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
A Linguistic Bridge Between Alienation and Intimacy: Chabad’s Theorization of Yiddish in Historical and Cultural Perspective
Eli Rubin
Yiddish has always been the oracular mainstay of Chabad’s intellectual and spiritual trajectory.
Jan 28, 2019
Article
A Narrow Path: Language and Longing for a Holy Place that is Lost
Aviv Luban
For the nascent Polish Braslev Hasidic movement, the events of 1917 and their aftermath severed the group from its Holy Place: the grave of Reb Nakhmen in what is now Uman, Ukraine. This geopolitical reality elicited a unique literary and spiritual response in the form of an impassioned prayer, penned by Reb Yitskhok Brayter (c. 1886-1942), a leader of that community.
Jan 27, 2019
Article
Kratsn in der linker peye: yidish, yidishkayt, un dos pintele yid: A special issue of In geveb on Religious Thought in Yiddish
Ariel Evan Mayse, Naomi Seidman, Marc Caplan and Daniel Reiser
An introduction from the editors of the special issue of In geveb on Religious Thought in Yiddish.
Jan 20, 2019
Article
Man, Woman, and Serpent: Kabbalah and High Modernity in the Early Writings of Aaron Zeitlin
Nathan Wolski
This study presents a translation and analysis of Aaron Zeitlin’s 1924 essay, “Man, froy un shlang,” published in Illustrirte vokh.
Dec 25, 2018
Review
Review of Raising Secular Jews: Yiddish Schools and Their Periodicals for American Children, 1917-1950 by Naomi Prawer Kadar
Dylan Kaufman-Obstler
Dec 10, 2018
Article
The Shtik Kabole Niger Couldn’t Digest: Poetry, Messianism, and Literatoyre in Aaron Zeitlin’s Keter
Nathan Wolski
This study presents a translation and analysis of Aaron Zeitlin’s (1898-1973) poem “Keter: Fragmenten fun a rapsodye,” published in 1923, at the height of the Warsaw expressionist explosion of the early twenties.
Nov 29, 2018
Review
Review of The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature, edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher
Adriana X. Jacobs
Nov 18, 2018
Review
Review of Convergence, an Album of Multi-Diasporic Musical Longing by Anthony Russell and Veretski Pass
Leah Reis-Dennis
Anthony Russell, in collaboration with Veretski Pass (Joshua Horowitz on piano, Cookie Segelstein on fiddle, and Stuart Brotman on cello), intertwines Jewish Eastern Europe folk music and African American spiritual traditions.
Nov 06, 2018
Article
Traveling and Traversing Chabad’s Literary Paths: From Likutei torah to Khayim gravitser and Beyond
Eli Rubin
This paper aims to complicate the neat chronology that bifurcates modern Jewish literature from its Hasidic roots, using Fishl Schneersohn’s novel Khayim Gravitser and Avraham Shlonsky’s Hebrew translation of the novel to demonstrate that these authors continued the Hasidic literary tradition of Chabad even as they embraced alternative literary forms in the cause of new aesthetic agendas.
Oct 09, 2018
Review
Review of A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture by Shachar M. Pinsker
Jeffrey Yoskowitz
Shachar M. Pinsker’s latest work is a lively examination of the role of cafés as meeting grounds for Jewish writers and thinkers in the modern period of transnational migration, from 1848-1939.
Sep 16, 2018