(Editor). Albatros [avant-garde Yiddish literary journal]

A rare complete set of the short-lived journal Albatros, which had enormous impact upon the modernist Yiddish literary scene. The poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1894-1981) was born in Eastern Galicia to a rabbinical family that traced its lineage back to the legendary Chassidic master R. Uri of Strelisk ("Seraph of Strelisk"), after whom he was named. Greenberg moved to Warsaw in 1920, where he contributed to the radical literary publications that were blossoming at the time. In 1922, he launched his own peiodical Albatros, " A journal for new poets' and for artists' expression." In his "Manifest to the Opponents of the New Poetry," Greenberg called for "the cruel in poetry...the chaotic in imagery...the outcry of blood (p.5)." With such a manifesto, it was not surprising that the second volume of Albatros was confiscated by the authorities due to its revolutionary stance. Consequently, the third and fourth volumes of Albatros appeared in the more liberal climate of Berlin, to where Greenberg relocated in 1923. It was in this final volume (pp. 15-24), Greenberg published his immortal poem "In Malchus fun Tselem" [In the Kingdom of the Cross], in which he predicted European Holocaust. In 1924, Greenberg emigrated to Eretz Israel, thenceforth switching to Hebrew as his idiom. He went on to become the voice of the Israeli right with its vision of a Greater Israel. In later life, Greenberg returned to the piety of his youth. See EJ, Vol. VII, cols. 906-909