Homer.  tr. Shelomoh Shaynberg.  Warsaw.  Yiddish Universal Bibliotek, 1937.

I grew up in a bilingual home—my mom is from Israel and my dad is American—and this made language something that I have always been acutely aware of.  And to this day, learning new languages is one of my favorite things to study…to the point that my friends make fun of me for being “all over the map” with my class choices (punny, right? Languages..maps…).

Anyways, because I am a huge language buff, I was really excited about my assignment to find a translation of Homer when I realized I could tie in my language interests.  I started out searching the library catalogue for a Hebrew translation of the Odyssey, but had no success.  Then, I happened to notice that there was one search result under Yiddish, but that it was in the Buhr Building—the warehouse where the surplus books are kept.

It was a really interesting experience to go to the Buhr Building and request the book, and even more interesting when the book came out in a special box that it fit into perfectly, with a warning label on it saying:

“Attention Reader: This volume is too fragile for any future repair.  Please handle with great care.  –University of Michigan Library Conservation Services”

I opened the box to reveal a very Art-Deco-meets-Eastern-European-Jewry style cover of the Yiddish translation of the Odyssey from 1937.  The binding was hanging on by a few threads.  Literally.  The pages were brittle from age to the point that there were shards of pages within the book from pieces just snapping off.  Had I not been able to leaf through the book, I would not have seen that the binding was made form recycled paper—some other Yiddish print that was repurposed for this book’s hardware.

The book comes from pre-Holocaust Warsaw, and the translator passed away 5 years after its publication in 1942 during Holocaust.  I was not able to find information on the translator’s personal life or cause of death, but nonetheless the book brings with it a sense of the time period.  It is an example of how the object’s significance is the conglomeration of the literary intent of the book, and the history of this particular object that it acquires simply by its physical existence.

-Rona Beresh