From Translation to Transmission: A Chapter in the Odyssey of Maurice Samuel

ABSTRACT:A reassessment of Maurice Samuel (1895–1972), author, translator, polemicist, and Zionist is long overdue. One of the most productive and durable of the group dubbed by historian Carole Kessner as The “Other” New York Jewish Intellectuals, Samuel may be characterized as a public intellectual who was content with making his marks in primarily Jewish contexts and without the anxieties of alienation characteristic of his more celebrated contemporaries. This essay addresses the role he played in conveying works from German, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish to an American audience. Four particular tensions receive attention: (1) the interplay between author and translator; (2) the relationship of a multilingual translator to the various source languages; (3) the inadequacy of the term translation for describing Samuel’s agenda; and (4) the reception of his pivotal works on the Yiddish authors Sholom Asch, Sholom Aleichem, and Y.L. Peretz. Samuel’s contributions invite reconsideration of our assumptions about the means and ends of cultural transmission in a modern context. I argue that Samuel’s works merit a better reputation, and that he has earned a place as one of twentieth-century American Jewry’s cultural heroes.