Community Read: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes
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Workshop
Co-sponsored by the International Association of Yiddish Clubs, Yiddish Book Center, the Workers Circle, and Yugntruf Admission: Free Registration is required. |
Meet Max Spitzkopf: legendary private eye, undefeated foe of villains, and passionate defender of the Jewish people. No matter how hopeless or dangerous the case, when “the investigatory profession’s greatest artist” is summoned, justice is assured. Aided by his trusty assistant, Fuchs, super-sleuth Spitzkopf deploys equal parts physical bravery and intellectual ingenuity—not to mention a knack for stealthy disguise—to unpick evil conspiracies, outwit the canniest of criminals, and restore moral order to the world. Giving a unique twist to a beloved literary genre, Spitzkopf’s mysteries are a vibrant testament to Jewish life, in all its variety, during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Join us for a beshutfesdike leyenung, or a “Community Read.” Led by translator Mikhl Yashinsky, attendees will read selections of the original Yiddish text from Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes by Jonas Kreppel.
Read a selection of the text in Yiddish, transliteration, and English translation.
About the Speaker
Mikhl Yashinsky was born in Detroit and graduated with a degree in European history and literature from Harvard. Now living in New York City, he works as a teacher, translator, performer, and playwright. With the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he performed in the Yiddish-language Fiddler on the Roof directed by Joel Grey and the classic operetta The Sorceress, both New York Times “Critic's Picks.” In the latter, he brought a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role of Bobe Yakhne (NYT). His play The Gospel According to Chaim (New Yiddish Rep, 2023–4) was hailed as the first new full-length Yiddish-language drama produced professionally in the United States, outside of the Hasidic world, for many decades and “jolted the repertoire with a work that is both traditional and delightfully subversive” (Forward) and his musical Feast of the Seven Sinners (14Y Theater, 2025) recognized as a “saucy spectacle which sprouts excitingly unorthodox fruit” (Forward). He has taught Yiddish at Columbia, the University of Michigan, Tel Aviv University, YIVO, and The Workers Circle, and co-authored the award-winning Yiddish language textbook In eynem (White Goat Press). Two books he translated were released in 2025: The Mother of Yiddish Theatre: Memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (Bloomsbury and YIVO) and Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes (White Goat Press). He currently holds a translation fellowship with the Yiddish Book Center, through which he is translating the poetry of fellow Detroiter Ezra Korman.