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

Nit dos dorf, nit di kretshme: Speaking About Jewish Taverns in the Works of Sholem Aleichem

The tav­ern is a fix­ture of the shtetl uni­verse — but it also exists on the mar­gins, where, for Sholem Ale­ichem, you can also find the chaos of modernity.

Article

Raysn: The Belarusian Frontier of Yiddish Modernism

On the eve of World War I, poets Leyb Nay­dus, Moyshe Kul­bak, and Elkho­nen Vogler devel­oped a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to nature in an attempt to reclaim the imag­i­nary Jew­ish ter­ri­to­ries of Lite and Raysn.

Article

Sholem Aleichem's Stempenyu: Speaking through Song

How does one write about romance in Yid­dish? Sholem Aleichem’s 1888 nov­el Stem­penyu pos­es this ques­tion through an exam­i­na­tion of the gen­dered lim­i­ta­tions on Jew­ish lit­er­ary love.

Article

Badkhones in Life and Cinema: A Reading of the Marshalik in the 1937 Dybbuk Film

The wed­ding bard of The Dyb­buk is a para­dox­i­cal fig­ure: a pro­fes­sion­al out­sider who speaks into being the lay­ered com­plex­i­ty of S. An-ski’s artis­tic project.

Article

Hertz Grosbard’s Jewspeak: The Lost Art of Word Concerts

Hertz Gros­bard’s word con­certs” were an embod­i­ment of Jew­speak,” per­for­mances that sought to give life to the Yid­dish lit­er­ary tradition.

Article

Viva Voce: Vicissitudes of the Spoken Word in Hebrew Literature

Why does the Hebrew nov­el have a prob­lem with speech? Alan Mintz on the non-dia­log­i­cal and the mono­log­i­cal in mod­ern Hebrew literature.

Article

Critical Discourse as a Jewish Thing and Its Beginnings in the Bible

The Bib­li­cal record pro­vides a set of pow­er­ful mod­els for crit­i­cal dis­course, cre­at­ing nar­ra­tives, laws, and prophet­ic modes that empha­size the prac­tice of ver­bal critique. 

Article

Introduction: There’s a Jewish Way of Saying Things

Rosen intro­duces There’s a Jew­ish Way of Say­ing Things: Essays In Hon­or of David Roskies by reflect­ing on how Jew­ish speech — the spo­ken word, the vibrat­ing res­o­nance of uttered sound — finds its way back into text.

Article

Talmud Talk and Jewish Talk

What are the par­al­lels between Jew­ish con­ver­sa­tion” and Tal­mu­dic dis­course? Is there some­thing inher­ent­ly Tal­mu­dic about Jew­ish speech?

Article

Translating As Saying

Can Mar­tin Buber and Franz Rosen­zweig’s trans­la­tion of the Hebrew Bible be con­sid­ered a form of Jew­ish speech? When and how does trans­la­tion become a Jew­ish way of talking?

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