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

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.


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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.

Review

Review of Women Writing Jewish Modernity by Allison Schachter

Schachter calls us to think beyond the andro­cen­tric, to imag­ine and cre­ate an under­stand­ing of mod­ern Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture that places women at its center.

Review

Review of Polacos in Argentina by Mariusz Kałczewiak

Pola­cos in Argenti­na pro­vides a mul­ti­fac­eted per­spec­tive on the hybridized iden­ti­ties that trans­formed Pol­ish Jews into Argen­tin­ian Jews and even­tu­al­ly into Jew­ish Argentines.

Review

Review of New York Klezmer in the Early Twentieth Century by Joel E. Rubin

Despite the shift­ing sta­tus and pop­u­lar­i­ty of this Ashke­nazi instru­men­tal music and its musi­cians, Joel Rubin is, sur­pris­ing­ly, the first researcher to devote seri­ous and sus­tained atten­tion to one of its most impor­tant and pro­duc­tive peri­ods: New York in the 1920s, and in par­tic­u­lar the remark­able — and nowa­days canon­i­cal — record­ings of its two best-known and most influ­en­tial fig­ures, Dave Tar­ras (1895÷71989) and Naf­tule Brandwein (18841963).

Review

Review of Beyond the Synagogue by Rachel B. Gross

Through her work, Gross seeks to val­i­date prac­tices that mean­ing­ful­ly con­tribute to Jew­ish iden­ti­ty for­ma­tion and con­nect Jew­ish Amer­i­cans to their his­to­ry as a peo­ple and to the con­tem­po­rary com­mu­ni­ty of Jew­ish people.

Review

Review of It Could Lead to Dancing by Sonia Gollance

Trac­ing the exis­tence of mixed-sex danc­ing is not only about wit­ness­ing chang­ing ideas of sex­u­al­i­ty but how Jews addressed the rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions aris­ing from modernity.

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