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 From the Jewish Provinces by Fradl Shtok, translated by Jordan D. Finkin and Allison Schachter

From the Jew­ish Provinces is a valu­able and high­ly read­able addi­tion to Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture in translation.

Article

The Yiddish Columbus: Critical Counter-History and the Remapping of American Jewish Literature

Glantz’s mas­ter­work Kris­to­bal Kolon offers a transna­tion­al vision of the Amer­i­c­as that insists — in Yid­dish — on its Jew­ish, Mus­lim, indige­nous and African ori­gins, sug­gest­ing a new geog­ra­phy for Amer­i­can Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture that exceeds the bound­aries of what we under­stand the Amer­i­c­as and Jew­ish­ness to be, and chal­leng­ing our expec­ta­tions of what Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture can contain.

Article

‘Brother Jews of the Entire World!’ Bergelson, Hofshteyn, and Soviet-Yiddish in the Worldwide Jewish Family

This arti­cle looks at the wartime artis­tic and jour­nal­is­tic out­put of Dovid Bergel­son and Dovid Hof­shteyn to see how these writ­ers appro­pri­at­ed Sovi­et ter­mi­nol­o­gy to paint Sovi­et Jews as the elder broth­ers in a world­wide Jew­ish family.

Article

A Yiddish Newspaper at War with Yiddish: Abraham Cahan and the 1931 Language Debate in the New York Forverts

This arti­cle describes the para­dox of the neg­a­tive atti­tude artic­u­lat­ed by the Yid­dish Forverts toward using Yid­dish as the edu­ca­tion­al medi­um of instruc­tion in Amer­i­can Jew­ish schools. 

Review

Review of Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Emigres and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s—1930s by Faith Hillis

Cre­at­ed out of neces­si­ty as a response to Tsarist repres­sion, Hillis argues that cir­cles of Russ­ian émi­gré groups, or colonies,” rep­re­sent­ed a cru­cial space in the devel­op­ment of Russ­ian politics.

Article

Prayer and Crime: Cantor Elias Zaludkovsky’s Concert Performance Season in 1924 Poland

In his con­cert career Zalud­kovsky walked a fine line between per­form­ing the sacred iden­ti­ty of can­tor and falling into the forms of cul­tur­al crime that he him­self had iden­ti­fied as cor­rupt­ing tra­di­tion through exces­sive com­mer­cial­iza­tion and medi­a­ti­za­tion of sacred music.


Click here for a pdf ver­sion of this article

Review

“Love is Death”: Judith: A Tale of Love and Woe

Judith is a nov­el about the mun­dan­i­ties of life and love that, as per­haps painful and unhealthy as they lat­er turn out to be, per­sist even as the world around us erupts into vio­lence, and that we car­ry with us halfway across the world and half a life­time away.

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