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
Introduction: Yiddish and the Transnational in Latin America
In studying Latin American (and indeed American continental) Yiddish culture, we need to appreciate the effects of encounter and interaction between these two well established transnational languages.
May 02, 2021
Article
Musical Comedy as Compromise Formation: Judío and Judía (1926), by Ivo Pelay
Ivo Pelay’s 1926 plays Judío and Judía, “Jew” and “Jewess,” thematize anxiety not only about the Argentineity of Jews, but also about the Jewishness of Argentina: the promise of assimilation and the threat of subversion.
May 02, 2021
Article
On Yiddish Nuances: Yiddishkayt as Listening Key in the Music of Osvaldo Golijov
This paper approaches Osvaldo Golijov’s music from the intersection of musicology and Yiddish studies.
May 02, 2021
Article
The Goldenberg Variations: The International “Star System” and the Yiddish Theater of Buenos Aires in 1930
From the 1920s until the 1950s, Yiddish Buenos Aires hosted a thriving theatrical landscape. Critics complained that the public’s adoration of “stars” propelled a preponderance of shund at the expense of “better” (literary) plays.
May 02, 2021
Article
The Image of Streetwalkers in Itzik Manger’s and Debora Vogel’s Ballads
By considering the image of the streetwalker in Manger’s and Vogel’s work, this article deepens the understanding of Yiddish creativity as ultimately multimodal and interconnected.
Dec 02, 2020
Article
Shylock’s Jewish Way of Speaking
What if Shylock spoke Yiddish? One experimental production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” did just that.
Jul 07, 2020
Article
Cod Yiddish From Across the Pond: Howard Jacobson’s Finklerspeak
Howard Jacobson tests the limits and contours of a Jewish way of speaking, presenting an Anglo-Jewish dialogue with post-imperial culture.
Jul 07, 2020
Article
Breaking Ground, Broken English: Abraham Cahan’s The Imported Bridegroom
Cahan’s characters speak in broken languages, and in so doing find themselves unable to find stable ground in America.
Jul 07, 2020
Article
The Fourth Child
The author reflects on his own experiences encountering David Roskies in the 1960s and collaborating with him in Holocaust remembrance at a very different time than our present context for the memory and commemoration of the Holocaust.
Jun 30, 2020
Article
Letters Without Addresses: Abraham Sutzkever’s Late Style
Abraham Sutzkever’s poetry is often read within the confines of “Holocaust literature”. This essays reads a selection of Sutzkever’s poetry against the Holocaust, against the apocalypse, and against the horizons of meaning that the label of “Holocaust literature” might impose.
Jun 30, 2020