A Jewish family saga set in Minsk, currently Belarus, The Zelmenyaners is a tragi-comical story of the inhabitants of a Jewish hoyf - or a courtyard, in Yiddish - faced with the violent settling of the new Soviet-driven reality. The hoyf is where the news are brought, where people go through as they come or as they go. There is always someone there ready to register the news.
I laughed a lot, but also realised the diquieting signs of the new times coming. I knew what it will happen to many of them, what the newly order will bring to those Jews, other than the blessings of electricity and radio. It is the last breath of a world long gone. While reading the book I was able to imagine that hoyf and the interaction between the inhabitants, as well as their humour, fearlessness and most importanlty, their joy of life.
The book was lately discovered and published in 2013 with an introduction and notes by Sasha Sanderovich. The book was initially serialized in the local Yiddish-speaking media of the time, hence the structure of the book chapters, that indeed look like separate story installments.
Kulbak, a former talmid at Volozhin Yeshiva in Belarus and primarily a poet, was killed at the Stalin´s orders during the Great Purge of Belarusian intellectuals when he was only 41. After the death of Stalin he, altogether with the other murdered intellectuals, was rehabilitated by the Soviet authorities.
