{"id":4937,"date":"2025-11-18T15:46:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T15:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/?p=4937"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:44:04","slug":"electrical-engineering-yiddish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2025\/11\/18\/electrical-engineering-yiddish\/","title":{"rendered":"Electrical Engineering in Yiddish: The Vilna Technicum (and Beyond)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Alona Bach, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Short-Term Graduate Public History Fellow<\/h3>\n

Electrical Engineering in Yiddish: The Vilna Technicum (and Beyond)<\/h2>\n

\u201cUp to this point, there has not been a single book about electricity in Yiddish, aside from a few small<\/a> pamphlets<\/a>,\u201d declared the engineer Israel Okun<\/a> in January 1922. It was a bold, frank introduction to his new Yiddish translation<\/a> of a German textbook about electricity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a><\/p>\n

Photograph of Israel Okun, first director of the Technicum in Vilna. <\/em>Letter O, General.\u00a0<\/a>Bund Photographs. RG 1402. Drawer C-28-2, Folder 173. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Writing from Vilna (Vilnius), Okun argued that \u201ca marked need for such [Yiddish] books has long made itself felt. Electricity is infiltrating more and more cities and towns where wide swathes of Jewish social strata can be found\u201d\u2014Vilna\u2019s first central power station had powered the city\u2019s streetlights since 1903<\/a>\u2014\u201cand the number of Jewish electrical engineers [elektrotekhniker<\/em>] and electricians [elektromontiori<\/em>] is growing. [\u2026] Yiddish technical courses are being opened in schools, people enroll in Yiddish lectures on the subject of electrical engineering\u2014and yet the necessary books in Yiddish, which would offer a systematic explanation of electricity, are lacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okun\u2019s Yiddish translation of Electricity and Its Practical Applications (Elektre un ir praktishe oysnitsung)<\/a> was poised to meet that need. The 270-page textbook began with an introduction to electromagnetism and the production of electric current (Chapters 1-3); and later covered topics including batteries (Chapter 4); induction and dynamos (Chapter 5); power stations, high tension wires, transformers, electric trams, and electric trains (Chapter 6); incandescent bulbs with carbon and metal filaments (Chapter 7); and cathode rays, fluorescence, and Moseley\u2019s Law (Chapter 9).<\/p>\n

\"Yiddish<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Elektre un ir praktishe oysnutsung: a bukh tsum lernen un leyenen<\/a>, trans. Israel Okun [from Leo Graetz, Elektrizit\u00e4t und ihre Anwendungen, 11th<\/sup> ed.] (Vilne: Farlag ORT, 1922).<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1922, Okun\u2019s desire for pedagogical materials was both pragmatic and pressing. He had just begun his term as the first director of Vilna\u2019s newly-established Jewish Vocational (Technical) School<\/a> of ORT<\/a>, known sometimes as the Technicum, which he had helped found the year before. The Technicum offered Jewish teenagers a three-year curriculum in either mechanics or electrical engineering\u2014proof, its founders hoped, \u201cthat, in Yiddish, one could teach not only mathematics, but also specialized technical studies<\/a>.\u201d Each year, between one- to two-hundred students<\/a> enrolled in Technicum courses. And to teach these students, the Technicum needed textbooks.<\/p>\n

\"placard<\/a><\/p>\n

A placard reading \u201cVilner yidisher Technicum bay ORT: Electrical Engineering Department.\u201d <\/em>Photograph; miscellaneous placards, undated<\/a>, Records of the ORT Vocational School (Technicum) in Vilna, RG 21, Box: 6, Folder: 93. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Flyers advertising admissions requirements for the Technicum. In 1923 (below left), students needed to be older than 16 to apply; a later advertisement (below right, c. 1926-1933) invites \u201cmen and women no younger than 15\u201d to apply for the Technicum. Students that year would enroll in a course of six semesters at 20 zloty a month, to begin August 30.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>
\"Yiddish\"\"<\/div><\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

Announcement of Mechanical High School\/Lyceum admission requirements and entrance examinations, 1939<\/a>.<\/u> Records of the ORT Vocational School (Technicum) in Vilna RG 21, Box: 6, Folder: 92A. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cModels built in the Vilna ORT Technicum, 1935.\u201d<\/a> ORT Photograph Collection, RG 380. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okun\u2019s translation may have been the first electrical engineering textbook made with Technicum students in mind, but it wasn\u2019t the last. Just five years later, the prominent Marxist and \u201cFather of the Bund\u201d Arkadi (Aron) Kremer<\/a> (1865-1935) handwrote a series of<\/a> textbooks<\/a> specially for the Technicum\u2019s curriculum. (Kremer, an instructor at both the Technicum and the Vilna Teacher Seminar<\/a>, also had strong engineering bonafides: he had studied at the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg before his first arrest for revolutionary activities.) Kremer\u2019s 1927 textbook guided students through the first five<\/a> terms of the Technicum\u2019s electrical engineering curriculum, and was\u00a0 distributed in lithographed copies to keep costs low for students. The copy of Part I held and digitized by the CJH<\/a> includes a 1930 inscription from Technicum director Mateusz (Matisyahu) Szrejber to \u201cthe great thinker and fighter for new forms of Jewish life, the friend of ORT,\u201d the famed diaspora nationalist Chaim Zhitlowsky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/a><\/p>\n

Kremer, Arkady and Kremer, Pati.<\/a> Bund Photographs, RG 1402, Drawer C 28-1, Folder 116 Item 52. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>
\"\"\"Page<\/div><\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

Right:\u00a0<\/em>Textbook \u2013 “Elektrotekhnik” (Electrical Engineering)<\/a>, by A. Kremer, 1st half year, 1927. Records of the ORT Vocational School (Technicum) in Vilna, RG 21, Box: 7, Folder: 111, p. 10. Collection of YIVO Archives. <\/em><\/p>\n

Left: The cover of <\/em>the 1928-1929 edition of “Elektrotekhnik” (Electrical Engineering)<\/a>, by A. Kremer, Part II, 2nd edition Issued by the “Farvaltung far gegnzaytiker hilf” (Administration for Mutual Aid) of the Technicum; cover illustrations by Yitskhok Shkop (Szkop). Records of the ORT Vocational School (Technicum) in Vilna, RG 21, (Box 7, Folder 113). Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Leon Daniel (above), a student in the Technicum\u2019s Electrical Engineering Department, took his first-year Electrical Engineering course with Kremer in 1922\u2014alongside Algebra I, Geometry I, Physics I, Technical Drafting I, Theoretical Mechanics I, practical laboratory work, and other courses. His course record booklet has been signed by the Technicum\u2019s then-director, Israel Okun (below).<\/p>\n

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\n
<\/div>
\"Page\"Marbled<\/div><\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

Student identification cards and booklets recording course credits<\/a>. Records of the ORT Vocational School (Technicum) in Vilna, RG 21, Box 6, Folder 85. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the end of the interwar period, Yiddish readers in Eastern Europe could learn about electricity from a range of popular and technical Yiddish-language texts<\/a> (many in translation, and many from the Soviet Union). These ranged from the academic A Simple Explanation of Dynamos, Motors, and Transformers; Direct and Alternating Current; Guidebook for Technicums and Institutions of Higher Education<\/a> (Minsk: Oysgabe fun Vaysrusishn melukhe-universitet, 1929) and The Practical Electrical Engineer<\/a> (Bialystok: 1925), to the accessible 63-page Advice for a Young Electrical Engineer, Inventor<\/a> (Kharkiv: Ukrmelukhe natsmindfarlag, 1932), What is Electricity?<\/a> (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1929), Electricity at Home: Lighting, Telegraph, Telephone, Radio<\/a> (Kyiv: Kultur-lige, 1930), and even a pamphlet featuring electrical experiments for children<\/a> (Moscow: Farlag \u2018Emes\u2019, 1932). At the Technicum itself, instructor and engineer M. Gordon had written two more textbooks for students, focused on electric grids and power stations<\/a>, respectively. But the era of Vilna\u2019s Yiddish-language Technicum was over almost as soon as it began: the school was forced to close after the Soviet occupation of Vilna in 1940, not two full decades after it had first opened its doors to aspiring engineers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ORT workshop in Vilna, [c.1920s-1930s].<\/a> ORT Photograph Collection. RG 380, Box C15, Drawer 2, Folder 1277. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Learn more about the Technicum by exploring YIVO\u2019s digitized collections.<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank you to YIVO archivist Jessica Podhorcer for generous research assistance and guidance on this project.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Alona Bach, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Short-Term Graduate Public History Fellow Electrical Engineering in Yiddish: The Vilna Technicum (and Beyond) \u201cUp to this point, there has not been a single book about electricity in Yiddish, aside from a few small pamphlets,\u201d declared the engineer Israel Okun in January 1922. It was a bold, frank introduction to his new Yiddish translation of a German textbook about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,395,1345,9,1347,6,1346,842,50,155],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-archives","tag-education","tag-engineering","tag-jewish-history","tag-jewish-studies","tag-libraries","tag-ort","tag-vilna","tag-yiddish","tag-yivo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5091,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions\/5091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}