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.
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
Review
Review of the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary
Alec (Leyzer) Burko
A comprehensive review of the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary, including many examples of entries.
Jun 14, 2018
Article
'Before the bow that was drawn': The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939–1940/41
Miriam Schulz
Translation by Joshua Price and Miriam Schulz
A translation of the introduction of Miriam Schulz’s recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees (“Before the bow that was drawn”: The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry).
May 14, 2018
Review
Yiddish Mass Culture in History and Practice: Eddy Portnoy's Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories of the Yiddish Press
Ayelet Brinn
Apr 09, 2018
Review
How to be Both: Officials and Artists Vying for the Limelight
Iaroslava Strikha
Mayhill Fowler’s book shines light on the blind spots of national cultural histories of turn of the century Ukraine, following the often uneasy interface between authorities and art institutions.
Mar 26, 2018