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
Yokhed ve-tsiber: Individual Expression and Communal Responsibility in a Yiddish Droshe by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Ariel Evan Mayse
Scholarship on Soloveitchik’s teachings has tended to focus exclusively on his Hebrew or English works rather than his Yiddish writings, but the present essay traces Soloveitchik’s style and exploring the nuances of intellectual legacy through the lens of an important Yiddish homily, a little-studied but critical essay called “Yokhed ve-tsiber” (“The Individual and the Collective”), an undated work was first delivered as a droshe (sermon) on his father’s yortsayt.
Feb 11, 2019
Article
A Guide to the Ze’enah U-Re’enah: Correcting Some Misconceptions
Morris Faierstein
The most popular Yiddish book ever published gets its story right.
Feb 11, 2019
Review
Review of Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy by Debra Caplan
Mayhill Fowler
In the brief decade of its existence, the Vilna Theater Troupe radically changed Yiddish theater, and the global stage.
Feb 06, 2019
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