials pertaining to the Kiev-based Institute for Proletarian Yiddish Culture and other Soviet academic institutions with which Shtif was affiliated, including teaching materials, Yiddish language lesson plans, reports, minutes, and course lectures. The bulk of the materials in the collection pertain to Yiddish language, philology, stylistics, and literature, Yiddish research activities in the Soviet Union, and Jewish cultural history.

The collection comprises 1.5 linear feet and dates from 1910-1933. The materials are mostly in Yiddish, although there is some Russian, German, Ukrainian, Polish, and Hebrew. The papers most likely derive from the Kiev Institute for Proletarian Yiddish Culture, where Shtif directed the Institute’s philological section. The Institute was ransacked in 1942-1943 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a Nazi unit involved in looting Jewish cultural property in the occupied countries. The looted property was then sent to Germany. After the war, looted Jewish materials were placed in the Offenbach archival depot by the U.S. Army. During this movement, Shtif’s papers were mixed with archival materials that belonged to YIVO prior to World War II. The YIVO in New York recovered this and other collections in 1947.

The Shtif papers were originally part of the materials arranged as RG 3, Collection of Yiddish Literature and Language, by Ezekiel Lifschutz, ca. 1950, who also created a finding aid in Yiddish. RG 3 is arranged as a reference collection in which documents from various individual collections that refer to Yiddish writers are assembled in folders according to the writer’s name. In 2007-2008 the finding aid for RG 3 was translated into English by Chava Lapin and edited by Rivka Schiller.

Arrangement

The collection was formerly part of Record Group 3, from which it was extracted to form a separate record group, RG 57. The folder arrangement was maintained. RG 3 is a segment of a larger block of the Vilna YIVO records within which all folders are numbered consecutively. Record Group 3 begins at folder 1701 and continues through folder 3402, within which the folders of RG 57 are numbered from 3022-3080. The folders have also been renumbered, starting at #1, so that each folder has two numbers. The Shtif materials are arranged in one series, primarily by topic.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Permission to use the collection must be obtained from the YIVO Archivist.

Use Restrictions

Permission to publish part or parts of the collection must be obtained from the YIVO Archives. For more information, contact:
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
email: archives@yivo.cjh.org

Related Material

The Papers of Nokhem Shtif were originally part of RG 3, Yiddish Literature and Language Collection, with which they share a provenance. RG 55, Yiddish Writers and Journalists Union, was also originally part of RG 3, as was RG 58, Papers of Khaykl Lunski. Shtif's correspondence is represented in the collections of B. J. Bialostotzky, RG 479, Yehude Leyb Cahan, RG 202, Abraham Liessin, RG 201, Kalman Marmor, RG 205, Alexander Mukdoni, RG 227, Joseph Opatoshu, RG 436, YIVO Vilna Tcherikower Archive, RG 82, and several others. The YIVO Archives also has several books by and about Shtif.

Separated Material

There is no information about materials that are associated by provenance to the described materials that have been physically separated or removed.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); Papers of Nokhem Shtif; RG 57; folder number; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Acquisition Information

Recovered by the YIVO Archives in New York in 1947.

Processing information

Ezekiel Lifschutz compiled and wrote a Yiddish finding aid for RG 3, Collection of Yiddish Literature and Language, ca. 1950. This finding aid was translated from Yiddish by Chava Lapin and edited by Rivka Schiller, 2007-2008 with the assistance of a grant from the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. The Papers of Nokhem Shtif (folders 3022-3080) were removed from RG 3, and they now form a separate Record Group 57. Additional processing completed in January 2012.

Access Points

• Individuals:

  • Lifshits, Shiye-Mordkhe, 1829-1878
  • Reznik, L. (Lipe), 1890-1944
  • Shtif, Nahum, 1879-1933

• Organizations:

  • Akademiia nauk Ukrainy
  • Institute for Proletarian Yiddish Culture
  • YIVO Archives

• Subjects:

  • Jewish history, life, and culture
  • Jews -- Europe, Eastern
  • Yiddish -- Soviet Union
  • Yiddish language
  • Yiddish literature
  • Yiddish philology

• Places:

  • Kiev (Ukraine)
  • Lithuania
  • Soviet Union
  • Ukraine
  • Vilnius (Lithuania)

• Document Types:

  • Administrative reports
  • Correspondence
  • Financial records
  • Lectures
  • Manuscripts
  • Memoirs
  • Minutes
  • Newspaper clippings
  • Notes

Container List