Zvi Kolitz (; December 14, 1912 – September 29, 2002) was a
Lithuania
Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
n-born Jewish film and theatrical producer and a writer whose short story ''
Yosl Rakover Talks to God'' became a classic of
Holocaust literature.
Life
Zvi Kolitz, a son of a prominent rabbinical family, was born in
Alytus
Alytus () is a city with Town privileges, municipal rights in southern Lithuania. It is the List of cities in Lithuania, sixth-largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, 14th-largest city in the Baltic ...
,
Lithuania
Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
. He studied at the nearby
Yeshiva of Slobodka and then lived for several years in Italy, where he attended the
University of Florence
The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled.
History
The f ...
and the
Naval Academy at Civitavecchia. He emigrated to
Palestine
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
in 1936 and led recruiting efforts for the
Zionist Revisionist movement. He was arrested by the British and jailed for his political activities. After Israel's independence in 1948, Kolitz became active in the state's literary and cultural life. In 2002, Kolitz died of natural causes in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, NY.
''Yosl Rakover Talks to God''
Kolitz is best known for ''Yosl Rakover Talks to God,'' a short story he wrote in 1946 for a Jewish newspaper in
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
. In the story, set in the final days of the
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...
, a pious Jew challenges God. ''And so, my God, before I die, freed from all fear, beyond all terror, in a state of absolute inner peace and trust, I will allow myself to call you to account one last time in my life,'' the fictionalized Rakover says, adding later ''I believe in the God of Israel, even when he has done everything to make me cease to believe in him.''
A few years after it was published, the story was translated into
English and
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
but without Kolitz's name as the author. It was passed on as an authentic testimony of the Warsaw Ghetto and ended up in several Holocaust anthologies and even as a meditation in Jewish prayer books.
It was many years before Kolitz was able to recapture his story and claim it as his own. It was later translated under his name in editions in Polish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish and Swedish. In 1999,
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint. Founded in 1942 as an independent publishing house in New York City by Kurt and Helen Wolff, it specialized in introducing progressive European works to American readers. In 1961, it was ...
published the story in a slim volume with afterwords by
Paul Badde,
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas (born Emanuelis Levinas ; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the rel ...
and
Leon Wieseltier. Dr. Levinas called it ''a text both beautiful and true, true as only fiction can be.''
Other works
While living in Israel in the early 1950s, Kolitz was a co-writer and co-producer of ''
Hill 24 Doesn't Answer'' (1954), a
1947–1949 Palestine war
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionism, Zionist forces conquered territory and established ...
movie, which was Israel's first full-length motion picture. He later moved to the United States and was co-producer of
Rolf Hochhuth's ''
The Deputy
''The Deputy, a Christian tragedy'' (German language, German: ''Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel''), also published in English as ''The Representative'', is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which portrayed Pope Pius XII ...
'', one of the first plays to challenge the
Vatican's silence during the Holocaust, which ran on
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
** Broadway Theatre (53rd Stre ...
, amid considerable controversy, for nine months in 1964.
Kolitz was co-producer of several other Broadway shows, including ''
The Megilla of Itzik Manger'' (1968), and a musical, ''
I'm Solomon'', an expensive flop that ran for seven performances in 1968.
Kolitz also wrote several works of fiction and Jewish philosophy, including ''The Tiger Beneath the Skin: Stories and Parables of the Years of Death'' (Creative Age Press, 1947), ''Survival for What?'' (The Philosophical Library, 1969), ''The Teacher: An Existential Approach to the Bible'' (Jason Aronson, 1982) and ''Confrontation: The Existential Thought of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik'' (Ktav, 1993).
Until a few weeks before his death, Kolitz wrote a weekly column for the Yiddish newspaper ''
Algemeiner Journal
The ''Algemeiner Journal'', known informally as ''The Algemeiner'', is a newspaper based in New York City that covers American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. It is widely read by Hasidic Jews.
History
Gershon Jacobson, a ...
''. The column appeared under his name for 32 years. He also taught courses in Jewish thought for many years at
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a Private university, private Modern Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City. .
Awards
* 1999:
National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1943, is an American organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of qual ...
in the Nonfiction category for ''Yosl Rakover Talks to God''
Sources
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kolitz, Zvi
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
Yiddish-language writers
Jewish American non-fiction writers
Jewish American film people
Film producers from New York (state)
University of Florence alumni
20th-century Lithuanian Jews
20th-century Lithuanian writers
Jewish refugees
Lithuanian emigrants to Italy
20th-century Italian Jews
Italian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
People from Alytus
Mass media people from New York City
1912 births
2002 deaths
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews