Articles

Essays and peer-reviewed scholarship in Yiddish Studies, an interdisciplinary field that engages all aspects of Yiddish cultural production, especially in its relationship to other cultures and languages.

Click here for a separate listing of open-access, peer-reviewed articles.

Article

Is There Such a Thing as “Yiddish Architecture”?

The spa­tial turn” in the human­i­ties has opened up new kinds of think­ing about Jews’ rela­tion­ship to place. Yet how can this approach — which focus­es on the phys­i­cal­ly con­crete — be applied to the field of Yid­dish stud­ies, which after all is defined by the intan­gi­ble fac­tor of language? 

Article

Dream of a Common loshn

How can we read Yid­dish poet­ry across time to find a new com­mon lan­guage? How can we cre­ate a space for the imag­ined dia­logues of Kadia Molodowsky and Adri­enne Rich with their fore­moth­ers, an alter­na­tive nar­ra­tive of blood and text? 

Review

Here Dwells the Jewish People

A review of Avra­ham Nover­shtern’s new book on a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture. Our review­er asks: was Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture in Amer­i­ca a cul­tur­al enter­prise that was doomed from the start or one that gen­er­at­ed mul­ti­ple beginnings? 

Article

Tongue-Twisted: Itzik Manger between mame-loshn and loshn-koydesh

Avant-garde Yid­dish poet Itzik Manger rein­scribes tra­di­tion­al Yid­dish cul­tur­al prac­tices, such as icon­o­clas­tic and anachro­nis­tic rewrit­ings of bib­li­cal texts, in a polit­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal and poet­i­cal­ly mod­ernist context. 

Article

Auden Can Wait: Introducing the Academic Section of In geveb

What is Yid­dish Stud­ies? We inau­gu­rate In geveb with a sym­po­sium on the state of the field, where a cross-sec­tion of schol­ars iden­ti­fy the press­ing ques­tions of Yid­dish Studies.

Article

Yiddish and the Holocaust

It seems obvi­ous that study of the Holo­caust would need to high­light Yid­dish. Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, the study of the Holo­caust has often been pur­sued with­out the slight­est nod to Yid­dish. What is lost when Yid­dish is left out? 

Article

Yiddish Literature in the American West

Was there a defin­able style of Yid­dish writ­ing pro­duced in the Amer­i­can West? It is time to look beyond New York and exam­ine the unique expe­ri­ences of Jews on the Pacif­ic Coast and the lit­er­ary cul­ture they produced. 

Article

The Schandmaske, Silence, and mame-loshn

Was Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture of the ear­ly mod­ern peri­od an out­let for the voic­es of women, or did it par­tic­i­pate in their sup­pres­sion, like the iron tongue of the Rothen­burg Schand­maske?

Article

Is There Yiddish Photography?

Is there Yid­dish pho­tog­ra­phy? Can non-lin­guis­tic things be Yid­dish? Yid­dish pho­tog­ra­phy (or cul­ture in gen­er­al) might emerge not in any work of art, but in the peo­ple who pro­duced it, read it, viewed it, bought it, sold it, and exhib­it­ed it.

Article

The Price of Remorse: Yiddish and the Work of Mourning in Jacob Steinberg’s Hebrew Poetry

Jacob Stein­berg’s poet­ry between Hebrew and Yid­dish, between mourn­ing and melancholy.

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